Blood on the Sun (CSI: NY)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The nails had definitely been driven in post mortem by someone with a strong arm, a left arm according to the angle of the penetration. It didn’t take an expert to know that whoever had done this had also killed Asher Glick. Only this time he had not been hurried.

  Unlike Glick’s case, no member of the Jewish Light of Christ stepped forward to protest an autopsy. So Hawkes was as thorough as he could be.

  He always felt like apologizing when he made that first incision. It had to be done. It was not Sheldon Hawkes who was violating the body. Hawkes was giving the dead person on the table a last chance to point a finger at his killer, the one who had fired two bullets into his brain. He made the first incision.

  “Bang, bang,” came Nancy Sinatra’s voice.

  They now knew a few things about the man in the baseball cap who had been in the crowds at both murders.

  Stella and Aiden hovered over the blowups of the man. The resolution was good, not perfect but good enough to see that the hair at the back of the man’s cap was gray. There were also age spots on his visible hand and, in a further blowup, they could make out several hairs growing on the ridge of the man’s ear. They both agreed that the man was somewhere between his mid-fifties and sixty-five or even older.

  “That shot,” Stella said, pointing at one of the photographs. “Pull it up on the screen.”

  Aiden nodded and started hitting keys. Images raced by until she found the one Stella had indicated. “What’s that on his shirt pocket?”

  Aiden started to blow it up. Since the picture of the man was only a small section of a large crowd scene, the image began to lose resolution as Aiden enlarged and focused on what looked like a small gold pin.

  “I think we can enhance it a little,” said Aiden. “Maybe partial images on other shots, but I think I know what it is.”

  Stella looked at Aiden, who stared at the photograph.

  “I think it’s military, a unit pin. My father had one. He never wore it. I’ll see what I can find, but there’s not much there.”

  “He stands straight, military,” said Stella. “Thick neck.”

  “He works out,” said Aiden.

  “Could be our killer,” said Stella. “In some of the photographs, he’s standing next to people who might remember him.”

  Aiden knew what she meant. In one of the photographs, the man in the cap was standing next to a man in black, a man with a black beard and hat, a man Stella recognized as being one of the same men she had seen in Asher Glick’s congregation.

  Stella wiped her nose.

  “You too?” asked Aiden, who was feeling the first effects of seasonal allergies in her itchy eyes.

  Stella, on the other hand, had a stuffy nose and a slight headache. It wasn’t really bad and she knew it wouldn’t be, but when she got home, she might have a dose of antihistamine syrup.

  She looked again at the photographs of the man in the cap. She had now looked dozens of times, sensing that she had seen him before, but not knowing where. She knew enough to let it alone and hope that it came to her like the name of a movie actor or author you know well but suddenly forget.

  “Let’s find Flack,” Stella said, standing.

  Getting a search warrant for Joshua’s apartment had been easy after Flack did his research. Judge Obert had signed it when Flack told him the story. The judge was well over seventy and more than ready to retire, but he had hung on through occasional lapses in which he could barely keep himself awake, even on the bench. Regular doses of Modafinil, originally used for narcolepsy, had alleviated the problem, though the judge found himself taking the pill far more often than his doctor had prescribed.

  Obert had handed the warrant to Flack, saying with both contempt and resignation, “These people.”

  Flack didn’t want to know who “these people” were. He was sure he would not like the answer.

  As he opened the door to Joshua’s apartment, Flack went over what he knew. He knew that Joshua was an alcoholic and had done hard time. His prison medical record, which had come to CSI about an hour ago, showed Joshua had developed lightheadedness and temporary losses of memory. He also had violent episodes and had almost beaten another inmate to death after a disagreement over something Joshua had been unable to remember. Joshua had announced his new name after the attack on the man. No one really gave a shit. Joshua had begun to seek converts, going first to prisoners who had Jewish-sounding names. The effort had almost gotten him killed.

  If there were a gun hidden in the apartment, Flack was determined to find it. He knew that there was something different about his relationship to Joshua than to all the suspects he had dealt with before. Part of it was that Joshua was a true believer. Flack didn’t trust true believers, especially religious ones—although the political believers and ethnic believers were probably just as dangerous.

  True believers were capable of anything because they were sure their cause was just. It was this belief that gave the only meaning to their lives.

  Flack knew a lot of true believers in his own family. He had no idea how he had escaped, but he had. From the time he was a boy he had kept his own peace about what he believed. What he believed was between him and God.

  The man in the cap was back in the deli across from the lab. Actually, he wasn’t wearing the cap at the moment. He had exchanged it for one of those tan hats you can crumple and keep in your pocket that always pop back to their original shape, waterproof, ready and with a brim wide enough to pull down over your eyes.

  He had also left his glasses at home. The lenses were plain glass. His eyesight was almost perfect. He held the latest copy of Smithsonian Magazine in front of him. This would have to be his last visit here, even though he doubted if anyone would remember him, was even more sure no one would recognize him. He ate slowly, accepting two refills of decaf coffee from the waitress. She looked down at the cap on the chair. He should have left that at home too, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was proud of it, probably the last symbol of that part of his life of which he was truly proud. The man smiled at the waitress, who walked to the next table to top off the coffee mug of a heavy-eyed young man in need of a shave and a hairbrush.

