by Oliver Stark
‘Do not stare at me, not in my fucking street. You hear? Not in my fucking street!’ shouted Heming.
He stepped up to the sidewalk. The men were running away in both directions. Leo was breathing heavily. ‘That fucking showed them,’ he panted. ‘They fucking scattered like rabbits. You see them dance?’
‘You did good, Leo. You’re a real rising star.’ Heming was still. His eyes stared with something close to longing. ‘You want to go after that cop, Leo? Call some boys together. You feel ready to lead your own team?’
‘Sure,’ said Lukanov. ‘I’m ready. I’m more than ready.’
Chapter Nineteen
Salsa Club, Upper East Side
March 8, 1.30 a.m.
Harper arrived alone at the Dancer Downstairs. The club was closed and shuttered. A sign on the small door at the bottom of a flight of steps expressed sympathy for the family of David Capske and said they were closing for two days. He knocked for several minutes, but no one was there. From the street the club was hardly visible. He took out his watch and started to walk the route that the murder victim, David Capske, and his fiancée, the writer, Lucy Steller, had walked the previous evening.
It took Harper twenty-five minutes to reach Lucy Steller’s apartment building. He headed off again, following the route David Capske had walked to the alleyway before he was killed. It took him just under an hour. It was quite a walk for someone rich and white, traveling into the heart of Harlem at night. Harper knew that Capske had reached the alleyway at 1.43 a.m. The caller in the apartment building said that a shot was heard at 3.30 a.m. If the rain started at 2.41 a.m., then the victim was lying on the ground in that spot for a long time, all wrapped up before he was shot. So between 1.43 a.m. and 2.41 a.m. what happened to Capske was still uncertain. However, after the visit to the morgue, it was clear that the killer had spent some time tattooing something on to David Capske’s chest.
Harper looked around him. Two uniformed patrol cops stood at the alleyway and nodded. He pulled out his shield and waved it towards them. Alleyways in East Harlem were dangerous places. There were limited exit routes for one thing, and victims didn’t stroll into alleyways too easily for another. Would Capske have gone into a darkened alleyway with unknown dealers? How did the killer lure him?
Harper tried to imagine how a man would have been able to wrap another man in barbed wire, unaccompanied. It wouldn’t be easy.
Surely the victim would have to be unconscious in order to allow the killer to start to wrap him. Harper made a mental note to ask the Medical Examiner about head wounds. If a man did this alone, his best bet would have been to knock the subject out, bind him, roll him, then wait until he came round. Harper thought about the timescales. It was possible, wasn’t it?
Perhaps Capske was just unlucky. Perhaps he was on his way to meet a dealer when someone in the alleyway hit him, dragged him unconscious into the dark and wrapped him as he lay flat out. That would explain the marks across the ground. If the body was flat out, the only way to bind him would have been to push the body across the wire. Harper pulled out his sketchbook. There were two places where the body had lain still. The first was halfway up the alley, but the majority of the blood was to the right side of the alley and it was less than the size of an entire body. The second spot was where they found the victim and there was blood the whole length of the body. How did that happen?
But a random attack? It seemed highly unlikely. Capske had been targeted specifically and he had been punished. And furthermore, someone had informed the police and the media.
Harper’s flashlight criss-crossed the alleyway. He’d found something that fitted, something that explained the situation, the strange time-lag and the marks across the ground. Harper let a smile cross his lips.
He thought about Denise Levene. She was back and had already spent the evening tracking racist thugs in Brooklyn. Whatever Mac had put her through, it had given her the confidence to start again.
Some of the guys in Blue Team, earlier in the day, had gone back to a multiple attacker theory. The Captain had lapped it up. Harper was now sure that what they were looking at was something darker. A solitary killer, a night stalker, waiting in an alleyway, ready with his cosh and barbed wire.
What kind of animal hunted like that? A political killer? No, not to his knowledge. Political killers tended to be martyrs who sacrificed themselves. This was someone who liked to kill for the sake of killing. If there was a political issue caught up in this kill, it was not the prime motivation.
