by Gary Conrad
“The ladies in the office can’t keep their eyes off him,” Anderson added. “Tall, slender, dark hair — they all think he’s hot stuff.”
Dockendorf threw up his hands in exasperation. “I don’t give a shit about how good looking he is.” Then he grinned and said, “But this case will kick his ass — just like it’s kicked ours. I can’t wait to see the chief’s new golden boy go up in flames.”
Hawk arrived wearing a black suit, a black dress shirt without a tie and black Merrell hiking shoes.
“I’m Detective Fishinghawk. Just call me — Hawk,” he said. His trimmed black hair was neatly combed into place, and his piercing dark eyes were bright and alert, as if all seeing. As he extended his right hand, he remarked, “I’ve seen you both around the office. Good to see you again.”
Anderson and Dockendorf stuck out their hands and Hawk shook them.
Hawk asked, “What do you know so far?”
Anderson and Dockendorf glanced at each other before Anderson spoke. “This is the seventh murder over the past four months, and they have several things in common. First, as you know, they have all been killed with a kitchen utensil. Number one victim was murdered with a wine corkscrew, and this one a meat cleaver. Each time it was something different, but always something from the kitchen.
“They have all been men and were all tied to a chair with rope. The killer wore gloves, so there have been no fingerprints. And all of the victims let the murderer into their apartments — like they knew him. And, for a coup de grâce, after they were killed, each and every one of our victims was anointed with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
Fishinghawk’s dark eyes blazed. “How do you know it was a him?”
Dockendorf answered. “There’s been so much blood at the scenes we were able to check the shoe tracks. All were the same Nike tennis shoes, men’s size six and a half. Must be a little guy.”
“I see,” Hawk said warily. “Have you found any connections between the victims? Education? Jobs? Clubs? Prisons? Any common history — any at all?”
“Nope,” said Anderson.
“Let me look over the scene,” Hawk said.
Dockendorf and Anderson ushered Hawk into the kitchen.
Hawk slowly walked around the area, nodded, and led the way back into the living room.
“Was the window AC turned on when you came in?” he asked.
“No,” said Anderson. “What of it?”
“How about the other murders? Was the air conditioner turned off at those scenes as well?”
“Come to think of it — yes,” confessed Anderson.
“Don’t you think it’s a little odd, in the middle of summer, for it to be off?”
“Maybe the guy that lived here liked it hot,” Anderson guessed as he nervously loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar.
“No, I believe his killer liked it hot. Look at the on-off dial.”
Dockendorf and Anderson both stepped over and stared at it. A small smudge of blood was smeared on the dial. They groaned and reluctantly turned to face Fishinghawk.
“Gentlemen,” Hawk said, as he folded his arms across his chest, “I’m no doctor, but I do know that cold intolerance is often associated with glandular disorders, especially hypothyroidism. The killer turned off the AC because she couldn’t stand the cold.”
“What do you mean she?” Dockendorf exclaimed. “We told you that he was wearing men’s shoes. We matched it up.”
Hawk shook his head, “She meant for you to assume that. That’s why she made the tracks so obvious. She’s actually a woman’s size eight, but she wore men’s shoes to confuse you.” Then he looked off thoughtfully and concluded, “Our suspect is a woman who is really angry with men — hard to say why, though off the top I might guess it’s because she has been around too many who are alcoholics. Besides, women are many times more likely to be hypothyroid than men. It’s a dropkick — it’s a woman.”
Anderson protested, “But —”
“I have a hunch, gentlemen — could be right, could be wrong — but it’s worth a shot. I want you to check on the past medical records of our dead, and I believe you’ll discover that they all saw the same endocrinologist. What are men usually seen for in an endocrinologist’s office? In our group of victims, I’d bet my bottom dollar that they were being treated for impotence.
“If you check the appointment schedule, you’ll find that there was a woman who had a hypothyroid condition who happened to be in the waiting room at the same time. I believe she let each and every one of her victims know that she was willing to help them with their problem. Little did they know what they were getting into.”
“You can’t be serious,” Dockendorf said, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand.
Hawk ignored him. “Oh — one more thing, once you discover her name, I believe you’ll find she is a new resident of New York City, probably lived here around four months, and in the place she has lived before there were a number of similar unexplained crimes.”
“Hawk, I think you’ve gone off the deep end,” Anderson said, shaking his head. “This is the wildest thing I’ve ever heard of. There’s no way anyone could connect these dots. Are you crazy?”
“Crazy is as crazy does,” said Hawk as he shrugged and his handsome face broke into a friendly smile. He nodded, bid them a good day and departed.
Chapter 2
August 20, 2014, Catskill Forest Preserve, New York
Daniel Fishinghawk dared not make a sound.
His weathered moccasins, given to him many years ago by his grandpa, moved silently across the moist earth. Years of yoga, combined with strength training and aerobic exercise, allowed him to move his toned body across the rugged landscape as quietly as a wraith. The sun began to dip below the wooded horizon. He was about to run out of time.
Just a little farther, he thought.
