Apex Predator

by J. A. Faura

  Donald nodded, “Exactly. Just whatever I need it for.”

  Mullins and Grady were taking notes and, as was often the case with persons of interest, it is something they say on their own that makes them even more interesting.

  It was no different with Donald Riche, “Sometimes I go up the coast and look for antiques. There really are some hidden treasures up there.”

  Without looking up from their pads, Mullins and Grady paused for just a beat and glanced sideways at each other.

  Without deciding which one was going to take the opening, Grady stepped up, “Do you deal in antiques, Donald, you don’t mind if I call you Donald?”

  Donald thought about it and realized they probably already knew the answer to that, “No, I don’t. I go looking mostly for myself.”

  Mullins and Grady then did look up from their pads and looked around the apartment. They looked at each other and then at Donald.

  Now it was Mullins that asked the question, “Donald, man, I got to tell you that coming in here, I don’t know what the name of this type of decoration is, but what I do know is that I don’t see any antiques anywhere in here.”

  Donald looked around. He hadn’t thought about that when he said it. He looked at the walls, at the furniture all around and at the furniture they were sitting on. And then a palpable change came over him.

  Grady and Mullins saw it immediately. The ready smile, that open demeanor, the helpful and sensitive eyes were all gone. His body language also changed.

  He moved farther from the detectives, he sat up straight and he looked at them with a cold and determined look, “Detectives, I don’t like the way this conversation is going. I invited you into my home. I told you both on the phone that I would like to help you any way that I could, and what I think I’m getting is a bunch of questions that don’t have to do with the girls or trying to get them back and I don’t like how this is going.”

  Grady was kicking himself; he might have come at him too quick. He should have eased into it a bit. Mullins had also been a bit surprised at how quickly Grady had tried to throw Riche off, but here it was.

  Mullins had to figure out a way to bring his guard down again, if it could be done. “Mr. Riche, there’s no reason to get upset, we’re just trying to think of anything that might help us. You can understand that, right?”

  Mullins was trying to make him a partner in the search, someone that they were looking to for help. If they were right about this guy, it would definitely appeal to his ego.

  Riche had flipped, though. He now understood he wasn’t just one of dozens of other people they were interviewing, they had put him on a short list of possible suspects.

  Once he made that determination, he stopped the façade and knew he had to do whatever he needed to do in order to protect himself, to protect his work really. “Gentlemen, I appreciate what you are trying to do and as I told both of you, I am more than willing to help in any way that I can. I met the girls Friday just over one week ago at Nancy Hunt’s house.

  “I felt I was doing Nancy a favor because she really wanted to go to the theater with the rest of the girls. I showed up at her apartment at the time she asked me to with DVDs for the girls. They watched movies in Nancy’s room and I watched movies out in the living room. Nancy came home at around eleven thirty, the girls were asleep on her bed and that was it.

  “I really don’t have anything else to say to you gentlemen that I think would be useful to your investigation, so if there’s nothing else, I really have some things I need to get working on.” Mullins and Grady closed their notebooks.

  While Mullins was getting ready to take his leave, Grady wasn’t quite ready to just get up and leave, “Mr. Riche, I understand what you are saying, but I want you to understand something also. Nine little girls are missing. Nine families are going crazy trying to figure out what happened to them. Mia and Emily were taken within a day of each other. They were the only two girls taken who knew each other, which means that whoever took them had to have seen them together or spent time with them together.

  “You see, we don’t believe in coincidences like that. And maybe it is just really bad luck that it was you, but as you have quite eloquently explained to us, you both saw and spent time with both girls the week before they went missing. So yeah, we’re going to ask you and anyone else who might have also been with them whatever we need to ask in order to eliminate them as a suspect or to figure out anything that might help us. We’re going to ask it, whether it makes you uncomfortable or not.”

  Mullins could see this going sideways quickly and tried to pull it back, knowing it was probably too late. “Mr. Riche, we’re asking these types of questions of everyone that was with the girls. It’s nothing against you personally.”

  Riche didn’t break eye contact with Grady and his look was decidedly different than that with which he had welcomed them.

  His eyes were hooded and cold now and he was in full defense mode, “Of course, I’m sure all the people you’ve talked to own vans and are single males and babysat the girls the Friday before the week they were taken.”

  He stood up and stretched out his hand, “Well, detectives, as I said, there really isn’t anything else to say. If you have anything else to ask, I will give you the name of my attorney and you can deal with him directly.”

  Grady and Mullins both stood up and shook his hand. Riche escorted them to the door, opened it and waited for them to leave.

  On his way out, Grady stopped midway out the door, “We’ll be waiting for your lawyer’s information.”

  Just before continuing to leave the apartment, Grady paused again, “Mr. Riche, you rent a warehouse in an industrial area near the Brooklyn Bridge, right? Probably to keep all those antiques and all…”

  Riche kept his expression neutral, “Good evening, gentlemen, you’ll hear from my attorney.”

  He closed the door behind them and then turned to lean his back against it. He put his head in his hands and tried to pull himself together. He had made a mistake and he knew it. He shouldn’t have taken Mia and Emily; they were too easy to relate to each other.

