by Oliver Stark
‘It’s going to be okay,’ said Denise. ‘It’s going to be okay. Do you think you could tell us your names?’
‘Ruth Glass,’ said the girl. ‘This is Jerry. We’re both seven but I was born first.’
‘Thank you, Ruth. We’re going to go now, but we’ll find the person who did this to your mother. I am so sorry she’s been taken away.’
Denise stood up as the social workers walked in. Denise thanked them again as she walked out. Harper waved at the little girl and drew a quick smile on a face on his sketchpad. As he showed it to her, the little girl forgot herself for a single moment and smiled back.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn
March 12, 4.06 p.m.
He sat outside the garage, drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup. His eyes were fixed on the small TV screen. He’d bought every one of the papers but none of them mentioned a blue eagle from the murder. He liked reading about his dead. He liked to see how dumb they all were, how little they understood. He liked to keep the clippings about them. But he didn’t understand how someone had seen the eagle.
They’d found the body of Becky Glass a day earlier but the TV reports were now talking about the latest NYPD discovery. They were looking for a man with a blue eagle tattoo. The image they had was of a small blue eagle with its wings outstretched. It was more of an American eagle than the one on his arm, but it was still shocking to see the image in connection with the 88 Killer. It shouldn’t have happened. How did the cops have a picture of the eagle on his arm? He considered it closely.
He hadn’t removed his coat until he was alone with Becky Glass. He had waited outside the alleyway until she walked by. She looked distressed. She was searching for her children. He was an opportunist. He’d told her they were in the alleyway.
She ran in, all on her own. Stood there and looked around her. Then he put the gun against her head and told her to take off her pants.
He only wanted her to do that in order to remove her underwear. It was important that she was degraded and humiliated. He had not intended to rape her. She had fought and cried and disobeyed him. He had to hit her face. He had to rip off her clothes. The attack excited him. He was ashamed. He made her kneel at his feet and wash his boots clean with her spit.
No one but the victim should have been able to see the blue eagle.
He let his mind return to his victim kneeling in front of him, thinking about angles. Perhaps someone had seen him from the street. He had pushed a large metal bin in the entrance to the alley, but someone might have looked round it.
He didn’t usually kill in the daylight, but he couldn’t help himself. It had been a mistake. He had lost control. He had only meant to trail her. He had been trailing Becky Glass for a while. He knew she had two children. They were even there with her at the interview, but they’d run off before she made it back down to the reception area. She was searching for the children. That’s why she went into the alleyway, to look for them, and that’s why he had acted. He hadn’t planned to kill her so soon, but it just overcame him and he couldn’t resist. He didn’t even bother to check to see if the children were in the alley. He had been foolish. The urge was too strong; the pressure of the press and the cops was getting to him.
He knew that Becky was a single mother. She had told him as much as he placed the gun at her head. He had listened to her pleading on behalf of her children as he dragged the clothes from her body. He hadn’t imagined for a moment that her children were watching, but, thinking logically, where would they go?
He recalled the scene. She had polished his boots. It had made him feel better. He had said he was pleased. He remembered her anxious gaze around the alley.
It was obvious and he wanted to kick himself for being so stupid. He had presumed that she was looking for help. But she had been terrified about her children witnessing the scene rather than what was happening to her. Witnesses. The children had seen him kill her. He leaned back against the garage. The children would be able to identify him. That couldn’t be allowed. That would put an end to his plans.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Museum of Tolerance, Brooklyn
March 12, 4.42 p.m.
Denise sat in the large glass atrium of the museum waiting for Aaron Goldenberg to appear. She had already scented the 88 Killer and thought she understood the way his mind worked — from the clinical bullet-hole to the forehead to the brutally angry use of barbed wire. One mind, twisted beyond normal limits, a man with a need for control — surgical control — and a deep, deep pain that needed to be screamed from the housetops. But he was losing that control. Which would make him even more dangerous.
She looked down at her notebook and took up her pen. She kept seeing the number that Ruth Glass had written on the page. She wrote the words across the top. Profile of the 88 Killer.
Denise was in the process of unpicking the killer’s mind. Like an expert unpicking a lock, she would press each lever in turn, teasing and testing until it fell in line and suddenly the whole row would be along the shear line and the lock would open. That was all she was after — the killer’s shear line.
So far, she had written: He’s male, early- to mid-thirties, gifted, but a failure in something, single, unable to form strong relationships, with a background in security or military-type work. A man without siblings, a lone child, probably with a normal-looking family, a family he felt never knew what he was, never accepted him. Possibly adopted.
She looked at the words and felt the give of the first lever of the lock. She continued to write. He’s used to being alone, it’s not a problem for him to be alone. He’s been alone his whole life, he can take it. But he needs to be understood and that’s confusing him. He feels a dual push to keep hidden but to be understood. His latest kills show an increased stress level. He is getting more extreme, his attacks becoming regular, necessary. He is not a neo-Nazi with Nazi sympathies, it is stronger, the identification almost exact. He is a Nazi.
Just then, Aaron Goldenberg appeared, holding a sheaf of papers and folders. He looked at Denise’s notebook.