He had arrived in the Catskill Forest Preserve five days ago and had but one goal in mind: Track and find the eastern cougar, which had been pronounced extinct over three years ago by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Daniel was aware of numerous previous sightings, all of which had been pooh-poohed by the Service. The ploy used to discredit these viewings was to make the finder look like a complete moron.
“Oh, you must have seen a house cat,” they would say. Or giving the discoverer just a little more credit, “. . . a bobcat.” You’d have thought that by the disdain the Service had for such accountings, someone had said they’d seen Sasquatch.
They just don’t want to be wrong, Daniel guessed.
Daniel had been here nearly every weekend over the past three months. He had discovered tracks he was sure were those of the eastern cougar, but his two-day weekends weren’t enough time to accomplish the task of finding one. At long last the chief reluctantly gave him a week off, and now he was certain that, just over the wooded ridge, one was feeding on its favorite prey, the white-tailed deer. He heard the sounds of ripping flesh and hoped the animal was distracted by its meal.
As he rounded the top of the ridge, he crouched and carefully concealed himself behind some brush. As he peeked over the top, he saw a huge tan cat, around eighty pounds — probably a male — the eastern cougar.
Daniel squatted back down for a moment and listened. When the noise of eating stopped, and he was certain the cat was finished with its meal, Daniel stood, intentionally cracking a twig.
The cougar pricked up its ears and intensely stared at him, unafraid. The two locked eyes for a few seconds, then the cat ambled away, not bothering to look back.
Daniel watched the cat until he was no longer visible. He had brought no photographic equipment — nothing to record this moment — because it wasn’t necessary. His mind worked like a camera, and once he saw something it was tucked away in his memory forever. Some called it an eidetic memory, others, a photographic memory. Whatever they chose to name it, all Daniel knew was that he remembered everything he saw in the minutest detail. For that moment, all he wanted was the image of the
cat in his mind, and he had it.
He sat down by the brush, pulled a water bottle from his belt clip, and said a silent prayer of thanks to his grandpa, Hunter Fishinghawk, who had raised him since he was two years old and had educated him on the skills of tracking. He had taught Daniel the subtle things that could never be found in books. Because of him he was able to experience this moment.
God rest his soul . . .
Daniel grimaced as he brought up the memory.
Not so many years ago, when Daniel was attending classes at Northeastern State University (NSU) in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, his grandpa was killed one morning by an intruder who entered their humble home in the countryside. Daniel, who still lived with him, found him that evening on the front porch with his throat cut, wild dogs and vultures fighting over his body.
After Daniel shooed them away, he was horrified to see that large portions of flesh had been eaten away from his legs, arms and face. Daniel turned his head away, knowing he would not forget. Still, his grandpa was larger than life, and that was a memory he’d not forget either.
Grandpa had been tall and strong with his salt and pepper black hair tied behind his head in a small ponytail, wearing his buffalo nickel belt buckle with one coin in the middle, depicting a proud Native American, surrounded by six more coins showing buffalo in a circular pattern. That was his grandpa, yes, larger than life.
And so Daniel took heart and stepped into the house to make a call to the police. That done, he warily walked through the ransacked home, checking every dark nook and cranny, revenge on his mind — but as he suspected, the intruder was long gone. A quick glance around the rooms proved the only thing of value, his grandpa’s collection of rare Indian arrowheads, had been stolen.
As a young boy, Daniel loved to look at all the arrowhead colors — waxy shades of black, white, green and brown. He was especially fond of one large green one, razor sharp with a brown area in the center, which had all the appearance of an engraved hawk. Daniel was sure there was none like it in the world. Given his last name, he hoped to keep it forever in memory of his grandpa.
It was not to be.
But at least the belt buckle was left behind, and Daniel kept it propped upright on a coffee table in his New York City apartment where he could see it often.
Per his grandpa’s wishes, Daniel had him cremated and several days later solemnly scattered his ashes in the nearby Illinois River, three miles east of Tahlequah. His grandpa was an only child, as was Daniel, and there were no other living family members. All that was there was a pair of red-tailed hawks circling overhead.
It was just as well, Daniel thought. He and his grandpa were both loners.
It was then that Daniel made the decision to be a police officer. If he could keep just one person from losing a family member prematurely, then it would be all worthwhile. After getting his undergraduate degree at NSU, he attended police academy in Tulsa and, after three years of beating the streets as a police officer, took the necessary courses and became a detective.
In the years that followed his career change, violent crime in the city of Tulsa plummeted to a nationwide low, creating quite a buzz in the national media. A visiting investigative reporter from CNN determined that the primary reason for the dramatic improvement was the work of Tulsa’s newest and brightest detective, Daniel Fishinghawk. No one wanted to break the law there; the risk of being caught was far too high.
Shortly after word got out, Daniel was recruited to the Big Apple. He wasn’t sure he wanted to leave his beloved Oklahoma hills, but when he heard of the proximity of the Catskills and the Shawangunk Mountains, both less than a three hour drive away, he had a change of heart. New wilderness areas to explore struck at his Native American roots.
Since in New York, though, Daniel had made an unnerving discovery. He had been here only three months and already, as hard as it was to believe, at twenty-eight years of age, he was getting burned out. All those years of seeing grisly murder after grisly murder had finally taken its toll, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could go on in his current employment.
