by Oliver Stark
Detective Munroe opened his hands, showed both palms. ‘We just need your help. Can we come inside, Miss Levene? It’d be good to talk to you.’
‘It’s Dr Levene, for the record.’
‘We’re aware of your academic qualifications, Doctor. My apologies.’
‘You must be desperate to look me up. Someone at the NYPD send you?’
Munroe shook his head. ‘We can tell you more inside.’
Denise tried to imagine why they were there. ‘You’re both from Missing Persons?’
‘Right.’
Denise looked up. The city was concrete gray under a pale blue sky. The traffic was rushing by in a frenzied continuous strain. The sweat was turning cold on her skin. She turned back to Sarah Gauge. ‘So, who’s missing?’
Gauge glanced at Munroe then cleared her throat. ‘You heard of Abby Goldenberg? The missing schoolgirl, Abby?’
‘No,’ said Denise. ‘Should I have?’
‘It’s been on the news. She went missing a week ago.’
‘I don’t watch much TV.’ Denise hadn’t heard of Abby, but the name Goldenberg rang a bell somewhere in her memory.
‘Kind of cut yourself off,’ said Munroe. He pushed a finger in one ear and scratched. ‘It’s not a solution.’
‘You’d know this?’ said Denise. ‘Because you’re a psychiatrist, right? Forgive me, I didn’t realize.’
Munroe’s lips formed a half-smile. ‘No, lady, I’m no shrink. It’s common sense. No one learned to ride again by hiding from a horse.’
‘Yeah, well, what I do is up to me, right?’ said Denise.
‘Sure, but—’
She held up her hand, cutting him off. She walked past both detectives and opened the heavy glass door of her building. Munroe and Gauge followed her in. ‘I apologize for being so persistent,’ said Munroe, ‘but a girl’s life is at stake here. We need your help.’
‘I’m on the eighth floor. You can take the elevator. I’ll meet you there.’ Denise went towards the stairs.
‘You’re taking the stairs eight floors?’ said Gauge. ‘You on some fitness program?’
‘I don’t take elevators,’ said Denise. The door to the stairway closed behind her. She was sheeted in sweat. The brief conversation had not been easy for her. The two cops looked at each other and Munroe pressed for the elevator. ‘What’s with her?’ said Gauge.
‘The killer held her underground for two days,’ said Munroe. ‘Only way in or out of her prison was an elevator shaft.’
Chapter Five
Diner, East Harlem
March 7, 8.07 a.m.
He sat in the diner in East Harlem, five minutes from the murder scene, eating a bacon and egg bagel. He was alone on a table for four but the diner was only half full at that time of day. An old lady to his right sat staring ahead, her head slightly crooked on her shoulders, wearing a pompous and refined air as if she was better than the rest, but beneath the table, she had no shoes and her bare feet were cut and rancid.
There were two cops sitting in the corner booth. He stared at them as they ate and joked. Jimmy Headless and Johnny Neckless. Every day, he imagined that this was how they started their shift — sign in, drive two blocks up from the precinct, park up and take free coffee and bagels from Enrico.
He took out a cell phone. Prepaid, untraceable. He had used it to call David Capske the night before, just after midnight. He’d told David that he had photographs of him taking cocaine. Threatened the palpitating young man that he was going to embarrass the hell out of the Capske clan and lose David his job.
David asked what he wanted. ‘Easy,’ he’d said. ‘One thousand dollars delivered tonight to a trash can on East 112th Street.’
He took the cell-phone battery from his pocket, put it back into the phone and waited for the software to load up and the satellite connection to show. He sipped some hot coffee as he logged on to a new Hotmail account and laboriously typed in the email addresses of all the networks and newspapers. Then he composed a short but important message.
He looked across to Jimmy and Johnny. Arch-morons of the modern world. Keeping up the illusion that we were all safe. He smiled at the waitress and nodded as she held up the coffee pot. He pressed send.
He sat and waited, the murder weapon still in his pocket like a memento of the kill. He remembered the feeling. He wanted to have that high again. But he couldn’t, not yet. He knew that he must remain hidden. His task was not to bathe in glory but to conquer the inferior. His task was to carry out orders.
