Apex Predator

by J. A. Faura

  Everybody had the police and FBI’s profiles and would filter their people through them.

  All agencies had agreed to meet at the end of the week to compare notes and eliminate as many people as it made sense to. Grady had also been coordinating with all the other lead investigators from the other precincts and the NYPD public information division just in case something did break or some reporter started asking questions.

  Some of the investigators from the other precincts had already begun to mention that there were reporters sniffing around, asking questions about the missing girls.

  Grady would be talking to Mia’s family later today. Her mother, her father and her 12-year-old brother were coming down to the station along with any other family member that had seen or been around the girls together.

  After spending 10 years or more in homicide, most detectives could sense when there was a window of opportunity, and every investigator on this case could sense this was it.

  As he was organizing his notes and related materials, Bob Grady heard a slight knock at his door. He looked up to find Steven Loomis standing in his doorway.

  Loomis looked tired and weary, but there was an intensity to the man that was unmistakable. It was the eyes more than anything. Grady had seen eyes like that before, eyes that had witnessed death and had peered into hell only to come out on the other side with a certain calculated coldness. The difference was that Loomis wasn’t a psychopath or a sociopath. He was clearly an extremely intelligent and controlled guy with no tolerance for bullshit and the highest level of motivation anyone could have.

  Grady sat back down in his chair, “Mr. Loomis, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Loomis came into the office without being invited and sat down in the chair in front of Grady’s desk. He smiled a thin, knowing smile, “I ran into Detective Mullins on the way in. He mentioned you guys might have caught a break.”

  Grady gave Loomis a deadpan look and took his time responding. Loomis was testing him; he was trying to find out just how much they would be willing to share with him.

  If Grady had read this guy correctly, he already knew they had caught a break and knew just what that break was. “Yes, yes, we did. Well, I don’t really like to think about the disappearance of two little girls as a break, but yes, two girls went missing that had a clear link between them.

  “They were friends and schoolmates. Their families know each other and have attended a lot of recitals and school activities together.”

  Loomis was nodding, pleased that Grady was not going to try to shut him out. It was the smart play; their way of keeping him informed just enough for him not do anything on his own. “So you are working off of a hypothesis that whoever took them had to have been around both of them at some point and that narrows down the list, yes?”

  It was Grady’s turn to nod, “That’s right. You’re in the business, do you believe it is just coincidence?”

  Loomis answered, “No, not in something like this. I get it. The other girls were completely unrelated to one another, they had nothing in common.” He had to fight through the rage that welled up when he referred to Tracy as one of the other girls, and Grady could see it in his face.

  The jaw clenching and the eyes becoming colder, Loomis went on, “So there was no pattern to follow, they all seemed like they had been taken during a hunting expedition when the opportunity presented itself, when he saw what he wanted, and with Mia Reynolds and Emily Wu, he had to have seen them together or somehow know both of them. I get it.”

  Grady folded his hands on his desk and leaned forward, he knew why Loomis had explained it to him.

  He wanted Grady to know exactly how good his sources were, “Very good, Mr. Loomis. I’m not going to ask how you have the names of the two missing girls or how you came to formulate your scenario, because to be honest I don’t want to know.

  “I would just ask that you do not in any way interfere or compromise any part of this investigation. If you can do that, I can guarantee that I will be absolutely honest with you and will keep you informed as much as it is legally possible.”

  Grady got a sideways response, “As much as it is legally possible?”

  Grady held up his hands, “Hey, I told you what you find out on your own and how you find it is none of my business, I don’t want to know.”

  Loomis leaned back in his chair. They were on the same page. “Fair enough. Thank you for your time, detective.”

  As Steven got up to leave, Grady threw out another caveat, “And I will expect the same courtesy from you, Mr. Loomis. You’ll let us know if you happen to run across something interesting, right?”

  Steven turned around, “Sure, but I thought the NYPD wasn’t too keen on civilians being a part of the investigation.”

  Grady crossed his arms and smiled, “The NYPD doesn’t like civilians involved in a criminal case, especially one like this one, but me, I don’t give a shit where the information comes from. I just want to shut this guy down.”

  Loomis was starting to like Detective Grady, something rare for him.

  He nodded and just before turning back around to leave, he paused and without looking back said, “We have a computer we use to do geographic profiling. It uses a mathematical formula, which takes the locations where the girls were taken and develops a statistical, geographic model of where the subject is likely to live. I’ll have the results of what we’ve come up with couriered over to you, personally.”

  Grady didn’t say anything. As he was walking out the door, Loomis turned back to make one last comment, “And you can call me Steven.”

  As he was walking down the hallway, Loomis heard Grady respond from inside his office, “Yeah, well you can call me Detective Grady.” Yes, Steven Loomis was definitely beginning to like Bob Grady.

  Chapter 4

  Felix Garcia had been a beat reporter for the New York Chronicle for five years now. He was assigned to cover the police blotter from three precincts in Manhattan. Born and raised in Spanish Harlem by a white mom and a Hispanic father had provided him with more of a street education than he cared for, but for which he was immensely thankful.

