by Mark Wheaton
Though he stuck with the whole Satanic cult thing for as many years as the newspapers would print it, Berkowitz had long since recanted. In fact, he’d become a born-again Christian behind bars and even tried to pay restitution to his victims. The Harvey story was just that, a small piece of a massive fiction invented by a delusional lunatic and lapped up by a public unwilling to believe that such a horrific series of murders, six in all with a greater number wounded, could have a rational explanation. It had to be supernatural, or they couldn’t sleep at night. It had to be the Devil, or what was preventing it from happening again tomorrow?
But as Leonhardt stared down at the facts of the case, everything from horrific crime scene and autopsy photos to photostats of the letters sent to police and Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin, he realized that this had nothing to do with the deaths in Jefferson Park. He was just as desperate as Breslin’s readers over a quarter of a century ago for that supernatural explanation.
The dog, Harvey, looked nothing like the black mastiff from Neville Houses. In two photographs, both showing the black lab with his owner, Sam Carr, the animal looked like what it was: the family dog.
Leonhardt sighed and closed the brown manila folder, doing up its rubber string tie, which had gone dry and rigid with age. He shelved it alongside the several other volumes of the same case file and made his way to where Vincent was watching television.
“You find what you were looking for?” Vincent asked. “Wait, don’t tell me if you did. Plausible deniability.”
“Came up dry,” Leonhardt said anyway. “It was a shot in the dark.”
“I thought you guys knew what happened up there.”
“Yeah, yeah, I think we do,” Leonhardt admitted. “Always the same with cases like these.”
“But when they’re so weird, you start looking for answers to all the unasked questions. That’s just not a place you want to go.”
The detective nodded. “You got me there.”
• • •
Ken got the job as a maintenance man in the building. The pay wasn’t much better than the warehouse, but if he agreed to be on call at night, this could up substantially, as each call was time and a half.
Trey’s bail was set at $100,000, the minimum for a case like this, and he was bailed out that afternoon. The ten percent Ken had to put up meant that he and Becca had to clear out of Ocean City, but then they received help from a surprising source.
“If it had been me standing there, I would’ve done the exact same thing,” Mr. Gaines told Trey through his lawyer. “You did me a favor.”
To that, Mr. Gaines put in $1,000. Half an hour later, Trey was out.
Though there hadn’t been a single incident of violence at Triborough Houses since the shooting of Janice, Becca still shuddered as they approached the building.
“I’m going to park and drop off our stuff on the loading dock so we can use the service elevator,” Ken said. “I’ll have a key now, so we won’t have to tromp up and down the stairs every day.”
Becca nodded and climbed out of the borrowed SUV at the curb. She stared up at Building 7, wondering if anyone would notice if she turned around, caught the next train for Ocean City, and just found one of those empty houses to break into and live in until she was old enough to get a job.
As she entered the lobby, she remembered that the last time she’d been here, she’d had Bones by her side. It was, she imagined, like carrying a loaded gun. Everything seemed a little less daunting with a ferocious German shepherd waiting to go off next to you.
She took the stairs two at a time until the fifth floor and then single-stepped it to the sixth. Like on the Jersey Shore, the place felt oddly depopulated. In this case, everyone was at work, not simply absent until the seasons changed or the weekend arrived. When she got to her door, she located her key, turned the lock, and stepped inside.
The apartment smelled like pizza, and she soon saw why. Trey had beaten them home and had brought a couple of boxes with him from the place over on Lexington. He must’ve just arrived, as he was still in the shower when she walked in.
Okay, she thought. Maybe I can do this.
She dropped her keys on the counter, went to her bedroom, closed the door, and flopped down on the bed.
• • •
“He’s looking pretty good,” the police veterinarian told the kennel master as he checked over Bones’s mostly healed wounds. “I’m ready to sign off on him for transport.”
The kennel master rolled his eyes. “I know he’s been working up there in the 22nd Precinct. You got some kind of deal with the detectives?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the vet replied. “You capable of getting his ass back to Pittsburgh? Or do you need a requisition?”
“I’ll have him on the first plane in the morning. And good riddance. He smells.”
“Yeah, that’s his job,” the vet snarked.
“Fine, he stinks. Happy, asshole?”
“Always.”
Bones watched this back-and-forth for a moment but then flopped over asleep.
• • •
The afternoon passed quietly in the Baldwin household. Trey sat on the floor of the living room watching television. Ken stayed on the phone. Becca came and went from her room. It was an unusual homecoming with everyone giving each other space but still checking on each other every few minutes as if to make certain no one had left.
Ken had to start his shift at six o’clock but was going to go down to the maintenance locker room early to get into his work clothes, a dull gray jumpsuit provided by the building.
“When I tell you to stay in the apartment tonight, I mean it,” Ken told Becca, who was making one of her circuits of the living room. He then turned to Trey. “And I’m going to ask you to stay home, but I don’t expect you to listen. Just, it’s our first night back and I’d love to know both of y’all are safe and sound. Is that asking too much?”
