Fools.
He licked his lip, tasting blood. He hated the taste of blood. A branch had smacked his face as he approached this third pair. He tried to stop chewing his lip, but he couldn’t. Admit it, he thought. I’m worried.
The kid saw me.
It made him nervous, but was that rational? What kid that small could describe anyone when adult eyewitness accounts were so flawed? Besides, in the park he’d been just another jogger, the usual self-important clone clean-shaven and wearing sunglasses under a baseball cap.
Ah! Breaking news interrupting Anderson! A round-eyed gal holding a mike, with yellow police tape and cops and floodlit brush behind her.
“The fearful news is that the Couples Killer has struck again,” she said tremulously. “Another man and woman have been shot, for the first time not at night but just minutes past sunset in this well lit part of Central Park. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, and the female victim has been taken to famed Madison Memorial Hospital. Their names have been withheld pending notification of kin, but this third attack has thrown the city into further panic.”
She held up a paper and read from it, her hand shaking. “The police have issued a statement that they will hold a briefing at nine o’clock, in the meantime urging extreme caution, especially at night, as they step up their manhunt.” She let the paper drop and blinked wide-eyed back at the camera. “Meanwhile our thoughts and prayers go out to these latest victims and their families. Back to you, Anderson.”
Anderson Live was taped, ha, and the break caught him droning mid-sentence about ocean depth. It was all so phony, thought the man in the fake goatee. He wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t.
He was fretting about that damn kid. It suddenly hit that he must be here too, getting checked out. Maybe he really could describe…
Would the cop briefing say they had a witness?
The man rose, shuffled with a fake limp out of the ER to the street. He limped two blocks and peered back at the hospital. A glowing star ship, it looked like, immense white cubes and rectangles with every window lit. Cop cars down in front of it, TV trucks unwinding their cables and upturning their floodlights.
No cab would stop for him. Hell, he wanted to see the cop briefing at home on his big screen. He lost his limp, started a fast jog, and then suddenly stopped.
He had a better idea.
4
A nine pound baby boy. Amniotic fluid splashing, breech, contractions feeble, fetal heart rate erratic, Caesarean needed. Whew, it was close.
David showered and was out fast, toweled and checking his phone. His jaw tightened, hearing Jill’s trembling voice.
“What?” asked Jim Holloway, a resident just twelve weeks into his second year. He and an intern had started the delivery and worried about too many problems at once. David, now the fourth year chief resident, had come running.
“Trouble,” David said, pulling on his scrubs.
“Police trouble, I’ll bet.” Jim was on the bench pulling on different running shoes. His and David’s had gotten soaked. “That’s the look you always get when they call.”
David put his foot on the bench and fast-tied his laces. “Another couple shot. Pregnant survivor brought here.”
Jim’s face went slack and the intern, drying off, groaned, “Oh jeez, that makes three....”
David was out the door.
In the hall he ran through the OB surgical suite, burst through a narrow scrub room, opened the OR door and called, “Got the bullet?”
“Yup.” From MacIntyre, his voice muffled by his mask. “On the table, Maggie.” He didn’t look up but an intern and Woody did for a second. “She’s an Iraq War vet!” Woody cried. “Can’t help it. I keep saying it, thinking it. What kind of cold, twisted sonofabitch is doing this?”
“Somebody’s gotta get him.” David eyed the anesthetized patient. “The pregnancy?”
“Lost.” MacIntyre was grim. “Stitched up the uterus but the placenta bled out.”
David’s lips tightened. He watched Maggie the circulating nurse retrieve a small specimen jar and come to hand it to him. They looked feelingly at each other. He held up the little jar and peered at the bullet. Small caliber, not banged up. Good.
He burst back out to the hall and tore down the stairwell.
Kerri Blasco and Alex Brand were on their cell phones, sitting before a coffee table in a corner of the ER doctors’ lounge. Exhausted residents napping on couches or rushing in and out of the adjacent locker room were oblivious to them. Or used to them.