He let the emails sail through space and time, hunting out their electronic destinations, and watched as they disappeared from the outbox.
He waited a good fifteen minutes, and then he put the phone to his ear and called 911. The tone clicked. The voice seemed small and distant. Not what you want in an emergency.
‘911, which service please?’ said the wheezy voice.
‘Police.’
‘What seems to be the problem, sir?’
‘There’s a dead body on East 112th Street, in an alleyway at Jenson House.’ He hung up, took the battery out of the cell phone and tossed it on to the floor. The phone would be wiped clean, smashed and deposited in a trash can on his walk to work.
He looked at his stopwatch and smiled at the number. His victim had taken seventy-nine minutes to die. There had been a lot of pain. That’s what he enjoyed. Pain.
He walked out past Jimmy and Johnny. ‘Hi there, fellas,’ he said, his right hand wrapped around the plastic grip of his gun, feeling the dirty excitement of flaunting it. They both looked up and nodded.
As he left, he guessed that the police dispatch would be chirping on the police radio for some squad car to go take a look. He waited in the street and, sure enough, the nearest cop car belonged to Jimmy and Johnny. They ambled out of the diner, fat and stupid, in no hurry whatsoever, and already about five hours too late.
He wanted to follow the dumb cops to observe them as they came across the corpse, to see their reaction to what he had done. He would’ve liked to have gone back to see the corpse and to take some pictures. But that was foolish. The cops would scan the scene. He couldn’t afford to be noticed.
He felt restless as he walked up the street, almost as if he’d set up a party that he wasn’t allowed to attend himself. Most of all he felt hungry for more blood. He only just realized what it was, the sudden feeling, almost unrecognized because it was unexpected.
He stared across the street. People were walking to work or to school. Then he felt it again. He thought it might have been some leftover excitement from the murder. Maybe the remembering, the sending of death messages, maybe all of the paraphernalia of the morning-after was tripping him up.
He was standing still, wearing a leather coat, a little unshaven, already late for work, his stomach warm from coffee, the blood of the dead man smeared across his chest and left to dry. He repeated the eighty-eight words as if a prayer.
If anyone wanted to know, if anyone asked now, who had killed that guy at Jensen House, he’d fucking scream from the rooftops: ‘I did, you fuckers! I did.’
He smiled at a woman approaching. He felt invulnerable, like a man on something. A blood-high, he called it, the freedom that comes from a kill.
He decided that what he was feeling could be called happiness. He hadn’t been happy his whole life long, but now… yes, that’s what it was, wasn’t it? That buzz of self-confidence, a sense of freedom, of optimism, of potency, of shamelessness — that was happiness, right there, sitting right there in his own heart and mind.
It was 8.22 a.m. on the streets of New York, the morning after the murder, and it came to him that he already wanted to kill again.
At first it was months before the intoxicating need filled his head, then weeks… now just a day. There was a feeling in his head like a ticking. Sometimes it went on for hours, like a roulette wheel slowed down. And when it stopped, then the order came.
It was ticking again.
H
e saw the world like never before, as if he was the central figure in his own movie and that movie had meaning. And its meaning was right there — blood on the streets, happiness, the urge to kill and a man nearly dancing with delight.
Chapter Six
Apartment, Lower Manhattan
March 7, 8.28 a.m.
Inside her apartment, Denise seated the two Missing Persons detectives in the living room. She left them for a moment and came back in clean sweatpants and a fresh top. She noticed the way Munroe stared at her. What was it? A chance to gawp or was he suspicious in some way? Difficult to tell.
Denise moved to the kitchen and poured a glass of orange juice. She didn’t offer the two detectives a drink and she didn’t sit down, either. She stood in the center of the room and looked at one then the other. She felt her nerves rising and falling, but tried to keep it hidden.
‘Nice place,’ said Sarah Gauge. ‘I like your things. All sleek and modern. I like a modern style.’ She gestured at the Italian sofa and then two angular aluminum candlesticks.
‘Can you get to the point?’ said Denise.