Trey shook his head. “I’m staying in. I don’t want to see anybody, I don’t want anybody to see me. Just going to sit here, watch TV, and eat pizza until I pass the fuck out. Cool?”
Becca stifled a laugh. Ken rolled his eyes.
“Answer the phone if it rings, okay? About a hundred people might be calling.”
“Done,” said Trey.
Ken grabbed his keys and headed out the front door. Becca was about to go back to her room when Trey waved at her. “Hey, come here a sec.”
Becca flopped down on the sofa behind Trey.
“Is Ken okay?” Trey asked.
“I think so. Why?”
“This is precisely the kind of thing that drives him out of his mind, you know? Sister in trouble, brother in trouble, job out the window, etc. He spends all his time worrying about providing for us and so little on himself. But he seems to be on an even keel, taking it all in stride.”
“He spent the whole time in Ocean City on the phone dealing with all of this.”
“Really?”
Becca nodded.
“Well, I guess that’s something,” Trey acknowledged. “But we’ve gotta pay him back by keeping things tight in the short term, cool?”
“Cool.”
Becca wasn’t sure she understood exactly what Trey was saying, but figured he might be announcing a hiatus from drugs, both dealing and using.
At least, in the short term.
• • •
Ken headed down through the building, a bounce in his step. Everything was falling into place. It had been rough going for a few days there and he had questioned whether things would actually work out. But now, as he walked down the endless stairs, he felt a certain lightness.
Reaching out, he ran his fingers along the bumpy wall. The paint was “graffiti-proof,” but time and time again, this tagger or that had found just the right paint pen that allowed them the execution of their handiwork.
It felt plastic under his fingers, almost as if it had been dripped into place. He idly wondered
what they would put in its place, if anything. Would they use the same building materials? Meaning cheap? Meaning designed for people who frankly didn’t mean much to anyone who might feel otherwise?
Everything would be better with the arrival of the fire.
• • •
Becca had just drifted off when she heard the phone ring in the other room. It took Trey a couple of rings to answer it, so she imagined he’d fallen asleep as well.
“Hello?”
There was more silence, but then Trey shuffled down the hallway and lightly knocked on Becca’s door. “You awake?”
“Uh-huh.”
Trey pushed the door open, his hand covering the mouthpiece. “You know a Mr. Werden?”
“Um…” was all Becca managed.
“Says he’s the guy Ken borrowed the SUV from. Did you guys borrow luggage from him, too?”
“What?”
Trey rolled his eyes and handed over the phone before disappearing.
“Hello?”
“Hey, is this Becca?”
“Yes.”
“This is Cy Werden. You guys borrowed my truck.”
“Yeah, I think Ken is going to take it back in the morning. He’s at work right now. Is that okay?”
“Oh, yeah. He told me that. No, middle of the day yesterday, he came by to drop off my dog carrier. He left it with Patricia and I guess she didn’t know any better, but the thing is torn to hell. The handle’s off, something practically chewed through the metal gate, it’s scratched to shit. We’re going to have to talk about that.”
Becca shook her head, trying to process this.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We didn’t have a dog carrier.”
“Um, yeah you did. He asked me for it specifically. It was in the back of the SUV when he drove away a week and a half ago. He dropped it off yesterday afternoon before driving back to Ocean City. Thing stinks something awful, too.”
Becca searched her memory. When Ken picked her up from the police station, the SUV was pretty packed, but it was dark. She didn’t see any dog carrier. But then, she hadn’t really looked in the back. She’d climbed into the passenger seat and fallen asleep for the entire trip. When they got there, it was morning and…
And Ken had immediately sent her to check out how close they were to the beach and to buy them a few bottles of water. By the time she got back to the parking lot, he was waiting with her bags and a room key. She hadn’t thought twice. She took her bags, went to her room, and slept until noon.
And then there had been that one afternoon.
She’d come back early from a day at the local library to knock on Ken’s door. She could hear him on the phone, so she’d tried his door, only to be surprised when it opened. She remembered seeing the wild look in Ken’s eyes as he saw her, bolted from halfway across the room, and half-slammed the door in her face.
“Don’t you know I’m on the phone?” he had hissed.
Becca had gone back to her room, figuring this was the usual Ken. He was trying to get a job or was dealing with somebody on Trey’s legal team. No other explanation had occurred to her.
“Can I have Ken call you back?” Becca asked Cy.
“Sure, but make sure he does. I’m not happy with…”
Becca hung up. She stared at the phone for a minute, unsure what to do. She moved over to her backpack and dug around until she found Detective Leonhardt’s business card. This one was crisp and brand new, a replacement for the one . She took a deep breath before dialing his number.
“This is Leonhardt.”
“This is Becca Baldwin from Neville Houses. The dog’s back. And this time it has my older brother.”
• • •
Down in the maintenance locker room, Ken quickly fed the mastiff. He’d left food for it the day before when he’d brought it down, but knew the food wouldn’t last long. He had tried to steal away upon dropping off Becca at the front, but too many people were around and the animal was nowhere to be seen.
