Seven Ways to Die Read online

  “Where did the blood go?” Winters asked.

  “Don’t rush me,” Wolfsheim snapped back without looking at her.

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay, you’ll learn,” he answered with a wisp of a smile. “Continuing. There’s another wrinkle. We completed an examination of the blood which shows us it contained toxic levels of both nitroglycerine and yohimbine. Point three milliliters of nitroglycerine and ten milliliters of yohimbine, which you probably know as Yohimbe, a fast-acting aphrodisiac when administered orally. Yohimbine is an alpha-2 adrenergic block agent. A dose of yohimbine this high has numerous side effects, including rapid heart rate, high blood pressure, overstimulation, and seizures.

  “The two drugs are additive and would cause an almost immediate and deadly drop in the blood pressure.”

  He paused for another sip of coffee while the TAZ squad waited impatiently for the big kahuna to continue.

  “The question is, which came first? Based on the condition of the heart and brain, it is my conclusion that the Yohimbe was administered first. I’m sure he took it willingly and chased it down with the drink on the table which was bourbon. The killer then began to masturbate Handley. Then he was given a second drink which contained the nitro tablet, and the killer began to service him orally. Handley was approaching a state of ecstasy and it was easy to slip the handball into his mouth and tie it in with the towel. That stifled any screaming. With the introduction of the nitro, Handley was brought to orgasm–and probably suffered extreme pain similar to angina. Then the killer injected the needle and began the exsanguination. Handley’s blood pressure already had dropped dangerously low with the administration of the drugs, and with the loss of blood he was probably brain dead within five minutes followed shortly thereafter by a fatal heart attack.

  “We found no DNA so I guess the killer swallowed,” Rizzo snickered, drawing a piercing stare from Annie.

  Wolfsheim ignored the interruption. “The killer then withdrew the IV, the remaining blood had settled by gravity to the lower part of the body and there was no blood when the killer cut Handley’s throat.”

  “Why go to the trouble of draining the blood when the nitro-Yohimbe dose would have killed Handley?” Bergman asked.

  “Good question,” Wolfsheim said.

  Bergman took a cautious guess. “No blood stains on the killer or in the room to mess things up?”

  “Possibly, but I doubt it,” Wolfsheim answered.

  “Make sure he died if by some miracle the nitro and Yohimbe didn’t kill him?” Hue guessed.

  “I like that better,” said Wolfsheim.

  Then Annie threw in a question: “Why cut his throat after all that?”

  “Why indeed,” Wolfsheim muttered again.

  “Now may I ask what happened to the blood?” Kate Winters asked cautiously.

  “Sure,” said Wolfsheim. “Annie, you want to take that one?”

  “Okay,” she said. “There were a few fibers at the death scene. They were on the floor next to the chair where Handley was killed. We’re checking them but we feel fairly certain they came from the towel around Handley’s neck. We’re guessing that towel was put on the floor and the blood drained into something fairly portable resting on the towel.”

  “Like a hot water bottle,” Wolfsheim added. “Then it was dumped into the toilet in the guest bathroom.”

  “Did you guess that?” Cody asked. “Is that why you took him out sitting up?”

  “Educated guess. The blood had to be somewhere. All the killer had to do was drain half his blood supply, two-point-seven liters, to kill him. So I assumed the rest of it had settled in his lower body. Had we tilted him over it would have run out of his mouth, ears, the slit in his throat. All over the place. So, I decided to haul him out the way he was. Also the neighbors wouldn’t notice.”

  Rothschild picked it up. She was excited. “The bourbon most likely came from Handley’s wet bar in the library,” she said. “The knife that slashed his throat had a serrated blade so we think it was one of the knives in a holder in the kitchen. Also washed clean in the toilet. We brought it in to test it.”

  “Which still doesn’t answer, “Why make the kill so complicated?’” Hue said.

  “Also it had to be somebody Handley knew,” Bergman offered. “Perhaps someone who had been there before to case the place.”

