Playing Dead Read online

  Dedication

  For Laura

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1: Felix the Cat Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part 2: The Great Pretenders Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part 3: You Bet Your Life Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Part 4: Passionate Kisses Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Part 5: Catch Me if You Can Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Part 6: Let’s Play Dead Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Part 7: The Great Pretender Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  About the Author

  Rave Reviews for Loverboy by R. G. Belsky

  Other Avon Books by R. G. Belsky

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  From the confession of David Galvin

  (a.k.a. Felix the Cat)

  to New York City Police

  July 12, 1987

  The pretending was always the best part.

  Even better than the killing.

  I remember one of them—it was either the second or the third time—that lasted for two weeks.

  She lived in a house that made it so wonderfully easy to spy on her. Every night I’d watch her come home and see how she lived. I knew what she ate, what she wore, what she liked on television, what her favorite music was—even what she wore to bed. Sometimes I’d gaze at her for hours as she slept in her bed—dressed in a sexy nightgown and looking so peaceful and innocent.

  I felt incredibly close to her at those times.

  Just like I was lying there in the bed right next to her.

  I suppose I was falling in love with her.

  During the day, I’d follow her to work or to the store or when she went to meet a friend for lunch. I rode on the same bus and sat in the same restaurant and found excuses to be around the same building where she worked. We were always together. We were inseparable. We were true soulmates.

  Twice, I even made real contact with her. The first time was when her hat blew off in the street on a windy day. I picked it up, handed it to her, and smiled. She smiled back and said “thank you.” The other time was in a department store. I held the door open for her as she left with her arms filled with packages. She mumbled a “thank you” again this time, but it was perfunctory and she barely looked at me. I was just one of millions of faceless people in New York City to her.

  No, she never knew that I was such a big part of her life.

  Until the very end.

  And the end, when it came, was especially satisfying. Probably because of the long buildup. I think that’s true of a lot of things in life. It’s why a big meal tastes so good when you’re really hungry. Or why it’s so much better to wait until Christmas morning to open your presents, instead of giving in to temptation and peeking in the closet early. Well, that’s how I felt about her too. Anticipation makes the heart grow fonder.

  But, after two weeks, I knew it was time.

  The truth is I was getting tired of her. It was just like any other relationship. The first time you make love is exciting and passionate. But after awhile it becomes routine. She was becoming routine. I didn’t feel the same jolt of excitement anymore that I used to when I’d see her lying in bed or taking off her clothes or making up her face in the mirror.

  It was definitely time to move on to someone new.

  The best thing about this one though was the way she acted at the end when she finally realized what was happening to her.

  They’re all different, you know.

  Some of them cry. Some get angry. And some become very quiet—as if they could will their way out of it by pretending it was just a terrible dream that they were going to wake up from at any minute.

  But she begged.

  Oh, did she beg. She told me about her life, her dreams, all her plans for the future. She promised me anything if I would let her go. She offered me money. Sex. She said she’d never tell anyone.

  I never saw anybody who wanted to live so badly.

  That made me very happy when I killed her. . . .

  Part 1

  Felix the Cat

  Chapter 1

  The first rule for a newspaper reporter is to never get personally involved in a story.

  They teach you that right from the very start. All the old-timers, the grizzled veterans, the newsroom pros that you meet. They’ve seen it all, done it all in this business. They know the pitfalls.

  Dougherty, they told me, you’ve always got to keep a wall up between you and the people you cover. You need to get into their lives, but don’t ever let them get into yours. Tragedy, violence, sickness—all sorts of terrible things like that happen to people in this world all the time. It’s what you fill a newspaper up with day after day. But you can’t ever let any of it touch you.

  It’s the same, I guess, with a lot of other jobs. I mean doctors don’t grieve over every patient they diagnose with a fatal disease. Or firemen for every life they don’t save. Or cops for every murder victim they have to put in a body bag.

  It’s just a job, after all.

  And you should always remember that.

  Otherwise, it will eat you up alive.

  The second rule a newspaper reporter has to learn is the truth about the first rule.

  It’s all bullshit.

  There is no wall that can render reporters invulnerable from the things we cover, no safe zone, no protection for any of us. It can’t be done. Sooner or later, we all come face to face with a story we can’t just walk away from after the presses start running. The murder victim whose death is so senseless that it makes us question our most basic beliefs about human decency. The convicted defendant who is sent off to jail even though we’re convinced he’s really innocent. The memory of a horrible car accident or airplane crash or burn victim that we just can’t seem to get out of our systems.

