88 Killer

by Oliver Stark

‘Can I sit down?’

  ‘No, victim, you cannot.’ He leaned in close. He smelled of two-day-old sweat and stale beer. Denise veered away.

  ‘You don’t like my smell?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You think a rapist is going to smell sweet? Going to get all washed and put on his best cologne? You better get used to the thing you’re going to learn to fight.’

  Denise couldn’t speak.

  ‘I’m a pig, because that’s what you’ve come to me for – to get rid of that stench he left on you. Am I right?’

  Denise stared ahead.

  ‘I said, AM I RIGHT?’ He shouted hard, close up to Denise.

  ‘Yes,’ she said and looked down at her feet, her heart thumping.

  ‘Sit back down, victim.’

  He walked around the group, his eyes moving from person to person. ‘We got work to do, victims. A lot of work. But you’ve all come here from something bad and you all don’t like where it left you and I’ll tell you why you don’t like it. You’re not prairie rabbits. You’re not cattle or deer or ducks. You don’t like being victims, people, because you are not made to be victims. You know what you are, people? No? I didn’t think so. You’re predators. Each and every one of you. Predators who have nothing to fear in the world but other predators. And you know what? Predators shouldn’t ever be afraid. That’s why your eyes sit right up there on the front of your skull. Front and center, to measure the distance between you and your prey accurately. You’re made to hunt and kill and cause fear and maximum damage. You’re not made to anticipate attacks and defend yourself. So I’m here to turn you back into predators. You understand? So sit down, listen and learn.’

  Mac turned back towards the pommel horse, then stopped and faced the group. ‘People who come here want to learn how to survive. Well, this is the right place. Welcome to Predator Class, victims.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Investigation Room, North Manhattan Homicide

  March 7, 2.05 p.m. ‘

  ‘Wait up, Harper. I need to speak to you right now!’ bellowed Captain Lafayette.

  Harper was moving fast down the beige and brown corridor of the precinct house. ‘I’ll get back to you,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got something that needs my full attention.’

  Lafayette’s face reddened and he marched up to Harper. ‘Stop with the fucking games, Harper. I need to know, right now.’

  Harper stopped and turned; he pointed his finger. ‘You know and I know that someone is going to try to pull this out of our hands. The media are painting this as a political assassination so we’re going to be dragged off-course unless we focus. We’ve got maybe twenty-four hours to make this our own.’

  ‘Then help me to keep them off your back.’

  ‘What do you need to know?’

  Lafayette sighed. Harper looked bad and he felt wired. Everything was urgent, everything had to be done an hour ago. Evidence evaporated the moment it was born. Time was all they needed and time was the one thing that destroyed evidence. Harper had sent out his teams to interview witnesses, families, friends and anyone else who might have come into contact with Capske.

  ‘It looks like a political attack, Harper. I got to explain to the Deputy Commissioner why we’re closing the door to the Feds and Counter-Terrorism.’

  ‘Don’t close the door, just point them in another direction. Look, tell the Deputy Commissioner that, as it stands, there’s not a scrap of evidence that this was political.’

  ‘You really think that? The killer emailed the networks to tell them just that. Jesus, I thought this was an open and shut case.’

  ‘You know Judge Capske and his wife had cut ties with David because he was marrying a non-Jew?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Did you know David Capske was big into cocaine a year back?’

  ‘Come on. Harper, I know nothing till you tell me.’

  ‘We can’t presume it’s political just because someone emailed. I’ve got the team bringing in evidence all the time. Just let me see this my way. What have the Feds got? Our victim’s related to Judge Capske – that’s it. You going to hand over every investigation on account of their parent’s CV?’

  Lafayette grabbed Harper’s shoulder and turned him towards the window.

  ‘Look out there, Harper. What do you see?’