Jill approached, her heart tight in her chest, realizing that she’d lost count of the times she and David had met them like this. Their relationship with the police had started fifteen months ago, the crisis surrounding two murders and discovering Jesse three months premature in a hidden lab.
Nearly getting killed too, both of them.
Helping the cops had evolved into friendships. In this post-CSI era, police work was harder. Bad guys too often knew to wear gloves, condoms and how to leave no physical evidence - no prints, fibers, or DNA. There was much that Jill and David could do that cops couldn’t. They’d skirted the law more than once because they could. Didn’t need warrants to go poking, help narrow investigations. Evidence inadmissible in court led to evidence that was.
“Hey.” Alex Brand rose and kissed Jill’s cheek. Kerri hugged her. Alex, a big, good-looking guy with brown hair, wore a gray shirt and tie under his sports jacket. Kerri, in dark slacks, wore her blond hair spilling onto her shoulders. Both had visited Jill and David often at their apartment, bringing toys to Jesse in great spirits.
Now they looked sad and terribly tense.
Exhaling, Jill put her evidence bags on the table and sank into an old armchair.
“Thanks.” Alex gravely snapped on latex gloves and opened the first bag. Held up a woman’s Nike shoe and turned it over. “Fresh moist soil, cinders from the jogging trail and leaf bits in the sole. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a guy with this in his soles.”
The shoe brought two images to Jill and broke her heart: a happy mom walking in the park with her child, then an hour later lying torn and bloodied on an ER table. This was so terrible. Jill looked away, blinking, but couldn’t stop seeing the shoe.
They saw David come in, tall and built like a quarterback, his handsome face tense, his still-wet dark hair falling over his brow. There were quick handshakes, grim comments, and the four got down to it. David gave the specimen jar holding the bullet to Alex, who held it up. He and Kerri peered through the glass.
“No surprise,” Alex muttered. “A .22 like the other attacks.” He spoke low and rushed, knowing they were in a race against time. “Six victims, ballistics is bound to show this bullet’s from the same unregistered gun, because that’s what this sick bastard wants. He’s laughing at us. There’s a hundred cops working on this and we’re nowhere.”
“Three,” David said quietly, his somber tone conveying that this meant a serial. It didn’t need saying.
Kerri nodded, her hand squeezing her notebook. “Plus this attack is closer to the second one, so he’s accelerating.”
“But why?” Jill blurted, feeling ridiculous given her background but out it came. “Attacks like this are usually about drugs, money or sex, but this guy…”
“Just wants to shock,” Kerri said bitterly. “He shoots from a distance, no connection between the other victims, seems to have chosen them at random. He’s also a sharp shooter. Head and heart hits every time, and his only pattern is couples.”
Both cops knew about Jill’s past. Her assistant D.A. parents had divorced when she was ten. Her father remarried, left New York for L.A., and had another daughter Jill hadn’t seen since a few years later at his funeral. Her mother, also deceased, had been ambitious and emotionally absent from her only child. Jill had grown up terribly alone, coming home to an empty apartment, reading about famous mom ranting in the papers or seeing her on TV…but still craving her attention – which she only
got by interrupting her at night and asking about cases, or being admitted to strategy sessions when detectives came to their apartment. Oh, the joy of being included! She grew to love some of those detectives. But in college her loneliness overrode her fascination with crime fighting, and the idea of obstetrics started seeming like a happy one. Babies, happy families. And the reality usually was that…
Alex was scowling at a folded paper he’d pulled from his pocket.
“Copy of a note the killer left us.” He passed the sheet to Jill and David, whose shoulders touched as they scanned the giant letters. “’COPS LOSE AGAIN!’” Jill read in a soft, shaky voice. “Signed, ‘CATCH ME.’”
“Computer-printed on a standard eight by eleven,” Kerri said as they handed it back. “No prints on it, same as his second message, and he left nothing at his first attack. He’s getting more confident.”
“CATCH ME,” Jill repeated, and shuddered.
Alex nodded. “In seventy-two font capital letters. Big, crazed, narcissist ego.”