He needed to know if the victim had been unconscious. He took out his phone to call the Medical Examiner’s office. He direct-dialed Laura Pense. It was a long shot, but a moment later she answered the phone.
‘You work nights too,’ said Harper.
‘Everyone else decided it’s vacation time. What do you want?’
‘I’m at the Capske crime scene and I’ve got a theory. What I need is a blunt-force trauma to the head and I’ve got a full house. I think he must’ve been knocked unconscious. Do you have that card?’
‘No. There’s no blunt-force trauma to the head. But there was intracranial hemorrhaging, so he got hit somehow. He was probably hit on his jaw. There’s a fracture running across his left side. X-rays just came back. Couldn’t see the bruising because of the tears in his cheek.’
‘That’s useful, thank you,’ said Harper. He suggested she go home to get some sleep and hung up. So that’s what had happened: the killer caught the victim on his jaw hard enough to give him brain damage. While he was knocked out, he taped his hands and ankles, wrapped him in barbed wire up to his chest, then he tattooed him. That was the first resting-point, with blood from the abdomen and legs. Then he waited, rolled his upper torso and head and shot him.
Harper imagined Capske waking up in his steel cage. He could feel the horror, the constriction. He could see the face of the attacker above him. Smiling, laughing? A terrifying end. But why would a killer wait to shoot him? Denise was right. It wasn’t just political. He wanted to hurt and punish Capske. Or maybe there was something else. Harper took out his sketchpad and opened it. He stared at the sketches of the crime scene, the placing of the body.
In his mind, he saw the corpse. There was something there, but he couldn’t bring it to mind. Harper nodded to the patrol still guarding the entrance of the alleyway as he headed out of the darkness.
Now he had the MO, the how and the what, the next thing Harper needed to work out was the why — the motive was everything. And this murder had many potential motives — drugs, politics, anti-Semitism. But none quite accounted for the ritualized kill scene, the sudden, brutal ambush, the waiting game and the execution, except for Denise’s description of some form of deranged narcissism.
Harper walked across the street. They’d not found a single piece of the kill kit. They’d been chasing down CCTV from every municipal and private source for five blocks. They had plenty of people on tape, but it was impossible to judge if any of them were involved. No one on the tape was seen carrying anything. So either the killer was in a car or, if he was on foot, he dumped his kill kit as soon as he used it.
Harper looked up and down East 112th Street. There were CCTV cameras at either end of the street. Rows of garbage from the cafés and eateries lined the sidewalks. Harper looked across again. Even if the killer cut through the housing project up to East 113th Street, the CCTV tapes would have caught him coming out further up. No, thought Harper. We would’ve found the kill kit. Somehow he got the stuff taken away.
He watched as the garbage truck turned up, and the men threw the bags lining the streets into the back of the truck. Harper looked at his watch and cursed. It was only 1.45 a.m. He had imagined that the killer might have waited until 3.30 a.m. in order to catch the garbage truck, so that he could dispose of his kill kit as he left the scene. But it was too early.
Harper crossed the street. A surly garbage man was tossing bags into the back of the loader. ‘Detective Harper, NYPD, c
an I ask you a question?’ said Harper.
The guy looked up. ‘Go ahead.’
‘We had a murder at this site last night. We reckon the victim got here at around this time — one forty-three a.m. He was hurt real bad. So bad, he must’ve been screaming at some point. Were you working this route last night?’
‘Sure was, and every other night.’
‘Did you see or hear anything?’
‘What time you say?’
‘The victim arrived around this time.’
‘Well then, I heard nothing and saw nothing.’
‘Why’s that?’ asked Harper.
‘We’re a couple of hours ahead of schedule tonight.’
‘So what time did you get here last night?’
‘Last night? About three-thirty a.m., give or take a few minutes.’
‘Last night, you were here at that time? You see anything?’
‘Not a thing worth noting.’
‘Where do you go from here?’ said Harper.
‘We got this street, then we complete the round.’
‘Then where do you go?’
