by Robert Pobi
Hemingway had dealt with dozens of families who had lost fathers and mothers and children to violent crimes over the years. When she took the academic exercise one step further, the murder of her own baby sister all those years ago had set her on this path; her own defining genesis had come out of a death. She remembered reading an old Russian proverb that said a tree can’t grow healthy if the roots are sick.
And it was hard to get sicker than a nobody killing your baby sister for no other reason than it seemed like a good idea.
And now Amy was gone. She’d have to look her parents in the eyes knowing that it was her fault. Amy had been murdered because the killer had confused her with her sister. Which was understandable; when they were together, people often thought they were twins. Or had. Past tense again.
She needed to give the old power plant a rest; it was time for sleep.
Phelps came in with a pair of paper bags and held them up. “Coffee, shumai—the pink ones, right?—and sweet and sour soup. Breakfast, lunch, and supper all rolled into one.”
She pulled her hand off of her stomach, pushed her chair back, and stood up. “I should marry you, Jon.”
“I snore and watch fishing shows. It would get old real fast.”
She smiled and it felt like it took all of her energy. “That’s okay, I shoot people and never come home.” And she realized that had sounded a little bitter.
As she took a Styrofoam cup from his hand she knew that she still had a big decision to make, one that would either allow or prohibit her intake of coffee—her favorite food group. And she’d have to make it soon, because there were tipping points for these things. There was a difference between unsure and irresponsible.
She stirred in a sugar. “What do you think makes this guy tick, Jon?”
“It’s not ritualistic but it has purpose.”
Hemingway thought about William Atchison. What had been done to him. “What kind of a purpose could drive a human being to do this? He’s not angry, he’s too controlled for that. He knows the difference between right and wrong, so he’s not crazy. He sends me a text message, so he’s confident. He knows we’re coming for him, and he’s hasn’t run. So what could be driving this guy?”
Phelps pulled a coffee out of the bag and peeled the lid off. He raised it to his mouth and paused, staring at her above the rim of the Styrofoam cup for a few seconds. “What’s the best motivator there is?”
And it hit her.
“Fear,” she said.
||| EIGHTY-FOUR
HIS FATHER was waiting for him in the kitchen when he got home. He didn’t look angry but he did look like something was wrong. Which was never a good thing.
Benjamin hoped it wasn’t something he had done.
He came in, put his knapsack down on the bench by the back door, and took off his jacket. His father was sitting at the island with a Scotch in his hand, the kind he only took out when he was having one of his “moods.” And lately, his moods were getting closer and closer together, as if he were plugged into a diminishing timer.
Benjamin thought of an innocuous greeting, something that wouldn’t tip the scales one way or another. “Hello, Father.”
His father looked down at him and his eyes had that faraway look that Benjamin didn’t like. “Son. I need to talk to you.”
He didn’t sound angry, which was a good sign. But that distant stare wasn’t going anywhere.
His father stood up from the island and he wobbled a bit.
Benjamin went to the sink and washed his hands, then he dried them. He tried to act casual, as if nothing were wrong. But there was plenty wrong—he could tell. His stomach started to rock back and forth, something it always did before the bad things started to happen.
Benjamin stared up at his father, his hands clasped in front of him, and nodded. “Did I do something wrong, Father? Did my SAT scores come back?”
“What? No, son. No. Not at all.” His father looked puzzled for a moment, then angry. “The police came by today. They wanted to talk to me.”
Benjamin felt his legs go cold. He hadn’t told anyone. Not a soul. He always kept the promises he made to his father. That was the Golden Rule: Keep the secret.
His father came forward and touched his cheek. Then he helped him climb up onto the island, on the cold stone by the sink.
He leaned in and whispered in Benjamin’s ear. “They say you might be in danger. They said that you should be careful.”
Benjamin didn’t like hearing this. Not one little bit. “Ca-careful of what, Father?”
“Someone bad, son.”
This sounded like a trick, so he chose the best answer he could; he was adept at making fast decisions. “I don’t know anyone bad.”
At that his father smiled and he knew he had said the right thing. “I know that, son. But there’s a bad man out there, and he’s hurting boys and they came by to warn me. I don’t want to worry you—because there is nothing to worry about—but I wanted to tell you, just in case they ask. You tell them I told you, okay?”
Benjamin nodded because he knew that had been another trick question. “Yes, sir.”
“The police don’t know what they’re talking about. You’ll be fine. After school’s over next week we’ll take a vacation. Maybe go back to Greece like last year—you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Benjamin had liked Greece. And there were plenty of things that had occupied his father’s time, lots of birds. “Of course.”
For a second his father’s focus seemed to go away, then snapped back like an elastic band. “Boys have been taken, Benjamin. When he’s finished hurting them, he dumps them in the river.”
“Why does he take them?”
“Because he’s unhappy, son.” At that his father looked down, at the floor. “You haven’t spoken to anyone, have you? About . . .” he looked up at his son “. . . me?”
