88 Killer

by Oliver Stark

  ‘We don’t sit and wait. We set a trap.’

  ‘What kind of trap?’

  ‘We release Lukanov and follow him. Either the killer will come to him or he’ll go to the killer.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Heming will know that Lukanov has said something. The killer’s got to be worried about these guys being inside, talking to us.’

  ‘You got a point. You think it’ll flush him out?’

  ‘They’ll make contact. Even if by phone or email, but that might be enough.’

  Lafayette stared at Harper for a moment, then nodded. ‘Okay, get it done.’

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Forest Park, Brooklyn

  March 9, 9.17 p.m.

  Denise Levene sat next to Aaron Goldenberg. ‘You wanted to speak to me,’ she said.

  Aaron tried to appear calm, but his eyes were anxious. ‘Have they found anything in the woods?’

  ‘They found a small amount of blood on one of the thorn bushes. It’s Abby’s. Looks like she crawled into a bush, scratched herself.’

  ‘Who would do this? Who’d want to hurt her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Denise. ‘There’s nothing on the attacker. The rain hasn’t helped and the time.’

  ‘But at least you’re investigating. You said you wanted to shake him out of the tree.’

  ‘Yes, we released a story that this was being looked into as a homicide investigation.’

  ‘I think you shook the tree well.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Aaron stood up and walked to an antique bureau in the window. He took out an envelope. He returned to Denise.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The kidnapper wrote to me. I received it this morning.’

  ‘The kidnapper?’

  ‘She may be alive,’ said Aaron.

  Denise put her arm around him. ‘Yes, she may be, that’s good.’

  He placed the envelope on the table. Denise looked at it. ‘Aaron, you know sometimes sick people get involved in crimes they had nothing to do with.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean this could be a hoax. Until we get it analyzed, we can’t be sure.’

  ‘Oh, I am sure,’ said Aaron. ‘I am very sure.’

  ‘Have you called the cops?’

  ‘No, I called you.’

  ‘Munroe or Gauge?’

  ‘They’ve moved on, passed their information to Homicide.’

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ said Denise.

  Aaron nodded. He went to take the letter, but she held up a hand.

  ‘Don’t touch it any more. It may contain evidence. They can find a lot from a letter.’

  ‘And what about you? What does this tell you as a psychologist?’

  Denise took out a set of latex gloves and put them on. ‘It tells me that he needs to be caught.’

  ‘But what else?’

  ‘I think he’s escalating. I think he’s changing. He started this as a secret and private thing. He went to some lengths to hide what he’d done with Esther and Abby, even changing the MO. Then things exploded with Capske. He went public and he started to show how dark he was. The barbed wire was a particularly evocative touch.’

  ‘It fits.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He hates Jews. He imagines himself part of some powerful Nazi project. They work in groups. They need each other to keep the delusion going. That’s why they come together. It is difficult to be a lone Nazi, because there is nothing but madness in it. But they need more than a group. They need the ideology, the symbols, and the dress. With all this paraphernalia, they can believe that their hatred is real. Then they need to focus all that hate and all that delusion on an object. On a Jew or a homosexual or a gypsy or an immigrant. They get reactions, they get to feel the excitement of hurting others. It begins to feel like their project is more real than anything else, so real that the rest of the actual world disappears. But even this is not enough. They need to kill and hurt as Nazis. They need to scrawl Nazi images on sacred buildings. They need, in this case, to use barbed wire, the image of the Holocaust, to hurt someone Jewish. A double attack.’

  Denise picked up the letter. ‘You see this in Esther, too?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Aaron. ‘Cutting fingers off to get gold rings. This is how they treated people in the death camps.’

  Denise stopped. ‘Marisa Cohen was found half-drowned.’

  Aaron stood up. ‘I have thought about that too,’ he said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Whoever this is,’ said Aaron, ‘he may be copying Nazi experiments.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘They used Jewish prisoners to test how long soldiers could last with hypothermia. They put these poor people in iced baths and timed them until they died. They wrote the results down in charts, as if what they were doing was simply scientific.’

