Playing Dead

By R. G. Belsky

It's been eleven years since David Galvin terrorized New York City with a series of gruesome murders. He picked his victim at random and stalked her silently, taking pleasure in a game of pretend until he captured his prey, played out his sick fantasies, and reached his ultimate passion watching her die. Then it was time to choose his next pretty woman.Now Galvin is dying in prison and he's chosen newspaperman Joe Dougherty to hear the shocking story he never revealed. Galvin's deadly game of make-believe was not his alone, but the brainchild of a group of wealthy college friends -- thrill seekers who killed for fun, kept their sickening secret, and went on to live successful, prominent lives. Galvin got caught. But among the rich and powerful, silence still prevails...and someone is still playing the game!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jan 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9780062852625

R. G. Belsky

R.G. Belsky lives in New York City.

Book preview

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 stop 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.

That’s what they all said, huh?

Absolutely.

Did anyone also happen to mention that if I didn’t have all the facts of a story, I sometimes just made it up?

C’mon, Joe—that happened a long time ago.

I figured if I waited him out long enough, he’d eventually get around to the real reason for this phone call.

How come you never drop by the office to say hello? Kramer asked.

I was fired. Remember?

Well, sure, but . . .

When you’re fired, it’s kind of a message that the company doesn’t want you around anymore. It’s not exactly a social invitation to keep in touch. I figured I was persona non grata.

You? You’re a friend. We go back a long way, you and me, Joe.

I sighed.

What do you want from me, Andy?

Do I need a reason to call up an old friend?

Yes.

What makes you think that?

My unerring reporter’s instinct.

Kramer laughed. You’re right, Joe. I do need something from you.

Then he told me the latest news about Felix the Cat.

It’s an easy gig, Joe. You’ll get paid; you’ll get some nice publicity for it, which should be good for your public relations business; and then you can go back to your job there and your house in New Jersey and your pretty new fiancée and live happily ever after. What do you say?

It would be just this one assignment, right? I said. "I’d go see Felix the Cat in jail, interview him for the Banner, then write up the story—and that would be it."

Absolutely, Andy Kramer said. In and out. No problem.

In and out, I repeated.

Chapter 4

Andy said the letter had arrived in the mail three days earlier. It was addressed to "Letters to the Editor, New York Banner"—and came from Ossining State Prison. Inside the envelope was a piece of paper with a typewritten message, written in simplistic verse—just the way Felix the Cat used to send his notes to the media. At first, the Banner editors thought it might be a hoax. But there was a handwritten signature at the bottom, so they checked it out. It was from David Galvin.

I sat in Andy’s office and read it.

Dear Editor:

I’ve been away in prison for eleven long years,

Now there’s lots of regrets, lots of tears

It’s finally time to do the right thing,

Send me a reporter, and I promise to sing

I know secrets about those old days,

when I was big news on the front page

Now I want to tell the truth behind it all,

the terrible deeds, the blood, and the rage

You’ve got a newsroom full of reporters,

but I don’t want anyone new

Joe Dougherty’s my choice

He’s the only one that will do.

Dougherty, Dougherty, he’s my man

If he can’t save my soul, no one can!

—David Galvin

(Felix the Cat)

Why me? I asked Andy after I finished.

I don’t have the answer to that.

"I mean it doesn’t make sense. Sure, I was working at the Banner during the Felix the Cat murders, but I didn’t have any kind of a big role in it. I didn’t break any exclusives. I didn’t get any personal notes from the killer. I never wrote public appeals for him to turn himself in like some reporters did. I was just one of a very large pack of reporters covering the case."

Your byline was on the story of Galvin’s arrest, Andy said. I pulled it from the library.

He handed me a story across the desk. I looked down at the clipping.

FELIX THE CAT CAPTURED!

cops swoop down

on killer of nine,

rescue woman captive

By Joe Dougherty

So what?

Maybe he’s been obsessing about that article—and about you—all these years in prison, he said. Pinned it up to the wall of his jail cell—and reads it every day until he thinks you’re his pal or something. I don’t know—the guy’s crazy, man.

On one level, yes. But he’s also very smart. I remember reading somewhere once how he had an IQ of one-sixty-one. I figure there has to be some other reason.

So you’ll ask him when you go to see him. Are you up for this or not, Joe?

Before I could answer, an editor came in to run down the day’s front-page stories. The biggest one was about the murder of a wealthy Wall Street investment banker, who had been found shot to death with a pretty young call girl in his Upper East Side apartment a few weeks earlier. Authorities were now zeroing in on a jealous girlfriend as the main suspect—who also happened to be the daughter of one of the city’s most prominent businessmen and political movers and shakers. The story had everything—violence, sex, money, power. It had been in the headlines ever since the shooting happened. There was also a building collapse in Washington Heights, a massive drug bust in Queens, a fiscal crisis at City Hall, and a $36 million winner in the lottery.

I remembered when I used to live and die with the news like that, each day of my life. Every story, every assignment—they all seemed so important. Now I barely listened to the news. I didn’t care anymore about investment bankers getting murdered or car crashes on the Long Island Expressway or four-alarm fires or shootouts in Times Square or sanitation strikes. I didn’t have time for that stuff anymore. I was all grown up. I had a life now.

I told that to Andy Kramer.

I guess I can understand what you’re saying, he said. "You’ve been through a lot over the past few years. The mess here at the Banner. Then the way your wife and son died right after that. It looks like you’re finally getting things together again. You don’t want to do anything to mess it up, right?"

Something like that.

He cleared his throat nervously. By the way, Joe, I know this is awfully belated—and I’m sorry I never called or dropped you a note at the time—but I was really sorry when I heard about the deaths of Susan and your son . . . what was his name?

