Copy Cat: A Chilling Tale of Murder, Memory, and a Predator in Plain Sight
From the darkly compelling collection Tomorrow’s Dead by David Dean
What begins as a brooding meditation on a chief of police, haunted by an unsolved murder and the unraveling of his marriage, quickly twists into something much darker. In Copy Cat (1999), a routine morning jog takes a shocking turn, and the predator behind a string of grisly deaths may not be as human as anyone suspected.
A dark, tightly wound short story with a killer ending—literally.
Copy Cat
(1999)
The chief sat at his cluttered desk and studied the photographs. His secretary had gone home to prepare supper for her family hours before and left him alone in his darkening office. His wife had not called. Most likely, she would not be there when, or if, he finally did arrive home. Quite possibly, she would be seeing the realtor who was handling the sale of their house. It was much too large for them now that the children were gone.
His senior investigator had, in a touchingly offhand manner, offered to look into the matter of the realtor, but the chief quietly declined his offer without ever acknowledging its implications. He had no wish to dissuade his wife from her affair, and even less to see his old friend's career destroyed by accusations of strong-arming his wife's latest lover. He was too tired to waste what little energy he mustered each day in fighting unwinnable battles, and a certain private peace lay in this acceptance. It was his wife who was in turmoil and paid the greatest price for her sexual wanderings, and it was for her, not himself, that he felt pity.
At five foot, nine inches tall, two hundred and forty pounds, with a gimpy leg (due to the only shooting the town had experienced in the last twelve years) and an unreliable heart, he could no longer satisfy the passions of the woman who had made the nights of his youth incandescent. With the leaving of their children, those passions had grown inexplicably white-hot, and she had passed from his life like a comet in a winter sky. In the end, he knew, age would quench and destroy her. Meanwhile, the kids refused to visit, and people talked.
Opening a drawer in his desk, he withdrew a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray he kept hidden there, and lit up, inhaling deeply. A breeze wafted in from an open window and ruffled the photos that lay before him. He adjusted his glasses and spread them out. Their color and clarity were impeccable, the subject matter appalling: The horror of the victim forever captured for posterity.
The tramp, as the chief had come to call the white male, had never been identified, despite every effort. He had carried no papers or licenses that would aid in identification, and his body had gone undiscovered far too long for fingerprints or facial photographs to be of any assistance. No one in town had gone missing and he matched no missing-person reports, or rather, his almost generic corpse matched too many to be of any assistance. In the end, he had just become “the tramp.”
The location of his body had added weight to this conclusion, being discovered partially concealed by debris in a wooded area at the edge of town, near the park and its small zoo, and not far from some switching tracks known to be frequented by freight-hopping winos. In the county's small law enforcement circle, it was generally agreed that the tramp had been the victim of a fellow hobo, now long departed; killed over a bottle of cheap wine or for a pocketful of change. The townspeople seem to agree. After the initial alarm had worn off, and it had been determined that the victim was not one of them, the local population had lost interest with surprising alacrity.
But they had not been there and seen the body, thought the chief. The pitiable and desolate end to a fellow man who, presumably, came from the loins of woman, as they all had. For some reason, the townspeople's lack of caring fueled the chief's own sense of personal responsibility for this nameless man, and he found himself overly occupied with a case that he could have safely shelved.
Had he been less preoccupied, he might have noticed that the mayor and council found his concern morbid and distasteful, an opinion shared by most of their constituency. His recent absences from council meetings and his increasingly disheveled appearance had been duly noted, while their probable cause had been debated in public places and private homes. There were two camps of thought: The public-at-large attributed it to his obsession with the unsolved murder; those closer to him laid the blame on his wife's blatant infidelities.
Unaware of this, he studied the pictures on his desk, occasionally referring to his copy of the medical examiner's autopsy report. Even with the use of a magnifying glass, no revelation leapt out at him. Not even a small, but overlooked, clue to give him fresh hope. Both body and scene remained well documented, yet unyielding and mute.
The wound favored by the M.E. for the cause of death was evident as a gaping tear in the blackened parchment of the skin tissues at the throat. Within, the upper vertebrae were twice deeply scored, evidence of the force of the slashing. The neck was broken as well, whether by violence or the result of scavenging animals could not be determined.
The rest of the body evoked similar equivocation. That the breast cage had been rent open and the abdomen eviscerated were apparent. Whether it was the work of the assailant, or a host of carrion feeders, remained an open question. The M.E. refused to commit on a corpse, “at least six weeks old,” that had been dry-baked in a compost of forest litter by an unusually hot September sun and worried by animals.
The chief yawned and stubbed out his cigarette. Pushing himself to his feet and scooping the grisly photos back into their folder, he thought for a moment of his bed. He dropped the folder back into a drawer and closed it, anxious his secretary not discover the disturbing pictures, then limped over to his worn leather couch, a relic of a long-forgotten predecessor.
