Rise of a Phoenix: Rise of a Phoenix

by phill syron-jones

  “McCall, are you there?” The voice sounded confused.

  “How the hell did you? Never mind, I don’t think I want to know. What’s up?” she said, adjusting to the shock of hearing from him.

  “I got an address and name for vic number two.”

  “Really?” She sounded surprised that he was capable of doing some actual police work.

  “Don’t sound too amazed. Anyway the second victim was a Miss Susan Black and she had an apartment in Queens; I just texted you the address.”

  She tried not to sound too excited about the new lead, not wanting to give him the satisfaction, , but a lead was a lead no matter where it came from. “OK, I will meet you OUTSIDE the block, you hear me! Outside the block. No going in by yourself.” She was blunt and to the point.

  “Yes, mommy,” he said and hung up. She scowled to herself at his childishness.

  TWENTY

  Sam McCall drove up to the main entrance of the apartment block and parked. On exiting her car she saw Steel leaning against the white plaster of the massive tower block. He wore black jeans, a strange black shirt that had only three or four buttons and what appeared to have a clerical collar, which looked stiff against his neck apart from at the front, where there was a small gap. Over that, he had a long black three-quarter length suit jacket. It looked smart but casual, and his outfit was topped off, as always, by those dammed sunglasses.

  “Detective,” he greeted her with a smile.

  “Detective,” she returned the greeting but not the smile.

  “Shall we?” he said, opening the door for her. McCall used the other door just out of spite, a trace of a smile on her face, smug in her small victory. He paused for a moment while a very attractive woman went through the door he’d opened for McCall. The woman thanked him and went on her way, leaving him with a smile he would never forget. McCall shot him a disapproving look, but he just raised his hands, palm sides up.

  “What?” he said innocently.

  As they entered the lobby they noticed a large well-built Hispanic man with short hair at the front desk. They figured that the guy’s dark suit and white shirt was part of a uniform denoting that he was part of the building’s workforce. Sure enough, as they neared the desk they noticed that the tie he wore bore the name of the tower.

  “Good afternoon, can I help you?” he said, his deep voice and with a definite foreign accent, probably Columbian. McCall reached towards the badge clip on her belt and lifted the shiny piece of tin so he could see it.

  “Yes, I’m Detective McCall and this is Detective Steel. I believe you have a Miss Susan Black staying here, is that correct?”

  “Miss Susan, yes. A very nice lady, she always says hello whenever she sees one of us on duty. Why are you asking? Has something happened to her?” His smile was replaced by a real look of concern.

  “Yes,” McCall tried to break the news gently.

  “I’m sorry to say that she was murdered and we are trying to establish what she was doing in the hours before she died.”

  “Whatever we can do to help, please ask,” he said, the shock of this revelation etched on his face.

  “Would it be possible to take a look at her apartment?”

  He nodded and called to one of the cleaning girls who was just passing.

  “Melanie, can you take these people to 121 please?”

  She nodded and asked them to follow her to the elevator. This lady cleaner was all of twenty years old, if that, with short dark hair and a strange light-blue outfit that had short sleeved arms and was buttoned all the way down the front.

  “Did you know Miss Black at all, Melanie?” asked Steel softly, noticing her shocked behaviour at the news of the death.

  “Not really. We spoke now and then, but just in passing. She was friendly like that. She was a nice person. She didn’t deserve to be murdered.”

  “Nobody does,” said McCall, with a strange look in her eyes, that Steel took note of.

  The girl let them inside the spacious apartment. Like the other victims, she lived alone, had no photos of family or friends, nothing that could lead them to their human contacts. McCall and Steel searched high and low for something but, just like before, they kept coming up empty. Eventually Steel walked into the living area carrying a pink book with a small padlock on its corner, apparently Susan’s diary.

  “Look what I found,” he said, waving the small book.

  “Not really your colour,” said McCall sarcastically.

  He smiled. “It’s her diary and I guess if we want to know something about a person it could be right here...” He was right and she knew it. And boy, how she hated that.

  “OK, bag it and we will take it back.”

  McCall’s search of the kitchen found nothing, just the reminder that they needed refreshment, after seeing the contents of Susan’s refrigerator. Steel walked back out of the bedroom and looked around, his brow wrinkled with confusion and worry.

  “What’s up?” McCall asked. Even knowing him for just a short time, she’d picked up on his ‘I’m on to something’ expression.

  “Did the other victims have computers?” he asked, still looking around the room.

  “I think so, why?” Now she was intrigued.

  “If you’re a successful business woman, you would have your life planned out. So far, have all the apartments been like this? I don’t mean size, just as organized as this place is?”

  He had walked into a small room that had probably been designed as a child’s room or a guest room. Instead it was arranged as a small office, with piles of business-related papers and a laptop.

  “McCall,” he called for her, as he looked through a large pile of papers that were on a pine-topped desk. McCall entered and looked round the small office. The walls were painted lilac and many pin boards hung from them, covered with flow charts and diagrams.

  “OK, I’ll get CSU in here, see if there is anything relevant.” She made the call and waited for the crime scene team to take over.