  Denise held his hand. ‘Your knowledge will help solve this, Aaron. We need to tell Harper. But, first, this letter. When did it arrive?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  Denise picked up the letter and opened it. She read it once through. It was short and to the point. Her nerves crackled as she read.

  Report 1: March 8

  Subject: Abigail Goldenberg

  Number: 144002

  Initial weight: 120 lbs

  Initial blood pressure: 114/64

  Week 1 weight 108 lbs

  Week 1 blood pressure 109/60

  Denise re-read the letter. ‘She’s losing weight.’

  ‘Maybe she’s refusing to eat. Maybe something else. I don’t know.’

  Denise suddenly understood. ‘You know what he’s doing, don’t you, Aaron?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know this is from the kidnapper?’

  He looked Denise straight in the eye. ‘It has a lock of her hair in the envelope.’

  ‘Is it hers? Can you be sure?’

  ‘It smells like her.’

  ‘We’ll get it tested.’ Denise stood up. ‘I’ve got to take this back, right away. Keep thinking, Aaron. I’ll be in touch.’

  Once outside the house, she called Harper. ‘Go ahead,’ said Harper. ‘Dr Goldenberg thinks the killer is copying Nazi atrocities and experiments. I’ll explain when I get back. There was something else.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Harper.

  ‘Tom, the killer wrote to Dr Goldenberg. I’m bringing the letter over.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘If we can believe it, then there’s some good news. It indicates that Abby’s alive.’

  ‘And the bad news.’

  ‘It also seems to indicate that he’s starving her to death.’

  Chapter Forty-Six

  North Manhattan Homicide

  March 9, 10.15 p.m.

  Harper stood up in front of Blue Team. ‘Let Lukanov go. Sign him out, tell him we’ve got nothing.’

  The rest of the team looked up. ‘What’s the story?’ said Garcia.

  ‘He’s giving us nothing.’

  ‘He’s our prime,’ said Swanson. ‘Let’s get the judge to give us some extra time. We can break him.’

  ‘He’s a foot soldier,’ said Harper. ‘Maybe he bought the barbed wire, maybe he took it to the compound, but he isn’t our guy. He gave us Heming. We need to concentrate on finding Heming.’

  ‘What about the compound?’ said Garcia.

  ‘We checked it out. It’s been torched. Presumably because of the heat on Section 88.’

  ‘What makes you so sure Lukanov wasn’t part of it?’

  Harper looked across at Denise Levene. She nodded. ‘He’s part of the organization, all right, but he’s not the killer. Marisa Cohen was killed after he was arrested.’

  ‘He attacked Denise and you. We don’t let some sick racist scum out for nothing. He’s still the only suspect we got.’

  ‘He’s our only link to Heming. We got to take a chance.’

  ‘There might’ve be
en a few guys. This guy might’ve been there, watching.’

  ‘Eddie, give them the low-down.’

  ‘His girlfriend puts him at home all night.’

  ‘His fucking girlfriend. The bleach blonde in the hot pants with the Nazi tattoos? Like she’s a good fucking alibi.’

  Harper nodded and looked across. ‘There’s enough to discount him. But listen up. He’s involved somehow, he’s just not the main man. And I want the main man. He’s our lure. Leo Lukanov will lead us to the killer.’

  Harper set the surveillance operation going. The team set up the rota for a tail on Lukanov. They would let him go before midnight.

  At 11.57 p.m., Leo Lukanov was released and left standing on the steps of the precinct in a state of confusion. He looked like he wasn’t sure whether it was a sick joke by the cops or just luck. He went straight home to his apartment. Behind him, just out of sight, Swanson and Greco kept up the tail.

  Twenty minutes later, Lukanov took off. He got the bus to his mother’s place. Ratten and Garcia were already sitting outside in a car. No doubt he was surprised to find that the media hadn’t been anywhere near his mother.

