88 Killer

by Oliver Stark

  Midnight. I woke up, he was at my bed. He was in my room, at my bedside. I screamed in terror. He pleaded with me to take him back. I would die if he came back. I can’t take it. He tells me that if I report him, he’ll make my life a living hell. It already is. Not one day goes by without phone calls or visits or one of his reports.

  Harper read what he could. ‘No names.’

  ‘We can probably glean information, but it’ll take time.’

  ‘You mentioned Yellowstone,’ said Harper.

  ‘It’s the one date-posted message that tells us where our killer was for a week last year.’

  ‘That’s worth following up. Okay,’ said Harper. ‘We’ve got to go through Lucy’s whole electronic history. There’ll be a connection. We find she uses a credit card in some hotel, then we check every other receipt. He’s got to be there. He was with her for eight months, he can’t hide that well.’

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  Lock-Up, Bedford-Stuyvesant

  March 14, 12.43 p.m.

  The food left out in front of the shed had attracted enough of the local homeless. Not people, but stray dogs. He sat on a high pallet overlooking them. They were frail and needy. He saw the one he wanted. A little beige-brown mutt, about two foot high with a white underbelly and a nice clean snout. It was probably a hybrid of a hybrid, not a pure gene in it.

  He climbed down from the pallet, took a biscuit out of his pocket and threw it to the one he wanted. The little dog looked up with big brown eyes, full of expectation and gratefulness. He threw it another biscuit.

  As he walked away, the little beige dog followed him. It wasn’t fast or eager, it moved with a tentative stride. He took a third biscuit out of his pocket and held it out; this time, the dog walked across and took it from his hand.

  He went inside the lock-up. The little dog followed. He shut the door. He heard Abby move in the small room behind the door. She would get her chance soon enough. The dog stopped and seemed to be aware that somehow it was no longer free. It looked at the door, at the man – and then another biscuit was thrown in its path and it forgot its instincts.

  The dog looked up. A line of biscuits ran all the way across the room. It ate and moved and ate and moved, and before long, the small beige mutt was inside the room that the man had built.

  The man closed the heavy acoustic door and bolted it. He moved to the Plexiglass window and looked in. The mutt had eaten the rest of its biscuits and was looking up at the window.

  The man watched for a minute; there was something appealing in the dog, in its lack of knowledge. He turned, put on large yellow gloves, and opened a big round can using an old-fashioned can-opener. He poured the blue pellets into the plastic bin and then sealed the lid.

  He crossed eagerly to the window. The gas was odorless and colorless. He watched for a moment, but nothing seemed to happen. He waited and watched. The dog sat, wagged its tail and barked once.

  He moved closer to the window. Then the dog’s muzzle sniffed. The gas must have reached the ground level where the animal was.

  The scene was unpleasant to watch, if one watched it emotionally. But if one used the scientific side of one’s nature and observed the effect of the gas, rather than reacting to the perceived pain of the dog, it was fine. Lucy was tied in the chair staring at the window. She was not detached, but then again, she was not supposed to be. He wanted to see the fear in her eyes.

  The dog barked, scratched, ran a small circle and jumped up at the window. It was in agonizing pain and showed every sign of terror. But within seven minutes, it was lying on its side, almost dead.

  The man raised his hand and pressed his palm to the Plexiglass. The little beige-brown mutt was still and lifeless. A harsh lesson in trusting strangers, he thought, but his experiment had worked.

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  North Manhattan Homicide

  March 14, 4.32 p.m.

  In the precinct, they reopened the cases: the brown, scratched case-files, the box-files of accumulated evidence, the database that Harper insisted on that hooked up every detail, to find links and matches. They looked back through each case slowly, letting their minds wander over the detail, trying to see what they’d overlooked. They had Lucy Steller’s phone records, Internet records, credit-card statements, bank statements and everything else besides.

