by Oliver Stark
‘No, but he’s all we’ve got.’
‘He’s smart, right? Smart enough to find a police safe house and kidnap two kids, smart enough to leave no evidence. You met Lucy. She’s not a difficult target. She seemed kind of lost in her own head. Why did he feel the need to take her?’
‘Could be part of the escalation,’ said Denise. ‘He’s not thinking straight.’
‘You read about Heming and his wife. She went off with a Jew. You don’t think that’s what’s happened here, do you? Lucy was going out with Heming, maybe after the marriage broke up. Maybe lightning struck twice for him. She was dating him and then left him for a Jewish boy.’
‘Could be,’ said Denise. ‘But they don’t seem to be a good match.’
‘No, and again, I can understand him wanting to punish her, if that’s his psychosis, but why take the hard drive and the diaries?’
Harper flicked through Denise’s casebook and stopped at a picture of Abby standing next to some boyfriend from her past. He turned to Denise. ‘Our killer knows the children can ID him, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So he’s confident he’s got alibis and he’s confident that there’s no physical evidence to link himself to the crime. We didn’t even get a strand of hair from the Becky Glass murder. He didn’t rape her either, even though it looks like he wanted to. Perhaps he’s afraid of leaving his DNA. I mean, maybe he’s on file so he’s got to keep the scenes clean. He certainly knows how to clean a crime scene. If it was Heming, the children could ID him from a photograph.’
‘If the psych team allowed us.’
‘He doesn’t know that.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘The only thing that can put our killer at the scene is the children. And the only other person who is linked to the case and to him is Lucy Steller. Fuck!’
‘What?’
‘He killed Capske out of spite, because he was jealous, because he was in love with Lucy Steller. He let himself make that mistake. That’s why he called the press. He knew he had to try to put us off the scent. The other kills are random, perhaps linked to Section 88 and hate attacks, but David Capske was never attacked by Section 88. David isn’t his victim type. David was an error, a personal vendetta. That’s why he’s taken Lucy. Our killer knew her. And she knew him.’
‘Where are you going with this?’ said Denise.
Harper stood up and took his coat. ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense. Lucy is the key to his identity. Lucy is personal. And that means you need to work harder than ever to find out who she went out with.’
‘Okay, we can do it,’ said Denise.
‘It also means something else,’ said Harper. ‘It means that we’ve been searching for the wrong man.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s not Martin Heming. It makes no sense to take Lucy or to try to take the children if the killer is Heming. Our killer’s identity is locked up in those three, but Sturbe is not Heming.’
‘The profile never matched,’ said Denise. ‘We’ve been chasing the wrong guy.’
Chapter Ninety
Lock-Up, Bedford-Stuyvesant
March 14, 10.40 a.m.
He’d been working on the structure for hours and it was nearing completion. The two Flemish bond brick walls came out from the back of the workshop, forming a three-sided space. The walls turned into the fourth side at full height, stopped for a door and continued with a two-foot wall and space for a window. The operation at the vigil had given him all the confidence that he needed, but he wanted to see them die. He didn’t want them to die in the dark. He needed to see the pain on their faces.
The fourth wall was fitted with a door that had special seals to ensure that no air could get in or out. The final piece of the fourth wall was about to be completed. Glass would have been perfect but it was too heavy and too expensive. He’d bought a single eight-foot by six-foot piece of clear Plexiglass and fitted it into the large window space. On the inner side, he had cemented security bars between the two walls. The Plexiglass was sealed into place, and then he added a further layer of bricks on the sides and bottom to add strength.
He stood back, looked at his creation and was pleased. He opened the door and walked in. The door shut into a wide jamb and was sealed on the outside by an old-fashioned set of bolts. Inside, the space was ten feet by ten feet. It was large enough to make a cell for a number of people. He looked up at the ceiling. The small inner room was still open to the roof.
He levered four strips of corrugated iron into place across two supports made of simple wooden planks. He drilled the iron into the wood and then bolted it together to form the roof.
He climbed up the ladder and on to the roof carrying a thick latex sealant and coated all the joints and bolts.
It had taken all morning and he sat with a take-out staring at his construction. He finally picked up his tubes. He would have two feeder tubes running from the roof of the inner building. He cut two holes in the roof and fixed shower heads into the corrugated roof, then sealed the join and a joining piece to his tubes and ran them both across the roof, down each side of the building and around to a central unit made of an old plastic bin with a sealed lid.
He welded the tubes together, ensuring that they were fixed. Finally he joined both to the large plastic bin.
He inspected his finished cell. It was perfect. He had a chair, throne-like, positioned opposite the Plexiglass wall.
He took a red flare, lit it and placed it inside the room and locked the door. The room filled with thick red smoke and for a while all the smoke was contained within the room, but soon, several wisps started to escape through the joins in the brickwork. He walked around, carefully marking each leak with a spray can. When he had marked each space, he started to plaster each one with more sealant or mortar. As he sealed, the red smoke reduced until no more was escaping. His cell was airtight. That was vitally important.
