Apex Predator

by J. A. Faura

  After an entire career in the NYPD, he thought he was pretty much impermeable to anything, and he was, he just had never imagined he would ever be exposed to anything like this. He doubted there was one soul right here right now, no matter how long they’d been at the job, that could have seen anything like this in their worst nightmares.

  A SWAT team had already been dispatched to Donald Riche’s apartment and he had been taken into custody without any incident. He was back at the precinct and not saying a word. He had been allowed to call his lawyer. Mark Mullins had been there to make sure everything had gone by the book and that no one got a little too zealous doing their job when it came to handling Riche, something that tended to happen from time to time with child murderers and rapists.

  The last thing they wanted was for some technicality or another to put a kink in the case, although from what Grady had seen in the warehouse and what he’d been told by the crime scene investigations team, there was a mountain of biological material all over the place and Grady was willing to bet that most of it was Riche’s. Still the best thing that could happen is that Riche would confess once faced with the evidence.

  He had asked for Riche to be allowed to talk to his attorney but not to be interrogated yet. As Grady was thinking that the DA’s office would also want to send someone down for the questioning, Mark Mullins finally arrived at the scene.

  Grady threw away the styrofoam cup with cold coffee he had been holding and met Mullins before he got all the way to the warehouse, “How did it go?”

  Mullins, holding his own cup of fresher coffee, answered, “By the book. No resistance, no trouble, nothing. Riche answered the door, the SWAT point man knocked and he answered before they’d needed to bust down the door. They took him into custody and that was that.”

  He took a sip of his coffee and went on, “He was brought to the station and again everything went by the book. By the time he got there, everyone knew and everyone was waiting to see him. I was there to greet him and make sure nobody got cute or heroic.”

  Grady asked, “How did he respond when you greeted him? What did he look like?”

  Mullins took another sip, shook his head and answered the question. “I have to tell you, Bob, it was creepy as hell. He saw me and recognized me and just said, ‘Good evening, Detective Mullins.’ Just that, nothing else, but it wasn’t what he said that made the whole thing creepy, it was his expression.

  “He was completely calm, he wasn’t asking questions about the reason he was being arrested or saying anything about being innocent, nothing. His expression and the way he acted were almost like he was relieved. We booked him, fingerprinted him and I took him to a holding room.

  “I asked him if he wanted something to drink and he asked for coffee. Before I could leave the room, he just said, ‘Detective, I will need to speak with my attorney, please.’ So I let him call his lawyer and that was that. His lawyer got there right before I headed over here, so I decided to wait for a few minutes. He went into the interview room and came back out about 10 minutes later, right before I was going to leave. He was white as a ghost and just let me know they were going to be a while.

  “He looked haunted, Bob, like he was going back in because he had to, but what he really wanted to do was just to get the hell away. Maybe it was me just reading too much into all of this, but the whole thing was surreal and creepy as hell.”

  Grady took it all in, he hung his head and then looked up at Mullins, “I don’t think it was you just reading too much into it. Go ahead and take a look at the scene. The CSI team and the medical examiner’s team are in there now. Everyone else is being kept clear of the scene, but they know you are coming.”

  Mullins said, “Alright, I’ll head over there.”

  He started on his way and Grady grabbed his arm before he could get on his way, “Mark, this one is bad. I know we talked about it and how bad it felt, but this is like nothing we ever thought about and it will give you nightmares. I haven’t gone to sleep and I’m already having them. The first guys on the scene are all being counseled and I think we’ll be looking at some posttraumatic claims before long. I’ll understand if you don’t want to take a look now. We’ll have all the pictures and evidence we need to hang a case on the guy from here and from his apartment, so I’ll understand if you want to steer clear for now.”

  Mullins looked at Grady and saw something in his friend’s eyes he had never seen before, fear. Robert Grady, a grizzled and seasoned homicide detective in New York, someone who made his way up the ranks by being a beat cop, in the vice squad, organized crime detail and many others and had seen the worst humankind had to offer, had fear in his eyes. Whatever he had seen had scared Robert Grady and that more than anything else gave Mark Mullins pause, but he was a cop and this was also his case, and as much as he might want to avoid seeing something that was going to give him nightmares, he couldn’t shirk what he felt was part of his responsibility.

  He looked Grady in the eye, squeezed his shoulder and went on his way. Mullins arrived at the crime scene, which was surrounded by uniformed officers and hazardous materials guys and a multitude of vans and trucks. He went straight into the scene and the first thing that hit him was the smell. There was a strong chemical smell, but mixed with it there was a smell Mullins was very familiar with, the smell of decomposition. Even with as many chemicals as there were in the warehouse, Mullins could still distinguish the smell of death.

  Before he had a chance to actually see any of the bodies, Mullins found himself in the middle of what looked to have come straight out of a nightmare. The warehouse was clearly set up as a workshop of some sort. As he was trying to make some sort of sense out of what he was seeing, Mullins caught a glimpse of one of the open upright refrigerators and watched as one of the guys from the CSI team had to leave the warehouse because he couldn’t take it anymore. It was just a fleeting glance, but it was enough to make Mullins understand why Grady had looked so haunted. There was a little girl in there, obviously dead, but there was something else wrong with the picture. He couldn’t see exactly what, but he now knew he wouldn’t be looking into all of the freezers.

