He considered calling in the press, maybe making an anonymous call to Newsday, just to goose the feds a little but reporters were a pain in the ass, pretty nearly as much his natural enemies as the feds were.
And it wasn't as if he had nothing better to do. He and Schaefer were keeping busy.
The day after the massacre, for example, a tourist from Missouri took a wrong turn, wound up on the Staten Island ferry instead of the boat to liberty Island, and went berserk, taking three commuters hostage; one of the hostages knifed another, and Schaefer and Rasche got to clean up the mess.
Rasche got to spend the evening listening to lawyers argue over whether the tourist could be charged as an accomplice to attempted murder, while Schaefer tried to get the tourist's family back in Missouri on the phone and worked through a maze of cousins and friends.
The day after that the big event came when a complicated deal between Jamaican drug dealers, Somali gunrunners, and Serbian terrorists went bad in TriBeCa, of all places, when the Jamaicans decided to keep everything for themselves. After the dust settled and most of the participants were hauled away to either the lockup or the morgue, Rasche got to help haul a truckload of confiscated heavy weapons to the police lab on West Twentieth for investigation.
Rasche didn't even recognize some of the stuff. The plain old automatic weapons he knew, and the rocket-propelled grenades-though he had no idea why the Jamaicans would have wanted them-but some of the contraband looked more like spare jet parts than weapons.
And maybe, given the Serbian connection, it was spare jet parts.
Schaefer was ordered to stay away from the scene on that one-apparently Captain McComb didn't trust him within reach of three tons of military ordnance. Instead, he spent his time interviewing survivors, trying to figure out just who had shot who with what.
That night two punks eager to impress someone tried to drop Schaefer from ambush; the first shot missed, and they never got a second. Both lived; one went straight to the Tombs, the other did a month in the hospital first.
All that stuff was ordinary enough-at least by the standards of NYPD homicide-but then the next day there was the police firing range.
Rasche and Schaefer weren't there when it happened; they hadn't had time to worry about their marksmanship.
Rasche probably wouldn't have bothered anyway, in this heat, even if his backlog of paperwork had vanished and the whole damn city had gone a week without so much as a jaywalking.
And Schaefer, Rasche sometimes thought, used the whole damn city as his firing range.
The range was in the basement of the police academy on West Twentieth, downstairs from the police lab. It was open to anyone licensed to carry a gun inside the city limits; officers were expected to practice there occasionally. Most of them did, including Rasche and Schaefer.
But neither of them was there when it happened.
It was late afternoon, and half a dozen assorted law enforcement personnel and civilian big shots were on the firing line, blowing away paper targets and griping about the heat whenever the noise level dropped enough to allow conversation. Fresh targets fluttered wildly in the breeze from the ventilators as they were cranked downrange, but the place was a steam bath, all the same. Tailored jackets lay in heaps on the floor at civilian feet, and none of the blue uniform shirts were buttoned all the way up.
Probation officer Richard K. Stillman rattled down the stairs from the street and marched happily along the basement corridor, untroubled by the heat. Life was good. He'd hit big at OTB yesterday, and he had a hot date lined up, with an hour to kill.
Something seemed to shimmer in the corridor ahead of him, but he paid no attention; he'd seen plenty of odd effects from the heat the last few days, and the air in this place was dusty enough for them.
He swung easily through the glass door and waved to Joe Salvati, who was manning the cash register. He glanced at the display cases and ammunition safe, and watched through the windows for a moment.
He didn't notice that the door took much longer than usual to close behind him.
"Hey, Joe," Stillman said as he pulled back his jacket, revealing the butt of a .45 in a shoulder holster. "How's it going?"
"Not bad," Salvati said.
Stillman drew the automatic. "Figured I'd get in a little practice," he said.
The other man smiled. "Can't hurt," he said.
Stillman hesitated; he wasn't in any hurry. He was taking it easy today.
The muffled sounds of shooting could be heard from the range; Stillman glanced at the windows again just in time to see one of the doors to the range shatter spectacularly.
The firing suddenly stopped as everyone turned to look at this unexpected phenomenon.
Stillman's jaw dropped. "What in the hell did that?" he asked.
Then someone screamed, and blood sprayed across the carpeted shooting platform at one position.
"Hey!" Stillman shouted. He charged through the ruined door, pistol raised. "What the . . . ," he began.
He never finished that sentence-or any other sentence, ever again. He went down, blood spraying.
Salvati stepped back, startled, trying to see what was going on, but he couldn't find a clear view. He could hear screams, and he saw blood on one of the windows, but half the lights in the range seemed to have gone out suddenly, and all he could make out was frantic movement, he couldn't see who was doing what.
