Apex Predator

by J. A. Faura

  Grady also responded, “Are you kidding? What cop in town with any time in the vice or homicide squad hasn’t heard of Max Zeidler.”

  Thinking about it, Drew felt a bit silly being surprised by that. Zeidler was a fixture and one of the most unique characters in the New York legal system.

  After the introductions, Loomis wanted to get this done as quickly and efficiently as possible, “Well, shall we sit down and have a chat?”

  Grady motioned to three chairs and sat down across from the three men next to Mullins.

  Both officers pulled out notes pads and Grady pulled out a tape recorder, “Mr. Loomis, we need to record the interview, do you have a problem with that?”

  Loomis went to answer, but Max beat him to it, “Detective, we thought this would be an informal fact-finding interview. We don’t need to have a recorder in order to do that.”

  Loomis turned to look at Zeidler. It was clear he hadn’t been expecting him to interrupt with this statement and was annoyed by it.

  He took the opportunity to assert his intentions regarding this process, “No, Detective Grady, I don’t mind if you record the conversation.”

  He said this while giving Zeidler a subtle look that said ‘This is my meeting.’

  Zeidler was taken aback and began to protest, but Drew reached out and grabbed his arm. Max looked over and Drew shook his head almost imperceptibly. Zeidler backed off. Grady proceeded; he began by stating the names of all present in the room, the date and time, then asked Steven if he was ready to begin with the interview.

  Loomis, hands folded in front of him on the table, simply answered, “Yes, I am.”

  Grady continued, “Mr. Loomis, I am sure your attorneys have advised you of your rights, but I am required to tell you that anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have exercised your right to have an attorney present at this meeting. Are you satisfied that you understand your rights?”

  Loomis once again responded simply, “Yes, I am.”

  Grady went on, “And you are willing to move forward to make a statement?”

  Loomis leaned back ready to get this done, “Yes, I am.”

  Grady leaned forward and the interview officially started, “Alright, where would you like to start, Mr. Loomis?”

  Loomis knew this was outside of interrogation protocols. Grady and Mullins’ job was to take charge of the interview and direct the questioning. Two seasoned homicide detectives did not normally politely ask a suspect where he would like to start.

  Loomis folded his hands on his lap and began talking, “Well, gentlemen, as you know, my daughter was one of the victims of Donald Riche. You both were involved in the investigation, and during the course of that investigation I had the fortune of getting to know you, which is the reason I requested to speak with you only.”

  Grady was taking notes, but he was getting nervous about where this conversation was going. Loomis looked to be heading down a path where he was getting into their personal relationship, and that was not an area Grady wanted to get into, especially here, but he simply nodded in response.

  Steven continued, “You also know that while he was at the courthouse building being arraigned, he was shot in the head as he was being transported.”

  Everyone in the room except for Loomis was taking notes. It was a charged atmosphere, everyone knew what was coming, but nobody wanted to rush it.

  Loomis never broke his tone or pace, “I am here to let you know that I shot Donald Riche. I shot him from an office window in a building two blocks away.”

  The men continued taking notes, also seemingly unaffected by the news. Grady gave Loomis a few seconds to compose himself, although he clearly was the one who needed composing.

  Grady wanted to get a detail that had been bothering him quite a bit, “What about the meeting that you were supposedly in? We have a time-stamped video of that meeting, a video that your company provided.”

  Loomis listened impassively and when Grady finished, he answered the question, “I utilized a simple video editing program to change the date on the video. I then asked an intern at the company, an intern I have no intention of naming, in case you were planning to ask, to take the actual video of the meeting and change it with my doctored copy. That meeting takes place regularly and includes the same people almost every time so it was not difficult to do.”

  Grady wrote everything down. He was waiting for Steven to explain why he had denied having shot Riche instead of doing this back when it happened.

  When it appeared that Loomis was not planning on moving on, Grady asked the next question, “Okay. Can you tell me the reason you decided to shoot Donald Riche?”

  Loomis looked at Grady with no expression. He simply answered the question, “No, detective, at this time I do not care to explain why I shot Donald Riche.”

  Mullins jumped in at this point. He had been quiet the entire time and he wanted to make sure that he was a part of the interview, even if it was to a lesser extent, “Mr. Loomis, I think it would seem obvious why you shot Donald Riche, so why not just deal…”

  At this point, Max interjected and Loomis was actually thankful for it, “Detective, I believe my client just explained that he does not want to explain the reason he did what he did.”

  Mullins turned to Zeidler and snapped, “I understand, Mr. Zeidler, but your client just admitted to shooting Riche in public, in broad daylight. I think at this point we need to clarify a few things.”

  Max countered, “I should remind you that we are here voluntarily and that our client is making these statements of his own free will. He has a constitutional right to stop talking any time he wishes.”

  Grady intervened quickly, the last thing he needed was for this to turn into a pissing contest, “Alright, alright, we don’t need to jump ahead. Mr. Loomis, can you give us any information about how you shot Donald Riche?”