  Cody had been listening to the word play. Now he joined in. “Well,” he said, “I agree he may have known Handley before that night, but it’s not a certainty. Handley could have described the layout. We have to assume Handley was discreet. He knew the only potential witness was the masseuse across the hall, who was usually asleep by eleven-thirty. So Handley would have been comfortable going to his place.”

  “So would the killer,” said Bergman. “I mean, up the stairs and in the door. Hell, entry in a minute, exit in a minute. Somebody spots you going in, you abort the job. Only risk is a minute to get out.”

  “Any ideas, Micah?” Wolfsheim asked. “Think about it. The killer was set up and waiting when Handley came home at 12:55 a.m. The entire procedure could have taken say twenty or thirty minutes max, depending on how much the killer was enjoying it. Clearly S & M is involved in this. My guess is the perpetrator was out of there by one-thirty, two at the latest. And all the killer needed to bring into the scene was a hot water bottle or some other viable container, a three-foot IV, liquid Yohimbe, two pills, gloves, and some booties.”

  “Stuff easily carried in a purse or a paper bag,” Cody said. “Maybe…to complicate matters? Maybe he was testing us? Or maybe…”

  “Yes?” Wolfsheim asked.

  “It was just a cruel joke.”

  Everybody paused to think about that. Could Handley have set up his own sadomasochistic game only to be killed by his partner?

  “Could have been a her,” Annie said.

  Cody nodded. “True enough. We don’t know for sure whether it was a him or a her.”

  “Or both,” Hue added.

  “Or androgynous,” Bergman said with a smile. “A he-she.”

  “It’s unlikely for this kind of killer to be a woman,” Kate said.

  “Yes, it is unlikely,” Cody told her. “But it happens. Though when women kill they usually employ the softer devices, like suffocation.”

  Larry Simon looked thoughtful. “But some women torture, and even use guns and knives.” He pointed out that Nell “Hell’s Belle” killed forty men; and that Theresa Noor, who shot her first husband and tortured other victims, including her own daughter, giggled while confessing.”

  “She tortured her daughter?”

  “Yeah,” Simon said. “She spread a whole pot of macaroni and cheese on her daughter’s legs, made her eat every bite, then killed her.”

  “Now that’s torture,” Hue chuckled ghoulishly, remembering his mother’s awful mac and cheese that was so dry it nearly choked him on more than one occasion.

  Cody hadn’t been paying attention to Simon’s war stories. He was thinking his own thoughts. “It wasn’t anyone in the Stembler family,” he said. “They were all at a party in Boston last night. The old man flew in on the company plane this morning.”

  “How’d he take it?” Wolfsheim asked.

  “Shock, disbelief. Then when it began to really sink in I think he was overwhelmed by the whole thing. Autopsy, wedding plans to be canceled, telling his wife and daughter.”

  “He volunteered to make the ID,” Kate added. “Then he said he had to make a list.”

  “Yeah,” Cody said. “The businessman in him started to creep out.”

  “That’s pretty cold,” Hue said.

  “He’s a corporate shark. He didn’t get where he is suckling on the milk of human kindness. Most people in his spot would have been more concerned with Handley. Motives, did we have any suspects, more details. He made the arc from Handley’s death to the problems he was facing in about three minutes flat.”

  “Did you tell him what happened?”
Wolf asked.

  “I told him Handley’s throat was slit by someone he knew and that it was not a robbery or a fight.”

  “Not entirely untrue,” Wolf said.

  “For now that’s all anybody has to know but us.”

  “I did notice that he didn’t bring up the possibility that the killer could have been a woman,” said Kate. “I got the feeling it was an option he didn’t care to deal with.”

  “Maybe we should call the perp Androg,” Bergman suggested. “Covers all bases.”

  “Sure, why not,” Wolf said. “Androg. I like it. Of course it opens up a few more doors. Now we really don’t know what the hell we know.”