The two detectives sat on the sofa and Denise watched them, then leaned against the wall. Munroe took a white envelope out of his pocket and pulled out a photograph.
‘This is Abby,’ he said. ‘This is the most recent shot we’ve got of her. Red highlights included, although she was brunette when she disappeared.’
Denise stared across at Abby. She was a striking-looking girl. ‘What is she? Tenth or eleventh grade?’
‘Senior,’ said Munroe. ‘She’s just turned sixteen. She’s a Queens girl — Forest Park area. Parents divorced. Lives alone with her father. Mother lives in New Jersey with a new family.’
‘The girl is Jewish?’
‘Yeah, she’s Jewish. Her father’s keen on his Jewish heritage, if you know what I mean.’
‘Before you jump in with your locker-room anti-Semitism, you do know I’m also Jewish?’ said Denise. She glared down hard at Munroe.
‘I didn’t mean anything wrong by it,’ said Munroe. ‘It’s just that he’s a specialist. An academic. He curates exhibitions about the Holocaust. That’s all I meant.’
‘Where does he work?’
‘He lectures at Columbia and curates at the Museum of Tolerance.’
‘Goldenberg, you said? Thought I recognized it from when I used to work at Columbia.’
‘Well, he knows you too, Dr Levene. Only by reputation.’
Denise began to search her memory for the name. ‘What’s his first name?’
‘It’s Aaron. Dr Aaron Goldenberg.’
Denise felt her heart pump. Any link just brought the tragedy closer. She paused and turned from the two cops, looking out of the window. ‘I never knew him well. We probably met at an event. I don’t think I ever met his daughter.’
‘We know that.’
‘So what are you doing here?’
‘Truth is, this investigation is drying up fast. We’ve exhausted all avenues and Dr Goldenberg knows it. He’s a very persuasive man, Dr Goldenberg. He wanted us to go one more round. He wrote a list. We always ask for a list. All the people who his daughter might have known, wanted to know or had been influenced by. If she’s a runaway, she might go for someone she barely knows.’
‘And?’
‘You were on that list.’
‘In which category?’
‘She admired you, apparently.’
‘Me? She didn’t know me.’
‘She wanted to major in Psychology. Her father took her to one of your lectures. When you left Columbia for the NYPD, she thought that was cool.’
‘Cool?’
‘Packing in academia for a real career.’ Munroe tried a smile. Denise didn’t respond. ‘One in the eye for her old man, I expect.’
Detective Gauge stood. ‘We’ve got her diaries. She mentioned you in there too. Not so much about the Psychology. She seemed to like your style, the way girls do. Thought you looked beautiful and confident. That’s what she wrote.’
Munroe pulled out a copy of the diary entry and handed it to Denise. ‘She was quite affected by your abduction too. She followed the case on the news. She wrote a few prayers for you.’
Denise felt her emotions stir and she tapped the wall hard.
‘Dr Goldenberg has this theory that she might be disappearing to emulate you in some unconscious way. Maybe she sees it as a means of getting some attention. Her mother’s a real live-wire. Doesn’t have much to do with Abby.’
Denise shook her head. ‘That’s bullshit.’
‘He’s trying to imagine why she’s not come home. He doesn’t want to think she’s just cut loose on him and run away with some guy.’
‘And what do you think, Detective?’
‘Looks like she planned to go away. She stowed her books and a set of clothes in a tree in the woods near her home. A dog-walker found them. She faked a phone call to a friend to get out of the house. We think she was going to meet someone. Maybe it was to run away, maybe she got into trouble.’
‘If she was planning to run away, would she leave her diaries? This stuff is quite intimate. She’d know it’s the first place you’d all look. She mention any boyfriend in the diaries?’
‘No, she didn’t.’
Denise turned. ‘She’s not a runaway. But you’re not here for an opinion, are you?’
‘Listen, we’re ticking boxes here, Dr Levene. We’ve got a list, your name’s on it. We got to ask. Have you seen her? Has she contacted you? Anything? This would’ve been a phone call if you ever picked up.’
