by Oliver Stark
Harper and Eddie moved back into the park. The choppers that circled overhead were useless. This was a one-man operation. The most difficult kind of perp to catch: a man who no longer cared for his own safety. It could have been any one of the thousands of men in the park.
They walked up past the media center. The reporters were wrapped up warm, sitting on the steps of AV trucks sipping coffee from paper cups. Everyone was waiting for something to happen, but no one wanted it to. A strange mood of uncertainty pervaded the press pack. They weren’t their usual eager selves. Placards declared the need for peace and remembrance. Written messages told of someone’s deep love for a person they had lost. Flowers and tributes grew throughout the evening.
The police operation was vast, but once in the park itself it was almost invisible. There were patrol cops everywhere, but many more non-uniformed officers from the NYPD, Counter-Terrorism and the FBI. There were units at every entrance with sniffer dogs and Geiger counters, doing checks and searches. They wanted to prevent any atrocities, and individual searches were the only way.
So far, they’d confiscated drugs and nothing much else. All around the park, sitting in tight groups in the semi-darkness, were several Rapid Response Units from all parties. Counter-Terrorism’s Hercules Teams sat in blacked-out sedans at each corner of the park, waiting for orders. The NYPD’s ESU SWAT teams were stationed in big black armored Bearcats, tooled up and ready.
As they walked through the crowds of people who were singing, talking, praying and crying, it looked like whatever it was, it wasn’t going to happen.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Union Square Park
March 13, 11.56 p.m.
Crowds were still filtering in, some finding it hard to move through the streets towards the vigil. The killer stopped at the roadside and watched the people lining up and walking along with candles lit for the dead.
The crowds were different now. They were not the earlier enthusiasts or the serious mourners; these were groups of people coming out of bars and restaurants. They were probably a little drunk and looking for more excitement. And as they wandered the streets, they got caught up in the sound and mood of the all-night vigil.
The killer observed them with a sense of disgust. Revelers, unconcerned about what was happening to his city, to the country. They were mourning the loss of people who didn’t deserve to be alive, people who were part of the problem. The killer took a cigarette from a pack on the seat and lit up. His anger had lessened since he’d snatched Lucy. She was his now and he felt good about that. It gave him a strong feeling of calm to know that she was his and his alone.
He sat in his truck and watched the groups move past. He needed to find the right group. He needed to choose the right profile. It amused him to think of all the effort being expended by the cops in trying to write his profile. He could write it in two words. Pissed off.
A small group stopped by the side of his truck just after midnight. Jews with white and blue Israeli flags, chanting something he didn’t understand.
He watched their hesitation as they stared down the street.
‘It’s quicker this way,’ said one of them, a man.
‘I think they’ve closed the south entrance,’ said one of the girls.
‘You have to wait in line for a bag search. You need to be getting home.’
‘But it’s important,’ said the girl.
He had had enough. The killer shouted down from the cab: ‘You guys want to get a ride right to the heart of this thing? Ever been in a police truck?’
They looked up. The driver was a bright-eyed cop. He was smoking too — a lit cigarette hung from his lips. This was not like some of the hard-faced cops they’d met; this guy seemed different.
‘Where to?’ one of them asked.
‘I’m going to the police compound.’
‘I’d like a lift,’ said one of the girls.
‘I got an empty truck here and I’m going through the crowds and down to the compound. You want to get a VIP seat to the vigil?’
This group felt invulnerable, in the middle of a huge police operation. In the middle of their people. Why would a group of five fear a single cop? It was all about gaining trust.
‘I’m going now, anyway, make your minds up,’ said the killer.
‘I think we should do it,’ said one of the guys. ‘We should take the time to do this.’
‘Okay, that’s final,’ said the killer. He jumped down from the cab, opened the back of the van and let them pile in, then he shut and locked the door. There was a light in the back to prevent them from getting scared, but the moment he started to drive he would switch it off. That way, they wouldn’t be able to see where the gas was coming from and wouldn’t be able to cover the vent.
‘Ready to go?’ he shouted from the front cab. He could hear their cheers as he started the engine, drove away from the curb and into the traffic.
He had read from the Nazi reports of the use of gas vans that screaming was a problem. They had tried to stop this distraction by gagging the victims prior to putting them in the vans, but that just wasn’t possible in this case. The killer couldn’t gag them, so he had another plan.
Inside the back of the van, the group lurched left, then right, but they were laughing as they fell across each other. After a minute of driving, the smell in the back of the truck was noticeable. They sniffed and stopped laughing, and someone started to cough.
The killer heard a bang on the side of the van. ‘Stop the truck,’ a man’s voice called. ‘We’ve got exhaust fumes in here.’
In the cab, the killer leaned forward and flicked off the light. In the back of the van, darkness fell.
As the killer turned up 2nd Avenue, he could hear them screaming. He knew it would take ten to fifteen minutes for the gas to kill them. He couldn’t risk others hearing them, so he switched on the sirens and continued to drive; the loud wailing of a police truck was all that he or anyone else could hear.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
Union Square Park
March 14, 4.12 a.m.
