“The tenants overwhelmingly voted down cameras in the hallways,” Tompkins explained when asked about additional coverage. “Felt it was an invasion of privacy. It was a huge expense for management to take on anyway.”
Frankel fast-forwarded through the footage. None of this was likely to help, especially since the last dead body found in the building was poor Mrs. Simmons, who had passed away three months before.
“What other ways can a person get into the building?” asked Frankel. “Besides the front door.”
Tompkins mentioned the maintenance entrance off Fifty-Eighth Street, but only a select few had keys to it. None of the employees would let someone they didn’t recognize slip inside, but he provided the cops with their names.
Then it was on to the painstaking part of the process—interviewing the occupants of the building. Grant and Frankel had discussed this on the way over during their lengthy (one traffic-snarled mile) trip up the West Side.
“We agree that we’re looking for a potential victim here, not our killer, right?” Frankel had asked between blasts of the horn.
“Seems far-fetched that, despite his bravado in trying to engage us, he would provide his actual home address. Plus, it would make no sense to start a killing spree across the Atlantic, only to go and bring it back to one’s own doorstep.”
“And we’re definitely pursuing the mother-father angle?”
“Unless you have a better idea?”
Frankel said he didn’t.
Grant realized that getting a forthcoming answer from the building’s tenants was no sure thing. If one of them had done something horrible to their folks, he couldn’t imagine that person owning up to such a transgression.
Frankel set himself up in the game room and Grant sat behind a table in a lounge near the building entrance. They’d decided to conduct the interviews separately to move more quickly through the tenants, then regroup and compare notes.
It was early afternoon when they began, so most of the interviewees were stay-at-home moms, pensioned elders, and those who worked at home. Only a few were worthy of discussion. One had written off her parents because they had refused to pay for her child’s schooling. Another had stopped talking to her widowed father, citing him as a hopeless drunk, her mother having passed when she was a teen.
“If anything, I should be killing him,” she told Grant. Then she burst into tears realizing what she’d said and he’d spent ten more minutes consoling her.
As evening rolled around, the work force returned to 988 Eighth Avenue, surprised to find policemen from two different countries occupying the public spaces in their building. The majority dutifully submitted to interviews with Grant and Frankel. To a person, they only had glowing things to say about their parents. By the time Frankel and Grant called it a night, they were convinced they’d been run ragged by a killer who must have been laughing himself silly.
Before leaving, they sat again with Tompkins to figure out how many tenants they still needed to reach. They’d made a sizeable dent and were down to fewer than a dozen. The super said he’d check on who was out of town and provide numbers for the rest.
On the way out, Frankel handed Grant a copy of the remaining list, which they divided in half. “Feel free to call them from your hotel or the precinct in the morning. Want to meet around eleven to see where we end up?”
Grant was so tired he could barely manage a nod.
The only place he wanted to end up was back home in Maida Vale with his head buried under a pillow until the new year.
“It isn’t necessarily an address,” said Everett.
Grant repressed a sigh. It wasn’t like that hadn’t already occurred to him, but it was painful hearing it spoken aloud. Especially after ten hours at 988 Eighth Avenue.
“At least it’s a place to start,” Grant told his brother.
Everett had left two messages asking Grant to call him back whenever he returned to the hotel; never mind the time change. He wasn’t surprised. His sibling was a self-pronounced insomniac and often worked into the wee hours.
“It could be an invoice number,” added Grant. “Coordinates on a map we’re not getting?” He threw up his hands, frustrated. “The possibilities are endless.”
“Did you consider it being a date?” Everett asked.
It had floated through his mind briefly, but that would translate to September 8, 1988—and three decades seemed like an eternity in these days of instant gratification and social media. He said as much to Everett but made a mental note to look into it later.
“You’re probably right,” Everett replied. “There are obscure references to try—the numbers for californium and radium on the periodic table of elements, ninety-eight degrees in a normal temperature Fahrenheit, eighty-eight keys on a piano . . .”
“Are you suggesting I should be searching for a radioactive Steinway?”
Everett chuckled. “Who knows how this bugger thinks?”
Grant smiled as well. The next night was supposed to be his weekly rendezvous with his brother. He actually found himself yearning to be seated opposite Everett, getting obliterated by a confounding series of chess moves.
Still, Grant found it edifying to review the case with him, much as they had that night—Was it only a week ago?— in Everett’s study when his brother had helped discover the crimes were being plucked directly from the Old Testament.
They spent a few more minutes debating various parts of the investigation until Grant remembered the voice messages that Everett had left earlier.
“You said it was important I should call—no matter what time,” Grant reminded him. “What did you want to tell me?”
Everett hesitated. Then he cleared his throat and began with, “I need you to listen to me for a minute, Austin.”
Uh oh, thought Grant. This can’t be good. But he listened anyway.
At first, Grant tried to go to sleep but he couldn’t get the end of the conversation with Everett out of his head.
So he distracted himself by looking up the date: 9/8/88.