  Harper stared out of the sixth-floor window down to the street below. The crowd of news teams kept growing. The nearside sidewalk had already been filled, and new teams and the later arrivals from the print media had set up on the opposite side of the street. The whole mass of people seemed to be in constant circulation. ‘I see about a hundred and fifty people down there telling some bullshit story before we’ve even got an autopsy report,’ he said.

  ‘What you see is pressure,’ said Lafayette. ‘By the fucking truckload. They’ve got Judge Capske’s rulings and every third one is some battle with the gun lobby. He’s been threatened a hundred times. They don’t need an autopsy report to put two and two together. And someone called them, Harper. Someone wanted this to make the front page.’

  ‘I get the connection, Captain. I get how we’re supposed to read this, but we’ve got to work from evidence, not from what the media think.’

  ‘That’s how it used to be, Harper, but you know as well as I do that this is not how it is these days. The media is your biggest fucking threat. Worse than me, Harper. They apply the pressure, start questioning why a homicide team are leading on a political assassination, why we’re ignoring the obvious, and we’re history.’

  ‘Looks to me that this is an East Harlem gang shooting. Cocaine found at the scene. All the hallmarks.’

  ‘Don’t bullshit me, Harper. Twenty-four hours, then I’m fighting our corner at a multi-jurisdictional meeting with the Feds and Counter-Terrorism, and you better give me something better than three wraps of cocaine and a smile.’

  ‘If it’s a political kill, then I’ll back off, but until I get to look at the whole story, I can’t lie down for the Feds or anyone else.’

  The Captain stared down at the street. ‘It’s the way of things now. Trial by media. You don’t want to get caught up in the middle of it.’

  ‘We need time,’ Harper repeated. He looked at the man who’d headed up North Manhattan Homicide for nine years and protected him for most of them. He knew Lafayette’s intentions were good, but sometimes things got taken out of the Captain’s hands. ‘I’ll get you something.’

  Harper started down the corridor. Lafayette called after him, ‘Why do you want to play it like this, Harper? A conviction on this isn’t going to be easy. The media will want a fall guy. Who do you think that’s going to be?’

  ‘I am what I am,’ said Harper. ‘Let’s just say I get excited by the complex cases.’

  ‘This might be the shortest lead you’ve ever taken,’ said Lafayette.

  Harper turned. ‘If I’ve got just twenty-four hours, I need help. I want Blue Team, plus four other detectives. No rookies – I want experienced guys. I want whoever it is leading the Federal investigation to come and tell me what he’s got. I want a profiler from the FBI Field Office to start working on this. And I want someone to keep the press happy. I need a specialist team to respond to the calls. We’re going to get a lot.’

  ‘You finished?’

  ‘For now,’ said Harper.

  He moved back into the investigation room. The overriding smell was of coffee and fresh paint; it wasn’t a good mix, or a good time to start a major refurb. Three maintenance men in blue overalls were finishing up the latest addition to North Manhattan Homicide’s investigation room – a new set of cubicles for each of the detective teams.

  The rest of the room remained as it had for twelve years: a big open space with a dirty blue carpet and a long string of fluorescent lights that leaked out a dull yellow glow. Outside, the sun hit the building only to show up the haze of deep gray dirt on the windows. Beyond the grime, the heavy bass note of the city could still
be heard.

  Harper walked across to his old desk, his head swimming with details from the case that he needed to get down and think about. He didn’t want a cubicle. Career advisers used cubicles. It wasn’t right. Harper just wanted the old, worn, paper-stacked brown wooden desk that had been good enough for the last five years. Blue Team liked to spread and merge and, like all cops, they didn’t like change.

  Calls of, ‘Hey, champ!’ followed Harper through to where the rest of the team were setting up base camp. Cops didn’t make a very sentimental bunch. It never took long to go from a hero to a zero in the eyes of your fans. Harper shrugged it off.

  Eddie Kasper pulled out a chair and fixed his backside to it with a sigh. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘The press want it to be political. The Feds want to argue jurisdiction. I need something to give the Captain and the Chief of Detectives if we’re going to keep this in house. And that means I need to know why Capske was killed.’