  Ten minutes after arriving he left and visited his girlfriend’s place. Harper and Kasper were sitting right outside.

  Lukanov made several phone calls from his girlfriend’s house. The cops couldn’t trace them, but they could be used in evidence later.

  After four hours, in the dead of night, Lukanov left his girlfriend’s building and walked home. It took him an hour to walk the streets. Harper and Kasper had to get out and follow on foot.

  He entered his own apartment building for the second time at 5.08 a.m. Harper returned with Kasper to their car and headed back to the bunkhouse. Likewise, Garcia and Ratten. Swanson and Greco were the unlucky ones. They sat outside his apartment, with an unmarked police car at the service entrance at the back. At 5.42 a.m., the lights in Lukanov’s apartment finally went out.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Apartment, Crown Heights

  March 10, 5.10 a.m.

  Lukanov wasn’t stupid. He knew he had a tail. Anyhow, even if he had missed it, Heming had told him he was being tailed. They had a routine. He called a cell number three times, waited forty minutes then called a public booth from his girlfriend’s place. By that time, Heming was there to answer the call. Heming had told him to keep his mouth shut, go home and stay put.

  Lukanov intended to follow the instructions. He opened the door to his apartment. The lock had been busted, so he only had to push it. He pulled off the remnants of the police security stickers pasted across the frame. The cops must’ve kicked the door down, fucking assholes.

  He entered the room for the second time that morning. Most of the room was wrecked. Everything was tipped out, the floorboards ripped up, wallpaper torn down. A note from the police department had been left, with details of how to get compensation. Assholes. This was what Heming had told them all about. The cops were part of the problem.

  Lukanov stared at the mess and then heard a noise in his kitchen. He turned. He suspected cops. Maybe they were going to get in a reprisal for attacking Denise Levene or for punching Detective Harper.

  He called out, ‘Who’s there?’ No one replied. Was it just rats? The cops had left food and shit all over the floor with the door open. Could even be cats. He hated cats.

  Lukanov heard a low cough from the kitchen. Not cats, then. An open apartment in this kind of building with the door kicked in would be quite a temptation. It might be kids or some hobo.

  Lukanov picked up his baseball bat from the floor and headed towards the kitchen.

  He pushed open the kitchen door and peered in. Someone was there, staring out of the window. A figure.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ shouted Leo, and he raised his bat.

  The man spoke. ‘How long does it take you to find someone in your own apartment?’ He turned. ‘Hello, Leo.’

  Leo let the bat fall. ‘Is that you, Martin? You scared the shit out of me.’

  Martin Heming stood tall and powerful in front of him in a suit. He was clean-cut and had shaved. ‘I look a little different. I had to be careful. Police are tailing you and they’ve been hunting me. They’re searching for some tank-top-wearing, unshaven thug, so I just put on a suit, carry a briefcase and wander around Manhattan.’

  ‘That’s a great idea, Martin, but why are they tailing me?’ said Leo. ‘They let me out.’

  ‘They let you out to lure someone else out. I can’t think of one other fucking reason, Leo, why they’d let kike-hating scum like you out of the slammer. Why would they? You raced down a cop. You hit a cop. You got caught. Ellery pulled a knife.’

  ‘I didn’t hurt anyone.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem right to me, Leo.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I just got a nose for it. What did you tell them?’

  ‘Nothing. But they told me something, Martin. Told me you set us up.’

  ‘You think I’d do that? Why?’

  ‘To pin Capske on us.’

  ‘Like they’re going to believe you lot could kill Capske. You can’t even rough-up a woman.’

  ‘They found us, somehow.’

  ‘They probably tailed you.’

  ‘I promise, Martin, I said nothing to them.’

  ‘You lying piece of shit.’

  ‘No, Martin. Not a thing.’

  ‘You fucked up. You had the operation. Your first independent and you fucking embarrassed us.’