On that day, Yellowstone Park was closed for the first time in history due to massive forest fires. Bart Giamatti was unanimously elected the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Grant couldn’t see either event spurring the killer to take out a particular sinner, be it an arson-setting park ranger or irate fan who didn’t approve of the baseball vote, let alone relating those things to dishonoring a parent. He searched crime blotters and, like any day in America, it was filled with atrocities. On that September day in the tristate area there had been three armed robberies, a nasty home invasion killing a couple on Long Island, and a rapist caught after an hour-long chase through Central Park. All horrendous occurrences, but trying to connect them to the present just made Grant’s head hurt further.
He should have nipped Everett’s idea in the bud. But he was often cowed by his younger brother, who was so much smarter that it was difficult for Grant to stand up to him.
So, naturally, he had agreed to do what Everett had asked.
The dining room at the Surrey reminded Grant of a London hotel tearoom. The finest china, silverware, and linens were on display, with each table featuring a simple but elegant flower arrangement that wouldn’t distract a conversation or the bite of a delectable dish. The walls were adorned with Impressionist-style drawings that could have been masterpieces for all Grant knew.
When asked by the maître d’ for a reservation, he gave him the name “Grant” and was told the other person in the party had just arrived.
Grant followed the tuxedoed man through a dining room populated by Upper East Siders and moneyed Manhattanites eating omelets and closing deals. As they neared the table, Grant slowed, filled with sudden trepidation.
Even with her back to him, it was clear the woman seated at the table was attractive, and from the way she carried herself, someone to be reckoned with.
“Enjoy your breakfast, Mr. Grant,” said the maître d’.
The woman t
urned and her exquisite jaw almost hit the floor.
“What the hell . . .?”
Grant noticed that she’d lost some of her British accent.
“Don’t blame me—you can put that all on your uncle,” he told her.
“That doesn’t mean you had to go along with it, Dad,” said his daughter.
6
No matter what Grant or Allison tried, Rachel wouldn’t stop screaming.
Barely three days old, but already possessing quite the set of lungs. Grant didn’t remember their newborn daughter uttering a peep while cradled in Allison’s arms in the hospital room or watching her through the nursey window.
She saved it up for the cab ride home. Grant was afraid the driver would drop them off on Hyde Park Corner because he couldn’t stand the racket.
The baby kept it up upon entering the flat. No matter what the new parents did, she proved inconsolable. They tried rocking. Cooing. Singing lullabies. Grant even recited nursery rhymes he remembered from childhood. Nothing worked.
Then Grant turned on the big portable radio in the living room hoping to drown out the screaming child and keep the neighbors from making child abuse claims.
It was tuned to the oldies station Allison found so tiresome.
The Beatles’ “She Loves You” began to play.
Rachel not only stopped crying—she began gurgling with pure happiness.
Grant thought, Oh my, she’s a lovely British lass through and through.
From the moment she entered the world, Rachel and Allison were as close as a mother and child could be. But on that wintry morning when Lennon and McCartney calmed his baby girl, Grant’s heart had been stilled when Rachel stared up at him with adoring sky-blue eyes. When recounting the story over the years and asked if that was the moment he fell in love with his daughter, Grant would smile and answer, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Nothing was too good for Grant’s little girl. He was never happier than when pushing the pram in rain, wind, or shine; he never missed a recital; he dutifully helped Rachel with homework even as the math got more complicated; and he was the first shoulder she’d cry on when an adolescent crush wasn’t reciprocated. Grant loved that she shared his passion for sixties rock—countless were the times when Allison walked away shaking her head as her husband and child sang along with Petula Clark and the Turtles.
Grant missed her terribly when she went to the States to study journalism. He knew that Rachel’s desire to become an investigative reporter stemmed from a fascination with Grant’s own profession and he was forever grateful she hadn’t signed up to risk life and limb at the Yard. When Rachel got her first job writing for a small paper in New England, Grant couldn’t have been prouder—knowing her determination to get to the bottom of a story came from watching her old man work case after case, year after year.
Her semiannual trips back to England (Christmas always and a holiday during the brutal New York summers) were cause for celebration. Despite her mother’s prodding as to when she was going to settle down and give them a grandchild or five, the trio were inseparable on these holidays.
So when things changed drastically two years ago, it had left him stunned.
It was like being thrust into a boxing ring and hit from both sides before he could even bring up his gloves. Allison’s cancer diagnosis had been a punch to the gut that doubled him over in blistering pain, and Grant knew he’d never recover. Then came the crushing blow—Rachel shutting him completely out of her life within days of the diagnosis for no apparent reason. Grant was reluctant to bring it up to Allison, who was deteriorating before his very eyes. The few times he’d tried, she didn’t want to talk about it.
Soon after, Grant found himself totally alone.
Now, standing in the middle of the Surrey dining room, Grant couldn’t believe this was the girl he had sung harmony with to Herman’s Hermits, read bedtime stories, then kissed and tucked in good night.
She was practically a stranger.