  Max now turned to Grady, “Detective, I just explained that my client doesn’t have to …”

  Grady interrupted him, he was willing to let Loomis do this his way, but he still had to get certain information, “I am fully aware of your client’s rights, counselor, but you of all people should know that we hear confessions all the time from people that weren’t within two blocks of the crime they are supposedly confessing to.

  “And you know something like this is going to bring the nuts out in force. Already has, actually, so although I do not want Mr. Loomis to say any more than he is comfortable saying, I do need to get enough information from him to verify that he did in fact do this. In order to do that, I have to get information that only the shooter would know.”

  Max was about to start up again when Loomis put his hand up, “That’s alright, Mr. Zeidler, I don’t have a problem telling detectives Grady and Mullins what they need to know. I understand what you are asking, detective, and hopefully what I have to say to you will provide that confirmation.

  “Donald Riche was shot with a cutting-edge sniper rifle, a CheyTac M200 Intervention with a custom .408 round. You will find that the rifle was taken from the weapons storage of Globalview Intelligence Consultants and you will find that the serial number comes back to that same company.

  “You will find the rifle tucked behind a water pipe in the emergency stairway at 1720 East 5th Ave. The shot was taken from the second-floor window at the northeast corner of the building. It was an empty office and the door lock has been picked, so your forensic team will find striations from a metal tool.

  “I’m sure you already knew the caliber of the round, but the CheyTac M200 Intervention is a relatively new and not widely available sniper rifle. The round I used has a standard ballistic coefficient of over 3500 yards and a muzzle velocity of 3000 feet per second, but I modified it to make it subsonic in order to help with sound suppression. Is that specific enough, detective?”

  The question was asked without sarcasm. Grady had been taking copious notes, along with Zeidler a
nd Mullins. He already knew the caliber of the bullet and the weapons it was likely fired from. Although most of the SWAT guys he’d talked to thought it had probably been fired from a Barrett, they wondered whether a suppressor had been used. You could not mistake the bang from a Barrett. They were still doing 3D renderings of the scene to calculate where the shot had come from exactly, but the crowds and onlookers had made it difficult. Now they knew.

  He looked up and also without sarcasm answered, “Well, Mr. Loomis, if we are able to verify that, then yes, it is specific enough for us to believe that you shot Donald Riche.”

  There was a pregnant pause where everyone in the room was waiting to see who would speak next.

  After a few seconds, Max spoke up, “Okay, Mr. Loomis has made his statement, so I would suggest that we move on to whatever is next.”

  Zeidler knew what would be coming next, but he had to get it on the record and he had to take control of Loomis’s statements and movements from this point on. For his part, Loomis truly seemed relieved. His posture and his entire countenance were tangibly changed. To Drew Willis, he now really looked like a man at peace. It’s not that he did not realize or understand what was happening around him, he clearly knew what he was involved in, but it was also clear that he was relieved to get this part of it off his chest. Drew didn’t know what it was about, how Loomis was acting, but he was getting the idea that he was protecting someone. It made sense, he had to have gotten help from someone within his company and most likely from someone in the press or in the police department and by confessing to the shooting, he preempted the necessity for an exhaustive investigation that may have put some people in uncomfortable situations.

  Grady and Mullins stood up, picking up their notepads.

  “We have a few calls to make. We have to call the district attorney’s office and the lead investigator from the courthouse. They are probably still in the process of analyzing evidence. This will save them a lot of time and resources. We also need to have them go to the building Mr. Loomis has identified to pick up the rifle and collect whatever is at the office he shot from,” Grady said.

  Mullins turned to face Steven, “Mr. Loomis, you do understand that given your statements you will be detained here at the station and that once we confirm everything and the DA is informed of this, you will be placed under arrest.”

  Zeidler answered for Steven, “Yes, detective, we do understand. I will be contacting the DA myself to discuss bail for Mr. Loomis.”

  Mullins nodded, “I understand. He will probably be in front of a judge tomorrow for the bail hearing, but I have to tell you, given the nature of the case and the media attention, it might not be until Wednesday.”

  Max was already taking his phone out of his pocket, “Oh, don’t worry, detective, we’ll be in front of the judge tomorrow, but actually, I am going to see if we can get him on the bench tonight.”

  Before walking out of the room, Grady also turned to look at Steven and his lawyers, “Make yourselves at home. I will have a uniformed officer stationed outside. I figured this would be better than one of the holding tanks. I’ll be back in a bit. If you need some water or coffee, please let the officer outside the door know.”

  He and Mullins walked out of the room and on the way to Grady’s office decided what each would do.

  Grady started, “I’ll call the district attorney’s office, you call the team from the courthouse and let them know what they should be looking for and where they need to look.”

  Bart Logan was still feeling shell-shocked, even though it had been a few days. The Donald Riche case was going to be his first exposure to a high-profile case, even if it was going to be as assistant counsel. He was also going to be able to work directly with David Neill, the district attorney. In the span of days, that opportunity had been erased, vanished. He was sitting in his office going over the Riche case files, but more than anything he was trying to figure out what his next move should be. As soon as the DA’s office had found out that Loomis had turned himself in, David Neill had quite neatly and ruthlessly ambushed him and Melanie Farris. Of course, he had positioned it as wanting to give Logan another chance at a big case, but the reality was that it had gone from a slam-dunk case to a no-win case in a matter of minutes. He had gone from being a part, a small part, of the prosecution team putting away a hated serial murderer of children to leading the case against the father of one of the victims, an all-American Navy hero who had killed that hated serial murderer.

