Harvest

by Robert Pobi

  Of course, she heard nothing but the indifference of the city.

  Theoretically, it was too early in the investigation to discern patterns of behavior beyond broad generalities, but something told her that sundown was the witching hour. When the day had run out, so had Bobby Grant’s time. She didn’t know how she knew, only that she did.

  The police boat was a twenty-foot Zodiac center console outfitted with a pair of 75 horsepower Mercs. Kowalski had the engines open and their wake spread behind in a mercurial jet stream, a deep white V that reached out for the shores of the river.

  Phelps held on to a handle bolted to the side of the console, the same even expression on his face that he wore throughout the almost seven years of their partnership. Even out here, on water that was piss hot, coupled with a wind that did nothing but magnify the humidity, he looked like he was fine, missing child notwithstanding. If she asked him how he was, he’d just shrug—the steam-driven Iron Giant in a suit, old school down to the soles of his shoes.

  She licked a line of sweat from her upper lip and tried to focus on the shore zipping by starboard, an endless maze of jetties, parks, restaurants, condos, industrial buildings, and myriad places where you could dump a dead kid into the drink without being seen. Especially after dark. Patrolling the shoreline was a last resort but it was better than contacting psychics, if only marginally.

  They were cutting due north, toward Hell Gate, fighting the outgoing tide. She was running on the belief that it was just a matter of minutes until another footless boy was surrendered to the East River. He was probably already out there, being drawn south by the careless hands of the current, heading for the Atlantic. She hoped she was wrong—she hoped that they’d get another day. But hope wasn’t a strategy. Hope was passive.

  The radio squawked to life, a single blurt that startled everyone in the Zodiac except for the Iron Giant.

  “We found him,” a nameless officer said, identifying his boat as an afterthought. “This is Search two-two-four-seven.”

  Hemingway checked the GPS and straight-lined their azimuth to 2247—a boat the roster said was piloted by a man named J. Smilovitch. The distance on the screen was an inch and a half—a little over half a mile west-southwest.

  Kowalski keyed the mic. “This is three-one-one-five, we’ll be there in two minutes.” And he spun the wheel and opened up the throttle.

  Hemingway took the mic. “This is Detective Hemingway. What exactly did you find?” she asked.

  Through the distant static of radio contact Smilovitch said, “Someone’s chopped off his hands. He looks awful. Just fucking awful—”

  She thought back to Trevor Deacon, the child murderer extraordinaire who had taken the feet of at least forty-four children, forty-five including the pair found in his trunk. He hadn’t been killed by an angry parent or a vigilante.

  Trevor Deacon had been killed by a competitor.

  ||| TWENTY-FIVE

  THE DOCK at the police quay was lit up like a Hollywood premiere, the concrete span lined with officers. But they were not there to celebrate the launch of a studio production; they were there to welcome Bobby Grant. Hemingway was with the boy, his body cocooned in a polyethylene bag to keep new contaminants out and to lock in any evidence that had survived the waters of the East River.

  Two of the ME’s people climbed down into the boat, slid the folded tarp into a disaster bag, then strapped the lifeless child onto an aluminum stretcher. After he was on his way to the van, Hemingway and Phelps climbed out of the boat.

  Dennet was waiting and he steered them through the throng of officers who parted in a sea of silent blue; even men who have seen death in all its permutations are humbled in the presence of a murdered child. The captain didn’t ask any questions, didn’t make any demands, he just pushed them toward the white NYPD Tahoe parked inside the fence, beside the medical examiner’s van. Dennet got in the back with Hemingway; Phelps sat up front with the driver.

  When the doors were closed and the engine started, the captain opened the ceiling vent on his side of the backseat and waited until cold air was pumping out before he spoke. For a man under as much pressure as this case was bringing down, he seemed to be in a relatively calm mood. Of course all of that would change in a few minutes when he started yelling. The equation was pretty simple: bring back results, not more dead kids.

  The driver followed the Econoline as it pulled through the gate out onto the Parkway.

  When they were up to speed, Dennet turned to Hemingway and said, “Please tell me you are making headway. Please tell me you have leads. Please tell me that this thing isn’t a scrub. We have two dead children, Alex. I don’t need to tell you how bad this is going to look on the news. By the time we get to the station, it’s going to be like the villagers outside of Frankenstein’s castle.” He paused and turned to the traffic outside the window.

  The driver said, “We have two news vans following us.”

  Dennet waved it away. “Parasites. No marketable skills except frightening the uninformed. Christ, I remember when the news conveyed actual information via educated opinions. If we dug up Walter Cronkite and showed him what has happened to network news he’d ask to go right back to the dirt.” He turned to Phelps in the front seat, then to Hemingway, the voice of the team. “Tomorrow morning we are going to hold a press conference. You are going to give these monkeys something that they can work with—and something they can work on. Let’s use these people to our advantage. They like snooping, get them to work for us. I don’t care how you do it, only that it gets done. I’ll book it for eight a.m. so it’ll make the morning cycle.”