  Everybody laughed. Then Wolf added, “I’d make one change.”

  “What’s that?” Hue asked.

  “Play it safe,” Wolf answered. And then added edgily: “Make it Androg 1.”

  Everyone fell silent.

  Cody nodded slowly.

  “You agree then?” Wolf said.

  Cody continued nodding.

  “This is too elaborate to be a one-off. There’s a demon loose amongst us,” Wolf said.

  “Yeah, and so far Androg hasn’t left or taken any trophies,” Cody said impatiently. “What are we looking for? A time sequence? A location pattern? Moon phase? What? And why Handley? Hell, we don’t even have a signature yet.”

  In the back of the room Larry Simon was staring at the big board. He said, almost casually, “Sooner or later the perp will start bragging. They all do.”

  13

  The crew, except for Vinnie Hue and Larry Simon, vacated the office quickly to follow their assignments. Wolf and Annie returned to the lab to clean up.

  Hue was busy transcribing and editing the tapes that had been gathered in the four hours since Handley’s body was discovered.

  Simon was at his desk toward the rear of the room, his eyes fixed on the screen, his fingers dancing across the keyboard of his computer.

  If Vincent Hue was the nerve center of the TAZ, Larry Simon was its brain. Like Hue, Simon had an IQ that was off the charts.

  From an early age, Simon, the youngest son of wealthy Jewish parents, mastered every subject his teachers threw at him with an ease that baffled them. Like a magnet attracts flux, Simon’s facile brain attracted information and retained it.

  By the time he was sixteen, the eccentric, moody, loner was a senior in college, five-five, and slightly overweight; a baby-faced teenager with a brain eons older than his body and littered with encyclopedic fragments of knowledge, none worthy of his undivided attention. When a group of psychologists gathered to study the prodigious youngster, one diagnosed him as borderline autistic.

  But a psychology professor at Harvard Medical School named Howard Reischman disagreed, observing that he showed none of the signs of autism. “There’s a big difference between frustration and rage and boredom and ennui,” he told Simon’s parents. “He just hasn’t found anything that holds his interest long enough to focus on.”

  He enrolled Simon in one of his abnormal psych classes in order to observe his learning habits and his interaction with other students. He quickly noted that Simon had a devilish sense of humor, never voluntarily answering questions in class and, when called on, casually couched his answers either as abstractions or ingenious epigrams. He wasn’t challenging the other students, he was challenging Reischman.

  Then, on a field trip to a mental institution, Reischman observed Simon taking copious notes while observing interviews with the inmates. Simon never took notes. Was he really that interested, Reischman wondered?

  Simon did not appear in class for a week following the trip. Reischman was concerned until Simon appeared at his house one night with a book tucked under his arm.

  “Do you have a minute?” Simon asked. The minute turned into a four-hour conversation. In that one visit to the institution, Simon had grasped the most subtle distinctions between psychopaths and psychotics and was comfortable discussing the subject in some depth.

  “The psychopaths were pretty bright guys,” Simon said. “The look normal but one of them lied all the time about everything. Another one played with himself the whole time we were there and actually enjoyed it. Totally anti-social. What separates them from the psychotics is they aren’t nutty. They know right from wrong, they just don’t care. They don’t have a conscience.

  “On the other hand, the psychotics are confirmed whackos. They hear voices and have visions that make them commit crimes. They’re like that David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, who claimed his dog made him do it.

  “Thing is, we don’t know what motivates psychopaths, so we can’t stop them before they commit crimes.”

  “That’s true,” Reischman answered.

  “Classic psychopaths,” Simon said. “Knew what they were doing and they knew it was wrong but they just kept doing it until they got caught.”

  Reischman was fascinated. He just listened. Simon had assimilated the history of serial killers and the range of iniquity that set them aside in a terrifying enclave reserved for the worst predators of society and the paradigm that distinguished them from the norm: They were not insane, they simply had no conscience.