  He was basically going to be a lead prosecutor against a defendant that had been hailed a hero before, would be hailed as an even bigger hero now, and who had lost his daughter to the ‘victim’ in the case. If he convicted Loomis, it would be no big deal, the guy had confessed after all, but if he somehow lost the case, something that was a possibility, a remote one to be sure, but one that the OJ verdict had made possible decades ago, his career with the DA would be over. You just never knew what a jury, a sympathetic jury, a particularly sympathetic jury in this case, might do. If all that weren’t enough, he would have to do it while dealing with Melanie Farris. She was competent enough, a little too zealous at times, but she was a hard-ass in the office and seemed to always be on guard against her male colleagues. He was in it now, though, and if he wanted to hold his position, he would have to do this by the book, no more, no less. Truth was that he had been glad when that monster had been shot. He believed in the justice system and would uphold the law no matter what, but there were times when whatever the justice system had by way of punishment seemed inadequate, and this had been one of those cases.

  Neill had said he didn’t want to seem insensitive to the circumstances, so he wanted everything handled carefully, ‘by the book’ he said, and by the book was exactly what he was going to get. He had also warned both of his deputies not to say a word to the press, he would ‘handle them’; he had said it as though he was a strong parent protecting his two vulnerable children. The fact was that he wanted all the media attention that was sure to come after this. Bart was more than willing to let him keep babbling his clichés as much as he wanted to. This was a case where he wanted nothing more than to do his job and keep his head down, and while he didn’t know it yet, soon everyone involved with the case would want nothing more than to do exactly that.

  Chapter 19

  API: Manhattan, New York

  January 12, 2012 by Felix Garcia/New York Chronicle

  Prosecutors have announced that they have a suspect in custody for the shooting death of Donald Riche. Riche was shot as he was being transferred at the superior courthouse last Wednesday at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon. Riche was being arraigned for the torture and murder of nine girls from across New York’s five boroughs. One of Donald Riche’s victims was Tracy Loomis, age six. The man in custody accused of Donald Riche’s murder is Steven Loomis, Tracy Loomis’s father. Loomis is a senior executive with Globalview Intelligence Consultants, an international security firm under contract with the federal government. Loomis was in the Special Forces, having served in the Gulf, Bosnia and Afghanistan as a member of the Navy’s elite DEVGRU SEAL team, better known as SEAL Team Six. Sources within the police department and the district attorney’s office have confirmed that Loomis walked into a police station and confessed to the shooting. “He made a brief statement accompanied by his attorneys. That is all we can say as we are in the middle of an investigation,” confirmed Detective Robert Grady, a lead investigator on the Donald Riche case and one of the detectives that took Steven Loomis’s confession. Loomis is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow at downtown superior court, the same place where Donald Riche was shot. It is expected that the district attorney will ask for no bail for Mr. Loomis, as according to the district attorney’s office he poses a serious flight risk. Steven Loomis is represented by Max Zeidler and Drew Willis of the firm of Corliss, Zeidler and Kirk. Mr. Zeidler is confident that his client will be able to remain free on bail during his trial, “Mr. Loomis has
been an upstanding member of society who has served his country with honor and who has a loving family that supports him. We are confident that a reasonable bail will be set.” Although neither side would confirm it, there is strong indication that there will be a motion for a speedy trial, as the key facts of the case do not appear to be in dispute. In his statement to the press, District Attorney David Neill said that while the case was tragic in many ways, the district attorney’s office would pursue the case by the book, “I think we can all sympathize with Mr. Loomis and what he and all of the other families were put through, but in the end we are a nation and a state of laws, and we have always allowed those laws to dole out justice whenever it is needed. The people of the state of New York expect this office to uphold the law and that is precisely what we intend to do. Irrespective of how we pursue the case, we will not forget the tragedy that has led us here.” Authorities had cleared Steven Loomis after receiving a video of a meeting he had been in at the time of the shooting, but during his confession Mr. Loomis revealed he had doctored the tape. Barton Logan and Melanie Farris will be the deputy district attorneys handling the case for the prosecution.

  Steven was being held at the holding tank at the courthouse. Zeidler and Willis had come to see him shortly after he had been brought there. They briefed him on how things were going to be moving from this point on but held off discussing anything of substance about the case until after the arraignment and the bail hearing. The arraignment and bail hearing were closed to the media and thus did not become the media spectacle everyone expected. There really wasn’t much by way of legal wrangling, as the core facts of the case were not in dispute. When it came to setting bail, Bart Logan made a solid argument against setting any bail, but in the end Loomis’s record and support from family and friends convinced the judge to set the bail at $1 million. Zeidler had more than that amount in the escrow account that the General had set for just such an instance and went about posting the bail immediately.