‘Queens.’
‘What for?’
‘To unload. You’re very interested in garbage for a cop.’
‘Can I ride with you?’
‘Ask the driver. I don’t see why not.’
Harper jumped up to the cab and introduced himself. ‘Can I ride with you, ask some questions?’
The driver shrugged. ‘Whatever turns you on.’
‘Where do you unload?’
‘Queens.’
‘I know. Where in Queens?’
‘North Shore Marine Transfer Facility.’
‘And what happens to the trash at the North Shore?’
‘It gets loaded into a container. When it’s full, it gets put on a barge and it sails away, to where I do not know or care.’
‘What about last night’s garbage? Will it have gone already?’
‘Hey, what do you think I do, keep tags on my garbage? I’ve no fucking idea, Detective.’
‘That’s okay. I can find that out.’ Harper took out his cell and called Eddie. He answered on the first ring. ‘You at the Station House, Eddie?’
‘Still chasing down these leads, but getting nowhere fast.’
‘I think I might know where the killer dumped his kill kit.’
‘What are you thinking?’
‘This killer is smart,’ said Harper. ‘And if he’s smart, he’s going to dump it somewhere we won’t find it.’
‘They checked the storm drains, the sewage, the trash, the streets, the houses, the roofs, the alleys; they’ve been everywhere, Harper,’ said Eddie.
‘I’ve been wondering why he waited until three-thirty a.m. to shoot this guy. It’s risky, right?’
‘It’s damn risky.’
‘Maybe he was waiting for Department of Sanitation.’
‘How so?’
‘Garbage trucks, Eddie. On Saturday, they collect around three-thirty a.m., and all our killer has to do is take his bloody clothes, the barbed-wire spool, the gloves and maybe even the murder weapon, put it out on the sidewalk and watch the city pick it up and take it away for him. Then he walks.’
‘That’s brilliant. Where are you now?’
‘In a garbage truck on the way to the North Shore Marine Transfer Facility in Queens. Meet me there in one hour with Blue Team and Crime Scene Unit. See if you can get the Logistics and Operational Manager for the Facility. We need to trace last night’s garbage.’
‘I’m on it, Harps. They work the same routes each night, right? We just need the truck number and the dumpsite. It’s going to be a dirty night’s work for someone in the Crime Scene Unit.’
Chapter Twenty
North Shore Marine Transfer Facility, Queens
March 8, 2.23 a.m.
Harper arrived at the huge blue warehouse at the North Shore Transfer Facility. Eddie Kasper, the team and two CSU trucks were sitting there waiting. Harper thanked the driver and jumped off. The air was cold next to the river, and in the distance he could hear the industrial hum of hundreds of loaders, dump trucks and garbage trucks transporting New York’s waste to someplace else.
‘Quick work, Eddie, what have you got?’
‘Dogs are on their way. We’ve got David Capske’s jacket coming across from the OCME to give them something to work on, but the handlers aren’t sure how they’ll cope. Depends on how rancid the trash is.’
‘That’s great, Eddie. What about the location of our load?’
‘We’ve dragged the Logistics Supervisor out of bed, the Operations Manager and the roll-on team. We’ve got tonight’s team on hold. Nothing leaves until we find our trash.’
Harper looked at the tired faces of the people in front of him. Two men who looked like they just got out of bed stood shivering in the wind. Behind them, three more of the team from the Transfer Facility. Their faces were cynical and bored.
Harper walked across. ‘This is a homicide investigation, gentlemen. I apologize for the disturbance, but we need your help. You’ll go back to bed when this is over, but our victim never will. So no wise-ass bullshit. We’re serious about finding that kill kit and we’ll keep the whole plant closed down until we do. Understand?’
The men nodded one by one. ‘That’s good. Now let’s locate the dock and the barge.’
He turned as the CSU trucks started to unload. Several men and women all wearing white suits tramped across the concrete.
‘First up, what happens when the trash gets here?’
The Operations Manager took Harper through the routine. Eddie Kasper took the Logistics Supervisor back inside with the truck number.
