by Oliver Stark
The killer jumped inside and started to pull everything out. He wanted space to hold people. He had a plan and the plan was to make a fool of the NYPD and to try to kill more Jews than he had been able to so far. Shooting people one by one would take too long, but it was more than that. It was affecting him. He wanted more dead. He wanted a bigger impact. The hunger was in him again and he couldn’t control it.
Nor could he afford to let failure happen again. Once the truck was emptied, he got in the back with a tube of sealant. He sealed up any and every joint and hole with silicon. Then he added rubber all around the two back doors in order to create an airtight unit.
He walked back to the lock-up and found a long piece of hose. He measured the length of the truck from the bottom to the top and then halfway across the roof. He cut a length of hose and then found a ladder. He climbed on to the roof and for the next half-hour welded all the air vents shut apart from one. On to the last vent he welded a short metal nozzle. Then he attached the hose to the nozzle and tied it firmly in place with wire. He ran the hose across the roof, taping it down, then ran it down the side of the van.
Finally, he took the other end of the hose and, using another nozzle, attached it to the exhaust. He spent a few more minutes ensuring that each end of the hose was in place, and then painted the hose blue so that it was not so conspicuous. The whole operation lasted under three hours. He stood back and declared himself pleased. Then he went to the engine and switched it on. He let the engine rumble on and he climbed into the back of the van, leaving the door wide open.
Soon enough, exhaust fumes started to fill the space and he began to cough. He jumped out of the truck. This was the way forward. This was much more efficient.
Chapter Eighty-Four
North Manhattan Homicide
March 13, 9.56 p.m.
Denise Levene sat at her desk. There was something more to the killings than she had been able to understand in the last few hours that she’d been researching. She was reading through the remaining diaries and looking through the photographs. Gerry Ratten was trying to find Lucy Steller’s online details. Although the killer had taken her PC, many people posted photographs online, kept blogs online, even stored their whole PC backup online. He just needed a breakthrough, but at the moment, there was nothing.
Harper was already out at Union Square Park with half the police in the city. Every time Denise called, he seemed more wired and angry. She called him again. ‘How is it?’ she asked.
‘We’ve got a few thousand people in the square. The face recognition has picked up half a dozen known offenders, but no Heming. It seems smaller than we imagined it would be. We’ve got hundreds of men on the ground and no traffic coming in from any direction, so we’ve done what we can. We just have to hope that he was lying or that we get lucky. What else have you got on Lucy?’
‘Nothing yet,’ said Denise. ‘But I’m going to call Lucy’s friends. They might know something.’
‘Anything more on Sturbe?’
‘I’ve been in touch with Dr Goldenberg. He’s sourced two possible ways forward. The first is a news report from fifteen years ago. A man called Edward Sturgeon was accused of being Sturbe. He lived in Boston. It may be that our killer had some Boston connection, but I can’t find anything linking Heming and Boston.’
‘What’s the other way forward?’
‘There was a book written about Sturbe. It had a very small circulation – in fact, it only went to specialist libraries, or libraries in Jewish areas. Dr Goldenberg has found a copy and guess what?’
‘I don’t want to guess.’
‘This killer is copying his approach almost to the letter. The barbed wire was something Sturbe started in Warsaw. He captured Jews in the ghetto then allowed them to escape through barbed wire or get shot. They dragged themselves through the barbed wire until they got so caught up, they died there. He drowned others. And there’s the rings. He cut victims’ fingers off to get their gold. Our killer seems to have read this book.’
‘Any way of finding a link?’
‘Heming has lived his whole life in Brooklyn. This biography of Sturbe was held in fifteen libraries in the country. The Brooklyn Library had two copies. They had a special Jewish History section.’
‘Is there any record of who took out the book?’
‘We’re going to check.’
‘Anything else?’ asked Harper.
‘I’ll keep you updated,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure how useful this information is.’
‘Well, keep going. If he’s copying this Nazi, then there might be something that leads us to him. For example, what kind of crimes hasn’t he committed yet?’
Chapter Eighty-Five
Union Square Park
March 13, 11.41 p.m.
The vigil was almost entirely peaceful. The NYPD Command Truck was parked across the entrance to the square on the south side. Harper and Eddie Kasper arrived back from their seventh tour around the square and went inside.
‘Update?’ called Harper to Lafayette.
Lafayette was sitting at one of the seats with headphones around his neck. ‘All are negatives. Nothing but complaints of infringements on human rights.’
‘How many searches have they done?’
‘Not got the numbers. Thousands, though.’
‘No calls or emails?’
‘Nothing. What’s the mood like?’
‘Peaceful,’ said Harper. ‘Everyone just wants to remember the dead. The park’s ablaze with candlelight. It’s moving. Really moving.’
There were four other men in the Command Truck monitoring their teams and liaising with the huge media operation. Harper stood at the door and stared across at their compound.
‘If the killer doesn’t show,’ he said, ‘they’re going to have a lot of footage about the vigil.’
‘Let’s hope that’s all they’ve got,’ said Lafayette. ‘We could do without another horror story.’
