by Robert Pobi
Daniel looked up at her. He didn’t smile, nod or acknowledge that he had even seen her. But he began talking, very matter-of-fact, a little too fast. “I was a few seconds late getting to her. Fifteen. Maybe twenty. I stopped at the diner to get a coffee. Came down the street. Passed some schoolkids. Guy walking his dog. When I got there she was still bleeding. Blood pissing out all over the place.” Their eyes connected and they knew one another again. “I’m so fucking sorry, Allie. I tried, I really did.”
The tears filled her eyes. She took a breath, pushed them back. Then unfolded from her crouch and sat down beside him. She put her arm around his shoulder. All she could think was had he been there, she might have lost him, too.
“I called nine-one-one. I wanted to call you but I couldn’t remember your number. I tried to find it in my contacts but my hands were shaking so hard I dropped my fucking phone. And all of a sudden the police were here. And now you’re here and I don’t know what I saw but I want to unsee it.”
“Daniel, it’ll be fine. It’s the adrenaline in your system. You’re in shock. We’ll get you some shots; B12 will help. You’ll start shaking in a few minutes.”
“In a few minutes?” He held up his hand—it was vibrating as if it were plugged into a hummingbird’s central nervous system.
“You’re going to be okay.”
“Okay? Your sister is out there spilled all over our doorway—oh, sorry, your doorway—and you tell me it’s going to be okay? No, Alexandra, it’s not going to be okay. This is so fucking far from okay that it’s in another language. Your sister is dead. I should have been here. You should have been here. How can we keep doing this? We never see each other. We never . . . Ah, fuck it.” And he stopped, stiffened and slid into himself.
Phelps opened the door, stuck his head inside. “The medical examiner’s people just showed up. And your sister has to leave.” He jerked his head in the general direction of the cameras. “The less we give those assholes, the better.”
Hemingway stood up, putting her hand on Daniel’s shoulder. She gave it a squeeze. “Tell them what you saw, then we’ll get you into a shower and bed.”
Daniel waved her away. “Leave me alone.”
She stopped to say something and then realized that she had nothing to offer. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
But Daniel’s head was back in his hands.
Hemingway and Phelps took up perch on the front bumper of the ambulance as the people who tended to these things came and went. They recorded, filmed, measured, black-lighted, dusted, collected, catalogued, and conversed.
It was slow in coming, but when it hit her it didn’t feel all that different than the time she had been shot. There was that same weird burning in her chest, as if the machinery had stopped working, but none of the noise.
She had to call her folks. To tell them what had happened to their daughter. And for the second time in their lives, they would have to bury a child.
Hemingway pulled out her phone and stared at it for a while, trying to figure out how to handle this. It came alive in her hands, lit up with her parents’ number in East Hampton; the summer cocktail circuit must have started.
She stared at it for one ring.
Two.
Then three.
Phelps pointed at her phone. “It’s sooner or later, kiddo.”
She accepted the call, took a deep breath, and pressed it to her ear. “Hemingway here.” It was a lousy save, one that would only buy her a few seconds.
“Allie! We saw the news and we were so worried. Mom said it was some kind of mistake but I wasn’t so sure. You know how I get. It’s—”
Her father was yammering on, something that went against his Anglican poise. “Dad?”
“—a father thing. If you ever have children, then you’ll know what I’m talk—”
“Dad?” A little louder.
And he stopped. “What?”
“Dad, it’s Amy.” She felt her voice waver just a little, but to a parent’s ears it was enough.
There was a long pause. “Is she all right?”
“I’m sorry.” And with that she held the phone out to Phelps.
They sometimes did this for one another, took up the slack. When Ernie, Phelps’s brother, had lapsed into a coma after a fall, she had been the one to deliver the decision to not continue with mechanical assistance; Jon just couldn’t say the words. At the time she hadn’t understood what it meant to him. She did now. Some things have to be said to—and for—the people you love when they can’t express themselves.
