by Tom Barber
One Way
( Sam Archer - 5 )
Tom Barber
Tom Barber
One Way
ONE
Two officers from East Hampton Town PD took the call. Both male, they’d joined the Department fresh from the Suffolk County Police Academy three years ago, and after a twelve-week orientation and on-the-job training programme, had been partners ever since.
East Hampton Town PD is made up of fifty-six officers who perform all of the law-enforcement tasks the area requires. The Hamptons are a group of villages forming a part of upstate New York everyone associates with wealth; the rich and famous frequently choose to vacation there, some renting places for the season and others just buying them outright to save hassle. Whichever option they take, the Hamptons contain some of the most expensive residential properties not just on the East Coast, but in all of the United States. There was a reason the region served as a setting in The Great Gatsby; the area evokes the glamour and sophistication of a prosperous present and romanticised past.
Given the demographic and the amount of zeroes a person needs in their bank account just to rent a place there, crime is low. Most of those who vacation and live in the Hamptons are the business and social creme de la creme, so any illegal activity tends to be either petty stuff or at the opposite end of the spectrum, serious accounting, fraud or business transgressions which an FBI or a Financial Crimes task force from the city handles. The most common illegal deed is burglary, thieves capitalising on properties mothballed for long periods out of season or when the residents are out of town, making the most of their absence to help themselves to expensive furniture, art and jewellery.
Murder in East Hampton Town is almost unheard of. Until that Saturday afternoon, there hadn’t been a single case in the area in over nine years. The PD has no homicide division, which means in the extremely rare event of an unexplained death, a Department squad car answers the call.
In their three years together, the two young men on their way to the callout that day had never attended a murder scene.
But what they found at the villa significantly changed that.
It had just gone 3pm on a beautiful Saturday in early March. The air was warm, the sun shining, summer missing the memo and arriving three months early. The address the two officers were given by Dispatch was a prestigious beach villa an hour’s drive from the city. A delivery man had called it in fifteen minutes ago. He’d been sent out to deliver a few additional cases of wine for a party and after no-one had responded to his repeated knocking on the front door, he’d gone around the back.
Inside an East Hampton Town PD Ford Interceptor, the two cops swung into the drive, pulling up beside an ambulance and seeing the delivery man sitting in the back. His own van was parked on the side of the road outside the gates, the rear doors still open. The man had an oxygen mask over his face and was being attended to by a couple of paramedics inside the ambulance.
He was staring straight ahead, his eyes glazed, and didn’t seem to notice the two cops arrive.
Sliding on the handbrake and switching off the engine, the two police officers stepped out of their vehicle and slammed the doors. Both were dressed in the dark blue EHT PD police uniform, and were carrying a pistol, cuffs, radio and nightstick on their belts. The medics looked over at them but didn’t say anything, concentrating on their patient. Approaching the entrance to the house, the officers saw the front door was shut, several cases of wine abandoned on a wheeled dolly beside it, the booze abandoned by the delivery guy.
Looking at the door, one of the officers turned and walked over to the ambulance.
‘Got a glove?’ he asked quietly.
The medic closest to him pulled a latex one from a box, passing it over. Snapping it onto his hand with a silent nod of thanks, the officer re-joined his partner. With the glove protecting against fingerprints, he tried the handle.
It twisted and the door opened. He eased it back to reveal the interior of the villa.
The house had a Mediterranean feel, light, open and airy with a polished tile floor which would keep the place cool in the hot weather. There were impressive paintings on the walls either side of the hallway, an ornate mirror hanging above a gold gilt marble-topped table to the right, a large crystal lamp and vase of flowers placed on the top.
The two cops stepped inside slowly, taking care not to touch or disturb anything. They made their way down the corridor and passed through an open door to arrive at what was the main living area.
It was spacious and open-plan, conjoined with a large kitchen and separated by a long granite-topped counter. Matching the exterior of the house, the walls were painted white and cream.
It meant the blood spattered all over them stood out starkly.
There were bodies strewn everywhere. Men. Women. Children. It was clear from the remaining foodstuffs on the counter and on a dining table that they’d been killed at or just prior to lunchtime.
Bowls of salad and plates of sliced cold-cuts were sitting abandoned.
Glasses and plates were shattered all over the floor, shards of glass and pieces of bone china lying amongst spilt food.
Bottles of wine and beer had either been fragmented by gunfire or were lying smashed on the counter, table and floor, the liquid mixing with the food and blood. Deep black bullet holes riddled the light walls and scores of copper shell casings were scattered everywhere, lying amongst the bodies and debris.
The villa had a terrible stillness.
It looked more like an abattoir than a holiday home.
Both cops stood frozen in the doorway. It took each of them a moment to recover from the initial shock. As one stared in horror at the carnage in front of him, the other looked out onto the veranda directly in front of them. The windows were all intact. One of the doors was pulled open, and the thin cream curtains fluttered gently in the breeze.
The only movement in an otherwise motionless house.