  What could she give him? There were no concrete leads. When she thought about it, there was no concrete anything except those crescents of blood in Trevor Deacon’s basement apartment. Man’s size ten or ten and a half.

  And two dead children. One with no feet. Another with no hands.

  The Chevy hit 60th Street and cut east, leaving the white Econoline to go on to its destination.

  “Where we going?” Hemingway asked.

  Dennet didn’t bother looking over. “To the Grant boy’s apartment. You are going to tell two people that their son is dead. Then you are going to go to the morgue and walk through the autopsy with Marcus.” He let out a sigh that might as well have been a curse. “And then you are going to go out there and find me the man who is chopping up these children.”

  ||| TWENTY-SIX

  SHE PULLED into the garage on autopilot—parking and getting out of the truck without exercising anything even remotely resembling concentration. She was halfway around the block when she realized she hadn’t checked her mirrors before getting out and she hadn’t checked the alley before leaving the garage; it was things like that that got people killed.

  The trip to the Grants’ apartment had been an exercise in agony. Mrs. Grant broke into hysterical weeping that her husband tried to quell but couldn’t stop. The mother-in-law had collapsed into the sofa and stared ahead, comatose. Dr. Grant poured himself a drink but left it on the bar when Hemingway began to explain that they had fished his son from the river and someone had taken his hands off with a hacksaw.

  The whole time Hemingway had talked to him, he stared at the Bösendorfer in the corner.

  Dr. Grant made himself three drinks he never touched.

  Of course, the time with the Grants was punishment from Dennet; a way to tell them to make inroads or they’d be doling out bad news to the parents of dead children until they stopped this guy.

  Dennet had also been very clear that if they didn’t make headway soon, they’d get pulled. The city would load more detectives onto the case. The FBI would be brought in. They’d be gone.

  And all the bullshit she had put up with over the years would be relegated to the wasted effort bin. She’d end up in burglary or vice or some other career dead end where the intent was to push her into quitting. And then where would she be? What would she do?

  After the Grants, she an
d Phelps had taken a ride to the grim land of the medical examiner to look at the boy. When they had walked in, the doctor was up to his elbows in the boy’s chest, fishing out the mass of organs referred to as the block in-house. They wouldn’t have tox screens back until the morning but it was the same perp; the boy’s left eye was punctured and the bones in his wrists had the same twenty-four-teeth-per-inch saw marks.

  And like Tyler Rochester, Bobby Grant had been alive when it had happened.

  This time the killer had cut in the right place, putting the saw through the sweet spot between the ulna and the capitate. He was getting better at this.

  Bad guy: Four.

  Good guys: Sweetfuckall.

  She rounded the corner and stopped. There was no traffic on Riverside and beyond that the Jersey shoreline glittered against the flat Hudson. She wondered where the monster was. What he was doing. What he was wearing. What he was thinking.

  And who he was thinking about.

  Hemingway stood on the sidewalk, staring out at the lights sparkling off the river. What had happened to all of Trevor Deacon’s children? Had he released them into the arms of the river? If he had, why hadn’t they been found?

  Her hand went to her belly and she fell back into thinking that bringing a child into the world took a lot of guts, a bucketful of wishful thinking, and more than a bit of denial. Of course she had thought about all of this before—every time, in fact, she had seen one of life’s discards in a parking lot or alley or any of the other places where people dumped the dead. But the exercise had crossed from academic to practical when she had peed on the little plastic stick yesterday morning and been rewarded with a big blue check mark.

  Two dead children. A dead driver. A dead child murderer. There was a rhyme, a reason, to all of this. Some formula that she did not understand, could not see. Was the baby growing in her crippling her in some way or would the cellular revolution going on in her body add some vital insight?

  Part of the solution?

  Or part of the problem?

  She unlocked the door and stepped into the entry. On her way up the stairs she passed the four equestrian portraits Mank had bought her the last time they had gone out. She paused for a second, thought back to the cemetery that afternoon, to the pebble she had laid on his gravestone. Then she turned away and walked into the loft.

  The space was dark; Daniel wasn’t home. Without turning on the light she went to the three big arched windows in front of the loft and stared at the distant shore of New Jersey. The only thing she was sure of was that this guy would keep going until she stopped him.

  ||| TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE NEWSPEOPLE hummed like a horde of talentless vain insects. They laid cable, tested lights, ran through lead-ins, coiffed and primped and chattered into cameras. There was a sense of triumph in their actions, as if they had discovered something important even though all they would really do was fill time with empty speculation.

  Hemingway and Phelps sat in Dennet’s office, prepping for the press conference. Mike Babanel, the precinct’s counsel, stood behind the captain’s desk, looking like a leaner, balder Tom Hagen.

  Dennet leaned forward and looked at Hemingway for a few seconds. “Are you ready for this?”

  What could she say to that? “I can’t wait.”

  Phelps stood against the wall that held the captain’s citations and golf photos. The Iron Giant hadn’t said much. Until now. “This could be putting you in his crosshairs, Hemi.”

  She just shook her head. “A six-foot chick with a gun isn’t his type.”

  “The Grant kid’s driver wasn’t this guy’s type, either.” Phelps didn’t sound convinced.