  ‘What if it is some wacko from the gun lobby?’

  ‘I got to tell you, Eddie, I’m not buying this Judge Capske thing. There are too many questions. Why the son not the father? Why has no political organization claimed the kill? They say it’s a political statement but not what for or who made it.’

  ‘You’ve got a point.’

  ‘Then ask another question: why would they torture the guy? If it’s a group, then they’ve got to be in and out fast. This feels different. This killer liked to spend time with his victim.’

  Eddie narrowed his focus. ‘You know something more than you’re saying, Harper? You got that look about you.’

  ‘Maybe this is about Judge Capske and some group who thinks he’s a threat to American freedom, but if it is, they found someone who hated the victim. Hated him so bad they wanted to watch him bleed to death. Think about the mind that can do that, Eddie. If Denise Levene were here, she’d say the same thing. Overkill like this is pretty unusual – it’s either a hell of a political statement or it’s not political at all, it’s something much more personal.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Squad Room, Missing Persons

  March 7, 4.15 p.m.

  Denise spent three hours being spat at, hounded and abused – and what’s more, she paid for the privilege. After the session, she didn’t go home. She walked a while and thought about things. What Mac had done was not nice but it had left her feeling stronger than she had in months.

  She grabbed a cab over to Missing Persons. All she was thinking about as Mac was screaming at her was Abby Goldenberg and what she might be going through. Abby Goldenberg who was just sixteen and had her whole life ahead of her.

  Denise could help herself now, but if Abby was somewhere out there she wanted to try to help her too. The guy on the desk called upstairs and Detective Sarah Gauge came down, welcomed her and showed her into their offices.

  At the squad room at Missing Persons, Abby Goldenberg’s disappearance was cataloged in four large box-files and one chronologically ordered lever-arch file. The two detectives had gone through a lot of leads in the eight days since her disappearance.

  Although they’d not voiced the level of their concerns to Dr Goldenberg, it appeared that they’d treated it as a potential abduction since day one. They’d even tried to get the detectives from the Major Case Squad to consider it a kidnapping. The latter had looked at the case-file and sent it back, saying there wasn’t a single shred of evidence. Or, more importantly, the evidence they did have suggested she was a runaway.

  Denise saw the problem. If the case stayed with Missing Persons, Abby Goldenberg would become another sad photograph on the NYPD Missing Persons website.

  Denise flicked through the case-files. Munroe and Gauge had been working hard to find a break, often on their own time. Not many cops would’ve visited every last person on Dr Goldenberg’s list, but they had done it. Was it something to do with the girl’s beauty or her father’s distress? It was difficult to say what moved cops to go the extra mile, but in the end it came down to a mixture of professionalism and personal integrity.

  Denise pulled out the daily report summaries written by Munroe. The pair didn’t seem to have taken a break in eight days. ‘You’ve done well,’ Denise said. ‘You’ve kept the trail warm.’ She flipped another page; pulled out an FBI profile. It was a one-page document, nothing more.

  Denise turned to Gauge. ‘You seem pretty convinced that Abby’s not just a runaway.’

  ‘I know runaways. What can I say? Some strike you that way, some don’t. I can’t see this Abby kid putting her father through this if she could help it. Not a chance.’

  ‘So, if she didn’t run, what happened?’

  ‘Rape murder, most probably. The body buried in some shallow grave or cut up and stored in someone’s ice compartment.’ She saw Denise’s face whiten. ‘Sorry, Denise. But it’s the truth. These things we know and it takes some doing to keep her old man from thinking them. I’m not cynical. I hope that she is a damn runaway. I hope she’s on some romantic delusion with some idiot boyfriend – I hope she’s screwing half of New Jersey to impress her mom. I hope she’ll come back tomorrow, but they don’t come back, not often, not after eight days. Not when they’re sixteen and don’t have a drug or home problem.’

  ‘How much time you got left on the case?’