  On the board in front of them they had a large eight-month calendar. Every call, receipt, purchase or interaction was noted by each date. They were piecing together her life story from Internet forums, relatives, friends and the accumulated electronic data.

  After just a few hours, the eight-month period was beginning to fill out. Harper stared at the board. Every time he spotted a date where Lucy was with Mr X, he had his team cross-check each receipt.

  Harper had the team bring in every person who knew Lucy Steller. The interview rooms were all full and the corridors outside were lined with people. Someone had to have seen Lucy with this man, but they’d been at it for hours already and not a soul had seen him.

  Denise walked up to Harper. He was staring at the cases. He had put the picture of Abby side-by-side with Lucy. He could see something. A pattern. He looked from Abby to Lucy to Capske. There was something there. What was it that was nagging away in his head? Something connected them. He looked across at the kidnapping of the children. All the unanswered questions came at once. What was the blue eagle the kids saw on the killer? How did the killer sit for hours with Capske with no one bothering him? How did he know about the safe house?

  Harper’s mind clicked once, then twice. He saw a picture in his mind. He saw another. Some route through all these threads seemed to be forming, but he just couldn’t quite catch it.

  ‘The boot-print,’ he called to Swanson. ‘What did CSU say?’

  ‘Nothing at all. It’s just a boot-print. No matches on record.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Harper. ‘Come on, something must break here. Eddie, anything from the interviews?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ shouted Eddie, ‘but we’re trying.’

  Everyone was silent, working the case, poring over and over every detail.

  Denise raised her head. ‘I’ve found nothing in any of Lucy’s old journals, not one reference to his name or appearance.’

  ‘Then we’ve really got nothing,’ said Harper. He looked up and saw Heming’s face staring out from one of the boards.

  ‘Where did you disappear to, Heming?’ said Harper. He stared at the pictures of Lucy and Abby. They might be both alive, somewhere out there, with a man intent on torturing and killing them. Harper looked up again at the board. Something was speaking to him, he just couldn’t quite hear it.

  Back at the start of it all, they still hadn’t worked out how the killer had enticed David Capske to East Harlem. Maybe there was something in it. They’d made so many small discoveries – the whole Nazi story – but none of it led to the killer. They knew so much, but so little. Then something emerged. He hit the desk.

  Denise looked across. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Your profile, Denise. Listen, I’ve had this feeling all along. This terrible feeling that he’s always ahead of us, always in the know.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Denise.

  Harper pulled out his shield and looked at it. ‘Remember the bird of prey that Ruth Glass chose? A blue eagle. We thought it was the Eagle of the Third Reich, didn’t we? We fell into that trap. Listen, Denise, the killer took a big risk in taking those kids. I think they hold the key.’

  ‘But they won’t let us near them. You’ve no idea where they are.’

  ‘Maybe they’ve already given us the answer,’ said Harper.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The cop who came out of Lukanov’s apartment. He fooled the detectives, right? And you know what else? I even think that’s how he got away with staying so long at the bodies.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Denise.

  ‘How the hell did he drive the Auxiliary truck to
the heart of a police operation without impersonating a cop?’

  ‘I still don’t see what you’re driving at.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea.’ He looked at Denise. ‘Come with me.’

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  Lock-Up, Bedford-Stuyvesant

  March 14, 4.43 p.m.

  Lucy looked all around her. She was in a brick room with a barred window. She looked up at the ceiling. Four shower heads.

  She knew enough about history to know that this was no shower. She looked out of the Plexiglass and saw the metal tubes leading to the bin. She had smelled the strange smell from inside the van. Almond.

  Outside, in his antechamber, a man was sitting on a chair staring into the window. It was him. Someone she had known. Someone she had made a mistake about. An evil man. He was concentrating. He clenched his fists hard in their leather gloves.

  He walked through to the next room. He didn’t appear to want to look at her. He returned with a metal can and walked over to the plastic bucket. Lucy watched him, terror in her eyes. She placed both hands on the Plexiglass and hit hard.