Within fifteen minutes, they came back together. Harper gathered the team.
‘We’re in luck,’ he said. ‘Our garbage is sitting on a barge in Dock Four. It’s due to leave later tonight, so we just made it. The garbage truck unloads in one of bays sixteen to twenty-two, which means the trash will be on the right section of the barge. We’ve been through the options. There’s no way we can jump on board and start sifting. We’re going to crane the rubbish back on shore, and sift it load by load. Any questions?’ There was silence. ‘Well, let’s get going.’
Harper searched with the team throughout the night, staring out over the vast mountains of trash as far as the eye could see. It seemed like an impossible task. At six, he lay down on a bench in the warehouse and closed his eyes. An hour later, he felt someone pushing his shoulder. He looked up.
‘Eddie, what’ve you got?’
‘We got something,’ said Eddie. Just then, Rick Swanson burst in. His blue suit was stained at the knees with dark wet patches, his hands were black with dirt, his jacket was covered in unpleasant-looking detritus. Behind him, Mary Greco was a five-foot-two picture of perfect cleanliness in a plain white tank top and jeans. She was wearing gloves and holding a plastic bag high in the air.
‘Five fucking hours in Harlem’s shit for forty-two-thousand dollars a year, Harper! No sleep, no nothing. It smells worse than a body in that dump,’ said Swanson.
Harper clapped. ‘But you found it! You’re a hero.’
‘Six fucking hours.’
‘You said five,’ said Eddie. ‘Either I’m not hearing things right or that’s one quick hour.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Swanson. ‘Six or seven hours, what’s the difference?’
‘How comes he’s all dirty and you’re clean, Greco?’
‘They offered us white suits, but Mr Macho found the onesies a little effeminate.’
‘I’m not wearing a fucking Babygro.’
‘No, you’re wearing cabbage and diapers by the smell of you.’
‘You got it, though, am I right?’ said Harper.
‘Yeah, we got it, all right,’ said Swanson.
‘What’s in there?’
Swanson took off his jacket and threw it straight into the bin. ‘I can’t wear this no more. It’s going to remind me of stampi
ng through a container of putrid Harlem crap.’
‘What’s in the bags, Swanson? Focus.’
‘He’s not as smart as he thinks,’ said Swanson. ‘He’s bagged the lot together. We weren’t getting anywhere until the canine unit brought in the sniffer dogs.’
‘We would’ve been another twelve hours,’ said Mary. ‘And this macho pig moans like a girl with a broken nail. Every five seconds. I couldn’t stand it any more.’
‘We got a rag of Capske’s blood from Forensics and they found it. You know what? I hate being second to a dog.’
‘In every way, Swanson,’ said Mary Greco. ‘In every way.’
Rick Swanson muttered something. He pulled off his shoes and put them in the trash too. ‘The fucking canine unit… if they’d come first, I wouldn’t have ruined my suit and shoes.’
‘The department will clean your suit,’ said Harper. ‘For the last time, what’s in the bag?’
‘The whole shebang. Gloves, remnants of wire on a wooden spool, knife and overalls.’
‘Weapon?’
‘No gun.’
‘Let’s get it straight to the lab.’ Harper looked at his team. ‘That’s good work, guys. Real good work. Let’s hope they find something for us to go on.’
Chapter Twenty-One
North Manhattan Homicide
March 8, 11.30 a.m.
Denise Levene was wearing a smart black suit, a white blouse and glasses. She breathed slowly, trying to control the nerves that were making her hands tremble. It was impossible to know if what she was doing was right for her, but it no longer mattered. She needed progress.
She walked right back into the North Manhattan Homicide investigation room and stood there. She felt her world begin to click back into place. No one looked up. No one noticed her. She looked down at the old blue carpet, at the tar spots, at the discarded gum that had turned gray.
She held back tears, but they were not tears of fear, they were tears of pride. She had made it through the door. She had thought about it a hundred times, and every time she’d backed out, unable to even make it to the door. Now she was there.