Was it some kind of brawl? Was someone going for the cash register? He couldn't imagine a stupider crime to attempt than robbing the police shooting range-but thieves could be amazingly stupid.
After all, Salvati thought, he was probably the only guy in there who wasn't armed.
He hesitated. He had his choice of several weapons, if he wanted one, but he hesitated. He couldn't see what was happening, but he heard shots now, and more screams, and loud thumping ..
What the hell was going on in there?
The guys back there had guns, they were shooting, at least half of them were trained professionals--what could he do that they couldn't, except maybe walk into a cross fire?
But maybe something heavier than handguns would help. He turned to look at the display cases.
Something hit him on the back of the head, and Joe Salvati went down.
Down and out.
The next thing he knew was the sound of boots crunching on broken glass, flashlights moving in the darkness, and someone leaning over him and shouting, "This one's alive!"
And then they were all around him, telling him to lie still, the paramedics were coming, and had he seen what had happened?
He didn't know what to tell them. He tried to ask who was hurt in there, who was dead, but no one would give him a straight answer.
"This one's alive," the voice had said; he waited for the words to be repeated, for someone to say there was another survivor, but he hadn't heard anything of the kind by the time he was carried out.
He'd heard a man retching, he'd heard hardened cops saying, "Oh, my God," in shocked tones, but he hadn't heard anyone mention other survivors.
Detective Rasche had gone off duty at six o'clock that day, on time for once, and he was at home alone, relaxing. His wife Shari had taken the kids to a park concert; Rasche hadn't made it in time to go with them, but he'd found a note and a microwave dinner waiting for him when he got home.
He'd thought about going after them, but trying to find three people in the mob at the park just sounded like too much effort right now. Instead he'd decided to stay home and enjoy the quiet.
The quiet was good, but he'd really have preferred seeing Shari. It seemed like weeks since he'd seen her for more than a few minutes over breakfast; even on his days off she was usually out doing temp work somewhere, doing her bit to help catch up on some of the bills.
When the heat wave broke and tempers cooled, maybe he'd be home more and get to see more of her-or maybe he wouldn't. Maybe it wasn't the heat; maybe it was just city living getting to everyone, the way it was
getting to him.
He sipped tepid coffee and tossed the remains of a Healthy Gourmet herbs-and-chicken entree into the trash.
Rasche had eight years to go till his pension, eight more years of living in New York City on a cop's pay, in a neighborhood in Queens that had been pretty decent when they'd bought the house but was now just the best they could afford, eight more years of microwaved dinners and mismatched work schedules.
This evening was one of those times when he wondered whether it was all worth it. New York cops generally still had a pretty good rep, despite the latest round of scandals-not like some big-city departments he could name. If he decided to move out, he could probably land a high-ranking job with some small-town force or with the county mounties in one of those big square states out west.
The Pacific Northwest might be nice.
Shari evidently thought so, too, as the swarm of stupid plastic magnets on the refrigerator no longer held a display of the kids' homework; instead, they supported a growing constellation of real-estate ads and travel brochures from Alaska and Washington State.
The hint wasn't lost on Rasche, but he'd been in New York for so long, damn near his entire life, and he'd put so much into the job here, trying to save a little bit of the city from itself, that it was hard to think about giving it up, even for his family.
His family that he almost never saw.
At least he had a family, though; there on the fridge, in an upper corner that Shari hadn't yet got to with her brochures, a yellow plastic smiley-face held up a photo of Rasche and Schaefer, taken on the occasion of nailing a particularly vicious drug kingpin from uptown, a punk called Errol G.
In the picture Rasche was smiling so broadly his mustache looked as if it were upside down, but Schaefer was playing Old Stone Face as usual, standing stiff as a lamppost, his face like an undertaker's nightmare.
Schaefer didn't have a family, so far as Rasche knew, didn't have any close friends. He'd mentioned a brother once, but Rasche hadn't asked about him, and Schaefer sure hadn't volunteered anything. There were some buddies, mostly in the military or law enforcement, but none of them seemed close-certainly no closer than Rasche himself was.
And Rasche, after six years as Schaefer's partner, wasn't sure he knew Schaefer at all.
What the hell kept Schaefer going, anyway?
It wasn't a woman; Rasche had seen Schaefer's apartment once, and there wasn't any doubt that Schaefer lived alone. No other human being could have put up with that place-stained ceilings and cracked windows and the TV blaring from next door through paper-thin walls, but the bed was made with military precision and razor-sharp creases at the corners, the floor was spotless, everything was folded and sorted and filed away. The goddamn coffee cups in the kitchen cupboard had all had their handles pointing in the same direction, for Christ's sake.