  TWENTY-ONE

  On his return from lunch, the good doctor was busy in his office at the department. Dr Davidson had created his own ‘murder board’; however, this assembly of information was based more on personality analysis than the murder facts. It had pictures of the victims, and lines of writing here and there that aimed to correlate similarities in the women victims, while also trying to analyze what made the killer tick.

  And on another board he had put what was known about the killer himself; for Davidson, just the smallest obscure detail that was there, or should have been there, spoke volumes to him. For instance he judged that the way the victims were found, demonstrated a respect or lack of it, for the victims.

  The doctor was perched at his desk looking over some medical reports that had come up from downstairs, and he picked up the water glass that was next to him and began to sip as he read.

  Now that he was banned from the ME’s lab (because Tina had thrown out ‘the freaky bastard’), all reports had to be brought to him by Officer Jenny Thompson. This woman was a promising young female officer, so any experience she could gain from being with the homicide department were always welcome.

  Thompson knocked on the door but he gave no reply. Again she knocked but heard nothing. One of the detectives noticed her plight and waved to her, indicating that she should go straight in; she nodded and obeyed, and as she entered, she saw Dr Davidson staring at some of the photos from the crime scenes. And she could have sworn that he was actually stroking them.

  Shocked by seeing this, she didn’t notice the chair in front of her as she collided with it, knocking the table. He looked up at her with maddening red eyes and pupils so dilated they seemed almost black.

  She stared, horrified at his gaze, and she found she could not move or scream. It was as if his stare had caught her in some kind of stasis. A long strand of thick saliva slid from his mouth reminding her of a rabid dog. Thompson broke free from his gaze, screamed and ran out of the room crying,
attracting a lot of attention. The big detective who had witnessed this scene burst in to confront the doctor, but as soon as the large man caught his gaze he turned white, rushing off to the men’s room to throw up. The detective had seen evil before but never felt it, not like that.

  TWENTY-TWO

  McCall and Steel stopped at a street corner vendor and ordered a couple of hot dogs.

  “So, Mr. Steel why don’t you tell me something about yourself?” McCall grinned as she shot the question at him.

  “Such as what?” Steel smiled. He had been wondering how long it would take for her to ask him something personal.

  “Such as anything.” she said, taking the steaming dog off the man and covering it in ketchup, to Steel’s disgust.

  “Would you like a hotdog with your ketchup?” John Steel said, still staring at the sauce running off the paper napkin.

  She gave him a quick ‘mind your own business’ stare and bit into it. Steel took his hotdog and paid for the both of them. The air was fresh with a slight breeze, and as they found a bench they both sat down to eat. Steel looked upwards, as if he was trying to gather some of the rays of sunlight from above.

  “So what do you want to know?” he asked.

  “I don’t know where were you born. What you did before you came here? Why did you join the US police and not the British force? You know, little things like why you don’t seem to exist!” She gave him a grim look and he just smiled.

  “Wow,” he said, biting into the hotdog that was mostly bread. “No wonder you put so much ketchup on it.”

  She could see he was evading the questions.

  “Look, I know, Detective, that I seem ... How I can put it”

  “An asshole?” she butted in with a grin.

  “I was going to say secretive but if you prefer that, I guess that works. Thing is, right at this moment I’ve got a couple of trust issues, but I promise I will tell you everything once I know where I stand, OK?”

  It wasn’t OK but she could sense there was definitely more to his story. The question was, did she want to know about his life, or be a part of it?

  Her cell phone buzzed, and taking it out of her pocket, she pressed the receive button.

  “We got a body at 42 and Lex.” The voice on the phone was Tooms and he did not seem happy.

  “OK, Mystery Boy,” McCall told the Englishman after finishing the call. “Let’s go, but we will pick this up later, believe me.”

  “Perhaps over dinner?” Steel said with a hopeful voice.

  “Yeh, we just tried that, and believe me that’s the only dinner we will be sharing.” She gave him a scornful look that made him grin even more.

  “See, you’re warming to me. Before you would have thrown the food at me, not made me eat it.” He looked up as a sudden thought struck him.

  McCall picked up on it immediately. “What is it?”

  “I was just wondering which would have been worse, eating the hotdog, or wearing it.”

  She pretended to throw her phone but he just got into the car quickly to evade her anger. She smiled before getting in, but once inside the car her good humour had vanished from her face.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Dr Davidson rose from his seat after reading the ME’s report on the latest victim, took the jacket of his brown thousand-dollar suit off the back of an empty chair and put it on, moving his hands down the arms as if to smooth out the wrinkles. Walking towards the door, he grabbed a black worn-looking briefcase with brass catches on it. As he entered the outer office, he stopped, put down the case and put on some black leather gloves that had lain upon the case earlier on. He looked round, surveyed all the people in the room, and smiled.

  When he got to the elevator a voice spat out: “Where you going, Doc?”

  “I have work,” Davidson replied, without slowing down his pace.

