The Helper (32 page)

Out of the corner of his eye, Doyle catches sight of Lieutenant Cesario entering the room and moving across to his office. He feels his heart start to knock on his rib cage as if to say,
You’re on, Doyle. Time for your swan song.

All he needs to do now is get rid of Mrs Sachs.

‘Hello, Mrs Sachs. How are you today?’

‘How am I? I don’t know how I am. I’m either deliriously happy or crushingly disappointed. What should I be, Detective? Tell me how I should feel.’

Doyle watches Cesario take his coat off and sit in his chair. He for one doesn’t look overjoyed. Doyle wonders if he’s getting heat from upstairs over the roommate murders. Well,
Lou, maybe I can help you out on that score.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Sachs. I don’t understand what it is you’re asking me.’

‘Well, you spoke with Mr Repp, didn’t you?’

Doyle recalls his visit to Repp, and it almost causes him to smile.

‘Yes, I spoke with him.’

‘Then I guess what he said to me yesterday must be with your permission. So I should be happy, am I right?’

‘Mrs Sachs, what did Repp say to you, exactly?’

‘That my Patricia is willing to come home. That she’s in some financial trouble, and that if I’m willing to provide the money for her to pay off her bills, she will come back
home to me. That’s what he told me, and that’s what I would love to believe. Only . . .’

Her voice cuts off, and Doyle is convinced she is choking back a tear. It’s what she would love to believe. But deep down, she knows she is being fleeced. She knows her daughter is
dead.

‘Mrs Sachs, can I assume from what you’ve just said that Repp is willing to act as the courier here? That he is offering to take the cash to your daughter and then bring her
back?’

‘Yes. That’s what he told me.’

‘And how much money did he say your daughter owes?’

‘Just over four hundred thousand dollars. It’s not the money. The money I can raise. But . . .’

Son of a bitch, thinks Doyle. You wouldn’t listen, would you, Repp? I gave you fair warning, but you wouldn’t listen. You’re still gonna take the old lady’s money and
then you’re gonna disappear. Well, we’ll see about that.

‘Mrs Sachs, let me look into this, okay? Give me some time to check it out. Meanwhile, keep tight hold of your money. Don’t give Repp a penny till I clear it. Okay?’

‘All right. Yes. Thank you. I’ll wait, but . . . I don’t want to lose her, Detective. If she really is willing to come home . . .’

‘Just give me until tomorrow, please. One more day to check this story out. Your daughter has been gone since 2001. One more day isn’t going to make a difference.’

There’s a pause, and then: ‘You’re right. I can wait another day. When you’re my age, the days fly past like they’re minutes. I’ll wait. Thank you, Detective.
You’ve been good to me.’

‘Goodbye, Mrs Sachs.’

He almost slams the phone down. What the hell does Repp think he’s playing at? Does he think this is a game? Does he think he can just ignore what I said and carry on doing things his way?
What a shit. What a lousy, stinking . . .

What am I doing?

Why am I getting so caught up in this? Five minutes from now I won’t even be a cop. Repp will be in somebody else’s caseload. Why am I letting him get to me like this?

Why? Because I care, that’s why. I care about people like Mrs Sachs and all the other victims who deserve to have somebody on their side, fighting their corner. It’s why I became a
cop.

And that’s what I’ll miss. See, I was wrong. When I sat here complaining about working the small cases instead of the high-profile ones, I had it all wrong. It’s the Mrs
Sachses of this world that make the job worthwhile.

And I’m gonna throw it all away.

Doyle looks again into Cesario’s office. This is one of the hardest decisions he’s ever had to make, but he knows he can’t back out now.

He gets up from his desk. Slips his hand into his pocket and grasps the digital recorder. Starts dragging leaden feet toward the Lieutenant’s room.

In the scheme of things, with all these corpses piling up around him, Mrs Sachs’s problems are peanuts. Yes, he’d happily smash Repp’s face in right now if he had the chance,
but let’s get things in perspective. People are dying and will continue to die if nothing is done. On that scale, Repp is way down the list. He’s an irrelevance. An irritant. A . .
.

Doyle stops in his tracks.

What was it the caller said on the phone?