As he took the phone from her hands, her chest tightened. She leaned over and took a deep breath, grateful for the big sunglasses.
||| SEVENTY-FOUR
PHELPS KEPT the front end of the Suburban at a single car length from the back bumper of the van carrying Amy’s body to the morgue. On their left, the East River flashed between the traffic and the concrete as they headed south on the FDR.
Hemingway rode shotgun, her thoughts slowly and steadily creeping toward anger. Amy had died, and even though she could keep herself from crying, she couldn’t keep the tears from forming. This was not allowed to derail her. Because that’s what that prick out there wanted: for her to go away.
She would not let that happen.
No.
Fucking.
Way.
They already had him, they just couldn’t see it. He was close, buried somewhere in the lives of these children. Now they knew it wasn’t Brayton. But it was someone connected to him. They might already have spoken to him. Interviewed him. Shook his hand.
In that spooky way Phelps had of reading her thoughts, he asked, “You gotta be all in or you gotta be all out. There ain’t no middle position on this one, kiddo.”
“We have him, Jon. Our perp is buried somewhere in the files and medical reports, in the hundreds of names we’re looking into, in the way he’s killed these people, and in the way I’ve pissed him off. I’m in. Until it’s done.”
Phelps pulled back as the van ahead took a tight right off FDR Drive, heading for home, the office of the underworld. “There’s Amy’s funeral, which means your parents. Daniel will need a little maintenance. And you got other shit on your plate, too.”
Couldn’t forget the baby.
She thought back to the ambulance, to the shell-shocked fear in Daniel’s eyes. This had been his first real peek into her other life. It might have been too much. This luck had followed since forever, some kind of negative space in the universe that sucked in and destroyed the people she loved the most. Two sisters now. Mank. And everyone they had lost since Tyler Rochester had been found hugging a bridge piling in the East River.
“Your dance card’s kinda full.”
“Either my dance card’s full, or I have a lot on my plate. It can’t be both,” she said, mimicking his tone in Deacon’s driveway yesterday. “Do you really believe that?”
He shrugged. “Not really. No.”
“Then stop being a prick. We go to the morgue. Then we go back to the office and finish up with the Brayton/Selmer list. Someone out there knows our ghost. We have a lot of people to visit.”
“You need to sleep.”
“Not as much as I need to find this guy.”
||| SEVENTY-FIVE
THEY STARTED with Doris Borenstein. She was the first of the morning and she had sandwiched them in between her beautician and her spiritual advisor, code words for plastic surgeon and psychiatrist.
A disembodied electronic voice asked them to hold their identification up to the camera. The man who let them in was ten percent larger than Phelps in every conceivable measurement and had a head that fit his shoulders like a five-gallon bucket slapped onto a snowman. He had pink eyes and white hair, a perfect albino. He introduced himself as Elio.
Doris Borenstein was a nervous woman. She was coiffed and perfect and looked like she had stepped out of the early seventies in a pair of bell-bottom linen trousers, a tailored button-down and a pa
ir of sunglasses that would have done nicely as welding goggles. Her skin also looked three sizes too small for her skeleton.
Everything was carefully chosen and beautifully lit, including Doris Borenstein, who sat under a softened light that did a good job of masking her wrinkles. Elio hung back, mute, arms loose by his side. There was a large-caliber automatic in his belt that he didn’t bother to hide.
“I apologize that I couldn’t meet you later but my advisor only has one-hour slots available. Why, exactly, are you here?” she asked, hand held to her chest.
“First off, does your companion over there have a carry permit? I do not enjoy being uncomfortable.”
Mrs. Borenstein smiled. It was an expression that belonged on a spider. “Elio is licensed to carry a concealed sidearm in nineteen states, branching out from his New York resident carry card. He has been in my employ for fourteen years.”
Hemingway nodded but that didn’t make her feel any more comfortable about the big sonofabitch standing there with a chrome Desert Eagle sticking out of his waistband.