“That’s a good boy. Eat it up. Been hungry, huh?”
The mastiff wolfed down the dog chow and then looked at Ken expectantly once the bowl was empty.
“Jesus! You really are hungry, huh?”
Ken quickly opened a second can and spilled its contents into the makeshift bowl, a bucket he’d found in the laundry room. The dog attacked this with the same verve as the first portion.
As the dog ate, Ken walked to a wall filled with clipboards hanging from hooks. Gus had said that each clipboard represented a work order that had to be filled. Ken scanned past all of these until he found the Triborough Houses master list. Every apartment number in every building appeared on it. Alongside them were the names of the tenants in each and their phone numbers.
But what interested Ken were the ones marked “unrented.” He knew some of these were being used by squatters, but that’s what his companion was along to identify. Taking that into consideration, he still estimated there to be about forty empty apartments spread across the sixteen buildings.
More than enough for his task. But he would need to start.
“Are we ready?” he asked the mastiff.
The dog looked up at him with a dull expression. Ken smiled and moved towards the stairs. The mastiff slowly padded along behind him.
XII
The kennel master didn’t know what to say. The detective across the counter was staring at him like he was about to take a bite of his nose.
“Are you going to give me the animal or not?” Leonhardt repeated.
“You’re not a handler, detective. I couldn’t give you the animal even if I wanted to. Department policy.”
“People are going to die, sergeant. Die. Same as what happened a couple of weeks back up in Jefferson Park. Except they aren’t going to be cops this time. Instead, it’s going to be a bunch of kids or their families. You want that on your head?”
“Yeah?” blustered the officer. “What’s a dog going to do about it?”
Leonhardt couldn’t help himself any longer. He punched the man in the face, dropping him with a single hit.
“A hell of a lot more than you, asshole.”
His hand instantly throbbing from one or more broken knuckles, Leonhardt vaulted the counter, took the kennel master’s key, and let himself into the maze of kennels beyond a white door the kennel master had been ostensibly blocking.
“Bones!” Leonhardt called out.
Several enforcement dogs began barking at once. Leonhardt moved past a couple of Belgian Malinois and Dutch shepherds before reaching the one dog that hadn’t barked once.
“That dog’s back, Bones. We have to stop it. I don’t know what it wants or what it’s up to, but it’s not good.”
Bones just stared idly at the police detective while the one human in the room fumbled with the lock on Bones’s gate. As soon as the gate was open, Bones stepped forward. Leonhardt raised a hand.
“No, we’re going to have to do things my way,” he explained, holding up a harness. “I know I’m not your regular handler, but we’re going to have to make this work.”
Bones allowed the harness to be placed around his neck and forelegs. Once it was snug, Leonhardt nodded. “Let’s get going.”
On the way out, they passed the kennel master as he nursed his broken nose, a phone already propped up by his ear.
“I hope you’re drunk, detective. In fact, I’ll go easy on you and tell them you were toasted. They’ll take your badge, but maybe leave you your pension.”
“Don’t do anything on my account,” Leonhardt said as he reached the front door. “I sure wouldn’t do it for you.”
The first time Trey was ever arrested, he was put in front of a youth counselor with all these big ideas about change. The guy talked about growing up in a hard part of Baltimore surrounded by crime and drugs, but that he was able to overcome it and get out. Trey began asking questions of the man and quickly found out that the guy’s father had a small business and w
as able to sell it off to move the family. When the guy continued his crime wave in the new locale (little more than tagging and getting into trouble at the private school he attended), the father mortgaged the house and sent him to military school.
“So you see, anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”
At the time, Trey had scoffed in his face, calling him an ingrate whose parents should’ve thrown him out on the street. Rather than become incensed, the counselor seemed pleased, telling Trey that now they could have an “honest dialogue.”
Trey stopped cold and laughed in the man’s face. He told him to go ahead and take him back to his cell, as it was clear an honest dialogue would be too much of a two-way street for the counselor to handle. The befuddled counselor did as he was told and began seeking out a more susceptible convert from Trey’s peers.
But there was one turn of phrase the man had used that stuck with Trey. He said that when you “entered the life of a career criminal,” the “mouth of your grave had opened.” For Trey, it was a beautiful and apt image. It meant that he could die at any moment and the ground was waiting to take him. He’d heard the similar idiom that “someone was walking over their grave,” but that wasn’t the same thing. That was some future site that was being alluded to in the moment. Suggesting that somewhere out there was an open grave with his name on it felt like a constant, a debt waiting to be paid that hung over his head like a halo of vultures.
As he listened to his little sister explain why she believed their oldest brother was in the thrall of a devil dog, he got the same kind of chills.
This is it, he thought. This just might be the moment of my death.
“So, I called the detective and he’s on his way…”
“You did what?” Trey asked, snapping out of his trance. “You bring in the cops, what if one of them decides to shoot Ken or something? You don’t think they’re going to be a little nervous walking back up in here?”