They heard a set of wind-chimes, tinkling softly from somewhere outside as they made gentle contact in the light wind. The villa was on the edge of the beach so the two men could see and hear the waves as they rolled in, seagulls calling from somewhere nearby, the air salty.
The cop to the right stepped forward, picking his way slowly and cautiously round the edge of the room, taking great care not to tread on any evidence. It was easier said than done. When he made it to the window, he drew his nightstick and used the club to push the gently billowing curtains to one side, examining the sand visible beyond the veranda.
There were a series of children’s footprints visible, coming back and forth from the water.
But there were also a set of four, maybe five, definite adult prints, leading from the sea to the villa and back again.
He looked up but saw nothing except clear blue sea and horizon.
No ships, no sailboats. No people.
Whoever did this was long gone.
He turned away from the window and re-joined his partner, who still hadn’t moved as he stared at the massacre. He sensed his partner watching him and they made eye contact.
Their priority now was to clear the rest of the residence.
The two men pulled their side-arms and split up, following protocol, checking the villa quickly. They moved fast but worked thoroughly, both of them on edge, inspecting every room. The rest of the house was equally lavish, each room beautifully decorated and well-appointed with expensive furniture. Whoever owned the property was damn wealthy, that was for sure.
It was clear as daylight they also had enemies.
Soon after, the two officers met up again outside the main room. The man who’d stepped up to the window holstered his side-arm and swallowed, his throat dry.
‘Found two more upstairs.
Both shot in the head.’
‘Was this a robbery?’
His partner stared at the blood-stained and bullet-riddled walls around them.
‘No. This was an execution.’
The other man looked down at the corpses. The body closest to his feet was a big man in shorts and a white shirt, lying flat on his back. He had a gold chain around his neck, thick chest hair protruding through the gap in the fabric, his hair combed back.
He’d been shot three times in the chest. Blood had dried around him, his lifeless eyes staring up vacantly at the ceiling.
Shifting his gaze, a body ten feet away caught the officer’s eye. The guy had a pistol in a holster on his hip, lying face down in a pool of his own blood. He wasn’t the only corpse in the room who had a weapon.
Staying where they were, the two cops both heard the sound of wailing sirens somewhere in the distance. Back up was almost here.
Then a noise came from inside the house. The two men froze. They pulled their side arms and looked at each other.
It had come from one of the rooms along the corridor.
They lifted their pistols and stood there, listening. They heard it again.
A rustle.
Movement.
Keeping their weapons in the aim, the two men moved down the corridor slowly as the sirens outside grew louder. There was the sound of a series of cars screeching to a halt in the drive, the quiet villa about to become a hell of a lot busier.
Behind the two cops, the thin curtains rippled gently in the sea breeze.
And the tinkling of the wind chimes echoed through the house.
*
Two weeks later and almost fourteen hundred miles south of East Hampton, a man twisted a key in a lock and pushed open the door to his second-floor apartment. He lived alone and had just come back from a long day’s work. He’d been having a rough time at the office lately and today had been especially gruelling, full of questions and not many answers. He felt like a boxer with his back to the ropes, taking an onslaught of punches, desperately trying to make it to the bell and back to his corner. He was hanging in there.
Just.
Closing the door behind him and ensuring it was locked, the man laid the keys on the side, along with a pistol he pulled from his belt and a cell phone he drew from his pocket. Walking over to the fridge, he yanked the door open and took out a cold Corona from the shelf, unscrewing the cap and tossing it at the trash. Scooping up a take-out menu, he wandered into the lounge and collapsed onto a chair, tired and pissed off in equal measure.
He grabbed the remote control from the arm beside him and flicked on the television, taking a long pull of cold beer. The last thing he felt like doing was concentrating on anything right now, but considering what he did for a living, it was important to stay abreast of current affairs.
He also wanted to see if he or anyone he knew had made the headlines.
He flicked onto CNN and took another swig of icy beer, looking at the take-out menu and thinking about what to order. He glanced at the screen again.
And he froze.
The footage was of a small girl leaving an urban Police Department Plaza in what had to be Washington or Philadelphia or maybe New York. She was being moved quickly, escorted fast by a male and female security team, reporters and journalists being kept well back.
The man scanned the banner headline and the images.
Slamming his beer on the table beside him, he jumped up from the chair and rushed across the room, grabbing his cell phone. Dialling a number, he moved back in front of the television and continued watching the screen, at the little girl being ushered towards a blacked-out car.
Someone picked up the other end.
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s me!’ the man said hurriedly.
‘What is it?’
‘You’re not going to believe who I’m looking at right now.’
‘Who?’
‘CNN, right now. Now!’
‘OK. Hang on.’ There was a pause. A shuffling the other end of the line. ‘Hurry!’
Another pause.
Then the man the other end came back.
‘Holy shit.’
‘It’s her,’ the man said, staring at the screen. ‘It’s her.’