‘No. Nothing. As you know, I’m not easy to get hold of.’
Denise used the towel around her shoulder to rub her hair. She looked at Abby’s picture again. She saw a bright, kind face, both cheeky and prepossessing. If she was to take a guess on the girl’s attitude, she’d say that she was a fun-loving risk-taker who had her father wrapped round her little finger. The smile would get her a long way, not necessarily in the right direction.
‘Is that all?’ said Denise. ‘I’ve got an appointment to keep.’
Chapter Seven
Apartment, East Harlem
March 7, 8.51 a.m.
The door to Harper’s bedroom opened. The drapes were drawn back and Eddie Kasper stood over his partner, saying, ‘What the hell happened?’
Harper’s eyes remained shut. He lay flat out on his bed, his face all cuts and bruises, each one of which he felt reverberating through his head.
Eddie flicked the switch on the radio that lay askew on an old crate and turned the volume high. It blared out a news report complete with high-pitched crackles. The man on the bed failed to stir.
‘The parents of the missing high-school girl, Abby Goldenberg, have made a fresh appeal for witnesses. Abby’s mother and father have come together to make a video appeal to help find their daughter who went missing at 5.15 p.m. on February 26.’
‘She’s probably already lying dead someplace,’ said Eddie and turned the radio off.
‘Optimist.’
‘So now you’re awake.’
‘What do you want, Eddie? I’m not on shift for two days.’
‘Leave has just been cancelled.’
Harper turned and moaned. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Just get up, Harper. I’ll tell you all you need to know on the way. Come on, we got to go.’ He threw a bag of grapes on to Harper’s stomach. ‘And there’s some get-well-soon food for you from the girls at the precinct. They love a loser. Shirley was almost weeping when I told her about the fight, Harps. Weeping. You should think about it. She’s not a bad-looking woman.’
Harper listened without response. He was finding it difficult enough to open his right eye. The left one was completely closed over. All he could see was a cloud of pinkish red. He was almost blind.
‘I need ice,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t fucking move.’ He lifted his head and it shrieked like a train rushing towards a subway station. ‘Get me som
ething, Eddie. Codeine. Anything.’
‘Hell, you’re a sad mess of a man,’ said Eddie. ‘And it smells like a goddamn locker room in here. Harps, come on, what the hell are you doing to yourself?’ Eddie threw open a window and headed into the tiny kitchen that was hidden behind a torn drape.
Harper moved his legs to the floor and lifted his torso off the bed. He sat for a moment, feeling the thumping of pain, then coughed violently and felt his ribs ache like they were broken in several places. He spat blood on to the floor, then looked out through a thin slit of light at the tall, slim figure of Eddie Kasper looming above holding a glass of water and a handful of pills.
‘I’m guessing I didn’t win,’ said Harper.
‘There we go. Make a joke of it. You could have got seriously hurt and I’m not going to be pushing you to no crime scene in a wheelchair.’
Harper grunted and tried to rouse himself from the bed but as he moved, his head thudded with bolts of pain. Every part of his face felt too large: his lips, gums, jawbone, and eyes. His chest, kidneys and stomach felt raw. Every muscle was yelling at him.
Eddie passed him the glass of water. ‘Shit, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, Harps. I was not prepared. I am upset, man. I was feeling emotional for you last night. Nearly jumped in the ring myself.’
‘Should’ve helped me out,’ said Harper out of the corner of his mouth. His lips cracked and he tasted blood on his tongue.
Eddie walked close and pushed Harper’s head back. Harper struggled with the pain. ‘What the hell, Eddie?’
‘I lost a hundred on you, Harps. I’ve got a very expensive date tonight and I’ve been promising her some fancy place. Now I got nothing. So much for a sure bet.’
‘Then don’t gamble.’
‘What am I going to tell her?’
‘I don’t know, Eddie, just cut out the middle man and take her to bed.’
Eddie stood up straight for a moment. ‘Not a bad idea, maestro. Looks like that little Italian didn’t mess your head up too bad.’
Harper tried to stand and felt a fresh stab of pain across his chest and stomach. He sat down again and breathed deeply.