  Sometimes the line between all this and our other lives—the ones we have outside the newspaper, if we’re lucky—begins to blur.

  And, when that happens, we sto
p being impartial observers at the game—and become players.

  Some people learn this lesson very early in their careers. They realize that being a reporter isn’t like being Clark Kent at the Daily Planet. And it isn’t like being Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant in some old 1940s newspaper movie. These are real people and real lives that we’re dealing with here.

  Others don’t find that out for a long time. Maybe it’s the luck of the draw, maybe it has something to do with them—but they can go for years before they come across the story that makes them come face to face with their own feelings and fears and inner demons.

  And then there’s the reporter who thinks that he’s got it all figured out.

  That he’s got everything under control.

  Except it’s all a lie.

  Because—in the end, when he finally learns the truth—he realizes he’s already been in way over his head for a long time.

  Like me.

  Chapter 2

  Ossining State Prison—which used to be called Sing Sing—is in a tiny, peaceful town nestled along the banks of the Hudson River, about thirty-five miles north of New York City.

  Ossining looks like a rustic hamlet, not the home of one of the country’s most notorious penitentiaries. There are antique stores, landmark historical sights, and comfortable restaurants. But the prison itself is anything but rustic. It is grim and gray and foreboding. A series of spiraling towers and walls and barred windows overlooking the Hudson—which houses murderers, rapists, drug dealers, armed robbers, and others of the worst of society’s misfits.

  The guard who met me at the front entrance of the prison was a woman.

  She was about thirty-five, with blond hair rolled up into a bun behind her head, and a face that looked very hard. She wore a uniform that clung a bit too tight to her breasts and thighs. There was a gun on her hip. When I used to cover stories, I hardly ever ran into women law enforcement officers. Now I see them around all the time. It just shows how long I’ve been away.

  “Your name?” the woman guard asked me.

  “Joe Dougherty.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “The New York Banner.”

  “And your business here?”

  “I’m supposed to see David Galvin for an interview.”

  She looked surprised.

  “Felix the Cat?”

  “That’s what everybody used to call him.”

  “He’s our most famous prisoner.”

  “You must be very proud.”

  I flashed her a smile when I said it. The same kind of smile that used to open up doors all over New York. That used to charm people into talking to me. That got me so many exclusive Page One stories back in the old days.

  Of course that was a long time ago.

  “Are you a crime reporter at the Banner, Mr. Dougherty?” she asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “What exactly does a crime reporter do?”

  “Oh, I look for clues, chase bad guys—all sorts of neat stuff like that.”

  “Are you any good at it?”

  “Sure, I’ve already found two clues this morning. Ten more and I get to send away for my Dick Tracy secret decoder crimestoppers ring.”

  I smiled again. The guard laughed this time. Her face didn’t look so hard when she laughed. I revised my estimate of her age downward a bit. Maybe only barely thirty. Maybe a job like this just aged you very quickly.

  “Galvin’s in the prison infirmary,” she said. “He’s got cancer, you know. A real pisser of a cancer that’s eating up his insides. They say he’s only got a few days left. The sonavabitch is dying.”

  “It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

  “Yeah, no one here’s too broken up about it.”

  David Galvin was a monster. He was pure evil. The devil. The antichrist.

  Eleven years ago, Galvin had murdered nine women in New York City. Later, he said he picked his victims at random and then stalked them—for days, sometimes for weeks—watching everything they did without any of them suspecting a thing. Then he struck, and the terror was unspeakable. Some of the deaths were mercifully quick. Others he lingered over—playing out his sick fantasies in the victim’s dying hours. Two other women survived. One was in a wheelchair, the other in a mental hospital.

  Unlike many serial killers, he came from a privileged background. His father was a high-powered corporate attorney, his mother an advertising executive. They lived in a big house in a posh suburb of New Jersey, and vacationed each year in Martha’s Vineyard. Until David Galvin was arrested, he was a student at New York University, where his major was premed. He put down on his application to the program that he wanted to become a doctor to help people.