At that the needles in Benjamin’s legs exploded and he thought he might pee himself. “Of course not, Father.”
But his father did not look convinced. “This man has taken some of the boys we met at the opera last year.”
“They seemed like a nice bunch of kids. Most of them, anyway. I didn’t like Miles Morgan but I suppose he can’t help himself. Not everyone can be like me.”
His father smiled at that. “Son, you are singularly unique. I’ve always told you that. There’s no one remotely like you out there.” His father smiled, then kissed him on the cheek. “My little genius. Now go wash up.”
At that his stomach started swinging again. “Yes, sir.”
“And don’t forget to wash your peepee.”
||| EIGHTY-FIVE
THE PRESS were going absofuckinglutely apeshit. Every news outlet on the East Coast, from the little local cable stations that had avoided being plowed over by the Internet to the big boys who owned the airwaves from Chicago to Manhattan, were stationed in front of the precinct. The talking heads wanted justice; they wanted answers; they wanted a suspect; they wanted details. But mostly, they just wanted ratings.
Hemingway was in that place of uncomfortable limbo located behind the podium and in front of the bright lights. The heat had redlined and most of the newspeople looked like they were about to blow their radiators. Dennet thoroughly believed that with her sister’s name indelibly recorded on the victim list, the reporters would grant her a degree of slack. Hemingway wondered if he really believed that or if it was just a clumsy attempt to blindside her; she knew the reporters would go after her like dingoes playing with a honey-covered baby.
Phelps stood behind to her right and she could feel his presence, a perfect mixture of sentinel, moral support, and guardian angel. She couldn’t keep her eyes from dancing around the crowd—she was too tired to fight instinct—and she wouldn’t be surprised if he was here in the room with her. It seemed like the kind of thing he might do.
She ran through the developments in the case and now that all of the relatives were notified she had been instructed to use
names. Which meant that more newspeople were camped out on the sidewalk in front of the Rochesters, Grants, and the rest of the families—more bad luck they didn’t need.
Hemingway recapped the timeline, starting with Tyler Rochester’s disappearance. Trevor Deacon was added to the mix. She discussed where the bodies had been discovered. Confirmed their grievous injuries but left out lurid details. She didn’t connect any of the dots for them. She didn’t lead them through Deacon’s involvement or tell them that the boys were half brothers. She neither confirmed nor denied the Park Avenue Clinic’s position within the ongoing investigation. And she paused before reading her sister’s name off of the list.
“Any questions?”
A forest of hands flicked toward the heavens.
At this point she reminded herself to keep the answers simple, monosyllabic if possible; the press conference would be followed with a brief and bloody biography of Detective First Grade Alexandra Hemingway and the armchair therapy would begin. Maybe they’d get someone like that Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank to discuss her unaddressed rage and daddy issues. What pissed her off was that he’d probably be right.
“Yes?” she said, pointing at a reporter from ABC. She didn’t really want questions—what she wanted was to fire a couple of rounds over the crowd and head for her Suburban.
“Are you certain that your sister’s death is, in fact, part of the current spree of killings that you are investigating? Is there a chance that it is somehow payback for your having killed Irish mobster David Shea?”
The bitch had hit that one out of the park. No warm-up. No easing into it. Bang, straight into the cheap seats. “My killing of Shea was in self-defense. We fought. He lost. That’s all. My sister’s death is linked to the serial murderer we are now hunting.”
A hand to her left—the New York Daily News.
She took it.
“Detective Hemingway, don’t you feel that your close relation to the killer’s last victim hinders your ability to stay objective?”
Hemingway sensed Phelps’s presence behind her, ready to rip the microphones out by the roots and use them on the reporters like suppositories. She leaned forward, the mic an inch from her mouth, and clearly said, “No.” Good night and go fuck yourself.
She nodded at a seasoned reporter from the New York Times.
“How many suspects do you have right now? And what do you feel the timeline will be on an arrest?”
The reporter was smart, a better caste of journalist when compared to most of the people lining the sidewalk in front of her. But that first question wasn’t really a question, he knew that they didn’t have a suspect; if they did, they would have released his name—or at least details about his arrest—by now. It forced her to admit that they were still paddling in a river of shit and the exercise had been geared to put her on the defensive. “As you know, we have not yet released the name of a suspect.” Because we don’t have one. “And as to the second question, the mountain of information we are carefully and methodically analyzing and cataloging is staggering. I can’t give you a timeline because anything I say could be outdated in a few minutes or even a few seconds. I can promise that I’ll be standing up here in the not-too-distant future giving you whoever is responsible for these deaths.”
“That sounds like you have someone in mind.”
No, it sounds like I wish I had someone in mind. “Like I said, I promise that not too long from now, we’ll be having a much less one-sided conversation.” She was pleased at how she had handled that.