  No matter, too late to take it back. The only thing he was really worried about was the fact that he might not get to finish his work the way he wanted to. Not the thought of prison, the death penalty or any other possible punishments, it was just the work that concerned him.

  He would have to hire a lawyer and not say a thing and, who knew, it may all just blow over. They had absolutely nothing other than the fact that he had met the girls. No physical evidence, nothing.

  As he thought about all this, Trinity started to feel more confident and he actually began to feel something new, a new sense of pride that he had completed the work he had in the midst of forces that were stacked up against him.

  He did his work by himself, and all the forces against him had many men and resources to pit against him. He was equal to the task; he had been equal to the task all along. Now it was time to find the best lawyer he could find.

  Mullins and Grady walked to the elevator without talking and without looking at each other.

  As soon as the elevator doors closed, Mullins started, “Bob, I know what…”

  Grady turned to face him, shaking his head with a sardonic smile on his face. “He did it. The son of a bitch did it.”

  Mullins was already shaking his head, “C’mon, you can’t make those kinds…”

  Grady pushed the stop button on the elevator and looked at Mullins square in the eye, “Goddamnit, Mark, I know the protocol and I know what we have, which isn’t shit, but you know that motherfucker took those girls. Nobody else we have interviewed, none of the 36 possibles have even come close.

  “Did you see how he got when we asked about the van? Did you get a look at his apartment? We’ve both been doing this long enough, and even though I will never admit to this conversation outside of this elevator, you and I know this is our guy. Now we just have to
build something to take to the DA.”

  He pulled the stop button. On the way down, Mullins said to Grady, “We have to figure out how to get a search warrant for that van and for that warehouse.”

  Grady hung his head and nodded, “I know, and any judge will laugh us out of his chambers with what we have so far.” They stood next to each other without saying anything for a few seconds.

  It was Mullins who broke the silence, “You know, I was just thinking this might be a piece of news we could share with Steven Loomis.”

  Grady looked at him, and Mullins went on, “I mean, he does have resources and he’s not bound by any of those probable cause, search warrant tie-ups we’re bound by. He’s a citizen.”

  Grady was smiling, “And you’re the one that wanted to hold out on him.”

  Mullins chuckled as they got to the ground floor and walked out of the elevator. “Well, you do this shit long enough and you take whatever you can, whatever way you can get it.”

  As they exited the building, Grady stopped and faced Mullins. “Seriously, we share what we have, including Riche as part of the investigation, and we let him take it from there. It can’t look like we’re getting this guy to do our dirty work for us.”

  Mullins nodded, “I got it. Do you really think Loomis would just go barreling in? No, he’ll take it nice and slow and will be really meticulous about it.”

  Grady continued walking, “Yeah, now we just need to coordinate with the rest of the task force and start spinning a story the Garcia kid can put down on paper.”

  They walked without talking for a couple of blocks then Mullins said, “I like that kid. He’s no bullshit and he doesn’t go for the tabloid angle.”

  Grady agreed, “Yup, so let’s work something up with the public information office and get it ready.”

  Chapter 6

  Loomis met Grady at a coffee shop on 5th avenue. Grady was already sitting in a booth digging into a plate of eggs, bacon and hash browns.

  Loomis sat down and the waitress came over, “Do you know what you want?”

  Loomis answered, “I’ll just have a coffee.”

  As soon as she left, Steven turned to Grady and quipped, “Do you always have breakfast like this?”

  Without looking up or slowing down, Grady answered around a mouthful of hash browns, “No, I’m cutting back. You know, trying that ‘more healthy’ lifestyle and all that crap. Hey, listen, I am assuming that you know who we’ve been talking to.”

  The waitress came back with the coffee. Loomis waited until she left before he answered, “Yes, well, I’m not sure I have everyone, but I do have the ones that seem to be of interest.”

  Grady looked up, “You got a guy named Donald Riche?” Loomis grinned, “Yes, he is one of the ones on our list. Why?”

  Still eating, Grady went on, “So, Mark Mullins and I went to talk to the guy.”

  Loomis waited, Grady just ate. Loomis leaned back; he knew the game.

  Grady wasn’t just going to give him a rundown of their interview, he was going to wait until Loomis asked, “And how did that go?”

  Now Grady did stop eating. “What do you know about Riche?”

  Loomis thought about it. He had gone through the file several times, “Single, mid-30s, runner for a brokerage firm, no priors, not even a traffic ticket. He owns a van, rents a garage or storage space near the Brooklyn Bridge, and has never been married. Of all the people that we know of, he is one of four that come close to fitting the composite profile.”

  Grady kept his eyes on Loomis. This was one of those moments where a look between two professionals communicated things that sometimes words were just not adequate for.

  Grady started talking, and eating, “So we talked to the guy, perfectly normal. Had us over to his place and was willing to answer whatever we asked, until we got to talking about the van. He got nervous and defensive, and before we could even ask him about the warehouse he rents and why he rents it, he lawyered up.”

