Deluge

by Stuart Melvin Kaminsky

  Stella turned her eyes to the taut metal line and the two men who were easing it down. The line went slack and Devlin's voice called, "I'm down."

  There was little room for movement at the bottom of the pit. Hawkes was kneeling and holding Custus's head out of the water. In the light from his lamp, Devlin could see the injured man's pale face. The man wasn't dead. Not yet.

  "Doctor?"

  "I'm okay," said Hawkes.

  There was "okay" and "okay." Devlin had seen them all. He looked at the beam that trapped Custus's broken ankle. He unhooked the metal coil from his waist and reached over to hand it to Hawkes. Hawkes shook his head.

  "You'll need my help," he said, nodding toward Custus.

  "I know how to do this," said Devlin.

  "And I know what his body can take. Let's get it done."

  It was Devlin's turn to nod.

  "What're you nattering about?" said Custus, eyes closed. "Can't you see a man is trying to reach nirvana here?"

  "He has a morbid sense of humor," said Hawkes.

  "I'm not easily amused," said Devlin. "Let's get him out of here."

  He reached into the water, found the rubble under Custus's ankle.

  "Can't move the beam," he said, pulling his hand out of the water. "We have to try to clear enough room under that ankle to pull him out."

  "Let's do it," said Hawkes.

  "Let's do it carefully," said Devlin. "The beam is wedged tight. It's not going to shift, at least not because we remove some of what's under it. Slow so more debris doesn't slide down when we work."

  "There's an irony here," Custus said weakly, painfully, as the two men reached under his broken ankles. "But it eludes me."

  "Under the circumstances," said Devlin, "that comes as no surprise."

  "Ahhh." Custus groaned in pain as a chunk of plaster the size of a football crashed into the water near his head. "This," said Custus, "is the moment in which I am to nobly tell you to save yourselves and leave me to my fate, but I have a secret."

  "More than one," said Hawkes.

  "Well, yes, but you've penetrated some of my better ones," Custus said. "No, the secret is that I'm not afraid to die, but I am very curious about the future I'll miss if I do. Ah, the irony. Now I remember. You are risking your lives to save me so that I can be accused of a bevy of crimes including murder. If brought to trial and convicted, I will spend what remains of my life in what…?"

  Neither Hawkes nor Devlin answered.

  "In a dark pit," Custus supplied.

  "Might be clear," said Devlin, leaning back, knowing that they had been lucky so far, knowing there was only so much luck to go around for a fireman. "Let's try it. I'll take him under the arms and pull him slowly. You ease his leg under the beam. Let's do it."

  "Wait," said Custus. "Doctor, you wouldn't have something a bit stronger than those pills to knock me into oblivion?"

  "I've already given you enough morphine to knock out a horse," said Hawkes.

  "Did you? Well, it must have been a Shetland pony. I suppose there's no recourse other than to pass out or suffer. The choice now belongs to whatever gods may be who hold dominion over my impenetrable soul."

  "Now," said Devlin.

  They moved him. His ankle didn't quite clear the beam. Hawkes moved Custus's legs to the side, both hands on the ankle to feel where the bone was most vulnerable to further fracture.

  A wave of water seeped in from the jagged wall where the dark open part of the cellar had been minutes earlier. Devlin's beam fell on Hawkes's face. Hawkes shook his head. Both men knew that they were working against a ticking clock that had only a few minutes left.

  "Do your best," said Devlin. "We're trying again. And this time it works even if it isn't pretty."

  Devlin renewed his grip under Custus's arms as Hawkes reached into the water under the beam.

  "Okay," said Hawkes.

  "Now," said Devlin, pulling.

  "Sweet Secret Jesus," screamed Custus.

  Hawkes turned the ankle as Devlin pulled.

  Something cracked in Custus's leg.

  "Let me be," he said. "You torturous- "

  "You're clear," said Hawkes.

  Custus didn't hear. He'd passed out.

  "Quickly but carefully," said Devlin tying the coil around Custus.