As if all these people dying wasn’t enough. You’ve got the distractions too, right? All that small stuff that just gets in the way. The little irritations that you could do
without. It’s all raining down on you, right, Cal?

Doyle stands there in the middle of the squadroom, his eyes darting but seeing nothing as he replays the phone call in his mind.

Shit!

He looks up. He sees Cesario raise his head and catch sight of him, then give him a look of inquiry.

Doyle feels himself being tugged toward Cesario’s office. He takes a step forward.

And before he can stop himself he is spinning on his heels and heading out of the squadroom. He looks straight ahead, blinkered to the other detectives. He marches out into the hallway and then
down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Taking them so fast he runs the danger of tripping and sending himself hurtling through the air. But he’s oblivious to the risk. He just needs to
know. He needs to find out.

He breezes past the sergeant’s desk, through the wooden front doors and out onto the sidewalk. He takes out his cellphone and speed-dials a number.

A single question burns in his mind. To anyone else it would sound trivial, but to Doyle it’s the most important question in the world. And he knows who will have the answer.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, hon, it’s me.’ He tries to sound casual, to keep the tremor of urgency out of his voice.

‘Cal, what’s wrong?’

So much for not panicking his wife.

‘Nothing’s wrong. I just need to speak with you.’

‘You’re okay? I mean, the way you were talking last night—’

‘Forget about that. A touch of the blues, that’s all. Today’s another day.’

‘Okay, so good. I’m glad. Because you had me worried.’

‘I know. Forget about it. Seriously.’

‘Okay. So, then, why the call?’

Any other husband might be irritated by the question, the tone of suspicion. But then other husbands probably call home more often than Doyle does. He admits he has only himself to blame. When
he has his work head on, home and family tend to get pushed out. It has caused friction between him and Rachel before, and he has promised her that he will try harder. This should be one of those
calls, making up for his failings in the past. Unfortunately it isn’t.

‘Well, this is gonna sound kinda weird. But things are pretty quiet down here today and, well, we’re doing a quiz.’

‘A quiz? You’re doing a quiz? In the station house? Things are so slow that you have time to do a quiz? All the criminals in your precinct have decided to take the day
off?’

‘Yeah. And I got this question. If we get this right, our team wins.’

‘Callum Doyle! Are you expecting me to help you cheat?’

‘One team point. That’s all we need. And it all rides on this question. Please, hon. You gotta help me out here.’

He hears a sigh, but he knows she can’t resist quiz questions. ‘Shoot.’

‘It’s a music question, okay? Britpop, I think, so right up your street. I recorded a few seconds of it. Ready?’

‘Go ahead.’

He takes out the digital recorder and holds it in front of the phone. He presses the play button. The music comes across loud and clear. Just before the killer’s voice breaks in, Doyle
shuts it off and puts the phone back to his ear.

‘Did you hear that?’

‘Yeah. “Why does it always rain on me?” The title’s in the lyrics, Cal.’

‘I know, I know. But I can’t remember who sang it. I need to know the band.’

‘That’s easy,’ she says. And she tells him. Goes on to say, ‘Ask me another.’ But he’s not listening. She said what he thought she would say. What he hoped
she would say.

It’s from an album called ‘The Man Who’.

The band’s name is
Travis
.

The person who is supposed to die at eight o’clock this evening is Travis Repp.

Nothing has changed. It’s still the case that people have died. More people are about to die. It’s just that now he has a little more information about the next intended victim. The
conclusion? He should still hand what he’s got over to the Lieutenant.

Everything has changed. He was about to go under. Now he’s been thrown a lifeline. He can catch the killer. He can set up a trap at Repp’s place and catch the killer. The conclusion?
He should save his career and his liberty and maybe even come out of this a hero.

What a di-fucking-lemma.

Because if he opts to go it alone, and he gets it wrong . . .

Again
. . .

Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

And yes, he could still be wrong. He got it wrong before, when he believed that Paddy Gilligan was about to take a hit.

Yes, Doyle, but that’s because you didn’t do your homework. You made assumptions. You didn’t even bother to check out the fucking song, you moron. ‘Hanrahan’s
Last’. How easy would that have been if you’d checked the song?

