Rise of a Phoenix: Rise of a Phoenix

by phill syron-jones

  As they approached, they saw police cars, ambulances, and two coroner’s trucks. They pulled up and parked, got out of the cars and rushed forward. Then Sam saw Tina finishing some paperwork off. She had never seen Tina looking so sad before now.

  Then she saw him. Steel was sitting on a step looking at his blood-soaked hands as though they did not belong to him.

  McCall ran towards him, passing Tina as she went, unaware that her friend was trying to stop her. She was furious. Suddenly all those days of John Steel wearing down her defenses had made her angry enough to tell him how she felt.

  “What’s the matter?” she yelled at Detective Steel. “Did some gang member piss you off? Is that it? God, you come here thinking you can stop every little crime, well you can’t!...This time you have gone too far, Mr. Steel!”

  He looked at her and stood up slowly, his clothes sodden with blood. What the hell had he done, she thought?

  “You’re right, Detective, I can’t,” he answered. “Maybe I should stop trying.” And with that he walked off, leaving her still boiling.

  “We are not done yet, Steel,” she shouted after him, but he just raised a hand as if to wave her away.

  She made her way to Tina, who had just processed the last body and closed the body bag.

  “So what has Dirty Harry done this time?” she asked, hoping to share the joke with her friend, but instead Tina just gave her a look of anger and disappointment.

  “What?” Sam asked in surprise. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Tina opened the bags, saying, “Look.”

  As Detective McCall peered inside she saw what appeared to the mortal remains of a boy. The other body bag contained the corpse of a woman, presumably his mother judging by her age and appearance, with similar injuries to her body. She noticed that the boy’s jacket was the same type worn by the lad, Luke, who had brought the coffee into the precinct that day.

  A lump filled her throat and tears rolled down her face. She was not just weeping for the boy and his mother, but for what she had done to Steel and what she had become.

  Detective McCall was told to go home and Steel had disappeared, so Tooms and Tony had to pick up the slack. The murderous Steve Johnson was now the DA’s problem, and his lawyers would have a hell of a case due to the fact that when the cops burst in he was in the process of putting a hammer through his wife’s skull. Plus, when asked why he did it he said that she would not give him money for booze and she just got in the way, after which he laughed. The lawyers would probably go for the insanity plea but the bastard deserved the chair, but that was not their call. “Thank God,” Tooms thought.

  McCall did not go home. Instead she went to the station gym and rode a million miles on the bike, followed by several rounds with the punch bag. Her black all-in-one gym suit clung to her sweaty body, enhancing her every curve; she could feel the hungry eyes of the men nearby on her, and she used the angry feeling of resentment at their uninvited attention to kick the hell out of the black worn bag. It swung with every hit as she gave it everything she had. Sam McCall showered, changed, and bought two coffees from the coffee shop round the corner. As she approached the morgue, she hoped to find Tina in a forgiving mood.

  When McCall entered the morgue she was greeted by an angry ME, her eyes still red with rage. Sam McCall gingerly moved forward, coffee cup held in an outstretched hand, almost as a peace offering. Tina took the cup, almost snatching it from her friend’s hand, while still giving her the evil eye.

  “Look, I’m sorry I lost my temper back there and”

  “Uh uh, girl, you do not apologies to me.” Tina raised a hand to stop her. “You know who you have to say sorry to.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Father Gabriel O’Donnell was always cheerful and good-spirited. He had no reason to be otherwise, for he had originally been a military chaplain and now he had a decent parish in New York, so all in all, life was good and less complicated than before. He had dark hair and his superficial appearance was that of a thin man, but in fact, under his garments his muscles and physique were those of an athlete.

  Entering the church, he moved to the middle of the red-carpeted gantry and knelt, prayed for a few seconds, then crossed himself before the cross that stood at the end of the building. Standing up, he then made his way to the door in the far corner that led to the back rooms and his office. On the way he noticed that the confessional box was occupied. He entered his side of the cubicle and sat down, and slid the small shutter that separated the two cells. He crossed himself and kissed the rosary in his hand.

  “Forgive me, Father, but I could not sin,” said a shallow voice.

  The priest shot up and opened the communicating door to find Detective John Steel sitting there covered in blood. The priest, shocked at seeing him, looked round and carried him to the back of the church and into his private office. Father O’Donnell was relieved and concerned that none of the blood was Steel’s, but he had questions. He walked over to a large wooden globe that stood in a dark corner of the room and lifted the lid; inside sat several bottles of whisky, brandies, and scotches. Taking two glasses, he poured them both a drink from a well-aged whisky. Passing Steel the glass, O’Donnell brought his chair forward slightly and sat facing the confused-looking detective.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” asked the priest, leaning back in the creaking leather chair. Steel stared into his glass, swirling the contents round, watching the liquid rise near the top and fall again to the bottom.

  “A couple of days ago I was walking down past Grand Central when this kid pops up out of nowhere; ‘can I shine your shoes Mr?’ he said.” Steel took a sip as the priest leant forward slightly.

  “I swear when I saw him I thought it was Thomas, you know, the kid was the spitting image of him.” Steel smiled slightly but was lost in his thoughts again.