David’s somber, dark blue eyes stayed on the sheet Alex held. “How’s the other surviving patient?” he asked.
“Comatose from a head shot. Irreversible, they think. In Manhattan General.”
A uniformed cop came and handed Brand a thick manila folder. “Copies of park security photos,” the cop said and left.
Brand opened the folder and thumbed through some of the photos.
Jill’s heart was aching. David saw, and squeezed her hand. His wedding ring glinted and was a twin to hers. Even in shock and dismay, his touch gave her comfort, helped her pull in a long breath.
Then David looked to Kerri. “Tell about this patient.”
Kerri leaned forward, her features tight. “Beth Willis, aged thirty-four, was a Navy nurse with a mobile unit that followed the Marines and tended the wounded as they were choppered in.” A mournful headshake. “Back here she found work at the VA but still suffers from PTSD. Just the victim for the Couples Killer, right? God Almighty!” Her eyes filled and she looked away.
“The male with Beth was just a friend,” Alex said gravely. “A psychologist from their PTSD group. They’d been exercising with a larger group and fell behind. She was brought in with her little boy, Ricky, who’s four.” Alex shook his head. “Pediatrics says he’s in shock but okay physically.”
Kerri added, “Beth Willis was lucky, the killer’s aim was off with her. It looks like her friend was shot first, in the back and straight to the heart. She may have heard or seen the killer and turned, which is why he missed her vital organs.”
“Maybe Beth and Ricky both saw him,” Jill managed, feeling cold.
It was possible. For seconds they all fell silent, except David who was on his phone.
Hanging up, he said, “Beth is out of surgery and in the recovery room. She’ll be groggy from pain meds, but you can try to talk to her.”
5
In the wide ER hall, they were pushing through staff, gurneys and milling outpatients when a female voice chimed, “Doctor Levine! Doctor Raney! Do you have any comment on the Central Park victim?”
Oh hell. A reporter, dressed in a denim jacket and holding up her smartphone. From behind her stepped a male reporter in jeans with his phone taping too. “Any word on her condition? Or her child’s? We heard-”
“No comment,” David said gruffly, pulling Jill away. She glared at them, didn’t hide the fury she felt at these vultures sneaking in, treating this terrible thing as hot news. Reporters weren’t allowed inside the hospital, but that pair dressed down to blend and used their cam phones.
Brand and Blasco tried to drop back in their plain clothes, but grim-faced and purposeful, they still looked like cops. Then a security guard was there, ordering the reporters out.
Too late.
Two other jeans-clad reporters were suddenly there too, arguing about their rights and then arguing with a uniformed policeman who came up.
“Dammit,” David bent and growled to Jill’s ear as they moved through the din. “We’re going to be on TV again.”
“Great,” she whispered. “Think we should sleep here tonight?”
“Definitely.”
For a comforting moment she pressed her brow to his stubbly cheek.
Another dressed-down guy with a cam phone caught them like that. “Fantastic close up!” he exulted to a grinning pal. “They’ll be trending in minutes!”
That pair was escorted out too.
Jill’s throat closed. Rising in the staff elevator, she found it hard to breathe.
They gave both detectives sterile gowns, and went into the recovery room with them. Monitors beeped, an IV pole hovered, and from the other side of the curtain sounded the whooshing of another patient’s ventilator.
Beth Willis was fighting her medication, weeping.
“Ricky?” she said weakly, seeing them. Her curling dark hair was sweaty and her dark eyes were bloodshot. “Ricky?”
“He’s okay,” Jill said, leaning in and squeezing her hand. “He’s here in the hospital and he’s okay.”
Beth became agitated and her pretty face puckered. “Nooo…”
Huh? On the other side of the bed Kerri bent to her. “You and Ricky are safe,” she said gently. “Did you see who did this to you?”
“Mortar,” Beth breathed. “Came right into the hospital tent.” Her reddened eyes widened, darted frantically around. “Ricky should be home. Too…dangerous. Casualties...”