‘I hear you,’ said Eddie. ‘The city’s had enough tragedy.’
Harper nodded and made his way outside again. ‘Another tour, Eddie?’
‘Damn,’ said Eddie. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
The two cops moved back out into the darkness. The police compound took up the whole of the southern end of the park. Hundreds of police vehicles stretched out. Cops everywhere, sitting around, patrolling, and catching a bite to eat.
Harper and Eddie moved back into the park. The choppers that circled overhead were useless. This was a one-man operation. The most difficult kind of perp to catch: a man who no longer cared for his own safety. It could have been any one of the thousands of men in the park.
They walked up past the media center. The reporters were wrapped up warm, sitting on the steps of AV trucks sipping coffee from paper cups. Everyone was waiting for something to happen, but no one wanted it to. A strange mood of uncertainty pervaded the press pack. They weren’t their usual eager selves. Placards declared the need for peace and remembrance. Written messages told of someone’s deep love for a person they had lost. Flowers and tributes grew throughout the evening.
The police operation was vast, but once in the park itself it was almost invisible. There were patrol cops everywhere, but many more non-uniformed officers from the NYPD, Counter-Terrorism and the FBI. There were units at every entrance with sniffer dogs and Geiger counters, doing checks and searches. They wanted to prevent any atrocities, and individual searches were the only way.
So far, they’d confiscated drugs and nothing much else. All around the park, sitting in tight groups in the semi-darkness, were several Rapid Response Units from all parties. Counter-Terrorism’s Hercules Teams sat in blacked-out sedans at each corner of the park, waiting for orders. The NYPD’s ESU SWAT teams were stationed in big black armored Bearcats, tooled up and ready.
As they walked through the crowds of people who were singing, talking, praying and crying, it looked like whatever it was, it wasn’t going to happen.
> Chapter Eighty-Six
Union Square Park
March 13, 11.56 p.m.
Crowds were still filtering in, some finding it hard to move through the streets towards the vigil. The killer stopped at the roadside and watched the people lining up and walking along with candles lit for the dead.
The crowds were different now. They were not the earlier enthusiasts or the serious mourners; these were groups of people coming out of bars and restaurants. They were probably a little drunk and looking for more excitement. And as they wandered the streets, they got caught up in the sound and mood of the all-night vigil.
The killer observed them with a sense of disgust. Revelers, unconcerned about what was happening to his city, to the country. They were mourning the loss of people who didn’t deserve to be alive, people who were part of the problem. The killer took a cigarette from a pack on the seat and lit up. His anger had lessened since he’d snatched Lucy. She was his now and he felt good about that. It gave him a strong feeling of calm to know that she was his and his alone.
He sat in his truck and watched the groups move past. He needed to find the right group. He needed to choose the right profile. It amused him to think of all the effort being expended by the cops in trying to write his profile. He could write it in two words. Pissed off.
A small group stopped by the side of his truck just after midnight. Jews with white and blue Israeli flags, chanting something he didn’t understand.
He watched their hesitation as they stared down the street.
‘It’s quicker this way,’ said one of them, a man.
‘I think they’ve closed the south entrance,’ said one of the girls.
‘You have to wait in line for a bag search. You need to be getting home.’
‘But it’s important,’ said the girl.
He had had enough. The killer shouted down from the cab: ‘You guys want to get a ride right to the heart of this thing? Ever been in a police truck?’
They looked up. The driver was a bright-eyed cop. He was smoking too – a lit cigarette hung from his lips. This was not like some of the hard-faced cops they’d met; this guy seemed different.
‘Where to?’ one of them asked.
‘I’m going to the police compound.’
‘I’d like a lift,’ said one of the girls.
‘I got an empty truck here and I’m going through the crowds and down to the compound. You want to get a VIP seat to the vigil?’
This group felt invulnerable, in the middle of a huge police operation. In the middle of their people. Why would a group of five fear a single cop? It was all about gaining trust.
‘I’m going now, anyway, make your minds up,’ said the killer.
‘I think we should do it,’ said one of the guys. ‘We should take the time to do this.’
‘Okay, that’s final,’ said the killer. He jumped down from the cab, opened the back of the van and let them pile in, then he shut and locked the door. There was a light in the back to prevent them from getting scared, but the moment he started to drive he would switch it off. That way, they wouldn’t be able to see where the gas was coming from and wouldn’t be able to cover the vent.
‘Ready to go?’ he shouted from the front cab. He could hear their cheers as he started the engine, drove away from the curb and into the traffic.
He had read from the Nazi reports of the use of gas vans that screaming was a problem. They had tried to stop this distraction by gagging the victims prior to putting them in the vans, but that just wasn’t possible in this case. The killer couldn’t gag them, so he had another plan.
Inside the back of the van, the group lurched left, then right, but they were laughing as they fell across each other. After a minute of driving, the smell in the back of the truck was noticeable. They sniffed and stopped laughing, and someone started to cough.
The killer heard a bang on the side of the van. ‘Stop the truck,’ a man’s voice called. ‘We’ve got exhaust fumes in here.’