  It was now three years ago, almost to the day, that the man had placed the jar on the mantel of the fireplace and stepped back to look at it among the photographs. In nearly all of the photographs on the shelf, the people, almost all dead now, were smiling, happy or pretending to be. Some of the people were painfully young. Some were old, holding on to their dignity at least for the duration of that photograph. Some of the young and old were the same people, photos of them taken decades apart.

  There had been no religious ceremony, no service. He had wanted none. The grief he felt, the loss, could only be shared with some of the people, now dead, in the photographs. There were people he could talk to, but he had no intention of doing so. He would tolerate no false piety. He wanted no insincere solace nor any promise of an afterlife or eternal memory in which he did not believe. The memory of the person whose ashes lay in that jar would die with him.

  He finished his third cup of coffee and looked across the street. She was coming out with that other woman, the pretty, young dark one. As she walked, Stella took a tissue from the pocket of her jacket and wiped her nose.

  It wouldn’t be long now.

  He should have been satisfied, but he had gotten up that morning at dawn as he always did and went to the living room to touch the jar. Something had changed. Something that made him uneasy, but by no means less willing to kill Stella Bonasera.

  Mac sat in a straight-backed padded armchair in the living room of the Vorhees house. He had pulled back the curtains to his left to let the sunlight in. He felt the heat on his arm and face.

  Danny had finished and gone back to the lab with the knife and a page torn out of Mac’s notebook. Danny’s tremor was definitely less pronounced, but it was still there and he still had a slightly haunted look in his eyes. Mac had seen that look in the mir
ror after watching a helicopter attached to his marine unit crash less than fifty yards from where he had been standing. Mac was supposed to be on that copter with eight other marines. He had been pulled off the routine test flight by a marine sergeant who said Mac was wanted in HQ to write a not-very-important report that was due that day. The copter rose about two hundred feet in the air and crashed as Mac and the sergeant who had come for him were about to get into a waiting jeep. Mac and the sergeant ran to the burning wreckage of the mangled copter, which burned brighter as they got closer and suddenly exploded, knocking Mac and the sergeant off their feet.

  The next morning Mac had looked in the mirror and seen the haunted look he would see on Danny. The other time he had seen that look in the mirror was just after his wife had died on 9/11.

  At the present moment, Mac needed to be alone. To Kyle Shelton it was a deadly serious game. To Mac it was a challenge that could be dealt with by using science and logic.

  Art versus science? No, there was definitely an element of art in what Mac and the other CSI detectives did. Art was imagination, creation, an essential element in science, but not a game.

  Mac took his notebook from his pocket and opened it to the last page on which he had taken notes.

  Approximately 2:45 in the morning, three members of the Vorhees family are murdered with a knife from their kitchen. Why 2:45 a.m.?

  The Vorhees’ son, Jacob, is missing. Did he hear what was happening? Maybe even open the door to his sister’s bedroom and see some or all of what had happened? Did he see Kyle Shelton, his dead family?

  ME report shows the dead girl had intercourse, and, judging from the vaginal bruising, the penetration minimal. There were no signs of semen. Was Shelton interrupted by the parents? Was he planning to kill them before he even entered the house? Why did he have a knife from the Vorhees kitchen if he wasn’t planning to use it?

  Bodies are laid out, women respectfully on the bed, father on the floor in a heap. Likely Shelton’s doing but what did it mean?

  Garage door is open. Jacob’s bicycle is missing. Did Shelton see him, hear him, go after him? Why didn’t he catch the boy before he got on the bicycle and rode away?

  Neighbor sees Shelton’s car drive off heading toward Queens Boulevard. Was he chasing Jacob?

  9:25 a.m. the next morning bicycle found along with Jacob’s clothes. One shoe fifty yards from site. Did he lose it running from Shelton? Did Shelton throw it there? Why?

  Linden leaf partially chewed by caterpillar and a piece of the insect on the leaf found in boy’s bedroom. Leaf did not come from neighborhood. Did it come from site where bicycle and clothes were found? Had it been stuck to Shelton’s shoe? Why had he returned to the house later that night? Where is boy or his body?

  1:40 p.m. Wednesday Shelton calls the lab from the Vorhees’ house to let us know the knife is there. He also makes a remark about having eaten and suggests CSI detective have a snack. Why does Shelton return to the Vorhees house? Why does he leave the knife with his prints? Death wish? Guilt? Part of the game he is playing?

  The phone in his pocket vibrated. Mac took it out and opened it.

  “That quote,” said Danny, “wasn’t from Anne Frank. It was from Henry Ward Beecher.”

  “Thanks,” said Mac. “I’m coming in.”

  It struck Mac as he turned off his phone. This was not a game Shelton was playing to win. He was playing it to lose. The house creaked around him, settled and was still. He had the beginning of an idea. When he had Hawkes’ report on the knife and Danny’s on the prints, he would be closer to drawing a possible conclusion.

  He closed his notebook, put it away and imagined the computer screen with the virtual images of Shelton and the Vorhees family. He began to move the images around to form a picture they had not considered before.