So the lesson is?

The lesson is I have to be sure. I have to be certain beyond all doubt that the next vic is Repp.

And I have about nine and a half hours to do it.

Back in the squadroom, he bumps into Cesario coming the other way.

‘You wanted to see me?’ says Cesario.

‘Uh, no. It can wait.’

‘You getting anywhere with that theory of yours about those DOAs being connected?’

Doyle fingers the recorder in his pocket again.

‘No. Other than the shrink, I can’t find anything.’

Cesario nods, like it’s the outcome he expected. ‘Actually, I’m kinda glad. The last thing I need right now is a serial killer on the loose. It’s bad enough that the
city’s murder rate has shot up lately without it all being the work of some mysterious homicidal maniac. Worth a shot, though, huh?’

He slaps Doyle on the arm and heads out of the room.

Doyle feels like a kid who’s just lost a major football game and been told he did his best. The patronizing tone in Cesario’s voice was that obvious.

He shakes his head and moves to his desk. Sits down and stares at the mound of files in front of him. One manila folder for each of the deceased. His lie to Cesario was only a partial one. Of
course there’s a link between the victims: they were all killed by the same man. But beyond that there has to be another connecting thread of which he is as yet unaware. Doyle refuses to
believe they were targeted at random. There has to be a reason. And the reason has to be in these files.

But he’s been through them. Time after time. He’s found nothing. It’s another quiz question:
What do the following have in common?
But this isn’t one he can pass
on to Rachel. He has to solve this one for himself. He has to locate the thread so that he can tie it to Repp. Only then can he be certain that he’s figured out the identity of the next
victim.

A few days ago he was convinced he had it. It all looked as though Vasey was the focal point. Both Cindy Mellish and Sean Hanrahan consulted Vasey, and then Vasey himself became a victim. But
then it all fell to pieces. None of the other victims were ever clients of Vasey. So maybe the only association there was that Mellish and Hanrahan were murdered partly as a way of signposting the
way to Vasey as the next victim.

Or is that just what the killer wanted him to think?

Did he want Doyle to think that this was all there was to it, when in fact there was something more concrete in the apparent relationship?

Okay, so hold that thought. Let’s explore this a little more.

Mellish and Hanrahan consulted Vasey. Lorna Bonnow and Tabitha Peyton never did. Or, at least, they don’t appear on Vasey’s official client lists. Which in itself is not definitive
because Cindy Mellish isn’t on those lists either. The other two victims – the doorman of Vasey’s building and Helena Colquitt – can be disregarded as collateral damage.

Let’s assume for the moment that Lorna and Tabitha didn’t consult Vasey.

However . . .

Maybe they did go to see a shrink!

Tabitha Peyton was a wreck. Beautiful, intelligent, delightful – yes, all those. But a wreck too. She lost both her parents. It drove her to drink, to meaningless relationships, and almost
to self-destruction. Wouldn’t it also have driven her to seek professional psychological help at some point?

It’s a possibility. Doyle regrets now that he didn’t ask her directly when he had the opportunity, but at the time he had already dismissed the Vasey hypothesis.

And what about the nurse, Lorna Bonnow? Did she ever see a shrink?

Doyle decides it’s time to abandon his desk.

The husband or the lover. It’s almost a coin-toss.

He opts for the boyfriend, partly for the reason that he lives here in Manhattan, but primarily because Doyle suspects that if Lorna was in the habit of divulging her deepest darkest secrets, it
was more likely to be to her clandestine lover than to the partner on whom she was cheating.

Doyle’s immediate impression of Alex Podolski is that he is one of those guys who spends a lot of time in front of the mirror. His long hair is shiny and immaculate. He wears a
canary-yellow T-shirt that is tight enough to ripple with the underlying muscles. And he seems to have cultivated a manner of looking sidelong at people when he addresses them, presumably because
he has decided that it’s his most striking pose.

Podolski invites Doyle inside, and glides with the grace of a panther across his living room. Doyle follows him in with the refinement of a bull elephant. He notices how the walls are festooned
with martial arts equipment: curved swords, nunchucks and various wooden sticks, poles and spears.

‘Quite a collection,’ Doyle says.