Daniel sighed.
He fondly recalled the days when his grandpa took him to the woods around the Illinois River. During those adventures his grandpa taught him respect for Mother Earth and how important it was to be close to the land. City living, he told Daniel, took one away from the rhythms of nature, and he made Daniel promise that wherever his life led him, he would take time to commune with the great outdoors. In this way he would always stay linked to his Cherokee beginnings — and his grandpa.
Daniel loved his grandpa almost as much as he despised his parents, who he never knew. When Daniel was only two years old, his father and mother, Daniel senior and Jenny, who were both crackheads and unable to stay off the bottle, were high as kites one late night when they had a head-on collision with another car on a narrow country road just outside of Tahlequah.
Both were instantly killed. But miraculously enough, little Daniel, who was unrestrained in the back seat of their beat-up brown Chevy Impala, was found unharmed at the scene by the police. It was odd, they said, that the little child in the devastating wreck never cried a lick, but smiled when his grandpa arrived at the hospital to pick him up. Since that time, his grandpa called him not only by his given name, but also “A-da-do-li-gi,” Cherokee for “blessing.”
It was all for the better, Daniel reasoned as he sipped his water. What would he be like now if he had been raised by two druggies? He didn’t want to think about it.
Daniel was disgusted by what he knew of his parents. For that reason, he never used the abbreviation, “Jr.,” at the end of his name. His father deserved no credit for what Daniel would become in life.
No credit at all.
The sun now fell below the tree line and was invisible. All that could be seen was a hazy glow as nightfall approached. Daniel clipped his water bottle back onto his belt and turned to find his backpack, which he had dropped off around a hundred yards to the east. He hadn’t wanted the sounds of moving fabric to notify his prey.
Daniel returned to his camp, a thirty minute walk away, and bedded down for the night. The sound of tree frogs filled the air, and his mind was peaceful — until he remembered in three more days he had to return to work. No doubt, by that time, in such a large metropolis as New York City, there would be more murders to solve — lots more.
He couldn’t bear the thought.
Chapter 3
August 23, 2014, New York City
“Hawk, you ol’ son of a bitch, how in the hell did you do it?”
Daniel Fishinghawk had just sat down across the desk from his detective chief, Kip Kelly. The smell of cheap cigars lingered in the air around him.
“I mean, c’mon, tell me. I’m all ears.”
“Chief Kelly,” Daniel insisted, “it wasn’t that hard. The clues were all there.”
“What in the hell are you talking about? I had two of our best men at the scene, Anderson and Dockendorf — seasoned veterans who had worked all these murders — and they couldn’t come up with a damn thing.”
“Well, chief, I —”
“Don’t ‘well, chief’ me,” Kelly said as he stood at his desk, veins bulging on his forehead. “Now I get it that you found the smudge of blood on the air conditioning on-off switch, but for Christ’s sake, Hawk, from that point on you made one leap of faith after another. If you’d have made one goof on any of your assumptions, you’d have been up a creek without a paddle.”
Kelly sat back down. “But the irony about this whole mixed up case is that you were right — you hit the nail right on the head! What the fuck? We did medical background checks on the victims, and, just like you said, they all had the same endocrinologist. And yes, the killer, Miranda Oberstein — isn’t that a helluva name? — put the moves on them while they were sitting in the doctor’s waiting area. And, I can’t believe I’m saying this, all had trouble getting their dicks up — every fucking one!
“Now,
about our murderer: She used to live in San Francisco, and before she left, there were a number of similar unexplained killings. After we arrested her, she confessed to all the crimes without the slightest bit of remorse. Seems her father was an alcoholic who beat the shit out of her at least once a week while she was growing up. And — get this — she then married an alcoholic who did the same thing. After divorcing him, he was her first victim.
“You can’t help but feel bad for her, but the truth is she is one sick lady — she’ll never go to jail, but she’ll be in the nuthouse for the rest of her life.”
Kelly shook his finger at him. “Okay, Hawk, time to fess up. Are you psychic? Have you been using the fucking psychic hot line?”
Daniel laughed. “No — let’s just say I have a way of putting two and two together.”
Chief Kelly stared at him, doubt in his eyes. “It’s more than that. You see things that no one else can, and it turns out you’re right — always! You haven’t missed a case since you’ve been here — how long has it been?”
“Three months,” Daniel answered.
“Commissioner Walsh has you on a par with buttered bread. If you weren’t so damn good in the field you’d probably be taking my spot, and I’ve been in this position over twenty years!”
“Chief, you don’t have anything to worry about. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about —”
“Hawk, stuff it for a sec. I didn’t have you come here on a Saturday morning just to tell you how wonderful you are. There’s something that’s come up — an international deal — and I’ve got strict orders to give it to you. Your country needs you.”
“Me?”
“Yep — you. We have to send our best man to handle this one, and as much as I hate to say it, I’m afraid you’re the guy.”
“What’s going on?”
“How’s your geography, Hawk?”
“Not bad, why?”
“Have you ever heard of Easter Island?”
“Of course. Isn’t that the place way out in the middle of nowhere with all the statues?”