  ‘None. We’ve been busting a gut to finish our other caseloads, working our own time, and generally lying and shit to give this case some light, but we’re all done. The Squad Sergeant is going to move it to the back room.’

  ‘And then what happens to Abby?’

  ‘We keep in contact with her father every few months, we give the impression that we’re still looking. Officially it’s still an open case, but between you and me, it doesn’t get a second of our time.’

  ‘He’s a smart man, he probably guesses. I was thinking that’s why he mentioned me. I’m a link – Columbia and NYPD.’

  ‘Yes, it could be. You want some time with this stuff?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Well, let us know if you think we’ve missed something.’

  ‘What’s the bottom line?’

  ‘Unless you can find some physical evidence to prove to the Squad Sergeant that this is an abduction or murder, then it’s over for Abby. She’s a statistic.’

  Denise nodded. She looked down at the FBI profile. ‘They sent this through to you?’

  ‘We made up some details about the case to get a second opinion.’

  Denise read the profile.

  ‘Any use?’ said Gauge.

  ‘Inductive profiling. It’s pretty basic. They use the limited information they’ve got about known criminals and match them up with the crime under consideration. All this tells you is that in the last twenty years, the kind of person abducting teenage girls in this type of location tended to be men aged somewhere between thirty-two and forty-five years old who have previous convictions. It’s not going to help you much.’

  ‘It didn’t.’

  Denise took a pen and pulled a clean sheet of paper from the tray on the desk. ‘Deductive profiling works quite differently. The Feds use statistical averages, but that’s a blunt tool. Deductive reasoning is harder but it uses every piece of forensic evidence, every detail of the victim, the location and time of the attack to build an individualized picture of the perpetrator.’

  ‘There’s nothing for you to work on.’

  ‘I can piece something together. At least, I can try.’

  ‘Well, let us know if you need anything else,’ said Sarah Gauge. ‘Right now I’ve got a missing prostitute and an absconded husband to track down.’

  Detective Gauge left the room and Denise was alone. A research psychologist by training, she had worked for years on the relationships between behavior and personality types, comparing these to criminal profiles and then analyzing where FBI and police profiles had gone wrong. It had drawn her into contact with killers across America, but always from a safe distance.

&n
bsp; She took the job at the NYPD to get closer to the action and in a very short time, she was too close altogether.

  Her research had shown her that inductive profiling worked in less than fifty per cent of cases. Human beings were not entirely predictable and Denise was interested in the fifty per cent who were more difficult to profile simply by using statistics. These were difficult because they were not normal. They were the criminals with psychologies so distorted and perverse that basic models and types didn’t help. They needed individual attention.

  On the piece of paper in front of her, she started to analyze the victim. It was often the biggest part of the profile, trying to understand why the killer was motivated to take this particular girl and for what particular reason. Denise wrote down everything she could about the kind of girl that Abby was.

  The facts were simple. The last thing they knew about Abby was that she left home just before 5.15 p.m. and was last seen leaving the house by her father. A driver spotted her crossing Parkway, but didn’t see anyone following her. There was a report that a truck nearly knocked her over. So presumably Abby was preoccupied. She was going somewhere secretive and she changed her clothes, so it would be something to do with a boy or a band. Denise couldn’t really see another reason for her to deceive her father. And this was to protect him, not harm him.

  Denise concluded that Abby was someone who was willing to listen to her own feelings and not be swayed by others. It seemed unlikely then, that she would have been seduced into a car, as some girls were by clever kidnappers who appeared injured, or seemed to need help or offer some inducement. She would also have had a high degree of self-confidence.

  Abby was sixteen, pretty, adventurous and slim. A sexual motive was certainly possible, if not probable. She was also Jewish and Denise couldn’t rule out that this might have been important to the killer in some way. There had been no contact with the family – no ransom request, and the family was not wealthy. Kidnapping for monetary gain seemed implausible. It was more probable, therefore, that it was someone she knew or who knew her family.