  Maybe the most frightening thing about the killings though was his motive. There was none. None at all. He said he just did it for thills. For kicks. Everyone has a passion for something. Sex. Food. Alcohol. His passion was killing.

  He began writing to the media after each body turned up. The notes were done in poetry—bizarre rhymes in which he talked about his victims and their suffering and his excitement in a detached way that sent chills through the people of New York City who read them in the newspapers.

  Every woman was terrified that she might be his next target.

  Until he was captured, most people thought he got the idea for his nickname—Felix the Cat—from Son of Sam, the infamous 1970s serial killer. Son of Sam always claimed that he coined his name because of a barking dog that used to keep him awake.

  But Galvin later insisted Felix the Cat was his own creation. He said cats—unlike dogs—were intelligent, mysterious, and moved quietly through the night, just like him. And, he said, they had nine lives. Even if you took away one of them, he still had plenty to go.

  But now he was dying a painful death.

  God works in wondrous ways.

  “Galvin’s in the prison infirmary,” the guard was saying. “He’s pretty weak. But he’s still got restraints on. There’s a twenty-four-hour guard on his door too. No one wants to take any chances with this guy. I’ll walk you down there myself. The guard will only be a few feet away if you need help or anything. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “You got some identification?” she asked. “How about a press card?”

  My press card. Christ, when’s the last time someone asked me for one of those. I rummaged around in my wallet and somehow found it. My old New York City press card from the last time I worked for the Banner. I took it out and handed it to her.

  “I think it may have expired,” I said.

  She looked at the date and whistled softly in amazement. “Yeah, it sure has.”

  “I keep meaning to have the thing renewed,” I said. “But I’ve been kinda busy.”

  “This press card isn’t just the wrong year,” she said. “It’s the wrong decade.”

  “I’ve been real busy.”

  The guard shook her head and handed the card back to me.

  “It looks to me like it’s been a long time between assignments for you, Scoop,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I told her, “a very long time.”

  Chapter 3

  It had been eight years.

  That was how long ago that the New York Banner fired me.

  So I was more than a little surprised when I got a phone call at home on a Sunday afternoon in early May from Andrew J. Kramer. Of course, when I used to know him he was just Andy—a struggling young cub reporter at the Banner. I was a big newspaper star in those days. Now he was managing editor, the Number Two man on the paper, and I worked at a public relations firm in Princeton, New Jersey. It’s funny the way life works out sometimes.

  “Hi, buddy,” he said now. “Long time, no talk, huh?”

  “How’ve you been, Andy.”

  No way I was going to call him Andrew.

  “Great. Just great. You should see my office, man. It’s the size of a battleship. I’ve got a corner window, a wet bar, and a
secretary with a body like Pam Anderson. Who’d have ever thought I’d be here back when I was sitting at the end of the night rewrite bank, huh?”

  Nice of you to call up and rub your good fortune in my face, I thought.

  But I didn’t say that.

  “I’m real happy for you, Andy,” I told him. “I always figured you were going to be a big success.”

  “Listen, I hear you landed a big job too.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Some kind of public relations firm?”

  “Lyman, Stiller, and Nash.”

  Whenever I said that, it sounded like a ’70s singing group.

  “And you’re getting married?”

  “This fall. Her name is Carolyn Nash. She’s a lawyer from Princeton. She works for one of the big pharmaceutical firms down here. And she also happens to be the daughter of Paul Nash, senior partner of Lyman, Stiller, and Nash. Just a coincidence, of course.”

  Kramer laughed. Now I hadn’t talked to Andy Kramer in years. When I got fired from the Banner and my life was falling apart, some of the people there tried to help me. They kept in contact with me, offered support, and gave me encouragement. Andy wasn’t one of them. I remembered going into a bar one time about six months after it happened. Andy was there, but left in a hurry as soon as he saw me. I knew why. He didn’t want to be seen with me. I was damaged goods, I was yesterday’s news—I couldn’t help him anymore. There was no reason for him to be my friend.

  So why was he calling me now?

  “Actually we were just talking about you the other day,” he said. “How you used to be one of the best reporters this paper ever had. You were really something, Joe.”

  I realized he was talking about me in the past tense—as if I was dead.

  “Everyone said you had an unerring reporter’s instinct. You had a real nose for news. You were aggressive. You opened doors that no one else could get past. And when you got your teeth into a big story, you never let go.”