In the cab, the killer leaned forward and flicked off the light. In the back of the van, darkness fell.
As the killer turned up 2nd Avenue, he could hear them screaming. He knew it would take ten to fifteen minutes for the gas to kill them. He couldn’t risk others hearing them, so he switched on the sirens and continued to drive; the loud wailing of a police truck was all that he or anyone else could hear.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Union Square Park
March 14, 4.12 a.m.
The night had come and gone. No dead bodies, no explosions. The first lights of dawn were arriving and most of the crowd had dissipated. There were a few left in small huddles, wanting to ride it out until morning.
Harper had been forty-eight hours without sleep but was still standing, while Eddie sat down, his head low in the collar of his Puffa jacket. ‘When do we get to go home?’ said Eddie. ‘He’s not showing up. He’s probably tucked up in bed, laughing at us.’
‘We go when they all go,’ said Harper, as his phone rang.
Denise had called throughout the night, with sharp, disturbing updates. There was no tiredness in her voice. She had spent the night going over reports about Sturbe with Abby Goldenberg’s father and hunting any link between Lucy Steller and the killer.
‘What have you got?’ said Harper, his eyes still scanning a park now scattered with litter.
‘Get this. Sturbe had an 88 tattooed on his chest. I have no doubt that our killer would copy this. And about future kills, he was involved in the destruction of the Great Synagogue.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I think he could try to destroy something big. He’s copying this guy’s ghetto history, and if he is, he’s got a lot more kills to get through. Sturbe’s own notes indicated he killed over forty people.’
‘Anything you got that might help us track him down?’
‘We found something on the Lucy front. We’re close. We think there might have been a boyfriend.’
‘A boyfriend?’ Harper struggled with the thought.
‘Yeah, her friends said she went out with a slightly older guy. I asked if it was Heming, they looked at the pictures in the papers and said it wasn’t.’
‘Maybe it’s not the link then,’ said Harper. ‘Keep at it, Denise. We’ll find something.’
‘As far as I can see, Tom, it’s all a grand delusion. Section 88 are finished, but this guy is carrying on. He fed his delusion through this assumed identity of Josef Sturbe and I’m worried about what he’s going to try next.’
‘We all are,’ said Harper.
Dawn became morning. Harper watched from the surveillance truck as the rest of the crowds left, followed by the media trucks, all empty-handed.
The police operation started to pack up and leave. Harper was the last to go. He jumped off the Command Truck and waited as it pulled off. By 7.30 a.m., there was nobody left.
Harper stood with Eddie, cold, hungry and tired. They looked around the empty lot. Harper saw a single police truck standing in the street and moved towards it.
‘What is it?’ called Eddie.
‘Auxiliary Support Truck,’ said Harper.
Eddie shook his head. ‘Auxiliary Support. Amateurs, Harper. They went home and left their truck!’
Harper walked across. There was no one in the cab. ‘The keys are still in the ignition,’ he said.
‘Some part-time nobody went home,’ said Eddie. ‘He’s going to wake up soon and think he’s missing something.’
Harper walked around it. It was on his second round that he spotted the tube running up the side of the van. It was painted the same color as the vehicle. He raised his eyes. The tube went right up to the roof. Harper put his foot on the big back wheel and jumped up. His hands caught the top of the truck and he pulled himself up.
‘What you doing?’ said Eddie.
Harper didn’t reply. He peered over the top of the truck. The tube ran right across the roof, to where there were three air vents. Harper looked
at each. Two had been sealed up. The third one had a small metal nozzle sticking up from it. The tube crossed the roof and joined to the nozzle.
Harper dropped down from the truck and crouched beside it. He pulled out his flashlight and shone it under the chassis. The tube ran right under the truck and connected to the exhaust pipe.
Harper stared, the horrific truth coming to him in a flash. He stood up. Eddie moved across. ‘What is it?’
Harper let the flashlight do the talking. He ran the beam over the tube, all the way from the exhaust pipe to the roof. Eddie watched the light. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He crossed himself.
‘Evil,’ said Harper. ‘This is what it looks like.’
Harper put on a glove. ‘Don’t touch a thing,’ he warned Eddie as he pulled the keys out of the ignition and walked round to the rear of the truck. ‘I don’t want to open it,’ he said.
‘You think you should?’
‘What if someone’s unconscious in there?’
Eddie nodded and Harper pushed the smaller key into the lock. It turned easily. He twisted the handle and pulled open the truck doors.
Both men reared back as the exhaust fumes that saturated the inside of the van billowed out into the glossy night lights still burning in Union Square Park.
The blackened insides of the truck were dark like a cave. Harper held his arm across his mouth and nestled his nose and lips into the curve of his elbow. He raised his flashlight and pointed the beam through the smoke. The widening beam of light caught bright pink flesh. Harper’s light moved laterally. One, two, three, four, five. Their faces and hands glowed garishly from the carbon-monoxide poisoning; the skin was pricked and dimpled. Their bodies clung to each other, the whole image like some terrible vision of hell.