  They liked to kill and the more they killed the more they liked it. Their motives were unique unto themselves, so unfathomable, so bizarre, they defied analysis, common decency, and human empathy.

  Reischman realized it was the enigma that hooked Larry Simon. There was no easy explanation for these awful crimes. They were obscene social puzzles and as such, had become worthy of Simon’s attention.

  “I think I know what I want to do with my life,” he announced.

  At twenty-two, armed with a strong recommendation from Reischman to Brooks and a confirming phone call, Simon was admitted to the FBI school and assigned to Brooks upon graduating. Simon would last five years before Brooks realized the young genius was getting antsy. He had been gathering data and talking to people in the field and he was getting bored. Brooks knew it was time for Larry Simon to hit the street.

  Brooks called an old friend, Lou Stinelli, a commander in the NYPD, and for thirty minutes regaled one of Manhattan’s top cops with Simon’s unique qualities. Stinelli listened with more than casual interest. Brooks’ timing was perfect for Stinelli was in the process of putting together a unique project of his own: the TAZ.

  “Why do you want to get rid of him?” Stinelli asked.

  “I don’t, but he needs to leave now. He needs to be on the street. He needs to go after these people face-to-face.”

  “Send him up,” Stinelli replied.

  Needless to say, Stinelli was blown away by the man’s knowledge.

  “So? What did you think of the session?” Cody asked Kate as they walked toward the little man.

  “Fascinating. I gather you and Wolf think we have a serial killer on our hands.”

  “Worst case scenario,” Cody said. “When you catch one like this it crosses everybody’s mind. So far we don’t have that much to go on. We have to follow what we do have and see where it leads.”

  They reached Simon’s desk but he kept doing what he was doing and didn’t look up.

  “Bet you a buck I know what you’re up to,” Cody said.

  “That little birdy tell you?” Simon said with a wry smile, still pecking at the keys. “I know better. I always lose whether it’s a little bird, the big bad wolf, or an owl and a pussycat that’s been banging on your ear.”

  Winters frowned but said nothing.

  “Deep six on Stembler?”

  The little man stopped typing and leaned back in his chair. “Just backing you up. I think that crack about him looking for a new candidate for a son-in-law is on the money. I did a probe on Handley. A guy in the company named Louis Nevins made the initial recruiting interview when Handley was a junior at Princeton. But Stembler himself went over there for the final interview and nailed him that day. I mean, he had Handley married into the family when he hired him.”

  The li
ttle man looked up at Kate. “Welcome to hell central.”

  “Thank you,” she said, shaking the hand he offered.

  “Picked a great day to start.”

  “So I gather.”

  Simon looked back at Cody. “What did that birdy tell you?”

  “Be careful but work fast.”

  Simon chuckled. “Obscure, as usual.”

  “You had to be there.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s what you always say. I’ve already run all the names we’ve gathered through the names and moniker base, including the maid and Nevins. No hits, they’re all clean. And no reference to the sister.” He chuckled a bit and added: “The Staten Island Fairy didn’t make the cut either.”

  “You gonna run ViCAP or NCIC yet?”

  “Maybe. What I like best is bleeding the guy. That’s a new one on me. I may start the trail by entering all three of Wolf’s findings. Death by piercing, double dose of drugs and exsanguination and see what happens.”

  “How about the crime scene?”

  “Probably bring up a lot of bondage hits. Handcuffing to the chair, blah, blah, blah. All that crap isn’t that uncommon.”

  He paused for a moment or two staring at the screen.

  “Maybe this wasn’t a sex crime,” Kate pondered aloud. “That what the birdy meant?”

  “Maybe he meant be careful but don’t waste time. Maybe Androg would like to lead us down a blind alley at this point.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “This is your part of the show, Si. Play the hand you feel we’ve been dealt.”

  “S.O.P.”

  “I’m gonna get Kate straightened away and pick up Charley. I’ll be back in thirty, maybe we can grab a sandwich.”