  Babanel looked out the window, then at Hemingway. “Remember to think about your answers before you say anything. They are going to try to trap you. And remember that you will be on televisions all over the world. Those two things should help.”

  Had he said help? “Sure. Televisions all over the world. Think before I speak. Easy-peasy. What about swearing?”

  Babanel, whose sense of humor was south of zero on the laugh-o-meter, shook his head. “Swearing’s not recommended either, detective.” He pointed to the document they had spent fifteen minutes going over. “Stick to the release and you are most of the way there. Answer seven questions. That’s it. Keep the answers brief. Tell them that you will keep them informed of any breaks in the case, but that you need to be left alone so that you can pursue all relevant leads. When they ask ‘What leads?’ thank them for their time and leave the podium.”

  It made more sense to put Phelps out there; he had received every award, honor, medal, and citation there was—from the department and the city—some of them twice. The unsaid logic was that he was too valuable an asset to hang out for the vultures, while she was expendable. Focus would irrevocably shift to her; if someone had to be thrown to the dogs, she’d have the shortest fall and the largest impact. It was business, not personal.

  And of course she had gone through this before. During the investigation into David Shea’s death she had been hounded mercilessly; six weeks of intense scrutiny that ended as soon as she was found innocent.

  She looked at Dennet, then Babanel, then turned around to see Phelps still leaning against the wall, looking like he’d rather be somewhere else. “Let the games begin,” he said.

  ———

  Standing in front of the podium brought her back to the weeks after Shea’s death. She remembered the noise, the stench of hair spray, the forest of shiny-eyed idiots staring her down. But she had somehow forgotten how hot the lights could be. Or how loud the cameras were.

  She stood on the front steps to the precinct with the morning sun bisecting the island from east to west. She tried not to wince into the bright halogen spots that came at her like a wall of headaches but she wasn’t succeeding. But she wouldn’t look down, or to the side—because that was negative body language.

  “. . . and last night we recovered the body of a second victim, ten-year-old Bobby Grant.”

  She paused as a murmur went through the crowd of reporters. She stared straight ahead.

  “Like the first victim, Bobby Grant had been mutilated. I am unable to discuss or release the particular nature of his wounds at this juncture in time but I can say that his body was found in the East River by a police patrol.”

  And that was pretty much it—the department’s peace offering.

  “And if you can keep it civil, I’d be happy to answer questions.” She stared into the lights, squinting to see hands.

  She pointed and nodded.

  Miles Rafferty: Can you tell us if either of the boys were sexually assaulted?

  Hemingway wished she could shoot reporters based on nothing more than dislike. “Actually, that’s something that we can neither confirm nor deny at this point because it still has bearing on the case.” By wording it like that, the press could conjecture for days without figuring out if that had been a yes or a no.

  She picked out another hand.

  Donald Cox, CNN: Can you be more specific in reference to the mutilations?

  Hemingway stared into the lights and shook her head. “Not at this time, no.”

  Edwin Choy, MSNBC: Could you be more specific as to where Bobby Grant’s body was found?

  At that she took a breath, and gave a general—and evasive—answer. “The body was found in the East River. I’m sorry I can’t be specific because it still has bearing on the investigation.” With that it sounded like they had something.

  Another hand, this one belonging to Anderson Caldwell, fluttered in the dead air: Did the two boys know one another?

  “That’s a good question, Anderson, and one we’re trying to figure out. It is possible that they crossed paths in some way but as of now it appears they did not know one another.”

  Jennifer Mann, Fox News: Do you have any suspects?

  Babanel had said this was a given and prepped her. “We are investigating a lot of leads right now but I ca
nnot at this time say whether or not we are considering any suspects.”

  Can I take that as a no?

  “You can take that as neither a yes or a no. I am not being vague to hide information. I am being prudent in order not to jeopardize the investigation in any way. There is a difference.”

  Alistair Franklin, the Washington Post: Do you think you have a serial killer on your hands?

  That was the one she was waiting for. She appreciated Franklin for wording it like he had—it allowed her to give a yes or no answer. “Yes, I do.”

  More camera flashes and hands and Horshack grunts.

  Cameron Gillespie for Nancy Grace: Do you think you will find the perpetrator?

  And at that Hemingway smiled. Now was the time to cash in on her past and maybe help the investigation go forward. She looked at Gillespie and paused, swiveling her head over the crowd. Then she took a breath, stared straight ahead, and slowly said, “I am going to find him and I am going to put him in prison.”

  While everyone was snapping photographs and yelling out questions, Hemingway leaned into the nest of microphones taped to the podium, and said, “If you would please calm down, Captain Dennet will fill you in on our plans—and recommendations—for keeping the school children of this city safe. He will run through the support networks that have been set up all over the city as well as our plans through the end of the school year on into the summer. Please check out the website at the bottom of your screen.”

  As she stepped away from the podium she saw Phelps look at his shoes and smile. “What?” she asked, and took her place beside him.

  Still looking down, he said, “You know, for a chick, you got the biggest set of balls I ever saw.”