Rachel reached for the bag that she had strung over the back of her chair. Grant took a gingerly step forward and shook his head. “Please, Rachel. Stay.” He somehow managed a smile. “I hear they serve a lovely breakfast here.”
He watched as Rachel glanced around the room, noticed patrons looking their way, and finally sat back down. Grant took a silent deep breath of relief that he and Allison had raised a young woman who wasn’t one for making a public scene.
Grant eased the chair away from the table and sat across from his daughter. The place settings were perpendicular to each other. The commander casually tried to shift the silverware to his side of the table without making a fuss of it.
“You planning on interrogating me?” she asked.
“That’s the furthest thing from my mind.”
He motioned to a passing waiter, desperate for a pot of tea to calm him. He would also have taken any advice the server had on how to break the ice with a daughter he hadn’t seen since they’d buried her mother the year before.
Rachel certainly didn’t seem interested in the melting process.
“So why exactly are we here?” she asked.
“I think Everett was just trying to do something nice.”
“By pulling a Brother Grant double switch?”
“I told him it was wrong to lure you here under false pretenses. He said you would never show up if you thought you were meeting me instead of him.”
“He wasn’t wrong,” Rachel responded.
Rachel had remained on speaking terms with Everett since things had taken a bad turn. He wasn’t surprised; Everett had always been in her life. But as a confirmed bachelor (“You know Allison was always the one for me,” his brother would gleefully rib Grant), Everett lectured all over the world and as a result was gone for months at a time. When he’d return to the UK, Everett would visit Rachel first thing, enthrall her with stories, and bestow gifts upon her from faraway lands, often saying Rachel was “the closest thing to a daughter that I will ever have.” Grant never begrudged the relationship—all he cared about was that her uncle made Rachel happy and laugh.
“I apologize for not calling directly,” he said. “My coming over here was sudden.”
“The priest who was murdered at Saint Pat’s.”
Grant gave her a solemn nod. “What else did Everett tell you?”
“That’s it. Don’t worry, Dad. I’m not writing a story about it.”
“I thought you covered crime for your paper.”
“I’ve moved on to Sunday feature pieces. I was going to do one but passed my notes on to a colleague when I heard you were involved.”
Grant suppressed a wince. “What sort of feature?”
“Murder in the church; tying it into religious fanaticism. But I didn’t want to step on your toes or try to curry some familial favor.”
He took a chance and leaned forward, desperate to engage with his daughter. “The last thing I would want is to come between you and your work.”
“And this way that won’t happen,” she responded, firmly enough that Grant could feel the door slam between them.
“What do you want from me, Rach?” he asked, using the nickname he always thought of as a term of endearment.
“Just to live our own lives. You’d think that could be done easily enough with an ocean separating our two continents.”
This was going worse than he’d even imagined. “Like I mentioned, I had no choice coming here. I’m just going to see this through and then go on my way the first of the year.”
This seemed to take Rachel by surprise.
“What? You’re actually retiring?”
Grant nodded. “I announced it a couple of months ago. I would have told you if we’d talked but . . .”
“But we don’t. I know that.”
Their server thankfully picked that moment to return with tea and coffee. The hot liquids slightly thawed their icy standstill, at least long enough to order. Rachel asked for a mushroom and bacon omelet. When to
ld they didn’t do porridge or kippers, Grant settled for a couple of eggs over easy and a side of ham.
“Can’t change those British spots so easily,” Rachel mused.
“I’m not planning on staying over here that long.”
“Guess that’d depend on what the person you’re looking for decides to do.”
Unfortunately, Grant couldn’t disagree.
He ended up discussing the case with her over breakfast. Not only was it neutral ground to avoid anything personal, it helped to lay it all out. Rachel offered up an occasional observation and a few questions, a by-product of her chosen profession, falling into the old rhythm from her teenage years when Grant would bring his work home from the Yard and discuss it with both her and Allison.
“And what are you holding out on with Ferguson?”
Rachel had spent enough time around her father to know when he was playing something close to the vest.
Grant considered. Then he made a big decision.
He told Rachel about the Ten Commandments.
He wasn’t exactly sure why. Maybe he wanted her to get the story out before that bothersome Ferguson. It was also possible that Grant didn’t care about playing by the rules any longer. The killer certainly wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine the Yard suspending him with just a few weeks left before retirement.
Rachel’s startled expression made it clear that Everett hadn’t betrayed the Commandment connection. Grant was grateful for that small miracle.
When they got to the Fifth, Rachel shook her head. “He could be going after anyone. Everyone’s got a mother and father.”
Grant went on to tell her a little about John Frankel. He was surprised to hear himself use a superlative or two. Until he spoke them aloud, he hadn’t realized how impressed with the NYPD detective he was.
“I met him a few months back at a crime scene,” Rachel said. “Seemed very serious and dedicated to his work.” She took a purposeful sip of coffee and gave her father a look that could only be interpreted one way.
“Sounds familiar,” Grant admitted.
The Last Commandment Page 6