  The two men eased his dead weight in the awkwardly tight space. They moved slowly, fighting the urge to hurry, an urge that could get them all killed.

  "Ease him up," Devlin called to the two firemen above. "He's not conscious."

  The coil went tight and the limp, dripping man was hauled on the board slowly upward until he was no longer visible.

  "You're next," said Devlin.

  Hawkes didn't argue. When the coil came down, he helped Devlin put it around his waist. Then Hawkes reached for his kit. He had placed Custus's gun inside the kit next to the other evidence he had gathered. Custus had not been all that wrong in the assessment of his situation. The difference was that Sheldon Hawkes did not see the irony.

  "Let's go together," said Hawkes.

  "Too heavy," said Devlin. "I'll see you on solid ground."

  Hawkes felt the pull around his chest as the coil dug in and he was lifted upward into twilight and the waiting face of Stella, who reached over with one of the firemen to help him over the brink.

  "You need a long shower," she said with a grin as he stood on more-or-less solid ground.

  Across the bombed-out remains of Doohan's, Hawkes saw an ambulance that had to be carrying Custus pull away down Catherine. The ambulance lights were spinning. Half a block farther the siren began to blare.

  Stella and Hawkes both watched the coil go back down the hole, clacking against the plastic board. A sound like the belch of a giant echoed from below.

  The coil dropped farther, went taut, and the two firemen pulled. Slowly, Devlin appeared. He was helped over the edge by the two firemen who had pulled him up.

  Devlin looked over at Stella and grinned.

  Stella grinned back.

  The monster from below bellowed and went silent.

  The walls of the pit did not suddenly collapse. Days later the hole remained and was finally covered over by a bulldozer, which flattened what was left of Doohan's Bar and left the space free for a well-equipped workout center. It would be called Doohan's Gym.

  * * *

  The hotel Ellen Janecek and Paul Sunderland were taken to for the night was barely a two-star accommodation. Sunderland offered to pay for an upgrade to another hotel, but Mac had no time to make the move and besides, there were no other rooms available. People had been trapped by the deluge. Rooms had been gobbled. In other cities, the people might be irritable, complaining. In New York, they were resigned. New Yorkers were no strangers to disaster.

  Sunderland and Janecek had been transported to the hotel by Don Flack, who had made sure that they were not followed.

  Neither of them had objected, not when Mac gave them a hint of what Keith Yunkin had done to the three other people in the therapy group.

  Both of them had been told to stay in their rooms, use room service, make no phone calls. A uniformed officer was in place outside each of their doors.

  "How long will I have to do this?" Sunderland had asked.

  "Till we catch him," said Flack.

  "What? A day? Two days?"

  "I don't know. Enjoy the HBO."

  Ellen Janecek hadn't asked how long. She had nodded affirmatively to everything Flack said. She smiled that I-have-a-secret smile that made him uneasy, then announced she was going to take a shower.

  Flack named her Beautiful Dreamer. Mac thought it fit. Flack had left her after she locked the door behind him.

  He nodded at the burly dark cop outside her door. She was safe. At least for tonight.

  When she got out of the shower, Ellen's cell phone was ringing. She had been told not to make calls. She hadn't been told not to answer them. Besides, it was an automatic response on her part. The phone rings,
you answer it.

  "Hello," she said.

  "Ellen, I gotta see you. Where are you?"

  The line was bad, very bad. She could barely make out the words.

  "Jeffrey?"

  "My mom's…tonight…never."

  "I can't hear you," she said.

  "Please," he said. "Where are…got to…"

  "The Hopman Hotel," she said. "You know where it is? Can you get here?"

  "Room?"

  "Four seventeen," she said.

  The line went dead.

  He was in trouble. Jeffrey was in trouble. Jeffrey needed her. She couldn't turn him away. She wouldn't turn him away. She loved him.

  * * *

  It was a little after nine. Mac rubbed his eyes, touched his face. He needed a shave. The lights flickered in the lab and made a crackling sound before returning to full strength.