He watched for thirty minutes and then, satisfied, opened the door to let the smoke dissipate. He walked outside into the yard, pulled his balaclava back on, opened the trunk of his car and looked down at Lucy.
Chapter Ninety-One
Apartment, Upper East Side
March 14, 11.18 a.m.
Harper had re-sent CSU to look for what they could at Lucy’s apartment. If the killer had been a past boyfriend, then there might be other evidence. He now paced around her apartment, looking and desperately trying to work it out. Then there was a call from the hallway.
Harper found the CSU team dusting the linoleum just inside the door and taking pictures. ‘What have you got?’
‘We’ve found a print of a boot. The bastard tried to clean it, but rubber can’t just be dusted off. It’s left one or two marks.’
‘Is it anything you can work on?’ Harper asked.
‘Sure it is,’ said the Crime Scene detective. ‘Look at this.’ He crouched and shone his flashlight at the boot-print. ‘See these marks of the sole? There’s lots of small tears in the rubber. It’s unusual. It would identify the boot, for sure. It’s as good as a fingerprint.’
Harper stared at the small marks. ‘I think I know what they are,’ he said. ‘Tears from barbed wire. The killer was rolling David Capske with his foot. Shit, he hasn’t even changed his boots. That’s how confident this guy is. It’s nothing if we don’t find the owner of that boot. How the hell do we do that?’
‘It might not help you find him, but it’ll help you nail him, Detective.’
‘I just worked out why the killer called the networks,’ said Harper. ‘David Capske was personal. He realized he’d made a mistake. Jesus, we should’ve seen it. That’s what felt so wrong about the whole political angle. It was fake, but it worked. We were sidelined — and he knew that we would be.’
Harper’s cell buzzed. He picked it up.
‘I’ve got good news,’ said Denise.
‘What is it? I need some good news.’
‘We followed yo
ur suggestion and looked into Lucy’s past. We found something.’
‘A name?’
‘No.’
‘A picture?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
‘Get back over here and we’ll show you.’
Harper rushed into the investigation room. Denise and Gerry Ratten were hunched over a computer screen.
‘What have you got for me?’
‘Ratten has found something. Postings on the Internet by a girl called Lucy S.’
‘Is this Lucy Steller?’
‘These are posts from fourteen months ago. And our suspect wouldn’t have known anything about them.’
‘Why not?’
‘She wrote them on a women’s forum, a help group for victims of domestic violence. A place to talk, to get up the courage to report the bastards.’
‘What makes you think it’s her?’
‘She says she’s writing a book. Her name is Lucy S.’
‘It’s not enough,’ said Harper.
‘And she says there’s a grocer’s which she can see from her apartment window.’
‘It wouldn’t wash in court.’
‘We’ve got evidence,’ said Gerry Ratten.
‘How the hell did you find it?’
‘You got to know where to look,’ said Gerry. ‘I just got a warrant and got her ISP to release her IP address and browsing history.’
‘They give you the websites?’
‘Yeah. We saw where she’d visited. We tracked a lot of them. I got two interesting things. One, that she was seeing a man that she called X. Two, that he was beating on her. Three, that he was racist and four, that about a couple of weeks earlier, they’d gone on a road trip to Yellowstone Park together.’
‘Why did she call him X?’
‘It’s a domestic violence forum,’ said Denise. ‘You’re not allowed to name the bastards. That would be against the law.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah, seriously. She made over four hundred posts over an eight-month period. Read some of the highlights.’
I am in an abusive relationship. My boyfriend does not let me go out or look at other men. He tries to make me admit that I have had an affair. He interrogates me for hours until I admit it, then he beats me.
X hit me twice today. Both times in the back. I don’t know what to do.
He drinks and he rapes me sometimes, but I kid myself it’s not rape, right?
X accused me of liking Jews too much and Blacks. It’s only because I’m supposed to be going to a party tomorrow. He said I’m trying to undermine him. He says I’m a slut. I said that I wasn’t. He gave me a black eye so I couldn’t go to the party.
I’m a good girl today. Will I get high fives all round? I finally broke up with X. It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t shout or scream. He just stared at me. Just stared and stared and didn’t say a thing. Not a word. Not one single word.
I got home today. X was standing outside the building again. He looked okay, but he’d obviously been drinking. I can always tell. Then he ran at me and put his hands all over me. It was only when I got inside the door that I realized that I was smeared all over with blood. I don’t even know where it came from.
Midnight. I woke up, he was at my bed. He was in my room, at my bedside. I screamed in terror. He pleaded with me to take him back. I would die if he came back. I can’t take it. He tells me that if I report him, he’ll make my life a living hell. It already is. Not one day goes by without phone calls or visits or one of his reports.
Harper read what he could. ‘No names.’
‘We can probably glean information, but it’ll take time.’
‘You mentioned Yellowstone,’ said Harper.
‘It’s the one date-posted message that tells us where our killer was for a week last year.’
‘That’s worth following up. Okay,’ said Harper. ‘We’ve got to go through Lucy’s whole electronic history. There’ll be a connection. We find she uses a credit card in some hotel, then we check every other receipt. He’s got to be there. He was with her for eight months, he can’t hide that well.’