  Mark Mullins was also a grizzled and experienced homicide detective with the NYPD and he had also seen horrible things, but he knew his limits and he knew he had never imagined anything like what he was seeing. He knew if he were to go farther in he might just want to hang it up, and he wasn’t ready for that. He took a look at the tools sitting on the bench, the power tools on the floor, the freezers and the little girl in the upright refrigerator, and put together the picture. That alone was hard for him to process and from what he could see, what Grady said made more sense to him. There was enough here now, and there would be even more after it was all processed and the coroner’s office was done with the autopsies, to make a case against Donald Riche.

  Mark Mullins would hold true to his convictions and do everything he needed to do to carry out his job as well as he could, but looking at every body part in those freezers and refrigerators was not necessary for him to feel like he could do his job. If he did it now it would be more out of curiosity than out of necessity, and he just couldn’t live with that idea, the idea that he didn’t have to look but did anyway.

  He took his handkerchief out of his pocket, put it up to his nose, and headed back to meet up with Grady. The two men looked each other in the eye without saying a word. They didn’t need to. Mullins could already tell what Grady was thinking about, Steven Loomis.

  Mullins asked anyway, “Tracy Loomis?”

  Grady nodded slightly and answered, “I made the ID earlier. I don’t know how we are going to want to handle that.”

  Mullins said, “He seems like a pretty solid guy. I just don’t see him as a wild card.”

  Grady looked long and hard at Mullins before saying anything, “I know he’s not, but you know we are going to have to level with him, and you were in there, you saw. How in the world can we even begin to ima
gine how a father is going to react to something like this happening to his six-year-old girl?”

  Mullins nodded and then realized something, “How did they get into the warehouse, I mean who called it in and why?”

  Grady answered, “The night watchman said he was knocked out by some sort of dart he pulled out of his chest. When he came to, his dog was still out with a half-eaten steak laced with tranquilizer lying beside him, and a strong chemical smell was coming from one of the warehouses.

  “When he went to check which one it was coming from, he saw chemicals pouring out from warehouse 11. He called the chemicals in to hazardous materials and the police to give them the dart he says he pulled out of his chest. The first uniformed officers on the scene looked at the dart, had a conversation with the guard and started to think he might have made that part up, and that what really happened was that he fell asleep at the switch and the ‘accident’ happened while he was sleeping. The cameras were bypassed and the main power breaker switched off. The CSI guys have the dart and the half-eaten steak and are going to run tests to see what it was that was in them.”

  Mullins looked at Grady. The two men knew what had happened and were trying to figure out how to reconcile all of it with what had been found.

  Grady was the first to speak, “You know it was him, Loomis. I talked to one of the SWAT guys, a former sergeant in Special Forces, about the dart and it is definitely something used in tactical operations, but he explained it was the type of thing used more in private security or mercenary operations than in law enforcement.

  “Everyone is so focused on the scene that the guard’s story is getting drowned out. After he saw what he saw in the warehouse, he was taken to the hospital. I don’t think he remembers or cares about the dart right now, but that’s going to change when things slow down and people look at this more carefully.”

  Mullins was smoking a rare cigarette, something he did almost exclusively when he was drinking, and thinking about what Grady had just shared with him, he said, “He knew we had nothing on Riche or any of the others and had to find a way to give us a cause to go into the warehouse. He knew we would have to wait a while to get a warrant, if we could get one at all, and knew Riche might be gone by the time we did. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  Grady answered, “Yup. To be honest, I’m more worried about how he’s going to react to this than about anyone finding out how those chemicals spilled.”

  Just as he was finishing the sentence, Grady got a call on his cell phone. It was one of the uniformed officers stationed outside the perimeter who had a guy asking for Detective Grady. Grady didn’t have to ask who it was, he just told the cop he would be up there in a couple of minutes. Mullins heard his side of the conversation and also knew who it was. He thought it would be best for Grady to meet Steven Loomis by himself, not to try to escape from it but because from this point forward the less people that knew about this and how deep it went, the better it would be for everyone. Besides, there was plenty for him to do and heading back to the station to see how Riche’s interview had gone was first on the list.

  Chapter 9

  Grady made his way to the cordoned-off area where the uniformed officers were stationed. He could see news vans already parking and correspondents setting up for their reports. Every single officer or investigator at the scene had already been warned to not say a word to any of the media. Grady, coordinating with the public information office, would make a preliminary statement and the commissioner would hold a formal press conference the next day.

  Steven Loomis was waiting for him. He looked tired, but under control. He had probably been briefed by whoever had pulled off this operation. Grady knew that the conversation would be difficult. Both men knew what could or could not be said. Grady knew why Loomis was here and he didn’t know if he would be able to give him what he wanted.