  He would not look at her. He took the new can and opened it. Poured the whole tube of Zyklon B pellets into the plastic bucket. Then he turned and stared at Lucy. All he had to do was open the channel.

  She tried to recall events, but her mind wasn’t functioning. He must have drugged her. She couldn’t remember things in the right order. Lots of the last few hours were blank. She could remember further back. She was his girlfriend, the love of his life, his black-and-white happy ending, his meaning, his everything. Not someone else’s.

  He walked across to the cell and stared inside.

  ‘You’re going to die,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Once upon a time, you made me sane. Just the warm curl of your skin and the smell of your neck – that’s all it took, and the hatred was a world away. You gave me redemption, Lucy, then you took it away.’

  She stared up at him, the tape around her mouth preventing her from speaking, preventing her from pleading.

  ‘You were more than my lover. You never understood that you were my antidote. You were my hope and you left me.’

  He pressed his face against the Plexiglass. ‘I have so much hate and anger inside me now, Lucy, that I can’t get rid of it. I have killed because of you. Then I realized why you hated me. Because you want a Jew for your bed.’ He reached out his hand. ‘I still want you, but I hate myself for it. You excite and repulse me. I found someone who looked like you,’ he said, through the Plexiglass, ‘but she wasn’t enough. She didn’t feel like you, Lucy. She didn’t have what you have. Her name is Abby. She was bigger than you, Lucy. I had to starve her just so I could feel her ribs like I could always feel yours.’

  Lucy stared out, shocked and silent. She was going to die. She knew it with horrible certainty.

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  Central Park

  March 14, 5.15 p.m.

  Harper drove down the side of Central Park with Eddie and Denise in the car.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Denise asked.

  ‘To test a theory.’

  ‘What theory?’

  ‘Just keep your mind open and try to think of what kind of person this could be.’

  Harper turned off and parked in East Drive surrounded by trees. He got out of the car. ‘Hear that?’

  ‘No,’ said Eddie.

  Denise got out of the car too. ‘Nice to hear some wildlife,’ she said. ‘It’s been an intense few days.’

  ‘So many birds in this little park. Makes you think.’

  ‘About what?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Life,’ said Harper. ‘Makes you think about life.’

  ‘What the hell is he on about?’ said Eddie. ‘We came to hear a theory.’

  Harper took out his NYPD shield and opened it up. ‘I needed to tell you this somewhere private. Away from the rest of the team. Away from all the cops we know and love.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look at my shield. What do you see?’

  ‘A police number,’ said Eddie.

  ‘A gold emblem,’ said Denise.

  ‘And what’s in the emblem?’

  ‘An eagle,’ said Denise. Her voice dropped. The sound of birdsong rose high above them.

  They stopped. Denise and Kasper suddenly saw where Harper was going.

  ‘When did it click?’ said Denise.

  ‘A few hours ago. I’ve just been turning every angle in my head, trying to see if I’m thinking straight.’

  ‘And are you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure of it. Think about it. It clicked for me with the children. I couldn’t make it work out. How the hell did this killer lure Capske into East Harlem? How did he lure Becky Glass off a street into an alley? How the hell did he dare to sit with Capske all that time? He’s a cop.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ said Eddie. ‘How the hell could this happen?’

  ‘It’s the only thing that pulls this all together. He knew the safe house, right? He knew how many people would be there. Christ, he even knew the weak point between shifts. He knows so much, it’s the only possible answer.’

  ‘You might be right,’ said Denise.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Denise’s psychological fingerprint all day. We’ve got a killer who is fixated on Lucy Steller, a non-Jewish girl. She throws him off. She gets together with a Jew. And this guy’s got levels of anti-Semitic hatred so deep he’s never really acknowledged them, and this is the trigger. She leaves him and he kills someone who looks like her. A Jew. Esther Haeber. Then he abducts a girl who looks very like her. Maybe to try to replace her. But he can’t deal with the lover, David Capske. So he kills him, then tries to disguise it. And now he’s in love with his own power.’