Kerri straightened and looked at the others. “PTSD flashback,” she said quietly.
Beth’s moving tugged at the IV threaded into the back of her hand. David caught her hand gently in his and adjusted her adhesive tape.
“Beth?” he said. “I’m David, and you’re home. In America, New York. You and Ricky were walking in Central Park, do you remember?”
Beth frowned painfully, moving her head back and forth on the pillow. “Sand…all over…surgical tent. So much…blood.” She started to cry again. David checked her monitor and muttered that her blood pressure was rising.
He called over a recovery nurse. “Give her a stat dose of Valium, two milligrams. Keep the dose low, she’s on pain meds.”
The nurse hurried off and the cops traded disappointed looks.
Jill gave them a wait till later shrug, indicating the door. David was leaning over Beth, speaking softly to her and patting her cheek. The nurse returned with the Valium and soothed her too, called her “honey.”
Kerri and Alex followed Jill out. “Tomorrow,” she said in the hall, feeling the knot still tight in her chest. “She’ll still be on pain meds, but she’ll probably be clearer.”
Alex handed her his folder of copied photos. Jill was surprised.
“The task force has plenty,” he said. “They’re surveillance pics of people leaving the park by different entrances, timed between right after Beth was attacked to an hour later. A smart creep knows there are cameras and might wait before leaving.”
Jill opened the pile of photos and started looking at them. Her head pounded with stress and fatigue. Sand in the surgical tents? She couldn’t put the terrible image away.
David came out, saw Jill thumbing through photos one at a time and said, “Wait. Gimme.”
She handed him the folder and he shoved a gurney against the wall. Whump! Then he started sorting the photos into different piles across the gurney sheet. Jill understood and started inspecting the ones he’d placed to the far right. It was the smallest pile. He shot her a little grin.
“That does it.” Kerri leaned to see. “You two really should have been detectives.”
“Makes sense.” David said, holding up a photo and frowning at it. “Anyone under a baseball cap with his chin down and leaving alone might know the cameras are there and not want his picture taken.”
Alex finished checking his phone in frustration. “No updates,” he muttered. “Eyewitness interviews have yielded nothing so far, for this attack or the first two.” He inhaled, looked from
David to Jill. “Beth may be our only eyewitness.”
He didn’t have to ask the obvious, the reason the photos had been sent over, but he did anyway. “If she wakes before we get back here…show those to her? If she’s up to it?”
“She will be,” David said. “Post-op, you can’t expect too much. But she’s gotta be a strong person.”
Kerri blew air out her cheeks. “Help us get this guy. He’s going to kill again. We’re sleeping in the precinct crib like three hours a night since this started.”
Jill, scowling at a photo, muttered something that sounded like “Sleep? What’s that?”
Looking strained and totally beat, the two detectives said good night and left.
6
In a dark bar, the man in the fake goatee sipped his Guinness. Nothing but the best, he thought, savoring the taste. He’d pulled his hood away and slipped on fake wire rimmed glasses before entering. The hair was a brownish graying wig and the glasses made him look smart.
Which he was, of course. He’d always been smart.
Next to him, a blond with black-rimmed, tired eyes and chipped red nails was downing her Cosmo and glancing up at the TV. The news was on. A nervous reporter was giving the latest on the Couples Killer, dragging it out, repeating that the police briefing was about to begin any minute.
He turned to peer at the avenue through the bar’s window. Diagonally across, the hospital, a block away. He’d decided to stick around.
“There’ll be more,” he said under his breath.
The blond next to him put a red-nailed hand on his arm. “No! You think so?”
“I fear so.” He looked at her, smiled politely. “I just put my girlfriend in a cab. Hated sending her off alone, but it’s sounding more dangerous to be a couple.”
“Wise move,” said a young man behind him, his scrubs showing under his open jacket. He’d had some beers and was letting off steam. The place was full of scrubs, self-important, obnoxiously piping about their cases. The man in the fake goatee knew this place. The hospital watering hole.
CATCH ME (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 4) Page 3