  Grady started the conversation, “So I take it you heard.”

  Loomis understood that Grady knew he had been behind the chemical spill in the warehouse and that he knew none of this would have happened this quick without it. In other words, Grady knew he owed Loomis. Still, he couldn’t go past a certain line, no matter what the scoreboard was.

  Loomis waited a few seconds to answer, “You know I have and you know why I’m here.”

  Grady hung his head and looked back up to Loomis, “Yeah, I think I do. Thing is, I don’t know if I can help you get what it is you came looking for.”

  Loomis looked at Grady intensely and said, “I’m not asking for much and I know you could find a way to do the right thing. I put my job and the jobs of other people on the line to make this happen and you know it.”

  Grady responded, “So you’re saying that if you don’t get what you’re looking for you’re going to leak this?”

  Loomis smiled a thin, sad smile, “No, Robert, I think you know that’s not how I work. But if you can’t grant me this one favor then you obviously don’t work the way I thought you did.”

  Now it was Grady’s turn to be sardonic. He looked out over the river for a minute before turning back to address Loomis. “Supposing I was able to get you in. Are you sure you want to see what’s there? I know your background and you know mine, so I think we both know we can dispense with the bullshit. This is bad and I mean really bad.

  “I would think the memory you would want of your little girl is one with her beautiful face doing something fun with you and your family. What is it that you are looking for? Closure? Because I can tell you, brother, that there is no closure there, just pain and things that will change you forever.”

  Loomis appreciated what Robert Grady was trying to do but knew he was doing it because he felt he had to, to get off his chest what he had to get off his chest. In the end he also knew Grady would let him through.

  “No, Robert, I got closure a long time ago. I am here because if I don’t know I will always wonder, and I don’t want to just leave it to my imagination or to however the DA and the media choose to spin the case.”

  Grady looked at him for a long time. He could understand what the man was saying, for some avoiding the unknown was a better coping mechanism, for men like Loomis it was better to make things tangible, process them and move on. Grady imagined Steven Loomis had quite a bit of experience doing just that, you couldn’t be in the types of operations the guy had been in and not have the ability to compartmentalize and move on. Grady told the uniformed officer, a kid barely out of the academy, to let Loomis by.

  After walking a few yards he said, “Wait here.”

  He knew there were people from a lot of precincts and a lot of agencies. He walked up to someone he knew from the coroner’s office, someone who knew not to ask questions, spoke to him for a few seconds and took the man’s windbreaker. He made his way back to Steven Loomis and handed him the windbreaker. Steven took off his pea coat and put on the windbreaker.

  Grady simply turned around and said, “Follow me.”

  The two of them walked past the various technicians, police officers and firemen without getting a second look.

  They got to the edge of the warehouse’s bay door and before actually walking in Grady walked over to the CSI van and grabbed a gas mask for each of them. “There’s some nasty shit here, put this on.”

  As he handed him the mask, he looked at Loomis and hung on to it for just a half a second. The look was Grady’s last attempt to convince Loomis to not do this. The look he got back, which was completely emotionless, did more to make him nervous than anything else Loomis had done or said until now. He turned around and went into the warehouse and began to let Loomis know what they’d found so far in a monotone and professional way, as detached as he could be. He figured that the more professional he was, the more he could assess Loomis’s reaction and keep the overall situation low-key.

  It wasn’t just Loomis he was worried about, he was also thinking about some of the other technicians and officers wondering who this guy was. Ther
e were enough people from different precincts that he doubted anyone would pay attention to anything other than what they were dealing with.

  Still he had to play the part, “The call came in as a hazardous material spill coming from this warehouse; it came from the night watchman. Two black and whites and the fire department responded first and got into the warehouse to find all this. By now we have DA investigators taking their pictures and talking to the cops and firemen first on the scene. Homeland Security also sent someone from the FBI to look into the terrorist angle, especially because of the chemicals.”

  As they were walking, and even with the gas mask, Steven could smell the chemicals and the underlying smell of human decay. It was faint, but it was there. He was a trained tactical operator and he had been trained to not miss anything, so he took everything in and stored it in his mind. He saw the tools, the warehouse turned into a workshop with its various areas; he took note of the neatness of the place. Other than the spilled chemicals, every tool, every object was neatly placed and cleaned to perfection. He saw the sterilizing machine and understood how the tools could remain in such pristine condition. One thing Loomis was sure of was that this took a lot of planning, expense and careful consideration in how things were placed. There was an order to how the warehouse was divided. He didn’t know what that was, but everything was here for a reason.

  As they kept walking, Grady kept debriefing Loomis, “We hadn’t been able to find the van because he had it parked here. We’ve gone through it and it was exactly what we thought it was, a trap and a mobile workshop for him. We found dozens of dolls and other toys little girls might like divided off from the rest of the van where he had portable coolers, vials of drugs and a set of tools similar to what you see on the bench over there.

  “There are basically four sections that seemed to be organized in some sort of fashion, we’re still doing a workup as you can see.”