  ‘Damn right,’ said Denise. ‘Lucy’s the trigger. He starts to stalk her after she ends it, then he starts to hassle Jews, and blame them, then he kills one. He starts to let this fantasy grow.’

  ‘Then, he joins Section 88,’ said Harper. ‘But never as a member like the rest. Why conceal his identity even then? Because it would show up. Because he knew, even then, back at the start of this. He’s known all along. How to kill in different precincts, how to stage, how to keep Abby from being fully investigated.’

  ‘How comes he used the same bullet and shit?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Some things he can’t help,’ said Denise. ‘He’s a narcissist. He believes he’s ultimately powerful. The rituals he can’t change. He wants to be known, they are part of this identity, a uniform so that he can express this self.’

  Harper looked up to the sky. ‘He needed a name that allowed him to hide his identity but also to display what he was.’

  ‘Sturbe,’ said Denise. ‘A Nazi serial killer.’

  ‘Exactly. He wears the name like a confession.’

  ‘Meaning?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Meaning, people want to show what they’ve done, so he’s wearing the badge – the serial-killer name. Like some sick joke.’

  ‘It’s unbelievable.’

  They stared at each other, a horrible truth dawning. Harper looked from Denise to Eddie. ‘Tell this to no one. Not another soul. If our killer is a cop, then we’ve got to stay one step ahead of him – and that means keeping our communication tight.’

  ‘How do we find him?’ asked Denise.

  Harper smiled.

  ‘What you got, Tom, what you thinking?’

  ‘If it’s a cop, then he’s listening in. He’s got access to case information. You know what we do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We use the same lure on him that he’s used on others.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The lure of authority.’

  ‘How?’

  Harper sat down on the hood of his car. ‘We’ve got to frighten him into believing we do know his face or are about to. I guess that’s what he did with Capske. I guess he had something to sell. I guess he told Capske that he wanted to put things in the past wi
th Lucy. We do the same. We lure him to us.’

  ‘What’s the plan, big man?’ said Eddie.

  ‘We go back in. We claim we’ve found something. A roll of film – that’s it. A roll of film from Lucy Steller’s apartment, dated according to her journal on some trip and labeled Yellowstone. It might be enough of the truth to get him interested.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Eddie. ‘She was a good photographer. Used 35mm film. She had lots of photographs of animals from that trip. No reason why there wasn’t another film.’

  Harper nodded. ‘We make all this known, we send the film to the photographic lab, then we lie in wait. And then he’ll come to us.’

  Chapter Ninety-Six

  North Manhattan Homicide

  March 14, 8.33 p.m.

  The plan had been set. They didn’t even tell Lafayette the truth. They only wanted the three of them to know. Any more added extra layers of doubt. A single offhand word, the smallest indication that it was a fraud and they were dead in the water. And that meant Lucy and Abby were also dead.

  The evidence was sealed in a brown paper evidence bag. Harper brought it into North Manhattan Homicide after a further visit to Lucy Steller’s apartment.

  He threw it down on the table and called to Denise, ‘Hey, we’ve found something that might give up the clue to this boyfriend.’

  ‘What have you got?’ said Denise. The team listened in.

  ‘We’ve got a roll of film. Lucy used an old 35mm camera. She liked to take shots. This is dated the last week of May last year – anything in the journals?’

  Denise nodded and moved towards her desk. The other members of Blue Team started to draw in.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Garcia.

  ‘Film from Lucy Steller’s place. Dated. Could have shots of the killer,’ said Harper.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Garcia, ‘and it’s just been sitting there all this time.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Denise rushed back over with an open journal. ‘That’s fantastic,’ she said. ‘Lucy spent the whole week with this guy in Yellowstone. This is dynamite.’