“You spoke with Detectives Lincoln and Papandreou. Did they tell you that Dr. Selmer was murdered yesterday afternoon?”
“I heard. We are not required to like everyone we meet. I have a very biased opinion of anyone connected with that clinic. Especially considering what your two colleagues told me about Dr. Brayton’s hit list. Incidentally, have you found him yet?” She looked from Hemingway to Phelps, then back to Hemingway.
“Dr. Brayton is dead. He committed suicide a few months back.”
“Who says the police never bring good news?” Mrs. Borenstein smiled. “Now what, specifically, can I do for you?”
Hemingway looked up at Elio but spoke to Doris Borenstein. She didn’t bother to ask if she wanted some privacy; Lincoln had underlined that she had insisted Elio stay in the room during questioning.
Hemingway chose her first question carefully, avoiding the subject of the girls. “Do you know anything that might help us? About the clinic; your son’s siblings; Dr. Brayton—”
“—That reptile, Fenton?” Borenstein interrupted.
Hemingway waited.
“I am not a stupid woman. I love my son, he is a remarkable child. But that clinic misrepresented the package I purchased. Marjorie Fenton is not concerned with patient care, she is concerned with making money. She is a greedy little rug merchant and yes—I can’t say that I’d be all that broken up if someone killed her as well. And that is not a threat of any kind—just wishful thinking.”
“Please tell us about your son, Solomon.”
At that she changed poses. “Solomon is a singer. Opera. The voice of an angel. If anyone ever took him,” she turned her head and looked up at Elio, “I’d kill them and everyone they ever loved.”
———
When they were back in the street, Phelps said, “That woman is trying to be Alexis Carrington.”
Hemingway smiled and got in behind the wheel. “She’s just bored.”
Before pulling out into traffic she checked the patient list.
One down.
A million to go.
||| SEVENTY-SIX
MARY ZRBINSKI attended to the general needs of the Atchison household. Her tasks ranged from picking up dry cleaning to arranging lifts to the airport. She made sure the cook had a well-stocked kitchen for the days he came in, and she made sure that William made his appointments. The Atchisons were decent people.
It was morning, the one day she came in at 10 a.m. as opposed to 7 a.m. She noticed that the black carriage lamps were still on as she came up the street. She put her key in the lock, pushed the door in, and stepped inside.
She closed the door and the stink hit her. What was that? She took a step and her feet went out from under her, wishboning her legs in a clumsy almost split that tore her skirt. Her head hit the hardwood and she lay there for a second.
The house was unusually quiet.
She pushed herself up and her hand slipped. The sensation of oil seeping through her clothes cooled her skin.
She fought to a sitting position.
Mrs. Atchison lay against the wall a few feet away. Blood was everywhere.
||| SEVENTY-SEVEN
WHEN HEMINGWAY and Phelps pulled up to the Atchison house, a uniformed officer met them at the curb. A woman sat in the back of his cruiser, wrapped in a kit blanket, sobbing. The other officer squatted by the open door, talking to her.
“Dispatch said two? One a kid?” Phelps asked.
The Atchison house was on their list—they had been on the way here yesterday when Hemingway had received the text from Tyler Rochester’s phone. She wondered if it was a coincidence. Either way, it was disturbing.
The cop nodded. “Maid came in for the day. Walked in and found the lady of the house at the front door. Called nine-one-one and we responded. Did a walk-through.” He swallowed. “The kid’s upstairs in the tub.”
“You guys touch anything?”
The cop shook his head and swallowed again. “No light switches. Nothing.”
Hemingway and Phelps headed into the house.
Mrs. Atchison was sprawled out on the floor. There were slip marks through the pudding-like scab, the sloppy handprints and thrash marks where the housekeeper had fallen.
The smell was so bad they had to breathe through their mouths.