Joseph. His name was Joseph, Junior, and he was a year and a half old.

Kramer shook his head. That’s tough.

I survived.

And now I was all the way back. I was just about to marry a lovely woman, and soon we would have our own children. Another little boy just like the one I lost—and maybe a daughter too. I’d go to work every day at a real grown-up job, with my own office and normal hours and three-martini lunches—no more living on coffee and junk food and spending hours staking out crime scenes like I used to. Then, at night, I’d go home to our big, beautiful house in the suburbs of New Jersey and enjoy the new life I had for myself.

All I had to do was say that to Andy Kramer, and tell him to take this job of his and shove it. Then I could leave here and never think about him or the New York Banner or David Galvin again.

Yep, that was the thing to do, all right.

Just stand up and walk right out the door.

I’ve got a city room full of reporters out there, Joe, Andy said. Most of them are eager, ambitious young guns—just like you used to be—who would love to do this interview. But Felix the Cat asked for you in the letter. So do you want to do the story or not?

Yeah, I want to do the story, I heard myself say.

Raymond Chandler said it best a long time ago: There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

Chapter 5

David Galvin had changed a lot in eleven years.

The last time I’d seen him was on the day of his sentencing. He was a dark, good-looking youth of twenty-two then, with a smug, arrogant look on his face. Even as he was leaving the courthouse after the judge gave him a life sentence, with no possibility of parole, he proudly flashed a thumbs-up sign to the press and curious onlookers outside. There was never a hint of remorse for the unspeakable atrocities he had committed.

But now he looked like he’d aged thirty years.

He was thin and emaciated, his hair was mostly gone and his eyes had that vacant, hopeless look that people have when they know they’re going to die.

Despite his condition, Galvin was still kept restrained by heavy wrist and ankle cuffs that were attached to his hospital bed—just like the woman at the front gate had said. A guard was posted outside the door, only a few feet away from me. Every five minutes, he looked in to see what Galvin was doing. Even in death, this man was going to suffer the indignities of being deprived of even the smallest of life’s freedoms.

Just like his victims had.

Above Galvin’s bed was a portrait of Jesus and the Twelve Disciples at the Last Supper. On the table next to him was a Bible. I remembered reading somewhere how he had become religious after being diagnosed with cancer a year earlier. He said he prayed to the Lord every day now for forgiveness for the things he had done. All he wanted now was to go to heaven.

Hello, Galvin, I said. "I’m Joe Dougherty. From the New York Banner."

He turned on his side in the hospital bed and looked across the room at me.

They really did send you.

That was what you asked for.

I didn’t think they would. I didn’t know if they could find you. I wasn’t even sure you were still alive.

I sometimes wondered about that myself.

Yeah, me too. I wake up every morning now and thank the Lord I still have one more day where I can draw a breath. It’s funny how precious all the little things are that we used to just take for granted. Do you know what I’m saying, Joe?

I pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bed. I took out a notebook and pen and set my tape recorder on the table next to the Bible. I was nervous. I wasn’t sure exactly what to say to him next. Or how to get the interview started. It had been a long time since I’d done anything like this.

So how are you doing? I asked him. Hanging in there?

When in doubt, go for the cliche.

As well as can be expected. I’ve got cancer. The worst kind too. It started in the colon, then it spread to my liver and my pancreas. They figure it’s probably in the bone marrow, lungs, and even my brain by now too. Or if it isn’t, it’s headed there very soon. I’m fucked, my man. Totally fucked.

I’m sorry—I guess, I said. I really don’t know what to say, except . . .

Except no one’s going to mourn me very much when I’m gone, huh?

I nodded. You did a lot of bad stuff.

That I did.

I looked around the room. At the picture of Jesus on the wall. The Bible next to his bed. There was even a copy of the Twenty-third Psalm pinned to the wall next to him. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Death, I fear no evil . . .

So now you’ve decided to make peace with God, huh? Say ‘I’m sorry’ and hope all is forgiven. March right up to the heavenly gates with your head held high, just like you were a normal human being. Instead of a murdering son of a bitch.

God is all forgiving, Galvin said. The scriptures tell us this.

Well, if he really is, then you’re going to be the ultimate test of that theory.

He smiled weakly.

What am I doing here, Galvin? I asked. "I haven’t been a reporter at the Banner for eight years. I haven’t even worked for any kind of a newspaper for awhile. Why did you ask for me?"

It’s not important, he said.

Yes, it is, I said to him. I need to know why.

You’ll find out. Galvin smiled weakly. Soon enough.

He looked down at the tape recorder next to him.

You better make sure that thing’s on, he said. I don’t have much time. I fall asleep a lot. And, if I don’t, the drugs for the cancer make me hallucinate and lose concentration. But I have to take them. It’s the only way I can stand the pain. So let’s just get going. Dougherty. I have a story to tell.

He told it then. The whole thing, from the first murder to the last. He recounted the details of the killings, the terror his victims felt, the pleasure he got from his acts. He talked about the dead ones. The two who lived too. The one that was with him when he was captured. And another victim a few months earlier that police had found barely alive. The cops had come very close to catching him that time, Galvin remembered. He said he wanted to contact the woman now—to tell her how sorry he was for what he’d done to her—but the prison officials wouldn’t let him.

It doesn’t matter, I said. She couldn’t have heard you anyway.

I remembered the woman lying in the hospital after the police found her. The way she looked. The fear in her eyes. The way she cringed in terror when anyone, even the nurses, touched her. It never got any better either. They say she just retreated into her own private little world. A world far away from