The Last Commandment

by Scott Shepherd

  Manhattan was in full Christmas spirit. It was nine-thirty and the streets were packed with people teetering with shopping bags. Others toted Christmas trees and the corner bars had patrons spilling outside singing raucous carols.

  All Grant heard in his head were two words—Bah and Humbug.

  Right around ten o’clock, he found himself outside Radio City Music Hall. A man in town from Dubuque, Iowa, was trying to get rid of a spare ticket for the late Christmas Spectacular as his teenage daughter had refused to go. Grant bought it, figuring seeing what was so spectacular might put him in the holiday mood, or at least take his mind off Rachel and Allison.

  There was something impressive about the Rockettes with their precise choreography in a chorus line that stretched the length of the largest stage Grant had ever seen. The crowd was in a jolly mood and sang along with every number.

  But a full-frontal assault of that much yuletide joy only made Grant recall Christmases past with his wife and their little girl.

  He remembered bringing home a lifelike electronic Saint Nicholas and how when he plugged it in to the wall, the figure had immediately started to whirr and bow—letting out a huge “Ho-ho-ho—Happy Christmas!” with a hearty guffaw. He thought it the most joyous thing he’d ever seen, until a four-year-old Rachel walked in on Boxing Day, took one look at the bearded robot twice her size, and ran upstairs to hide under the bed. Grant spent the rest of the morning coaxing Rachel out from under the mattress with numerous presents. The rest of the holiday found Rachel walking cautiously around the house afraid that “Saint Electronick” (as Grant had dubbed him) was going to pop out of a closet and “Ho-ho-ho” her to death.

  The following year Rachel kept asking if Saint Electronick had returned to the North Pole and she giggled when it reappeared by the tree on Christmas Day. By the time she was six, Rachel was bringing friends over to see the bowing Father Christmas and Allison had to sit their daughter down and tell her she couldn’t charge admission.

  After that, the ritual of “The Plugging In of Saint Electronick” had been the most anticipated moment of the holiday season in the Grant household. The parties had continued way into Rachel’s adulthood and only stopped the Christmas when Allison was living out her final days.

  Grant wasn’t even sure where Saint Electronick resided now—somewhere deep in the cellar, he thought. He was certain that if he went down and saw it, he’d burst into tears.

  He got up halfway through the show and left.

  Once again, he stood and watched tourists and New Yorkers skate below the gigantic Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. He knew it was time to move on when he started wondering where he might find the cord that disconnected the speakers blasting the nonstop holiday music.

  He ended up on Fifth Avenue walking past department store windows—all brilliantly decorated for Christmas. He stopped in front of Saks Fifth Avenue and took in the Burberry display, staring for a long time at the pink and brown patterned cashmere scarf on a festively dressed mannequin. He thought how lovely it would have looked draped around Allison’s neck. It would have gone perfectly with her auburn hair and coloring.

  For that matter, Rachel’s as well.

  Grant let out a heavy sigh. Christmas was never going to be the same.

  Especially this one—as a widower searching for a maniac in a foreign land.

  It was just after midnight when he returned to Rachel’s apartment.

  She wasn’t home yet—the lights were on exactly how Grant had left them a few hours earlier.

  He passed the table with the laptop again.

  This time, he stared at it a little longer, then went back to the foldout couch. He opened his carry-on bag and dug out his pajamas and toiletries. He tried unsuccessfully to avoid glancing at the computer on his way to the bathroom.

  Finally, giving in to temptation, he sat down at the table. He glanced over at the door—prepared to jump up the moment he heard the knob begin to twist.

  Grant tapped the keyboard.

  The computer screen lit up and asked for a password. He thought about it. He typed in Allison—and got back the message Access Denied.

  He figured what the hell and tried something else. Austin.

  And got the same message for his trouble.

  Grant shook his head. After the past two years—what did he expect?

  What he expected was better of himself. True, he was a policeman and it was second nature to be inquisitive. But not spying on his one and only daughter.

  He got up out of the chair, returned to bed, flicked on the television, and started flipping through the channels.

  Perhaps they were showing Notting Hill again.

  “Silver.”

  Grant’s eyes flickered open.

  Gray morning light was coming in through the window and Rachel was hovering above him. Disoriented, Grant sat up.

  “Silver?”

  He looked from Rachel to the table and laptop. The screen was powered back up. He wondered if she had realized he’d tried to access it and was telling him the password.

  “Prior Silver. Remember him?” prodded Rachel.

  The name rang a bell—but not very loudly.

  Grant tried to get his bearings and realized he must have fallen asleep right after he sat on the bed. He noticed that Rachel was in the same outfit she’d been wearing last night.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Just after seven. I thought I’d just stay with my friend—give you the place to yourself. I tried you around eleven or so to tell you, but you didn’t answer. I figured you were already asleep.”

  “I went for a walk.”

  “Well, I was worried I’d wake you if I called again. Good thing—you were dead to the world when I came back an hour ago.” She pointed to the computer. “I’ve been online with Sergeant Hawley and I think he came up with something.”

  Grant suddenly felt pieces falling into place as he fully woke up.