  “OK, so what happened, Jonny?” asked the priest, not really knowing if he actually wanted to know or not.

  “Anyway, this kid and I got chatting and it turns out that he is earning the money to go to school, trying to make something of himself, but his dad is a drunk and a bully so I figured that the guy was swiping the boy’s money.”

  The priest looked confused for a moment. “How do you know about the father? Did you follow the boy?”

  “No, but I could tell. Every time I saw him he had fresh bruises, and there was this scared look on his face when I mentioned family.”

  The priest nodded. He too had seen what Steel had described, far too often.

  Steel washed back the contents of the glass and the priest just swopped their glasses. He felt that if he got up to get a fresh one the moment would be lost.

  “At the station today my work colleagues were having a private chat and I can only imagine what that was about.” Steel took a swig from the glass.

  “That’s when I got the call from the uniforms downstairs, a disturbance at the kid’s address.”

  The priest got up. He needed a drink, as he could only imagine what was coming next. Walking to the cabinet, he just grabbed the bottle and returned to his seat.

  “We got to the address and there were other uniforms there waiting to go in.” Steel looked up at his friend, but his pained expression was lost behind his glasses. “We burst in to see the guy with a hammer beating in the heads of the kid and his mother. There was blood everywhere.” He downed the contents of his glass and the priest refilled it, his hands shaking, something that Steel noticed.

  “Are you OK, Gabriel?” asked Steel, now concerned about his friend. The priest nodded and begged him to continue.

  “As we get in Officer Pike, just a young kid but a good cop from what I have seen, well he goes in to disarm this scumbag and gets himself slammed against the wall. The guy has Pike pinned there and has a hammer raised, ready to smash the cop’s head in.” Steel shook his head and looked up at his friend, who was now pre-empting everything he was about to say in his head.

  “So what did you d
o?” Knowing the answer before he said it, the priest asked anyway.

  “The guy has this big blood-dripping hammer over his head and he stops and looks at the cop for a second then at me, then he smiles and raises the weapon further back to get a better swing.”

  “Did you shoot him?” Knowing Steel for so long, the question seemed redundant, but he asked it anyway.

  “No!”

  O’Donnell’s face froze with surprise; Father Gabriel O’Donnell used to be in the TEAMs and knew Steel well. John Steel was a man who scared most of the toughest SEALs, not just because when he exploded he was nothing short of an animal, but because the man could move like a ghost: one member of the team called him ‘unnatural’ and another, who was of tribal Indian descent, called him a ‘wraith’. But what he had just described went against the nature of the beast. Steel saw the look on his friend’s face and smiled.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Gabriel, I wanted to blow this guy away so badly, but in a split second I had to make a choice.”

  “Between what exactly?” The priest was getting more and more surprised, and excited at the progress Steel had made.

  “Between going back to what I was and losing everything I had worked for, or being a cop and not letting down the people I work with, and letting down you, my old friend.”

  The priest smiled and put a reassuring hand on Steel’s knee.

  “But one thing hasn’t changed, my friend,” Gabriel said, still grinning.

  “What’s that?” Steel looked worried.

  “You’re still full of crap, buddy.”

  They both laughed.

  “Anyway, go on, now you have my attention,” said the priest, sliding back in the seat and getting more comfortable.

  “So this guy is smiling at me, the other cops have their pistols raised, and what do I do? I rugby tackle the bastard and while he is on the floor, that’s when I drew my piece. I put it on his temple and looked him in the eyes.” Steel took another hit from the glass.

  “At first this guy taunted me to kill him—dared me to do it. But I knew that death was too quick for him and too much paperwork for me. No, this bastard was going to jail, where every depraved nut job with family waiting would want a piece of him.”

  At that point, the priest knew that the old Steel was still there, it was just that now he used thought instead of force to get things done. The problem was, which was deadlier?

  “I had him. I could feel the anger swelling up inside of him, but then I told him he was going to live and that I would visit him every day if I had to remind him of what he had done, and that put the fear of God into him.”

  “Did you enjoy it?” asked O’Donnell, now getting worried.

  “At first yes, but then I calmed down and cuffed him. Helped the cop who’d been attacked to his feet and the uniforms booked him.”

  “So are you OK, Jonny?”

  “Yes, fine and that’s the problem, after everything that happened. Well you know?”

  The priest nodded.

  “I’ll get you a coffee,” Gabriel said, taking the glass. Steel smiled and nodded.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  McCall was back at her desk; after having a bit of a bawling out from the Captain, she returned to work. She sat at her work station and flicked through the many files on the three murders, forensic reports, and ME reports but she still drew a blank. Slamming the file she was reading shut, she stood up and moved to the set of information boards set up in front of her desk. One of these was a map of the city, which was covered by a plastic sheet so it could be written on repeatedly.

  Standing back, she looked at the pins that had been placed there denoting which victim was found where. She sat on the back edge of her desk and looked closely at each pin, each line, and each name of every street. What was she missing, she wondered? Tony and Tooms walked up to her and both smiled at her. She had had a rough couple of weeks, there was no mistaking that, and she probably did deserve a ticking off, but what had happened was really bad timing.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Tooms, as he sat next to her and sipped his coffee.