  He smelled bullshit a mile away and could think on his feet better than any of the other young reporters at the Chronicle. That was why he had been assigned his own beat covering three precincts over the complaints of the Ivy League whiners stuck with covering the social pages. Not bad for a kid that had taken six years to graduate from NYU’s journalism program.

  He was by no means the only reporter of mixed heritage in New York, but his tall lean body, light brown skin, dark curly hair and light aqua eyes made him hard to forget. He spoke both Spanish and English fluently and had learned to seamlessly move from one culture to the other in order to fit his purposes. Unlike many of the other young journalists at the Chronicle who concentrated almost exclusively on their online persona, Felix had an old-school mentality that harkened back to Woodward and Bernstein.

  He believed that good journalists kept their nose in the story, in developing sources and in looking for things deep under the surface, not worrying about how many ‘likes’ they got or how many Twitter followers they had. To Felix’s way of thinking, it was the story that should win fans, not the person who wrote it.

  That didn’t mean that he did not have a deep understanding of social media or that he did not value what the Internet could do to bring his writing to those looking for that good story. Ironically, he had more followers on Twitter and more ‘friends’ on his Chronicle Facebook page than any of the other young reporters at the Chronicle.

  He had traded on his family name, but not in the way of the Carnegies or the Rockefellers. He was Augusto Garcia’s grandson, from Spanish Harlem, and that carried some weight when he knew he wouldn’t get the information in his role as a reporter. He had more cousins, uncles, nephews and nieces than he could count, whether they were blood relatives or not was irrelevant, once a tio, always a tio and once a
primo, always a primo.

  Family was defined by the strength of your word and your bond. He never forgot this.

  He had a reputation for being tenacious, smart, but also discreet. He had never burned a source, something that everyone that had ever given him a scoop appreciated. He was careful not to jump too quickly when he started hearing chatter or rumors about something.

  Instead, he did his own homework and came up with one or two scenarios that he would work from. Once he decided on those scenarios, however, he bit down and didn’t let go until he had his story.

  After three years hanging around the precincts and monitoring police scanners, he thought he had a pretty good feel for when there was a real story there or when it was just bullshitting among cops.

  Over the past few weeks, he had been following leads on a couple of homicides, both of which turned out to be crimes of passion, nothing to get excited over, and some burglaries where there was actually the hint of a story since one of the burglaries had been a sophisticated cat burglar right out of Ocean’s Eleven who had made off with more than $300,000 in jewelry. He had made a mental note to follow up on that one.

  Then there was the usual smattering of domestic violence cases, nothing newsworthy, and last there were the missing persons reports. Again nothing out of the ordinary, although he had noticed that in each of the precincts he covered there was a report of a little girl missing. Nothing in common with any of them other than age and they were just three among twelve others from around the five boroughs.

  Still, Felix had also made a mental note to check with some of the other beat reporters about missing little girls of the same age range. Maybe there was something big there, but Felix had gotten egg on his face before for jumping to conclusions too soon. Too many options of what could have happened to them, a divorced parent simply taking their kid, getting lost, runaways, although at six he thought that unlikely, still too many possibilities to put anything on paper.

  He would wait until he had something to dig into, the cat burglar story was his main focus for the time being, but this one was definitely worth filing away to follow up on later. Besides, he had accumulated enough resources within each precinct to learn if there was something worth learning.

  Drew Willis was wrapping up his caseload and was thrilled about going to The Hound’s Tooth and having a stiff scotch.

  He couldn’t wait until the assistant district attorney normally assigned to this courtroom came back. Bart Logan was really starting to grate on him. The guy had a stick so far up his ass he would have trouble bending his neck to look down.

  The whole week had been a series of arguments and sidebars and meetings in the judge’s chambers for even the most simple of negotiations. Like Drew, Logan was just a few years out of law school and was really trying to establish a reputation as a hard-ass. What he had really achieved was to garner contempt from most of the public defenders he worked with, and not even the guys that were lighthearted and really flexible dealmakers were comfortable working with him. They just put up with his bullshit to try to get the best deal possible, if anything Logan threw on the table could really be called a deal.

  As he was putting his files into his briefcase, the door to the courtroom opened and in walked Max Zeidler, a high-profile defense attorney who didn’t step into a courtroom for less than $50,000. His clients were mostly Wall Street types caught on insider trading stuff, wives or husbands accused of murder with estates of billions on the line, or high-profile drug dealers. Not anything close to the street dealers, but the big fish, the guys that worked in tons.

  Zeidler was in his late 50s but was in great shape and looked to be in his late 40s. He still had a full head of silver-white hair, which he slicked back. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he had not bowed to the temptations of the plastic surgery gods. His skin was wrinkled and tan and made the perfect combination with his blue, pinstriped Armani suit, his dark yellow paisley tie and his mane of silver hair.

  He had first gained notoriety back in the ’70s and early ’80s defending the old mafia dons and doing it pretty successfully, so much so that in a couple of cases the Federal court had moved to have him disqualified over some RICO technicality or another.