TWO
‘C’mon, push!’ 3rd Grade NYPD Detective Josh Blake ordered, standing inside a gym eight days later in New York City. ‘Push! Let’s see some effort!’
‘What do you think this is?’ his detective partner hissed through gritted teeth, fighting with a barbell on a bench underneath. The weighted bar in his hands was halfway up but it wasn’t moving fast, two hundred and twenty five pounds of nothing but solid metallic resistance.
‘Sometime this week would be nice,’ Josh said, watching him struggle.
Gritting his teeth, the blond man on the bench eventually locked out his arms and exhaled, the repetition complete. Josh nodded, helping him rack the barbell and the man sat up, wiping sweat off his brow and glancing around.
The gym was an upmarket one, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was late afternoon on a Sunday but there were still a few people around the place, some working hard on treadmills and stair climbers, others using the weight stations. The cost of a month’s membership here equalled the blond man’s rent in Queens for the same period, but Josh had paid for the year and was allowed to bring a guest every now and then. He was a great advertisement for the gym, the fruits of his labours clear in his physique. Black and just turned thirty, Josh was built like a Sherman tank or someone who stood outside a club with his arms folded asking to see some ID. Despite looking so physically intimidating, he possessed an even temperament and an even cooler head, and was one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. He and the blond man on the bench had been NYPD partners for eight months, and had become great friends outside of the Department.
‘Getting there,’ Josh said.
The other man nodded, rising from the bench, and took a seat on another positioned near the window. His name was Sam Archer. Twenty eight years old, he was also a 3rd Grade Detective and worked with Josh in the NYPD’s Counter Terrorism Bureau, a division formed recently in the last couple of years. A hair over six foot and a hundred and eighty five pounds, Archer was blond with blue eyes and had a face that looked more suited to magazine covers than law enforcement, a fact he was constantly ribbed about by his colleagues. However, like many before them, they’d quickly learned not to judge a book by its cover where he was concerned. He may have looked like a movie star but he was as tough as nails, carving out a damn good reputation in the short time he’d been a NYPD Detective. The two men operated in a five-man field team based out of the CT Bureau’s headquarters across the East River in Queens. However, Archer had spent the last three months trapped behind a desk whilst he recovered from a broken ankle and a nasty case of pneumonia after an unexpected hard fall into a freezing river at Christmas.
What had started out as an irritating chesty cough at the beginning of January, which he’d ignored, had eventually landed him in hospital and being pumped full of antibiotics for two weeks. He’d lost twenty pounds in weight and felt about as strong as a new born puppy once he got back on his feet, not aided by the broken ankle which had complicated his recovery. He’d finally ditched the cast and the crutches five weeks ago, and had been doing intense physiotherapy ever since, working on getting the strength and mobility back in the damaged joint. Between physio sessions he’d spent much of his spare time in the gym either out in Queens or here under Josh’s expert tutelage, trying to get back to full physical health. It had been tough going, but muscle memory had kicked in and he’d regained the weight he’d lost and most of his power. He’d just been assessed and finally cleared for field work again, starting officially tomorrow morning, the best news he’d heard all year. Considering the types of people the Counter Terrorism Bureau were tasked to deal with, he had to be in peak physical condition to do his job. Now, he felt he was pretty m
uch there.
Opening a bottle of water and taking a drink, he watched as Josh slapped an extra plate on each side of the barbell, slid on the clips, then moved around to the bench and lay back. He unracked the bar as if there was nothing on it and started pushing out repetitions, each one controlled and smooth. Archer stayed where he was, watching; Josh didn’t need a spot. He’d recently recovered from an injury himself, a gunshot wound to his arm. Josh had always looked as if he’d started life with a barbell in his crib but the bullet he’d taken had forced him to lay off the iron for a while. He’d been hitting it ferociously since he got the green light from the doctor six weeks ago and now looked even bigger than he had before he took the round.
Josh’s recovery was ahead of Archer’s, so he’d already been working on the street for six weeks, but truth be told it didn’t feel right unless Archer was beside him. He was almost as keen for his partner to return as the man was himself. Archer had been off his feet once before when he’d broken his ankle a couple of years ago, at the end of an operation back in the UK when he was a cop in the Armed Response Unit, the premier counter-terrorist task force in London. Back then every day off duty had felt like a week, tedious and boring as hell. This time around had been no different.
Finishing his set, Josh racked the barbell and sat up. Archer suddenly felt a cough coming on and hacked a few times, a deep chesty noise that came straight from the lungs and resonated around the gym, the last remnants of his chest infection. Physical exertion still brought it out every now and then.
A personal trainer nearby paused to look over but Josh caught his eye. The man turned back to his client.
‘The cough still bothering you?’ Josh asked.
Archer shrugged. ‘Not like it used to. How’s the arm, Popeye?’
Josh looked down. There was a white scar from the 9mm round, a small silver crescent moon. ‘Pretty good,’ he said, flexing his considerable bicep. Archer rolled his eyes and coughed again. The trainer looked over again, and this time couldn’t bite his tongue.