  Aside from the fact that she had pieced together photos of the man in the baseball cap and come up with most of what was written on it, Aiden had found little of interest in what she recovered from the Sirchie vacuum Stella had used on Joel Besser’s body. Dust mites, sloughed skin, the usual. There was, however, one thing she had almost missed. It had been tiny and looked like all the other microscopic flotsam you picked up in the city, except this microscopic bit had something about it that looked familiar.

  She hunched over the microscope and kept increasing the magnification. She took photographs with the camera mounted on the scope as she moved along.

  When she had finished, Aiden carefully placed the glass slide in the slotted box on the table.

  No hasty conclusions. She had learned from Mac and Stella that if you have a theory, you test it inside and out and look for evidence.

  On the computer screen, Aiden found eight web sites that fit her needs. If she had made the search too broad, she knew she would have come up with thousands of sites.

  Before she made her phone call, she called Stella, who answered immediately.

  “We’ve got a name,” Aiden said. “It’s on his cap. Name is Walke. I think there’s a short name or initials before the name, but I can’t find an angle to pull them up.”

  “Walker?” asked Stella. “It might not be his. Could have bought it at a thrift shop.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Aiden. “His clothes don’t look like thrift shop buys.”

  “I don’t think so either,” said Stella. “I’m on my way back.”

  She flipped her cell phone off.

  Aiden went through the eight sites, found exactly what she was looking for and reached for the phone.

  There was no problem finding and talking to many of the people in the crowd outside the two scenes of the crucifixion murders. Rabbi Mesmur had helped identify some of them and when Flack and Stella found them they were quite willing to talk, mostly about their theories of who had committed the murders and why.

  A woman, Molke Freid, in a long dress, her head covered with a scarf, was at home with her three youngest children five blocks from the synagogue. The other four children were in school. It was obvious that the woman was pregnant and close to delivery.

  They sat in the kitchen at a large table, a plate of cookies and a cup of coffee in front of them.

  “You want to know who did it?” Molke asked, as if the answer were obvious. “One of those crazies for Jesus.”

  “Why would they murder one of their own?” Stella asked.

  “To create a martyr, to send you looking in the wrong place,” the woman said. “They killed Asher Glick. You were investigating them, so they killed one of their own so you would look someplace else.”

  “Where?” asked Stella.

  The cookies were good. Stella was working on her third.

  “Or maybe it was anti-Semites,” said the woman. “Maybe a group of them, maybe just one. Who knows?”

  Flack and Stella nodded. They had, of course, considered this and were checking out groups and individuals who might have committed similar crimes.

  “We’re looking for a man in a baseball cap,” said Flack. “He was standing next to you in the crowd outside the second murder. An older man. Something was written on his cap, possibly Walker.”

  Molke was shaking her head, her thoughts elsewhere.

  “The man in the cap,” Stella reminded her.

  Molke came back from her reverie, touched her hand to her forehead and looked at them.

  “Not Walker,” Molke said. “Walke. The words stitched on the man’s cap were ‘USS Walke.’ ”

  Flack jotted that down.

  “USS Walke,” Molke continued. “December 3, 1950. Hit a mine off the east coast of Korea. Twenty-six died, forty were injured. Bad luck ship. In World War II, July 1944, the Walke was escorting minesweepers and was attacked by a group of kamikazes. Thirteen members of the crew died, including the captain.”

  “Are you sure about all this?” asked Flack.

  “My uncle had a cap like that,” said Molke. “He was proud of his military service and the ship. The Walke served combat missions in
three wars, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. It was often hit, never sunk. The Walke always came back. It was turned into scrap metal in 1976. I asked the man in the cap if he knew my uncle. He said he didn’t.”

  “He give you his name?” asked Flack.

  “No,” she said. “Just kept looking at the door across the street till you walked out.”

  The woman was looking at Stella.

  “He gave you a long look, then turned and walked away.”

  When they were back on the street, Flack said, “It doesn’t make sense. He’s killing Jews because of you?”

  “We’ve seen crazier,” she said.

  “Watch your back,” said Flack. “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a kosher restaurant over there,” said Flack. “Kishke and herring in cream sauce.”

  It sounded far from appealing, especially the stuffed intestines. Besides, she wanted to get back to the lab and start her search for the man in the cap. She had no intention of focusing only on him. She would check the alibi of every man in the Orthodox congregation and keep up the search for others. Flack could have another shot at Joshua and check to see if the furniture dealer, Arvin Bloom, had an alibi for the time of the second murder.

  “Kreplach soup?” Flack tried. “Matzoh ball soup?”

  Stella smiled.

  “Let’s make it fast,” she said.

  Flack smiled back.

  As they crossed the street, Stella didn’t tell him that he wouldn’t be able to order the two items he wanted. It wasn’t kosher to mix dairy products with meat. She had learned that back when she was nineteen and dancing at the Broadway Dance Center. Her friend Ann Ryan, whose real name was Ann Cornridge, had invited her home for dinner not four blocks from where she and Flack were now standing in front of the restaurant. Ann’s parents had explained kosher law when Stella had asked if there was butter for her bread.