“Are you a doctor, Alex?” he asked then.
“I am. A psychologist,” I said.
“Ah. One for the books, then.”
“Now, I told you about Josh. Give me something in return,” I said. “Are there other victims we should know about? Tell me how many you’ve killed over the years.”
“I’m sorry,” Creem said, “but we’re out of time for today. Isn’t that what you shrinks always say?”
“Hang on. One more question.”
“It was fun while it lasted, detective, but I think we both know I’m already well beyond your reach. I wouldn’t go to too much trouble if I were you.”
“Creem, wait!” I said, but it was too late. He’d already hung up.
When I set down my phone, I could see on Valente’s face that he hadn’t gotten anywhere. Also that he was good and pissed by now. We’d just had a decent shot at Creem, and once again he’d slipped through our fingers.
Maybe for the last time.
CHAPTER
97
I TRIED CALLING CREEM’S NEW NUMBER BACK, BUT ALL I GOT WAS A GENERIC machine-generated voice mail. He’d probably destroyed the phone as soon as he hung up on me.
Right away, I turned my attention back to his home office. Maybe it would give us some clue about where he’d planned on running.
By all appearances, Creem was fastidiously tidy. Possibly even a little OCD. Everything about his house was well ordered, right down to the matching letterboxes, pencil cup, and stapler sitting at perfect right angles on the desk. It was easy to see as the outward manifestation of a man who needed to control every aspect of his universe—from the mundane physical details to the repetitive, hyper-precise way he’d cut up each of his victims.
Bergman’s murders had been self-similar as well, but there was a difference. With every kill, Bergman had been less controlled. Each one of those young hustlers had been stabbed and mutilated a little more than the one before. In retrospect, Bergman was the ticking time bomb, waiting to go off. Creem was more like the Swiss clock.
From his desk, I worked my way around the office, opening drawers, checking files, and even lifting up furniture to look underneath. It wasn’t until I got to the black lacquered media console by the door that I found anything at all out of place.
There, at the back of the cabinet behind a boxed set of date-ordered AMA journals, I found three matching pewter photo frames. It looked like they’d been thrown back there, rather than placed in any kind of deliberate way.
When I pulled them out, I saw the glass was mostly gone, with several shards sitting on the floor of the cabinet itself. Each photo was of the Creem family. There was a group shot in front of a massive Christmas tree; one picture of Miranda Creem, standing on a beach somewhere; and a hinged double frame, with side-by-side school photos of Creem’s two daughters.
All three women—Miranda, Chloe, and Justine Creem—were attractive, tall, and blond, I saw. If anything, the two girls were an even closer match to Creem’s slate of victims than their mother was.
And then there was the undeniable kicker. Each photo had been pierced with some kind of sharp object, like someone had driven a pair of scissors right through them. Three times each. Everything in threes.
That’s who he was trying to kill, wasn’t it? Creem had been methodically—and symbolically—erasing the three women who had left him after his scandal. If he’d gone straight for them, it would have been too suspicious. So he did the next best thing. He went after a theoretically endless supply of surrogates, maybe as a way of keeping himself from actually having to kill his own family.
Or maybe he was just building up to it.
I ran upstairs to find Valente. He was in the second-floor master bedroom, going through Mrs. Creem’s desk when I got to him.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Where’s Creem’s family right now?” I said.
“Rhode Island. They’ve been staying at her parents’ house in Newport, last I heard. Why?”
I held up one of the mutilated photos to show him.
“Because I don’t think he’s done yet,” I said.
CHAPTER