Kicking off his shoes, he lay down, pulling up the old army blanket he kept hidden under the couch and tucking it around him. Reasonably comfortable, he reached up and turned off the overheads. There, in the swimming darkness, he wondered if his wife would return home that night and regret the empty bed. He wished that he didn't care, but he did—terribly. And with the bleak honesty that besets weary men, he knew that a large portion of his obsession with the death of the tramp was simply a device to avoid the more immediate concerns of the living. After a short while, he fell asleep.
***
The runner stood at his sink drinking from a glass of filtered water. The predawn world outside his window remained dark and hidden. This did not bother him, as his mood was one of ebullience and well-being. He was twenty-seven and in his prime: tall, lithe, and finely muscled. His thoughts strayed for a moment to the night before and a smile spread across his face. The memory of his sexual escapades with a woman twenty years his senior gave him an added sense of power; her lewd appreciation of his toned, handsome body and, later, her grateful cries of ecstasy aroused him even in the cool, damp of the morning. The knowledge that she was the wife of another man, and the chief of police at that, gave the liaison an added edge, a certain illicit and dangerous flavor. She was a lovely, voluptuous woman for her age, he had to admit—if a bit worn at the edges.
Setting the glass in the sink, he bent at the waist, touching his toes. After a few moments, he sat on a rug on the polished wooden floor and began a series of stretches and warmups. He was anxious to be out, but his regimen dictated he be properly prepared for his run to prevent injury. He was well rested despite the evening's exertions, having bid a reluctant goodnight to his pliable real-estate client by ten-thirty. By eleven o'clock, he had showered, brushed his teeth, and was asleep. He controlled his schedule very carefully.
Stepping out onto his deck, he took several gulps of air, slowly exhaling each.
When the sun, a red ellipse on the horizon, began to break through the patchy morning fog, he came down onto his back lawn and began to jog across the wet grass to the tracks that ran behind his house, swinging a five-pound running weight in each hand.
He had used the presence of the railroad as a bargaining chip to bring down the price of the house when he had been negotiating for it. In reality, he knew that the freight trains were an infrequent event, and that he was such a sound sleeper even their occasional passing would have no effect on him. In fact, he had desired the house partially for its proximity to the tracks. The well-worn path that ran along the side of the rails had long been one of his favorites, carrying him through miles of solitude and forest, to arrive at a smoothly asphalted bike path that bisected the tracks as it entered the county park. Once there, he would make a right and jog through the lovely, deserted, early-morning grounds, past the rather forlorn zoo, to arrive at the town's main street. From there, it was another right and home for the single cup of caffeinated coffee he allowed himself each day.
Gaining the tracks, he turned north and began his jog in earnest. It was darker than he had expected; the overhanging trees and abundant undergrowth effectively shading the path and giving it a tunnel-like effect. In spite of the warmth of the season, the days were growing shorter, with the sun rising later and later each morning. Today, its appearance seemed tardy, and he looked at his illuminated watch to ensure that he had not mistaken the time. He had not, and the knowledge gave him a certain sense of foreboding, as if the night were attempting to prolong its stay.
He increased his stride in an attempt to outrun this feeling and after a few moments, as his heart began to pump the oxygen-enriched blood through his system, he began to feel better. His eyes, too, began to adjust to the dimness, and the soft, gray, cottony shapes that loomed to each side began to take on definition.
To his left, the low hummock of the tracks could be seen, with its twin rails stretching into the distance like a great fallen ladder. On his right, the dripping shrubs and weedy, second-growth trees separated into distinct forms and less mysterious shapes. Even a subdued color began to bleed into his surroundings, like a chameleon gaining a green leaf. Then, like an announcement, sunlight began to pour over the tops of the trees to his right, striking the far wall of his man-made valley and throwing it into sharp relief. With the sun near to escaping the horizon, his heart felt lighter.
He felt the pounding of that organ with a great sense of pride, knowing the promise of strength and speed it hammered out, and began to pump his arms more vigorously, the weights like gloves on his hands. By his calculations, the entrance to the park lay three minutes’ distance, and he lifted his face to the sky as if to hasten the sun's warming ascent.
Ahead, something low to the ground streaked silently towards him. Like him, it ran in the deep shadows of the path, apparently oblivious to his presence. He slowed to a stop, breath catching in his throat, looking for a way to avoid it.
The fox, orange-red in the early autumn light, saw him at the last minute and braked itself some twenty yards away, nearly sitting on its haunches with the effort. For a moment they stared at one another: the fox, its long, red tongue lolling across its black lips, panting; the man, panting as well, steam rising from his overheated body in the still-cool morning air.
Before the runner could react, the fox fled like a flame into the undergrowth, turning not so much as a stone with its silent departure. The runner was left in sole possession of the track. He stared down its length and saw nothing.
After a few moments, he began to jog again, slowly regaining his former pace, but his recent, and brief, peace of mind had fled with the fox.