‘It should say Profile of Josef Sturbe,’ he said.
Denise turned. ‘Aaron. How are you?’
‘Better now. It has been so many days with nothing to do. Now I can work.’
‘So what did you find? Is Josef Sturbe a real identity or an assumed one?’
‘I will let you know what I found out,’ said Aaron. ‘But how did Harper get on?’
‘Detective Harper has tried every database that he can find and there’s nobody coming up with that name. The Feds have nothing on him either. They think it’s a name Martin Heming uses. A pseudonym.’
‘Then they’d be wrong,’ said Dr Goldenberg. ‘Very wrong.’
Denise raised both eyebrows. ‘He’s real?’
‘Yes, Josef Sturbe is real, all right.’
‘How the hell did you find a man when the combined forces of the NYPD and FBI couldn’t?’
‘They weren’t looking in the right places.’
‘Then what are the right places? Where can we find him?’
‘We can’t find him, but we know who he is. Josef Bernard Sturbe was born in Bavaria in 1923. We don’t have any records of him until 1943 when he turns up in the Warsaw Ghetto.’
‘He was an actual Nazi?’
‘Yes. A member of the SS. Of the feared Totenkopf — Death’s Head Division. According to reports, he believed he was fighting only for the Führer. He was fascinated by Hitler’s Mein Kampf — obsessed by eighty-eight words from its text. “88” is not just a code for Heil Hitler,’ said Aaron. ‘It also refers to the following passage. Let me read it to you: What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the Creator of the Universe. Every thought and every idea,
every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this point of view and used or rejected according to its utility.’
‘He was into eugenics? What was he?’
‘A curious case. After the war, they could not find Josef Sturbe. The Nazi Hunters had him on their wanted list but he didn’t turn up. Many Nazis, members of the SS, went to South America after the war. There was a Network, ODESSA. It helped members of the SS to escape. They think Sturbe went to Argentina and ended up in America.’
‘Was he ever found?’
‘No. Never.’
‘What was he famed for?’
‘He was a murderer. Very vicious. A serial killer in the ghetto. A man who was so desperate to prove his loyalty to the Führer that he hunted in the ghetto after dark. He kept a record of how many he had killed. He conducted experiments, trying to emulate men like Dr Joseph Mengele. But he was an amateur. In SS circles, he was mocked. Sturbe had a secret, though.’ Aaron paused. ‘He was a Jew.’
‘What!’
‘The son of a young Jewish girl who had got herself into trouble, he was adopted by a German family. The Sturbes pretended the baby was theirs. His papers proved he was a German, but he looked Jewish. All through the 1930s he was bullied and mocked. He joined the Hitler Youth, but they could see he was no Aryan. He tried to change his appearance. He bleached his hair, but it made them ridicule him more. He joined the SS when they only allowed pure Aryans. He was obviously not, but they accepted him based on the ancestry of the Sturbes. It was on the eve of his acceptance into the SS that his father told him the truth.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He never spoke to his father again. But this knowledge was like a canker inside him. It was as if he could never outstrip his own identity. He hated the Jews even more than the other officers did. He started to murder in the Warsaw Ghetto. He was insatiable, proving his hatred every day.’
‘And no one knows what happened to him?’
‘No. The SS all had their blood group tattooed on the inside of their upper arm. After the war, the Nazi Hunters found a man in Boston who they claimed was Josef Sturbe. He was recognized by someone who lived in the ghetto. But he had no mark under his arm, so they let him go. Fifteen years ago, the Sturbe myth surfaced. Someone found Sturbe’s notes and in it, he stated that he never allowed them to tattoo him, because he feared that they would be able to detect his Jewish ancestry in his blood.’
‘He was insane?’
‘Yes. He was insane. I doubt he was the man in Boston, but we shall never know.’
‘So what do you think this has to do with our 88 Killer?’ Denise asked. ‘Josef Sturbe would be about eighty-seven if he was alive.’
‘I expect our killer has taken him as a model.’
‘Our killer feels the same? A fraud? A fake?’
‘I think it might be something like that,’ said Dr Goldenberg, ‘but we must continue to search.’
‘I think our killer is afraid of Jews. I think he’s deeply afraid of them. It’s why he caged Capske, it’s why he’s starving Abby. The Jew has a hold over him, a power. In his imagination, it is a terrible power. He’s trying to reduce it, to lessen the power, the anxiety.’
‘Maybe not a terrible power,’ said Dr Goldenberg, ‘but a terrible secret.’
Chapter Sixty-Six
North Manhattan Homicide
March 12, 7.14 p.m.
Harper walked into the investigation room with Denise Levene. They had to share what they had. They’d both worked through the night, hadn’t slept at all and looked ragged and exhausted. Harper had received a call from Jack Carney. The Hate Crime Unit had picked up some information. The remaining members of Section 88 and a couple of sympathetic organizations were planning a night of attacks to show solidarity with Leo Lukanov. His death was being treated as a martyr’s sacrifice. They also heard that Martin Heming might try to turn up to soak up some of Lukanov’s martyrdom.