Chapter Ninety-Two
Lock-Up, Bedford-Stuyvesant
March 14, 12.43 p.m.
The food left out in front of the shed had attracted enough of the local homeless. Not people, but stray dogs. He sat on a high pallet overlooking them. They were frail and needy. He saw the one he wanted. A little beige-brown mutt, about two foot high with a white underbelly and a nice clean snout. It was probably a hybrid of a hybrid, not a pure gene in it.
He climbed down from the pallet, took a biscuit out of his pocket and threw it to the one he wanted. The little dog looked up with big brown eyes, full of expectation and gratefulness. He threw it another biscuit.
As he walked away, the little beige dog followed him. It wasn’t fast or eager, it moved with a tentative stride. He took a third biscuit out of his pocket and held it out; this time, the dog walked across and took it from his hand.
He went inside the lock-up. The little dog followed. He shut the door. He heard Abby move in the small room behind the door. She would get her chance soon enough. The dog stopped and seemed to be aware that somehow it was no longer free. It looked at the door, at the man — and then another biscuit was thrown in its path and it forgot its instincts.
The dog looked up. A line of biscuits ran all the way across the room. It ate and moved and ate and moved, and before long, the small beige mutt was inside the room that the man had built.
The man closed the heavy acoustic door and bolted it. He moved to the Plexiglass window and looked in. The mutt had eaten the rest of its biscuits and was looking up at the window.
The man watched for a minute; there was something appealing in the dog, in its lack of knowledge. He turned, put on large yellow gloves, and opened a big round can using an old-fashioned can-opener. He poured the blue pellets into the plastic bin and then sealed the lid.
He crossed eagerly to the window. The gas was odorless and colorless. He watched for a moment, but nothing seemed to happen. He waited and watched. The dog sat, wagged its tail and barked once.
He moved closer to the window. Then the dog’s muzzle sniffed. The gas must have reached the ground level where the animal was.
The scene was unpleasant to watch, if one watched it emotionally. But if one used the scientific side of one’s nature and observed the effect of the gas, rather than reacting to the perceived pain of the dog, it was fine. Lucy was tied in the chair staring at the window. She was not detached, but then again, she was not supposed to be. He wanted to see the fear in her eyes.
The dog barked, scratched, ran a small circle and jumped up at the window. It was in agonizing pain and showed every sign of terror. But within seven minutes, it was lying on its side, almost dead.
The man raised his hand and pressed his palm to the Plexiglass. The little beige-brown mutt was still and lifeless. A harsh lesson in trusting strangers, he thought, but his experiment had worked.
Chapter Ninety-Three
North Manhattan Homicide
March 14, 4.32 p.m.
In the precinct, they reopened the cases: the brown, scratched case-files, the box-files of accumulated evidence, the database that Harper insisted on that hooked up every detail, to find links and matches. They looked back through each case slowly, letting their minds wander over the detail, trying to see what they’d overlooked. They had Lucy Steller’s phone records, Internet records, credit-card statements, bank statements and everything else besides.
On the board in front of them they had a large eight-month calendar. Every call, receipt, purchase or interaction was noted by each date. They were piecing together her life story from Internet forums, relatives, friends and the accumulated electronic data.
After just a few hours, the eight-month period was beginning to fill out. Harper stared at the board. Every time he spotted a date where Lucy was with Mr X, he
had his team cross-check each receipt.
Harper had the team bring in every person who knew Lucy Steller. The interview rooms were all full and the corridors outside were lined with people. Someone had to have seen Lucy with this man, but they’d been at it for hours already and not a soul had seen him.
Denise walked up to Harper. He was staring at the cases. He had put the picture of Abby side-by-side with Lucy. He could see something. A pattern. He looked from Abby to Lucy to Capske. There was something there. What was it that was nagging away in his head? Something connected them. He looked across at the kidnapping of the children. All the unanswered questions came at once. What was the blue eagle the kids saw on the killer? How did the killer sit for hours with Capske with no one bothering him? How did he know about the safe house?
Harper’s mind clicked once, then twice. He saw a picture in his mind. He saw another. Some route through all these threads seemed to be forming, but he just couldn’t quite catch it.
‘The boot-print,’ he called to Swanson. ‘What did CSU say?’
‘Nothing at all. It’s just a boot-print. No matches on record.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Harper. ‘Come on, something must break here. Eddie, anything from the interviews?’
‘Nothing yet,’ shouted Eddie, ‘but we’re trying.’
Everyone was silent, working the case, poring over and over every detail.
Denise raised her head. ‘I’ve found nothing in any of Lucy’s old journals, not one reference to his name or appearance.’
‘Then we’ve really got nothing,’ said Harper. He looked up and saw Heming’s face staring out from one of the boards.
‘Where did you disappear to, Heming?’ said Harper. He stared at the pictures of Lucy and Abby. They might be both alive, somewhere out there, with a man intent on torturing and killing them. Harper looked up again at the board. Something was speaking to him, he just couldn’t quite hear it.