  The storm was over, at least for now, but the standing water in streets, gutters and basements was shorting out electrical circuits. Subways stalled. Dirty rain gurgled up from sewers, and the rats, sniffing at the now-clear air, were rushing more boldly along the sides of buildings in search of food.

  Stella had called, told him the firemen had gotten Hawkes out safely. The force of Mac's relief had been strong and it made everything a little easier to deal with on this wet and dismal day.

  Mac leaned over the table again and reached for a dropper. He put the dropper into a solution he had prepared with the shavings from the knife tip that had been taken from the body of Timothy Byrold.

  He walked across the room and placed the specimen into a spectrograph. Less than a minute later he had the information he needed. He couldn't tell the age of the stainless steel, not with certainty, nor could he be sure of the exact corrosion rate because of the dozen factors that affected corrosion. What he could tell was the level of corrosion and the composition of the samples of stainless steel Sid Hammerbeck had taken from the wounds of the victims. If he found the knife the minute flecks of metal had come from, it would be easy to match them. The composition of the stainless steel and the level of corrosion would match the sample to the knife like a fingerprint. In addition, the microscopic ridges of the knife would match the ridges made by the knife when it struck the bone of each victim.

  And Mac was about to seek that match now.

  The knife that cut off the toe of the boy in Queens lay on the lab table. The hospital had turned the knife over to the police. The knife was an Army Ranger knife, not all that unusual. But what was unusual was that it was scalpel sharp, which accounted for its going cleanly through the boy's toe. The Queens detective who had taken the knife remembered the bulletin, marked urgent, about three sexually mutilated victims who had been murdered with sharp, stainless steel. The detective had dropped the knife in an evidence bag and sent it to the CSI lab in Manhattan.

  Now it lay next to Mac Taylor, who had found enough blood on the blade to make a type match to Byrold. There was even more blood from another source. Mac assumed it was the injured boy. He called the hospital in Queens to check on his type, was told it was a match, and that the boy's toe had been successfully reattached.

  "Kid says he wants the knife," the nurse Mac talked to said. "Says he found it and it's his."

  "Tell him it's evidence in a murder case," said Mac.

  Mac was definitely tired, but there was no going home. Nothing waited for him there but troubled sleep. Out there a man named Keith Yunkin who walked with a limp and had murdered three people was seeking a fourth victim before midnight, before the anniversary of his brother's death was over.

  Mac checked the preliminary autopsy reports on the three murder-mutilations. The data on the cleanest wounds, the initial ones under the victims' armpits, did not match. He checked again. The difference was small, but it was there. Mac was sure they were accurate. Sid wouldn't make a mistake like this, not even a small one.

  He picked up the phone and called the medical examiner's cell phone.

  "Sid?"

  "Mac."

  "Where are you?"

  "With friends," said Sid. "Colleagues who have a few beers and stronger fare and share tales of the dead."

  He wasn't drunk, but he had managed to take the edge off.

  "The three you did today- "

  "Excluding the teacher with the punctuation marks in his neck and eye?"

  "The other three," said Mac.

  Someone called Sid's name. Sid covered the phone and Mac could hear him say, "I'll be right there."

  "Could all three have been killed by different weapons?" asked Mac.

  "Interesting question," said Sid. "There was a slight difference in the shearing from the wounds under the arms. I attributed that to- "

  "He could have sharpened the knife after each murder," Mac supplied.

  "Right," said Sid. "Or the tissue of each victim could have accounted for a difference in shearing, but…now that you mention it. I think I'll go back and take another look at the departed."

  "It can wait till tomorrow," said Mac.

  "I can't," said Sid.

  He hung up and Mac sat back.

  A clean, new, scalpel-sharpened knife for each victim. Ritual execution? No ripping. Methodical. Not simple revenge. He's ridding the world of sexual predators. And there's no reason to think he'll stop at four or stop at the end of today.

  11

  THE MAN SAT AT THE BACK of the subway car, his lips moving, making no sound. He wore a poncho and hood. The hood was drawn forward. His face wasn't visible. His hands were plunged into his pockets.