Carney and Harper had set a night of joint surveillance between Homicide and Hate Crime. Harper wanted the whole of the task force to get out on the street, trail the Hate Crime Unit and their usual targets and see what these neo-Nazis were capable of. He wanted to help Hate Crime to cut out this terrible cancerous growth of anti-Semitism.
Harper looked across the room at the blank faces of the team who had been working flat out for days. Garcia wasn’t around. He pulled up a chair and sat down in the center of the room. ‘Guys, close in a minute. We’ve got in touch with Becky Glass’s husband. He’s been out of town speaking at a conference with a thousand delegates. He can’t tell us anything.’
Denise sat near the front. There was a freshly printed profile on her knee that she needed to share with Blue Team.
The team turned to face Harper. Harper spoke slowly, conspiratorially. ‘Listen, this is going to take a while to settle. We’ve found some new information about the killer. Denise has been working with Dr Goldenberg. It’s quite unusual stuff, but stick with it.’
Denise filled the team in on the background of Josef Sturbe. She gave his life story and then walked up and down the room. ‘In summary, gentlemen, our killer has assumed an identity. His identity is strange. It is of a man who is so ashamed of his origins and his race, that he becomes an extreme version of those he wants to impress.’
‘What can we use?’ said Swanson. ‘You think our killer is an eighty-seven-year-old man?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Denise. ‘I think he is a deluded narcissist. He wants power, he wants accolades but he’s got a big secret. Perhaps he’s like Sturbe, someone who feels his identity is fake. I’d say we ought to work from two assumptions. The first is that the killer is adopted. The second is that he was adopted from a Jewish to a non-Jewish family.’
‘He’s a modern-day Sturbe?’
‘It’s just a theory. I don’t know what he is. I’ve got a couple of other Nazi elements,’ said Denise. ‘The 88 moniker is code for Heil Hitler, but it’s also a reference to a passage from Mein Kampf, Hitler’s ruminations on power and eugenics. It’s not his name, it’s a salute after his kills, and it’s his mission statement. We’re looking at a man driven to kill by hatred, because somehow he’s got the idea that Jews are the cause of his problems, that they are less than human. But I think it’s himself he feels is inhuman. That’s why he identifies with the Nazis — because he thinks he’s subhuman himself. I think that he’s killing his own identity.’
‘He’s a Jew?’
‘Most serial killers attack their own kind. I’d say, yes, he’s Jewish.’
The room was silent. It was a complex idea to take in. They didn’t know how to respond.
‘We can’t go around saying that the Nazi Jew Killer is a Jew, Denise. We’ll be pulled apart as racists.’
‘You know the Atlanta Child Killer case?’
‘Remind me.’
‘A number of black children were killed over a period of time. Same kind of outrage, and everyone thought it was a racial crime, except that there was no political statement or claim by any group. In the end, they found him. He was a black man. He was attacking his own. That’s what a serial killer is, someone attacking their own identity; that’s why they repeat — it’s a process. It’s themselves they’re killing.’
‘That’s good,’ said Harper. ‘It gives you all some background. Anything else?’
‘How close is that profile to our prime suspect, Martin Heming?’ said Mary Greco.
‘There’s very little match,’ said Denise. She opened her palms. ‘I wish I had something more concrete. I’ll keep trying.’
Harper stood up. ‘You all understand?’ He looked around. ‘No word of this to anyone. We need to be further along before this comes out.’ There were nods throughout the room.
‘Now, why you’re all here. You want to hear about the operation — Operation Sturbe. There’s to be no more waiting around. We need to be out there watching them. We’ve got to find him, people. We’re go
ing out to Brooklyn to work some overtime. We’ve set up a surveillance operation with Hate Crime. We’re going to track them, as many as we can, all across Brooklyn and see what we can find.’
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Brownsville, Brooklyn
March 12, 8.01 p.m.
Harper crossed town with Blue Team. There was a sudden sense of potential, and the whole team felt it. A feeling that they just might have something that cast a net around this killer.
They headed towards their meet with Hate Crime.
Harper, Levene and Kasper stopped outside a worn-out shop on the edge of Brownsville in Brooklyn. Behind them, the cars of Blue Team pulled up and a series of doors opened and shut.
The team leader, Jack Carney, was organizing the op on the ground for Hate Crime. He walked across. ‘Hey, Harper. Let me walk you through it.’
Harper introduced his team. They all shook hands. The night was damp and the temperature was dropping. It felt chill and gloomy.
Jack Carney walked by Harper’s side. ‘We’ve got surveillance going on most of the remaining members of Section 88 and seven other groups which are marked as code A through to G. We think they’re going to try something. They’re hurting after you took Lukanov and the gang. The word out here is that he didn’t kill himself, that police killed him.’
‘If only,’ shouted a voice from the back.
‘They’re after a conspiracy and that’s what they want to believe.’
‘It all fits with their view of authority,’ said Harper.
‘The key point is that they are angry and want to do something. We’ve been seeing a lot more activity. They usually use a public place to talk. We think that they’re going to use a big restaurant off the main road. It’s called McRory’s. There’s a big parking lot, a large drifting clientele. A busy place they can get lost in. They tend to get take-out and sit in the cars out back.’
‘Any sign of Heming?’ asked Harper.