The night had come and gone. No dead bodies, no explosions. The first lights of dawn were arriving and most of the crowd had dissipated. There were a few left in small huddles, wanting to ride it out until morning.
Harper had been forty-eight hours without sleep but was still standing, while Eddie sat down, his head low in the collar of his Puffa jacket. ‘When do we get to go home?’ said Eddie. ‘He’s not showing up. He’s probably tucked up in bed, laughing at us.’
‘We go when they all go,’ said Harper, as his phone rang.
Denise had called throughout the night, with sharp, disturbing updates. There was no tiredness in her voice. She had spent the night going over reports about Sturbe with Abby Goldenberg’s father and hunting any link between Lucy Steller and the killer.
‘What have you got?’ said Harper, his eyes still scanning a park now scattered with litter.
‘Get this. Sturbe had an 88 tattooed on his chest. I have no doubt that our killer would copy this. And about future kills, he was involved in the destruction of the Great Synagogue.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I think he could try to destroy something big. He’s copying this guy’s ghetto history, and if he is, he’s got a lot more kills to get through. Sturbe’s own notes indicated he killed over forty people.’
‘Anything you got that might help us track him down?’
‘We found something on the Lucy front. We’re close. We think there might have been a boyfriend.’
‘A boyfriend?’ Harper struggled with the thought.
‘Yeah, her friends said she went out with a slightly older guy. I asked if it was Heming, they looked at the pictures in the papers and said it wasn’t.’
‘Maybe it’s not the link then,’ said Harper. ‘Keep at it, Denise. We’ll find something.’
‘As far as I can see, Tom, it’s all a grand delusion. Section 88 are finished, but this guy is carryi
ng on. He fed his delusion through this assumed identity of Josef Sturbe and I’m worried about what he’s going to try next.’
‘We all are,’ said Harper.
Dawn became morning. Harper watched from the surveillance truck as the rest of the crowds left, followed by the media trucks, all empty-handed.
The police operation started to pack up and leave. Harper was the last to go. He jumped off the Command Truck and waited as it pulled off. By 7.30 a.m., there was nobody left.
Harper stood with Eddie, cold, hungry and tired. They looked around the empty lot. Harper saw a single police truck standing in the street and moved towards it.
‘What is it?’ called Eddie.
‘Auxiliary Support Truck,’ said Harper.
Eddie shook his head. ‘Auxiliary Support. Amateurs, Harper. They went home and left their truck!’
Harper walked across. There was no one in the cab. ‘The keys are still in the ignition,’ he said.
‘Some part-time nobody went home,’ said Eddie. ‘He’s going to wake up soon and think he’s missing something.’
Harper walked around it. It was on his second round that he spotted the tube running up the side of the van. It was painted the same color as the vehicle. He raised his eyes. The tube went right up to the roof. Harper put his foot on the big back wheel and jumped up. His hands caught the top of the truck and he pulled himself up.
‘What you doing?’ said Eddie.
Harper didn’t reply. He peered over the top of the truck. The tube ran right across the roof, to where there were three air vents. Harper looked at each. Two had been sealed up. The third one had a small metal nozzle sticking up from it. The tube crossed the roof and joined to the nozzle.
Harper dropped down from the truck and crouched beside it. He pulled out his flashlight and shone it under the chassis. The tube ran right under the truck and connected to the exhaust pipe.
Harper stared, the horrific truth coming to him in a flash. He stood up. Eddie moved across. ‘What is it?’
Harper let the flashlight do the talking. He ran the beam over the tube, all the way from the exhaust pipe to the roof. Eddie watched the light. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He crossed himself.
‘Evil,’ said Harper. ‘This is what it looks like.’
Harper put on a glove. ‘Don’t touch a thing,’ he warned Eddie as he pulled the keys out of the ignition and walked round to the rear of the truck. ‘I don’t want to open it,’ he said.
‘You think you should?’
‘What if someone’s unconscious in there?’
Eddie nodded and Harper pushed the smaller key into the lock. It turned easily. He twisted the handle and pulled open the truck doors.
Both men reared back as the exhaust fumes that saturated the inside of the van billowed out into the glossy night lights still burning in Union Square Park.
The blackened insides of the truck were dark like a cave. Harper held his arm across his mouth and nestled his nose and lips into the curve of his elbow. He raised his flashlight and pointed the beam through the smoke. The widening beam of light caught bright pink flesh. Harper’s light moved laterally. One, two, three, four, five. Their faces and hands glowed garishly from the carbon-monoxide poisoning; the skin was pricked and dimpled. Their bodies clung to each other, the whole image like some terrible vision of hell.
PART FIVE
Chapter Eighty-Eight
Lock-Up, Bedford-Stuyvesant
March 14, 6.12 a.m.
The killer stared out through the glass shield. His hands were coated in thick protective gloves and he could feel the heat from the metal below. He hadn’t slept. He couldn’t any more.
He pushed his arms forward. The fierce shriek of the angle grinder as it bit into the steel rod bellowed throughout the garage. Sparks sheeted out in every direction. The metal scaffolding poles had been picked up here and there. He had known they would be useful one day. His big idea was pinned to the far wall, sketched in pencil on to a roll of paper.