  Grady looked up and stared directly into Loomis’s eyes. In that look he told Loomis that working within his world this was as far as he could take it with this guy for right now. Both men knew Grady could not come out and ask Steven for anything.

  He had promised to keep him in the loop and he was doing exactly that, but he had also asked Steven to reciprocate and the look from Grady now told Loomis he intended to hold him to it.

  Loomis listened and got the message, “You think it’s him, don’t you?”

  Grady just looked at him, Loomis kept on, “You think it’s him and you have nothing to get a warrant for his apartment or for the van or for the warehouse.”

  Grady went back to eating, “Detective Mullins and I are going to do whatever we can to take something to the DA and to a judge, but honestly, we’re going to get laughed out of the building. There isn’t a shred of physical evidence. The guy is squeaky clean, and you’re right, no history.

  “I know you’ve been in front of fanatics and terrorists, but I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the presence of evil, in the presence of someone who has something different behind their eyes. But Loomis, off the record, I mean I’ll deny I ever said it kind of off the record, that’s this guy, that’s how he felt.

  “I may be wrong, but I would rather be wrong and scratch this guy off the list than to waste a lot of time running in circles. I will tell you this, though, even if he isn’t the guy in this case, there’s something there, something...creepy, about the guy.”

  Steven Loomis listened carefully. He understood exactly what Grady was saying, he had a strong gut feeling about this guy, and New York homicide detectives took that almost as seriously as physical evidence or an eyewitness.

  The problem was that they could never move on their gut feelings, and Grady had just shared with him that it would take a significant amount of time for him and his task force to develop enough to dig deeper into this guy because he was limited by what his job allowed him to do, his job allowed him to do.

  Steven looked intensely at Grady, who was in the middle of taking a bite of hash browns, and nodded almost imperceptibly.

  He finished his cup of coffee, put it down on the table and went to say goodbye, “Thanks for the update. I’ve actually got to get going. I have to get to the office. I’ve been out for a while and there’s just a lot of stuff I have to catch up on.”

  As he was getting ready to leave he grinned at Grady, “You should really try to mix in some fiber into the ‘healthy lifestyle crap’ thing.”

  Grady went on eating his breakfast and looked up as Loomis was leaving. “Don’t mention it. And I did try that bran crap. It tasted like shit. A man has his limits.”

  He kept his eyes on Loomis as he walked out of the restaurant. Yeah, the guy would use whatever resources he had to get as much as he could.

  Grady kept eating his breakfast and kept thinking that the man definitely looked different. The look that Grady had seen in all parents, the look of desperation and helplessness, was not there. The grief was there, but it wasn’t there like it was for most parents who lost their children.

  In Steven Loomis, Grady saw an intense and thoughtful look driven by the grief and by what felt like an intense and quiet anger just under it. It wasn’t something that was draining from him, it was something that was driving him and could potentially make him a wild card. Still, Grady knew he could count on him to get him more information on Riche, and in the end, the upside outweighed the downside.

  Loomis had been reading through everything Carl had gotten on Donald Riche. His childhood, foster system, went to college and got a degree, never in trouble with the law, no meaningful relationships to speak of. He had worked at his current brokerage firm for three years, but he had worked a variety of jobs since he graduated from college.

  One interesting thing Carl had been able to find was that Riche used his credit card to buy dry ice, machining equipment and supplies, and medical equipment and supp
lies for some time now.

  What the hell could he want all of that for? Of all the people the police had on their short list, this guy matched the composite profile better than anybody.

  Even without all of this, his conversation with Grady had told him everything he needed to know. This was the guy, though nothing Grady said could be construed by anybody as anything other than a casual conversation with the lead detective on the case sharing some information with one of the parents.

  But Steven wasn’t just one of the parents and Grady wasn’t just trying to keep him in the loop. He was letting him know that under the rules the police had to follow and with what they had, it would be almost impossible to get anything of value on Riche anytime soon and he was letting Steven know where to use whatever resources he had.

  Steven had gone to the field division earlier that day and requisitioned two groups. Everyone knew not to ask any questions. He had tasked one group with surveillance. Two teams of two operatives would rotate and would watch the guy 24/7. In a case like this, the subject was usually a lone operator, someone that had no financial motives and who took his time to enjoy what he was doing. He was also meticulous, so he wouldn’t leave things behind or engage in phone conversations.

  The second group was tasked with looking into the warehouse the guy was renting and going through his apartment. It wasn’t going to be too hard to find out what the guy was up to without leaving a single trace that they had been at either place. Steven knew the trick would be how to get the information to Grady in such a way that it didn’t screw up the case against the guy, if there was a case there at all.

  Will Talley and Ben Stewart were the best surveillance team the company had, and when they found out what this was about, they were the first to volunteer. The team that would rotate with them would be made up of whoever was available at that particular time.

  All of them were experienced operators, ex-military, police and some international guys, including former MI6, SVR and Mossad agents.

  Talley and Stewart had been on nighttime duty with the guy for two days now and had gotten absolutely nothing. The guy came home from work, went into his apartment and stayed there for the duration. The day shift guys hadn’t fared much better. He went to work, sometimes brought his lunch and sometimes went out with coworkers.