Jennifer Krantz-Domingo-Gomez was in the front, her hand politely raised, no malice in her face. Hemingway knew the woman casually and she took a chance. “Yes, Jen.”
Gomez, a little woman with a face like a candy you wanted to unwrap, smiled. “Have you collected any DNA or other forensic evidence during the investigation?”
Gomez just got on her Christmas list with that softball. “The medical examiner’s office has handled itself with the usual proficiency and professionalism we have come to depend on. I can comfortably say that besides being in constant rotation with the FBI’s CODIS program at Quantico, our own labs have done an exceptional job in processing evidence.”
Her peripheral vision picked up movement to her left. “Yes, Pete,” she said.
“Besides the FBI and their CODIS program, have you enlisted the help of outside agencies—on either a state or federal level? And if not, at what point in the investigation would you consider seeking their assistance?”
Shit. “The NYPD has the necessary resources and skill to deal with this. We will be making an arrest on this investigation and we will be making it as soon as humanly possible—without the help of the BCI or the FBI. If their presence would advance the investigation, they’d be here by now.”
Sashi Numrta from People snapped her fingers. Without thinking about the action, Hemingway nodded at her.
The reporter blinked her eyes and turned on the charm. “Detective Hemingway, do you understand the concerns some have expressed over your handling of such a high-profile case when the shooting of David Shea is still fresh in everyone’s mind? Are you uncomfortable with this or—?”
“No, I don’t understand the concerns. I am a valuable asset to this force. Every single inquiry into the Shea incident found me faultless. Or maybe you haven’t seen the footage.”
Even the reporters laughed at that one—Numrta had hosted a miniseries on the shooting and those unbelievably long thirty-eight seconds of video had been played three dozen times over three nights. She was more than familiar with the video—she was probably the world’s expert.
The only thing Hemingway remembered about that brief snippet of time was the noise—the sound of her heart thundering in her skull and the punch of gunfire. She remembered walking out into the sunshine and sitting down and not being able to breathe or scream and then passing out. “So I think that personal attacks and libelous accusations should be avoided.”
“I wasn’t accusing—”
“Next question,” Hemingway said, cutting her off and nodding at another reporter.
“Detective Hemingway, as a police officer who makes roughly seventy-one thousand dollars a year, how is it possible that you own a building valued at over five and a half million dollars?”
“My finances are not up for discussion. I file my taxes every year on time and have a private firm handle the paperwork for me.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that your money is in any way ill-gotten—”
Had he said ill-gotten? What was this, Elizabethan England?
“—I thought that listeners would find it interesting that a woman who comes from such a wealthy background as yourself would make the decision to become a police officer.”
Sonofabitch. He knew the story. Everyone knew the story. It had come out after Shea, when the media had taken her life apart with a scalpel, layer by layer. Maybe they were trying to convince the viewers that a real fucked-up human being was at the center of this story; nothing sells good television like the promise of weakness. “Do you have any questions about the investigation?”
The reporter shifted his feet and a few snickers echoed in the crowd.
“Next,” she said.
A woman stepped forward, her pen pointed at Hemingway. “Detective Hemingway, with this many people dead in such a short period of time and no suspect in custody, are you worried about the possible damage to your career?”
At that Hemingway realized that they just wanted to film her losing her shit in time for the evening cycle. “To be honest, unlike yourself, I don’t care about the ratings, I care about results. And if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere more productive to be.”
||| EIGHTY-SIX
PHELPS RODE up in the elevator with her, his presence making her feel a little less vulnerable in what she knew was going to be an unpleasant reunion. She had gone over this meeting from every conceivable tactical angle and no matter how she approached it, she knew she’d wal
k away from this feeling worse than she already did.
“You’ll do okay,” Phelps said, his voice a full octave below the pitch of a diesel engine.
“That’s one way to look at it.” The reporters had acted like the mean kids from Willy Wonka, she hadn’t talked to Daniel all day, and she was about to be ostracized from her family. She shrugged.
“Family’s family,” the big man said.
“You come from different people than I do, Jon.” He rarely spoke of his family, but when he did, it was with fondness.
Phelps seemed to mull the statement over for a few nods of his head. “Yeah, I do. My old man chased work all over the place so he could feed us, dragging the family across the country. My mom looked forward to spending her golden years doing all the things he promised her she’d do before they reached the end of the rainbow. But on the day they handed him his gold watch he crawled into bed and stayed there, sleeping, being afraid and depressed. That whole time my mother sat downstairs with her suitcase packed, waiting to go on a safari she’d wanted her whole life. Six years later he had a heart attack and two weeks after that my mother bought herself a seniors group ticket to see Kenya, a place she had always dreamt of visiting with her husband. She had a stroke while packing her suitcase and died with her head on the carpet. She never got to see Africa. Everybody’s broken, Hemi.”
“I’m just not looking forward to it.”
At that he just shrugged. “Ninety percent of the shit we worry about never comes true. The other ten percent? Fugged-aboudit.”