  There weren't many people on the train, not at this hour, not heading back into the city, not on a system that had been damaged by stalling and flooding.

  What few people were on the train sat away from the hooded man who held one leg out awkwardly, bouncing nervously. They were New Yorkers. They were familiar with the crazies who talked to themselves and to people and creatures who were not there. As long as they didn't talk to you, you could live with it.

  The hooded man's voice could now be heard but only when the train came to a stop at a station. What he said made no sense, though the word "kill" was heard by some.

  Two people got off at the next stop even though it wasn't theirs. They would wait for the next train, though it might take an hour, and hope that those aboard it were reasonably sane and safe.

  On the train, the man in the hood grew more restless and angry at whatever ghost or demon with which he argued.

  Edward Bender, tired before he even began his night shift at the Colston Hotel, was getting increasingly aggravated by the mumbling man, but he wasn't sure what he could do about it.

  Suddenly the hooded man rose with a roar and started down the aisle, moving awkwardly. A heavy white woman cried out something in a language Edward didn't understand.

  The hooded man had a knife in his hand. It didn't have a long blade, but the blade did glisten in the flickering subway light. The train swayed and the hooded man started up the aisle. Edward rose, threw his magazine on the seat. The hooded man was as tall as Edward and younger, but Edward no longer gave a shit.

  Passengers were cringing against the windows, covering their faces with their arms or closed umbrellas.

  "Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?" the hooded man asked Edward. The man was no more than a few yards from Edward, who said nothing. The man's right arm rose, clutching the knife. He lunged forward at Edward and fell to the floor. Edward stomped on his hand. The knife slid down the aisle.

  "Oh, thank God," someone said.

  Edward looked at the man seated on the aisle. The man's leg was still in the aisle. He had tripped the hooded man and possibly saved the life of Edward Bender.

  "Thanks," said Edward, a foot on the neck of the hooded man who screamed, "We've all had enough. The deluge. No time for an ark."

  "I'll stop the train at the next station," Edward said. "You find a cop."

  Keith Yunkin, who had tripped the hooded man, nodded, got up and moved to
the door just as the train pulled into the station. He stepped out onto the platform.

  It would take him a little longer to get to Ellen Janecek, but he had a few hours. It would be enough.

  He moved toward the exit. He had no intention of finding a policeman and he hoped that no policeman would find him.

  * * *

  Lindsay should have been home taking a hot bath and eating one of the ripe peaches she had set aside for herself. Instead, she sat before a monitor in the CSI lab looking at this morning's surveillance tapes of the Wallen School. A cup of chili and a Diet Coke rested next to the monitor.

  She looked at everything, paying particular interest to the images of the corridor outside the chemistry lab. This was the fourth time she had scanned the tape looking for- she didn't know what she was looking for. It was a feeling. She had feelings like this from time to time. Sometimes she was right about them. The Loverton poisoning the first week she came to New York was one example. Most of the time the feeling didn't pan out, either because she couldn't find the forensic evidence or she was simply mislead by her instincts. This effort with the tapes looked as if it wasn't going to pan out.

  Then the glitch. She saw it and knew even before she proved it to herself. Lindsay saved the screen and opened a word processing program. She typed in the sequence of the camera shots, the order in which the camera picked up the images. There were sixteen surveillance cameras randomly programed but carefully positioned in the Wallen School. Lindsay typed in data on all sixteen. She didn't have to check to be sure she was right, but she did check.

  She went back to the morning tapes, pausing to wolf down spoonfuls of chili and wash them down with Diet Coke. No doubt about it. The corridor outside the chem lab was not in the tenth sequence. She went through the next sequences looking for the corridor in each one.

  The corridor was missing in the eighteenth sequence.

  It hadn't been a mystical feeling. She had seen and sensed that something was not right in the tapes. Now she had proved it.

  Each sequence had a time in white letters on the first image. The tenth sequence read: 8:40 a.m. The eighteenth sequence read: 10:50 a.m.