As he traveled north, he saw the last tendrils of fog rising into the air above the trees like thin, ghostly streamers heralding the promise of another hot day. He also saw the killer of the tramp.
Had he not kept glancing into the brush with the nagging fear that the fox, grown bold with rabies, would come dashing out to bite his bare legs, he might never have seen. But now it was too late… as if not making eye contact could change the outcome.
His heart fluttered and lurched in an alarming manner, making him gasp aloud in a high, girlish voice. His knees buckled and he stumbled with the surge of adrenalin furnished by this certain knowledge, despite his brain screaming that he should run as never before. In the midst of all this, his thoughts shot upward like a covey of startled quail, flying in a dozen different directions, re-forming in revelation, then scattering again at the terror revealed.
It was like him to have been unconcerned that his favorite jogging path took him daily past the murder scene. He could truly say that it had never given him more than a moment's pause. It had been an isolated event amongst persons that these things happen to, and his strength, status, and confidence precluded any other conclusion. What little thought he had given it were evidenced in the five-pound weights that doubled as deterrents to violence, and that he now threw to the ground in a mindless flight from an undiscriminating death.
***
The killer, unlike the runner, loved the brief time betwixt night and day—that quiet teetering of the balance from darkness to light, when the world is given over to the fortunate prey and the predator slips unobserved to its lair. But, being a predator, the killer understood too that as the sun drove back the darkness, it deepened the shadows and lulled the unsuspecting with its false promise of peace. The dawn presented a last, and best, opportunity.
He had watched the runner for some minutes as he approached, panting and wary, yet determined on his course. A course that would take him within feet of the killer. The killer had heard the steady crunching of the gravel beneath the runner's feet for some time before he hastened to his vantage point beside the trail, disturbing some small animal as he did so. There, he lay on his belly… waiting. Then the steps ceased.
He was tempted to stick his head out and look but resisted. Like all hunters, he understood patience as the thin wall that separated those that would die from those that would kill. He lay there in the wet grass, enjoying the anticipation, the… almost uncertainty.
The footsteps resumed and gained in speed. A few moments later, the runner came into his view, his head swiveling from side to side, disturbed and wary. He willed himself to remain still. He could see that his victim was large and healthy. This was unlike the last and gave him pause. That one had been easy. Even after years of confinement it had been an effortless kill, and the memory of it thrilled him and filled his mouth with the taste of iron. All those years, unable to do what he wanted… needed most!
Then the runner was next to him; a body's length away. At the last possible moment before his passing, the runner turned and saw. His eyes met the killer’s, and all was understood between them: the role that each must play.
The killer broke from his cover in that same instant and began his silent pursuit of the stumbling, sobbing runner. In a moment, he was upon him, slashing him to the bone with his first, joyful blow. The slanting rays of the new sun crept over them as the killer celebrated the dawn in a welter of blood, punctuated by the occasional grunt of satisfaction. The victim, like the rest of nature, had grown quiet and still.
With the same caution he had exercised with his previous victim, the killer dragged the corpse to a spot deep in the woods, carefully covering it with the litter and debris of the forest floor. Satisfied with his work, he turned and hurried east towards the park. He knew, from years of watching, that soon the park attendants would be arriving, and he could not risk their observing him. He would not risk his greatest secret. Not after waiting so very long to enjoy it.
As the first service trucks approached the garage area, the killer watched from a perch in a large tree that overlooked his compound. Calling greetings to one another, the men hurried into a Quonset hut for their morning coffee. The great cat hesitated a moment longer, gathering strength in its haunches, then sprang from the branch, clearing the fence and inner moat, and landing lightly within.
When the first zoo attendant made his rounds, he found the old Bengal in its favorite spot beneath the ancient oak tree, carefully preening itself, for all the world, like a big house cat. The tree bore deep scores in its venerable trunk, testifying to years of service as a scratching post to the mangy old tiger that had dwelt beneath its ever-spreading branches. As he turned away, satisfied that his charge was well and secure for another day, he briefly wondered if it weren't high time for the grounds division to give the old tree a serious pruning. Its great branches shaded nearly the entire enclosure, narrowing the big cat's choices for sunning himself to fewer and fewer spots with each passing year. Making a mental note of this, the aging keeper continued on his rounds.
The tiger followed the old man with his round yellow eyes until he vanished from sight, then resumed his careful grooming, removing the last of his victim"s blood from his fur with a broad, raspy tongue, pink as a flower.
***
That morning the chief arose stiff and cranky from a fitful night's sleep on the lumpy couch, unaware that eventually another body would be discovered and that when it was, he would become the prime—and in the public's mind the only—suspect of the copy-cat murder of his wife's latest lover.
If “Copy Cat” left you breathless, there’s more where that came from.
In this gripping new collection, David Dean—Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s longtime favorite author—delivers stories of obsession, justice, and the darkest corners of the human mind.
🔪 Featuring the Edgar Award–nominated “Tomorrow’s Dead.”
📘 [Read the rest in Tomorrow’s Dead]