They had their service pieces out; they had been at this too long to trust anyone else’s work.
They moved around the stagnant puddle of Mrs. Atchison’s blood, almost resorting to rock-climbing moves on the paneling to step over the mess on the floor. It seemed impossible that all this blood had fit into one person’s body.
The ground floor was clear. As was the basement—a well-stocked wine cellar.
They moved up the stairs in file, Hemingway point.
Another wave of death hit them, this one mixed with the scent of lavender. They cleared the floor from front to back, quickly working their way to the bathroom. The door was ajar and a bright slash of light spilled out across the hallway.
They paused at the door, nodded a final Are you ready? to one another, then Hemingway reached out and pushed it in with the nose of her revolver.
Phelps staggered back and coughed, putting his hand to his mouth.
Hemingway stood in the doorway. There was no way to equate the mess she saw with a living, breathing child.
The boy lay in the bathtub, head back, tear streaks through the blood that spattered his face. His ribs were spread wide and he looked like a bloody cryptid insect in the process of becoming something else—his lungs had been lifted out and flopped back over his shoulders where they hung like scabbed bloated wings that had not yet formed. The rest of his internal organs were gone.
||| SEVENTY-EIGHT
THEY SENT the Atchison boy off to the stainless steel table in Dr. Marcus’s lab where he’d be reduced to evidence. The last two bodies should have given up more than the first two; they hadn’t been scrubbed clean by the river.
Yet they were still shy on trace evidence. And completely lacking in suspects.
Something was bound to turn up; it was physically impossible for a person to enter a room and not leave a little of themselves behind. Hemingway and Phelps were becoming almost superstitious about this one, though: the only thing that denoted his passing were the dead children.
They had more interviews to do. New information to sift through. An ever-widening gene pool of potential killers; it felt like half the population of Manhattan was under suspicion.
Marcus had already signed out the autopsy reports on Brayton’s eight dead girls. And then he had been interrupted with Hemingway’s sister and William Atchison. One step forward, two steps back.
But Papandreou and Lincoln were out hunting down whatever they could on the girls—half sisters in an equation no one understood.
Hemingway and Phelps still had patients to speak to. Parents to warn.
But how did you warn someone about this
? You couldn’t. Not really. There was no way to look the parents in the eye and tell them about bloody butterfly boy. That would be cruel. Hell, it would be more than cruel; it would be sadistic. But they needed to know their kids were in danger.
Hemingway was frustrated. “So he kills all of the female children first. Then he goes after the boys. Whoever is doing this had the information in Brayton’s files before the first girl died. Before they took Selmer’s bag out of the backseat of his car. It’s someone who had access to Brayton’s files at some point.”
“Who has legal access to a doctor’s files?” Phelps wondered aloud.
“Any of the nurses at the clinic. Receptionist. Cleaning staff. IT people. Maintenance. Movers. Shredding service. Delivery people. There are a thousand ways to get to a doctor’s files if you’re not interested in the legality of the situation. But everyone in the clinic—from the cleaning people to the guy who used to deliver the sandwiches at lunch to the coffee machine repair people—had been cleared. One guy with a twenty-year-old DUI and one with a domestic violence arrest—no conviction. Three people with parking violation problems. No one fits this.”
At that Phelps looked over at her. “Hemi, when we find this guy, he’s just gonna be some bum we’ve never heard of and no one ever paid attention to.”
She wasn’t so sure.
||| SEVENTY-NINE
THE SKY had knitted over again in a gray foil, as if the storms of yesterday had come back to tease the city with the promise of rain. But the heat and humidity held on with sticky fingers and if Hemingway didn’t get a shower soon, her blouse could be used as a biological weapon.
She hoped that the weather would stay ugly and they could forget about the final track-and-field day at Randall’s Island. The place seemed tied to everything that had happened so far, from Deacon using it as a spectator and drug-buying hangout, to all the schools of the dead children using it as their physical education grounds.