  “Don’t know yet,” she said slowly, as though some idea was stirring at the back of her mind.

  “Did you get anything?” she asked.

  Tony shook his head as he polished off the rest of the hot dog.

  “Homeless guys struck out, these guys are either in the wind or dead.” Tony remarked.

  She had to agree, but she wasn’t about to give up yet. She stood up and took different coloured markers.

  “What are you up to?” asked Tooms, who was looking puzzled. Taking another pin, she placed it on the map, then McCall drew lines from one victim to the other. Wherever they crossed, she put a pin.

  “You are working on the basis that all serial killers have a comfort zone?” said a voice from behind them. They all turned to look at the doctor, who was standing there.

  “What if this guy doesn’t have a comfort zone?” asked Tony.

  The others looked at each other, hoping someone would say something to shatter that horrifying thought.

  “Well, Doc?”

  Doctor Davidson scanned the map for a moment. “You said he used homeless people to move the body?” he asked, still looking at the board.

  “Yes, why do you ask?” asked McCall. If the doc was a genius, now was the time to prove it.

  “Well, this could mean he felt he was close to the victims and couldn’t see them in their end state, as it would shatter the illusion he had built of them.”

  All three detectives looked at one another, mouths open in surprise.

  “What do you mean? That this killer feels he has a relationship with the victims and so cuts them up, keeps parts but can’t get rid of the rest of their bodies?” Tooms spoke, completely confused by what he had heard.

  “This man you are after,” the doctor continued, “from what I can tell he does not identify with the entire victim, just the parts he likes about the person, in the same way that a man with a foot fetish cares little about the appearance of the person, he’s just interested in their feet.”

  “Ok, Doc,” Tooms replied. “Given this information, where do we start looking?”

  The strange medical man turned to them. McCall could sense that an idea was blooming inside that thin skull of his.

  “Check men who work at beauty salons and anywhere that guys might have had contact with our victims, especially situations where he could see them partially dressed.” The doc moved closer to the board, and a strange look crossed his pale face that was almost sadness, or perhaps it was remorse.

  “You’re looking for someone who has been fixated by the victims for a long time, even years maybe. Look at co-workers who may have played sports with them on occasions. Anyone who has seen them in the flesh. Judging by our victims’ lifestyles that list should be quite short.”

  Tony raised a hand once he had jotted the information down. “What about the kid the sister was talking about?”

  The doctor’s eyes still stared at the photos of the women as they had been in life.

  “It may be a lead, OK, go for it,” McCall instructed him, then turned to the Davidson. “Nice job, Doc,” she said with a smile, the first proper smile she had given him. He returned the smile, but she wished he had not.

  It sent a shiver shooting through her spine.

  The midday sun burnt brightly, but in the homeless shelter it was cooler. The empty old school building was now was home to the lost, the destitute or those who just didn’t-want-to-be-found. Raggedy people scuffled here and there just to find a hot meal, a bed for the night or both.

  The queue for food was long and the seating places in the dining hall were getting shorter, but still, for them even a place on a clean floor could be considered a relief.

  Eric and George were buddies, they had seen many cold winters and blazing summers together, and in this world they lived in, a friend to watch your back was never a bad thing. The pair had endur
ed much but still managed to keep cheerful.

  “So, have we got another job coming up, Eric?” asked the stockily-built George, as he moved along the queue. George was smaller than Eric was but his build was more that of steel worker: his many years in the navy had given him some bulk. He had seen many wondrous places in far off lands; however, after his life in the services he’d fallen on hard times, and now he roamed the open road with his pal.

  “No. It’s kinda strange we haven’t heard from him, don’t you think?” replied Eric. He spoke and carried himself well. In his former life he’d been a distinguished surgeon, but he had succumbed to the urges of drug addiction and lost everything: his job, his wife and kids, everything. Eric was a tall skinny man with brushed back, receding hair; his long thin face was noticeable for its long Roman nose and large mouth, whose broad smile could crack his face apart.

  “Shame, we sure could have used the money, oh well,” Eric said, straightening his filthy red tie. Even though he was down-and-out he still insisted on wearing a suit. George found this strange, but Eric had never done him wrong and now he hardly noticed his friend’s eccentricity.

  “Work, did I hear you say?” They both turned to find a bearded hunchback next to them, asking a question.

  “What of it?” Eric addressed the stranger. “And it is most impolite to eavesdrop, sir, now be gone with you.” Eric turned back to his friend, and the bulky hunchback, who was almost the same height as George, moved a little closer, cupping his hands together, as if he was asking for forgiveness.

  “Please, sir, I meant no disrespect to you or your friend, it’s just the thought of work excited me so much, apologies,” The newcomer said.

  Eric turned and gazed upon the man who had spoken so politely. His speech had touched something within him.

  “You spy upon me, Sir,” continued the man, “as though you wonder what a man of such disposition can possible do for work, but I assure you sir I am as strong as an ox.”