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“Room five-twelve was dark. The curtains were closed and the lights were off. He opened the door quietly and walked in, closing it behind him, enveloping himself in the darkness. He switched the lights on, they flickered as they came to life, revealing the death in the room.”
‘The cause of death is most likely strangulation.’ She reached out a pen from her breast pocket and pointed towards the marks on the victim’s neck. ‘Contusions here and here are most likely from our killer’s hands.’ With her latex gloved hands, Cuccurullo felt around the man’s neck as if she were strangling the man. ‘His windpipe has been crushed, and I’m almost certain that some of the spine has been broken. It wouldn’t have been a pleasant death, slow and painful at best. Unless he was drugged he didn’t put up much of a fight either. I’ll let you know as soon as I’m finished with my investigation. It’s been a busy night, I’m not certain when I’ll be able to get around to this poor man.’ Heather Cuccurullo was an attractive middle-aged Latin-American woman, with a gentle demeanour and a heavy dose of respect for the victims. She was thorough in her investigations and always presented impeccable reports. In all accounts she should be the lead ME, not James Kranner.
The manager of the Silver Street Motel, a slight, pale man, hovered nervously in the doorway to room 204, listening as best he could to what was being discussed in hushed tones. He kept rolling his hands together as if he was cold and chewing his lower lip. Grace could understand his apprehension, having the police buzzing around, and the emergence of news reporters wasn’t good for business; but neither was a dead body discovered by the maid. She had apologised to him on several occasions, saying they would be finished as soon as they could be, but she knew they were going to be there for most of the day at best.
The Silver Street Motel was a loveless, unemotional place; the kind of motel that was in every town. Non-descript and uninteresting; it had plain walls, plain carpet and plain staff. Nothing marked it out as special or unique from the dozens of similar establishments.
One of the maids had discovered the body. It was questionable how long he’d been kneeling with his hands and feet bound looking towards the window. ‘They had the do not disturb sign on for a few days.’ The maid had said at the initial interview. ‘I only work mornings and left the room for the afternoon shift to sort.’ It was probably quite appropriate for that kind of thing to happen, but it was obvious that the afternoon staff had also seen the sign and left the room for the morning shift.
Grace left the motel just as confused as she entered, not much more knowledgeable after the three hours of interviews and suggestions and discussions. She was, though, grateful to get into the car and switch on the air conditioning. The radio informed her that they were in the grasp of the hottest day of the year so far, in the hottest year on record. The latest White Stripes track kicked in as she switched the radio off.
The initial rudimentary reports from the medical examiner and the scene of crime officers hadn’t proved very useful or particularly interesting.
Grace had to work with a white John Doe in his mid-thirties at an initial guess; but that was all they could get. There was no wallet found in the room (which was paid for in cash) and the guest book hadn’t been signed. AFIS and CODIS would be running over time trying to find a fingerprint or DNA match, but Grace didn’t hold out much hope. So far, it appeared he was just another dead body that had no identity, but a big problem to solve.
Caroline Goldwyn stared deep into the eyes of the man she had just arrested. It had been a difficult six months. Six months of anguish, heartache, worry; six months of dead ends and dead bodies; six months without a single suspect. Yet here she was looking into the eyes of a man that seemed to show little remorse for what he had done.
She brushed some of her shoulder length brown hair back off her face. Although she wore it tied back, there were always a few unruly strands that refused to stay in place. She cursed her mother for making her eat her crusts as a child. ‘You’ll never get curls if you don’t eat your crusts.’ Of course, now she wished she hadn’t bothered. Curls were more trouble than they were worth.
The interview room was small and cold. February was like that; it made every room in the building as grey and cold as the morning outside. Rain lashed against the barred windows, beating incessantly creating an uneasy noise.
Caroline Goldwyn stared deep into the eyes of the man she had just arrested. Since joining the NYPD in 1969, she thought she had seen it all. In her fifteen year service she had investigated hundreds of rapes, murders, brutal attacks, but nothing had prepared her for this man. She was told early on that once in a lifetime a criminal comes along that defies classification – Bundy, Manson, and now Gheraty.
Caroline Goldwyn stared deep into the eyes of the man she had just arrested. Dominic Gheraty, Dom, as he insisted, was barely into his twenties and had already taken the lives of eleven other people. And those were the ones he was admitting to. There were more, she was sure of it; he had even had the gall to hint at the fact. Caroline Goldwyn started deep into Dom Gheraty’s eyes; those cold, grey, intimidating, heartless eyes. She hated him with every living breath within her. Men, women, young and old, all victims at Gheraty’s ruthless and unforgiving hands. It didn’t matter to him who the victims were; it was more the act of taking a life that was important. His rituals, his sick and perverted acts. Caroline Goldwyn wanted to reach across the table and make him suffer the way he made all those eleven people suffer. But she knew better than that. She knew he was enjoying this. She could see it in his eyes. Those cold, grey, intimidating, heartless eyes.
J U N E
CHAPTER ONE
Grace Tsang stood over the corpse of what was once a thirty-something year old man. The sweltering heat had turned the body rancid a lot quicker than normal. The stench alone was enough to make her feel nauseous. She knew all about the tricks to stop the smell – peppermint oil under each nostril usually worked well, but not today. With temperatures in the high nineties, rotten flesh had a smell all of its own, and no amount peppermint oil could disguise it. She tried hard not to wretch as the medical examiner leaned the man’s head back to show what he had been gagged with.
Unfortunately, the sight was worse than the stench. The body had been positioned as if the victim was looking out of the window; his hands and feet bound and he had been gagged. He was on his knees with his hands behind him and his head sunk into his chest. His skin had started to rot and was green and grey in places. Blood had pooled around his naked body.
‘The same material was used to bind his hands and feet as well as gag him with.’ Dr. Heather Cuccurullo pointed from the victim’s mouth to his hands and feet. ‘All I can tell you is that it’s red and it’s definitely a heavy-duty fabric. Something like a workers uniform or heavy duty bed linen, and it was tied tight enough to almost completely cut off circulation to his extremities. I’ll be sending swatches off to the scene of crime officers for analysis.’
The red fabric had been tied tight, blood had dripped and caked from the victims wrists and ankles, and his mouth had almost been sliced in two where the fabric had been tied.