  ‘The cops knew.’

  ‘So that’s what they told you?’

  ‘How else did they get there so quick?’

  ‘They got there so quick, Leo, for two fucking reasons. The first is that you didn’t wear gloves transporting the barbed wire. The second is that you fucking emailed your squad and left the black card in your apartment.’

  ‘I needed the team quick. I couldn’t get hold of them on the forum.’

  ‘What’s the problem with email?’

  ‘It’s traceable.’

  ‘Right, the forum is anonymous.’

  ‘Sorry, man, sorry.’

  ‘You going to be sorry to me or you going to tell me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You tell them about Sturbe?’

  ‘No. You think I’m stupid?’

  ‘He’s in the fucking bedroom, waiting. He thinks you told them. He’s going to be coming in here and pulling your teeth out one by fucking one.’

  Lukanov went pale. ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘You want me to call him out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sturbe’s angry.’

  ‘I took a hit for you.’

  ‘You’re out, no one else is. Not Paddy, Ray or Ocks. Just you. You know what that tells me?’

  ‘I didn’t get caught hitting someone.’

  ‘You hit Harper. No, Leo, it means that you gave them some information.’

  ‘No, sir, not me.’

  ‘You know what that’s called, Leo?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘High fucking treason.’

  ‘I did nothing. No treason, nothing.’

  ‘You’re not safe, Leo. You’re like a weak point in a wall and the thing is, the weak point is the point where the wall breaks.’

  ‘I’m not a weak point, I swear.’

  ‘I’m going to go in the bedroom, talk to Sturbe; we’re going to decide what to do with you.’

  Leo watched. ‘Fuck you, Martin. There is no Sturbe. You fuck. You’re just trying to spook me. We all know that Sturbe’s just a fucking game you play. You can fuck off and die, Martin.’

  ‘Really? You think that, do you? You think that this has no one behind it? Really? You think this is just me?’

  ‘Fuck you, Martin. We’ve all been up to the compound this Sturbe wants us to build and none of us have seen him.’

  ‘You’ve got to watch yourself, Leo.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Sure you do, kiddo.’
r />   ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘You know what happens when you stop believing in the bogeyman.’

  ‘What?’ said Lukanov, his head twisting to look over his shoulder.

  ‘The bogeyman comes to pay you a visit.’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Apartment, Yorkville

  March 10, 6.45 a.m.

  The autopsy on Marisa Cohen found a third bullet. Harper had it in his hand. He needed an answer soon. Even if they caught Martin Heming, they’d need some evidence to link him to the murders.

  Each bullet was too mangled and, without a cartridge, there was no way of matching it to a gun. But Harper wanted to know more.

  Eddie was working with Hate Crime, conducting interviews with friends and relations of Marisa Cohen. So Harper brought Denise with him.

  Denise sat in the car. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I need someone to look over the three bullets. Ballistics have nothing much, but I gave them to someone who used to work with us. He’s retired, works the odd case with the FBI. He’s one of the best. Hans Formet.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘These bullets look different to me – so do the entrance wounds they leave. They’re tight, no expansion. Look, Hans is a genius. If anyone can find something, he will.’

  ‘Anything on the tail?’

  ‘No, he’s still in his apartment. Sleeping. He didn’t get back until after five a.m. What about Abby?’

  ‘We’re working on the note. Nothing yet. What am I here for, Tom?’

  ‘You’re here to certify I’m of sound mind and let me know if I’m not.’

  ‘But if you’re not, you wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘Then get me to a psychiatrist as soon as you can.’

  They both smiled.

  ‘I want to hear more about what Aaron said. You can talk on the drive over.’

  Harper pulled out. Denise filled him in on the Nazi symbols used in the three murders and Harper listened intently. ‘It makes sense,’ he said. ‘You’re beginning to understand him.’

  ‘With Aaron’s help, I am.’

  Harper and Levene arrived at the home of ballistics expert Hans Formet and walked up the steps.