  Now he walked into the courtroom like he owned it, with his minions following and people getting out of his way. He actually looked like one of the dons he defended back in the day.

  Drew watched the little procession with some amusement. It was even more amusing to watch Logan’s reaction to Zeidler’s arrival.

  He stood up from the prosecution table buttoning up his suit coat with a very dignified look on his face and his hand outstretched, “Mr. Zeidler, Bart Logan, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you, I’ve been expecting you. I assume you’re here about the Pedroza case.”

  Zeidler stopped, looked at him, shook his hand as a mere courtesy and asked, “Where’s Melanie Farris? I thought she was the one handling the case.”

  Logan tried to maintain his composure, but the red spreading across his face betrayed his annoyance, embarrassment was more like it. ”She’s been pulled into another case, so the Pedroza case has been handed to me.”

  Logan was trying hard as hell to remain composed, but the awkwardness of the situation was just not in his comfort zone and rather than coming off as someone with some authority, he came off as a petulant child insisting he was right.

  Zeidler turned back and whispered to one of his assistants, then turned back to face Logan. “Well, Bert, you don’t mind if I call you Bert, do you? Why don’t we get the judge out here and get on with requesting a continuance until Melanie can get back on the case.”

  Bart stood his ground, Drew was impressed, “Mr. Zeidler, there is no reason for requesting a continuance, the people are ready and all the stipulations about the DNA evidence have been made. Your office confirmed it. And it’s Bart, not Bert.”

  Zeidler was smiling. Drew knew what was coming and he was actually feeling sorry for Logan. The kid just couldn’t figure out which battles he should fight.

  “Alright, Bart, here’s the deal. We have made the stipulations we have because of long and careful discussions with Melanie Farris and your boss, David Neill, you know, the DA.

  “Now if we are going to have to deal with a different legal team then we will need a continuance in order to discuss the case with that new legal team, a team I am assuming you will be a part of, but not heading, no offense.

  “If we are going to ask for a continuance anyway, then wouldn’t it make sense to request one until the original prosecution team could handle the case again? I am sure you would still be a part of the team, but this way, things would move just so much more smoothly, don’t you think?”

  Drew had to sit in admiration, in one fell swoop Zeidler had let Logan down easy, without insulting him, dangled a high-profile case in front of him like a carrot in front of a horse and made him think it would end up coming off as his idea. Logan was clearly outgunned and outmatched here and he didn’t even know it. He made a show of looking through the file and thinking about it, but he knew damn well what he was going to do.

  Still he had to save face and get the last word in, “Based on the complexity of the case, Mr. Zeidler, the people would not be opposed to a continuance until Mr. Neill and Ms. Farris can rejoin the case. Of course that will be up to Judge Lee to decide.”

  Zeidler nodded and patted Logan on the shoulder. “That’s a good man. Don’t worry, Jerry…I mean Judge Lee…won’t have a problem with it. His docket is backed up as it is.”

  Logan looked satisfied with himself. He turned to the judge’s clerk, who was smiling at the whole exchange herself, “Heather, could you ask Judge Lee if we can meet with him in his chambers?”

  Heather nodded, “Of course, Mr. Logan, I will check with him.”

  As she turned to go back to the judge’s chambers, she caught Zeidler’s eye and gave him a quick wink. While they were all waiting for her to come back, Dr
ew, one of the last lawyers in the courtroom, was shaking his head and smiling as he finished putting his files away.

  Zeidler and his entourage, most of whom were on their iPhones or Blackberries texting away, just sat and waited. He looked around the courtroom and saw Drew putting his files away and called out to him, “Willis, it is Willis, right? That was a nice outcome on the Jordan distribution and conspiracy case. I represented the co-defendant and we didn’t get a much better deal. It was a nice play getting the cop to doubt the source of the container at the preliminary.”

  Now it was Drew’s turn to try to look nonplussed and confident. He actually felt pretty good, so it wasn’t all that hard, “Thank you, Max. It wasn’t that hard really, the guy’s report and notes were crap from the beginning. I just had to get him to admit that on the stand to the judge.”

  Zeidler nodded, smiling, “Sometimes that’s not as easy as it looks. Good work anyway.”

  Drew finished packing his files and went up to shake the man’s hand, “Thanks again. Hey, good luck with Pedroza.”

  Zeidler rolled his eyes toward Logan and made a low gesture with his hand as if to say ‘We’ve got it in the bag,’ but what he actually said in a low voice was, “If you ever think about joining a firm, a no holds-barred, balls-to-the-wall firm, you make sure you give me a call first.”

  Drew turned to leave, “I appreciate the offer, it is an absolute honor, but I just hung out my shingle not too long ago, you know how that is.”

  Zeidler smiled, “I do, do I ever. Just keep it tucked in your back pocket. You never know.”

  Drew turned and started to walk out of the courtroom. He had no doubt Logan had caught that whole exchange and could almost feel his eyes boring a hole in the back of his head.