  “Prior Silver,” he repeated. “A thief, if I remember correctly.”

  Rachel nodded. “Multiple robberies in the London financial district. He stabbed one customer, who nearly died.”

  He straightened up; she had his full attention now. “Back about the time you were in upper school.”

  “I remember it as well. He said all sorts of nasty things about you.”

  “He wouldn’t have been the first.”

  “Still, it frightened me and Mom.”

  “So, he’s out and about?” asked Grant.

  “For over two years. But according to Sergeant Hawley, he ‘found the Lord’ while serving his time.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first that happened to either.”

  Rachel was back at the computer screen, scrawling through her text with the sergeant.

  “Hawley learned that the man led a Bible group in prison at least three times a week,” she continued. “Silver actually wrote a couple of sermons on repentance; one was even published while he was incarcerated.”

  “Interesting,” said Grant as he peered over her shoulder. “And I presume Prior Silver was in London when the first three murders were committed?”

  “Certainly looks like it,” said Rachel. “He also flew to New York City the day before Father Peters was killed in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.”

  15

  Prior Silver.

  Grant had barely remembered the name when Rachel first mentioned it. But halfway through reading the man’s file, it came back to him like an avalanche. Strange that he could have forgotten it so easily, but Grant realized he’d put a lot of people in prison over three decades.

  Twenty years ago, a spate of bank heists hit London’s Financial District—numbering six by the time Grant’s team turned their focus on Silver. All the robberies took place during the noon hour, which coincided with the lunch break that Silver took from the garage where he’d been a mechanic for ten years. It had been a colleague of Silver’s that had tipped the Yard, having stumbled upon h
im in the WC picking up bundles of cash that had spilled on the floor in a stall where Prior had been tallying his latest haul.

  Grant had set up surveillance on the mechanic and days later watched him leave the garage with a sandwich, only to dump it in a trash bin the minute he rounded the corner. Prior walked two more blocks, dug a kerchief out of his pocket, and donned it as a mask. Then he ducked into a Barclays, where he pulled a knife and demanded the nearest teller empty the till.

  When Grant’s team descended upon the bank, things took a turn for the worse. Prior grabbed Abby Van Dyke, who’d been waiting to cash her weekly check, and brought the knife to her throat—attempting to use her as a hostage shield.

  Abby had started screaming and tried to squiggle free. That was when Silver cut her with the knife. With blood on his hands, Silver had loosened his grip just enough and Abby tumbled to the ground. Silver whirled to make a break for it—only to run directly into then-Sergeant Grant, who threw his arms around the misguided mechanic. Grant was quickly joined by the rest of his team, who leaped onto Prior Silver like he had the ball at the bottom of a rugby scrum.

  The crime wave that had brought the Financial District to its knees was over.

  Having seen the news on the telly, Allison and a twelve-year-old Rachel had greeted Grant when he returned with hugs and admonishments—his wife taking him to task for putting himself in such danger. He told her it all went with the job, but he was home now, and London was one criminal safer—for at least an evening.

  Allison started worrying again when Grant took the stand at Prior Silver’s trial. Grant’s testimony regarding the knife attack on Abby had been particularly damning. It got Silver a thirty-year prison sentence as opposed to a term half that length if charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon hadn’t been added to the robbery counts. Silver began screaming during Grant’s testimony—shouting he hadn’t meant to cut Abby, that the knife had slipped when he was backing out of the bank. Once order was restored, Grant doubled down, claiming Silver’s actions had been purposeful and fraught with malice to fend off the police.

  When his sentence was delivered, Silver threatened Grant, vowing he “would make him pay for what he’d done”—which kept Allison up for a number of nights. She only relaxed when Grant informed her that Prior’s actions had gotten him placed in Wakefield, a prison in West Yorkshire often referred to as the “Monster Mansion” due to the great number of violent inmates incarcerated there.

  Grant continued to review the file in the back of a cab, sitting alongside Rachel as they traveled to the precinct. Looking back, Grant didn’t regret his testimony. He honestly believed he had kept a violent man off the London streets.

  With the steady influx of investigations on his docket, Grant had forgotten about Silver shortly after that. The scarce free time he had was spent with Allison and Rachel, not looking in the rearview mirror at old cases.

  So he had been unaware of the turnaround Silver did up at Wakefield, starting with the family Bible his wife had given him on her one and only prison visit. The final straw for her had been having to return the Fiat Silver had given her, the authorities claiming it had been bought through “ill-gotten gains.” Prior had told her he’d had a “run of good luck at the races,” though she couldn’t remember when he’d last backed a winner. She really loved that car, certainly more than she did Prior—and within weeks had divorced him and run off with the owner of the Fiat dealership she had returned the car to.

  Meanwhile, Prior Silver got hooked on scripture and spent every possible moment in his cell memorizing passages. He took to spreading the Good Word, enduring more than his fair share of beatings. It didn’t prevent him from preaching Gospel, especially Mark 1:15, which preached the kingdom of God was at hand and it was time to repent and believe in the word of Jesus.