  “Thank fuck for that,” came another voice from somewhere in the room; this, however, did make him stop for a brief second, and then, as the elevator doors shut behind him, he was gone.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  McCall and Steel arrived at the address they’d been given; it was a shabby hotel in the East Side with wallpaper that looked like it had been hung in the 1930s, when the place had been built. It was dark, even though there were wall lights, but their minimal illumination was inadequate.

  Outside the victim’s room two patrol officers stood either side of the door, making sure nobody entered. McCall flashed her badge and they both nodded. As the detectives entered the room, they donned some blue latex gloves, then walked into the sitting area, where they found a shaven-headed man with tattoos that covered his arms and most of his neck, seated on a chair. They approached from either side, Steel sensing that something was not right. The man was sitting there with his eyes wide open, and he was dressed in blue jeans, white shirt and black army-style boots. His tanned complexion minimized the colours of an array of tattoos, presumably collected in jail, and a beard sprouted from his slim face. He appeared to be dead, however there didn’t appear to be any indications of the cause. Steel held his position and started to scan the room. McCall was about to approach the corpse when he yelled for her to stop.

  “Stop! Just stop!” he commanded. “In fact, do me a favour and get against that wall.” He pointed at the wall behind her, which had no view to or from the only window.

  “God, you are so paranoid! Look, the man is dead and we need to find out what killed him and we can’t do it from here.” She had lost patience with him at this point, maybe a result of the irritations from the past couple of days that had finally gotten to her. McCall didn’t know or care why he wanted her to stand still, all she wanted to do was get to the body.

  “Don’t you find it strange that he is sitting there dead, facing a window with no clear cause of death?” he asked.

  “Maybe it was a heart attack, or some other medical explanation. But we won’t find it from here,” she said.

  “Look, I have seen this type of thing before and I just think it’s a trap, that’s all.”

  She gave him a weird look and walked forward towards the body. Steel lunged at McCall, knocking her to the floor in a football tackle. Just as he did so the window shattered and there was a popping sound as the dead man’s head exploded over the back wall. Blood and head fragments peppered its surface. Catching their breaths, Steel looked at McCall, who lay underneath him.

  “You OK?” he asked as they lay there, his legs astride her.

  She looked up at him, their eyes met and she felt an attraction that she soon managed to shake off.

  “Are you hurt?” he repeated, sounding concerned.

  “What? No, but you are squashing me.” He realized the position he was in and rolled off her.

  “Sorry.”

  They both looked at the headless corpse.

  “I guess you were right, but how did you know?” She gave him a wary look as he got up and hugged the wall.

  “I know one thing,” Steel muttered, still panting from the adrenaline rush.

  “And that is?” she asked, calmly anticipating some hopefully useful information.

  “Well, if he wasn’t dead before, he sure as hell is now.” Steel sarcastically pointed out, as he looked at the pattern of blood and brains on the wall and then give a shrug.

  She just gave him a ‘Sick bastard’ look and called in the incident.

  Fifteen minutes later a flurry of police and members of a SWAT unit were swarming all over the building opposite in an attempt to find the shooter or at least some clues. With the area made safe, the CSU teams had split and had two places to canvass. McCall was sitting with a blanket draped around her shoulders getting checked out in the back of an ambulance, when Steel walked up to her with a cup of hot chocolate.

  “Here, drink this,” he said, passing her the beverage. She saw it and looked puzzled.

  “Hot chocolate? Really?” She looked puzzled.

  “Yes, the sugar will help compensate for the adrenaline
loss so you won’t feel faint,” he said, sipping his own. “Oh really? And where did you learn that?” she said suspiciously.

  “Discovery Channel. It’s brilliant—tells you everything.”

  She knew it was an evasive answer, but under the circumstances, she was going to let it pass. For now. “Thanks.” She smiled up at him. “Any time.” Steel returned the smile.

  McCall was given the all clear by the medics, and prepared to head for the shooter’s building, when the Captain came to join them. “Where the hell do you think you are going, detectives?” He yelled, stopping them both.

  “I was...We were just going too.” McCall suddenly froze as Brant shot them both an angry look.

  “Go home and get some rest, I hope the next sentence was going to be, detective.” His look was severe. “Hey, don’t look at me Captain, I was just following her,” Steel said, innocently sipping his drink. “But sir,” McCall protested, “we were just shot at from”

  “Yes, you two were shot at. So that makes it someone else’s case. You’re too close to it, so you have to go home. Do it now!”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The evening drew in and the sun began to disappear into the horizon, leaving behind a sky that looked as if it was on fire, with the dark orange and reds that bled across the heavens. Streaks of dark cloud cut across the view, as if the canvas it had been painted upon had been slashed, hiding the last remnants of the sun. The bar was quiet, but that’s how he liked it. It was a place he could come and gather his thoughts. The place was old, dating back to probably before Prohibition; the booths were of heavy oak with dark green leather padding, the tables supported by shining brass pillars, and the floor was tiled. The bar ran the breadth of the room with bar stools lining its counter, ready to house the next happy customer. Tooms loved this place, it was his retreat and that was why he had invited him here. As the detective walked in he was greeted with friendly hellos from the staff, which he returned with equal pleasure. He searched, then he saw a large bulk of a man with short hair, who was sipping a cold one.