He cut the pole right through and it fell to the concrete floor with a clatter. There were several of these on the floor now, all the same length. He rolled the last one into the pile and then counted them again. His shoulder was aching and the heat in the small garage with the low iron roof was bad. He was streaming with sweat, wearing a shirt to protect his skin from the sharp fragments of steel and the red sparks.
The diagram on the wall was repeated in actual size on the floor. Two chalk lines extended from the back wall into the room. A third line connected them, forming a square. There was a wooden board on the floor, two pallets of bricks, and bags of sand and cement.
Having finished cutting his steel poles, which were going to be perfect tubes, he removed his shirt and undershirt. He took a spade from the side of the room and ripped open the cement bag. He poured it on to the board, and then added a shovel of sand. In the heat he went over to the hose and doused himself liberally first, before filling a bucket with water.
He used the spade to form a cavity in the sand and cement mix, then threw in water from the bucket, folding it in with the spade.
When he was happy with the consistency, he took a trowel and started to lay a thin line of mortar between the chalk lines. He then took the point of his trowel and formed a V in the mortar. From the block of twelve bricks he took the first one, laid it flat side down on the mortar and pressed it firmly into place with a slight twisting motion. He laid the second brick along from the first, filling in the joint between them, then placed his spirit level on top to check that they were flat. He continued until the walls were nearly all built.
The killer could see that the evolution of the species only worked if people destroyed what was weak. If not, humanity would continue to be diluted by impure genes. He lifted another brick and placed it on top of the mortar. He was still depressed about missing the children, but now he had Lucy. Second attempts were good enough.
He thought about Section 88. They were amateurs. Fools, most of them. They had been useful, but they hadn’t understood him. Not at all. If there was one thing he knew better than anything else, it was how to keep a fire burning. It had burned through the last twenty-five years, it had grown through any slight, any injustice, and become a raging, tormenting anger.
The truth — if there was such a thing as truth — was that he now felt bad if he didn’t kill. He felt cowardly, and as though he, too, was weak. Once you started to kill, the need was impossible to stop. It was mechanical and vast. It consumed him.
The killer heard a bark, then a whole series of barks. Someone was outside. He stood and reached for his gun.
A moment later, a knock rapped on the door. He unlocked the door and opened it.
‘I got what you asked for, Sturbe,’ said Martin Heming.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
North Manhattan Homicide
March 14, 10.18 a.m.
Harper slept three hours then walked back to the station house, his head full of dark images. The news media had just picked up the story and the panic and rage were building.
There were no reporters outside the precinct and the investigation room was nearly empty. It would take Forensics another day to get anything from the Auxiliary Truck, but Harper already knew that there would be nothing. The killer was too good, and the purpose of the attack was unmistakable — it wasn’t just to kill, it was to prove his superiority to the police.
Denise Levene sat in the circle of light from a low desk lamp in the corner of the room. She looked asleep. Harper moved across, his feet making no sound on the old carpet. Denise turned quickly as he approached. ‘Tom! Are you okay?’
‘I’ve never seen anything as bad as what I saw in that truck, Denise. We’ve got to find this guy. He’s escalating beyond anything I could’ve imagined. Five kids gassed in a police van.’ Harper threw himself into a seat. ‘Anything coming together here?’
‘I’ve got nothing new. We’ve been working all night.’
‘No leads on Lucy
?’
‘We haven’t found anything. He’s cleaned all traces.’ Denise stared up at Harper. ‘It’s always darkest just before dawn,’ she said.
Harper smiled in response and stared down at the book that Denise was looking at. ‘What is it? Your high-school scrapbook?’
‘It’s my casebook. I keep a close eye on the Abby case. I keep every detail, every article.’
‘You really feel for her, don’t you?’
‘Sure, don’t we all?’
Harper picked up the casebook. He held it as he crossed to the coffee pot and poured out a fresh cup of coffee. ‘Interesting,’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘Looking back over the life of a case.’ Harper sat and started to flick through the images. He saw outrage, hope, despair, page after page. The turns and dead ends of a fruitless investigation. At the end, the presumption of death.
‘They look alike, don’t they?’ said Harper, staring at a picture of Abby Goldenberg smiling in a high-school shot and the photos of the murder victims on the wall.
Denise stood up and stretched. ‘Yeah. There’s definitely a type he goes for. No question.’
‘No, I mean Abby and Lucy.’
‘They do,’ said Denise.
‘I don’t understand how Lucy could be a target,’ said Harper.
‘Why?’
‘She’s not Jewish, is she? He must’ve been going for Capske, but then why come back for Lucy?’
‘Because she saw something the night he was taken, something that would lead us to him.’
‘Yes. I thought of that,’ said Harper, ‘but if she was only taken because of some accident, then it’s damn strange that she’s a dead ringer for Abby. I don’t get how this fits together.’
‘I don’t get it either, but Lucy had something he wanted to keep from us.’
‘Another thing, if we’re working on the assumption that the killer is Heming, then why does it matter if Lucy saw him? It makes no sense. We know it’s Heming, don’t we?’