  The result was Silver becoming a model prisoner, and a few years later he was transferred from the “Monster Mansion” to Hatfield, a more lax facility farther south where he had penned the sermons Rachel mentioned. Grant quickly scanned one published as a pamphlet entitled Repent + Believe— where Silver claimed repentance was more than just remorse for one’s previous sins; it was also a redirection of the human will.

  The sermon was instrumental to his release two years before. Grant wondered if that “will” had been “redirected” to punishing others for their sins—starting with Thou shalt have no other gods before me in a loo at the British Library.

  “It certainly seems to line up,” agreed Frankel.

  He had joined the Grants in the basement office. The commander had just condensed the trial and tribulations of Prior Silver for Frankel.

  The first thing the detective asked was about Silver’s air ticket.

  “He arrived early last Saturday, the fourteenth,” Rachel told him, providing the specific airline (British Airways) and time (ten in the morning).

  Frankel nodded. “Giving him an opportunity to check out Saint Pat’s, then come back the following night and kill Peters.”

  “His return trip is scheduled for this coming Tuesday—the twenty-fourth.”

  “Wonderful,” said Grant. “Back home just in time for Christmas.”

  “At least New Yorkers and tourists would be safer over the holidays,” Frankel pointed out, looking for something to feel good about.

  “It’s only Friday,” countered Grant. “At the rate he’s going, Silver could have already dispatched the final five before he takes a plane for Heathrow on Tuesday.”

  “It could only be four,” reminded Rachel. “Remember, he might have already killed number six; we just haven’t been able to find that victim yet.”

  “Aren’t you both just rays of fucking sunshine?” grumbled Frankel. He asked Grant if he’d heard from Ferguson since yesterday.

  “Not a bloody peep,” answered Grant.

  Grant hadn’t really expected to. The chances of the Mail man running down an unknown killer or finding a body first were slim to none with most of the NYPD looking for the same thing. Grant had essentially wanted to put the journalist on a wild-goose chase; if it brought back an unexpected dividend—so be it.

  “Unfortunately, the ticket was paid for in cash, so we don’t have a credit card yet for Silver,” Rachel informed them. “But Hawley and the Yard are working on it.”

  Ten minutes later, the sergeant had come up with a debit card issued to Silver that had been used three times in New York City over the past week. The first time was at a JFK fast-food restaurant shortly after Silver landed, the second for a cab ride into Midtown minutes later, and the third as a guarantee hold for a room at the Hotel Pennsylvania that same evening.

  “A hold means he hasn’t checked out yet,” Grant surmised.

  “There’s an easy way to find out,” said Frankel.

  The Hotel Pennsylvania, commonly referred to as the Penn, had one distinct advantage over every other hotel in Manhattan. It was the closest to Penn Station, situated directly across Seventh Avenue from the massive underground terminal.

  “Makes it easy for anyone staying at that dump to get as far away from the place as soon as possible,” Frankel told Grant on their way.

  Once considered one of Manhattan’s Grand Dame hotels, the Penn had fallen on hard times over the years and didn’t even qualify as a tourist trap; it was only booked if someone didn’t know better or was the first thing one spotted getting off the train from Wichita, Kansas.

  Rachel had wanted to come along, but Frankel and her father convinced her this was when reporters did their thing while cops did theirs.

  Frankel had tried ringing Silver’s room before they’d left the precinct but got no answer. The hotel operator asked if he had a message for the guest. The detective declined, deciding not to leave one saying they were heading over to question him about five, or possibly six, murders he might have committed.

  The front desk seemed familiar enough with NYPD, clearly having conferred with Frankel’s brethren about the hotel’s undesirab
le guests. After ascertaining that Mr. Silver was still registered, the manager provided the room number and offered to escort the cops upstairs.

  “We can find our own way,” Frankel told him. “No need to call ahead. We’d rather surprise him, if you get my drift.”

  The manager looked relieved to not deal with what looked like an unpleasant situation. “By all means,” he said and pointed them toward the elevators.

  Grant and Frankel exited on the fifth floor. The corridor was dimly lit—it could have been three in the morning. The faded flowered wallpaper was probably put up during the Truman administration, back when the hotel might have had enough stars to warrant a presidential entourage.

  They traveled halfway down a corridor that literally stretched a city block and arrived at room 515. A “Do Not Disturb” sign hung from the unpolished knob.

  It didn’t stop Frankel from knocking on the door. There was no response. The detective leaned his ear against the door panel but neither cop heard footsteps.

  Frankel looked down the hallway to see a maid emerge from a room five or six doors away, reuniting with the housekeeping cart she had parked there.

  “Excuse me? Ma’am?” Frankel called out.

  The maid, a Latina in her fifties who shuffled along, looked up at him. Her eyes flickered with seeming alarm as Frankel pulled out his badge.

  He shook his head. “No. Nothing for you to worry about. Really.”

  “Can I help you?”

  Frankel pointed to room 515. “My colleague and I were wondering when was the last time this room was serviced.”

  “Not since yesterday.” She indicated the sign on the door. “That’s been there since I started at six this morning.”

  Grant noticed Frankel give him a look that might have classified as a wink. The detective flipped over the sign so it read “Please Make Up This Room.”

  “I think it’s ready for you now,” Frankel told her matter-of-factly.