Nobody but Schaefer could have lived there.
So what drove Schaefer? Why was he a cop? He could have landed a job somewhere else-there was always work for a big, smart, tough guy who wasn't afraid to tackle anything. So why was he still with the department?
He wasn't after any pension; Schaefer never gave a damn about money If he'd wanted a pension, he could have stayed in the military instead of becoming a cop. So far as Rasche knew, it had been Schaefer's idea to switch.
Maybe he hadn't been seeing enough action in the army.
Or was it righteous anger that drove him, maybe? Outrage at the things people did to each other? He talked about New York as his city, but somehow Rasche couldn't see it as his motivation. He didn't think Schaefer meant so much that it was his city to protect, as that the city was his turf-the place where he was the boss male, and anyone else who showed up claiming to be tough was a challenge.
If that was it-it was pure macho dominance at work, not anger. Rasche and Schaefer had been partners for six years now, and Rasche wasn't sure at all that he'd ever yet really seen Schaefer get mad.
Which, when he thought about it, made him a little nervous. What kind of man could go through the crap that Schaefer went through without losing his temper every so often?
He'd got that far when the doorbell rang.
"Damn," he said, putting down the coffee.
The doorbell rang again.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" he called as he trotted down the front hall.
The doorbell rang a third time.
"I'm coming, goddammit!" he shouted as he grabbed the doorknob.
Rasche yanked the front door open and found Schaefer standing on the stoop.
Schaefer's expression was exactly the same as in the photo on the fridge, and for a moment Rasche had an odd feeling of unreality, as if the past and present were tripping over each other.
Rasche had dumped his jacket and tie the moment he got in the door of his house, and was standing there in a sweaty undershirt; Schaefer still had the crease in his pants, the knot of his tie tight and perfect.
Rasche didn't think that was because Schaefer actually cared about his appearance; it was because the rules said what to wear, and that wasn't a rule Schaefer cared enough about to break.
"They hit again," Schaefer said in a growl, interrupting Rasche's thought. "The police range on Twentieth. The goddamn police academy! You want to go, or you want to watch Green Acres?"
"You could say hello," Rasche said. He didn't need to ask who Schaefer meant.
He was shaken and trying to hide it; he knew guys at Twentieth Street, and the image of dangling, skinned corpses with familiar faces was growing in the back of his mind.
Schaefer didn't bother to answer; he simply waited for Rasche to decide, in or out.
From that Rasche knew that he and Schaefer weren't supposed to be on this case. The feds probably wanted it kept quiet. The feds probably wanted to handle it themselves.
But those imagined faces of fellow cops weren't exactly encouraging Rasche to go along with the feds.
Rasche sighed. "Okay, okay. What the hell, Green Acres isn't on tonight anyway. Let me get my piece."
* * *
6
Forty minutes after ringing Rasche's doorbell, Schaefer marched over the yellow tape, past a protesting lieutenant, into the foyer of the firing range.
Rasche was close on his heels, saying, "Dammit, Schaef, the captain's going to suspend us if he. . ."
Schaefer interrupted. "Good," he said. "I need a vacation."
The glass door at the entrance was smeared with blood, but unbroken; even so, as soon as Schaefer walked through it, glass crunched underfoot, and Rasche noticed that the display cases along the wall had been shattered.
"No bodies?" Schaefer said.
Rasche looked around.
The devastation was thorough enough, and the blood plentiful enough, that he hadn't even realized immediately that there were no corpses in sight.
Schaefer, of course, had never been one to let nonessentials distract him.
There were three forensics men at work in the lobby with cameras and tweezers; they were in civilian clothes, so Rasche couldn't tell if they were NYPD or feds. He didn't recognize any of them.
One of them looked up and said, "The bodies are in the range. We've ID'ed most of them. We had one survivor out here, Officer Joseph Salvati-he's on his way to the hospital with a concussion and a broken nose."
Schaefer nodded and studied the scene.
Rasche turned toward the firing range, peering through the windows, trying to ignore the cracks that hadn't been there the last time he was down here.
The lights were out in the range itself, but Rasche could see enough in the spillover from the foyer.
The bodies were hanging from the ceiling girders and the broken lights, swaying gently in the breeze from the ventilators, blood still dripping here and there. An unused target was clipped to one dangling finger, a touch of surreal grotesquerie that fascinated Rasche.
Schaefer stepped up beside him with a flashlight and pointed it through the broken door at the floor of the rang
e; the beam glittered off the polished metal of assorted firearms and cartridge casings, and lit pools and streaks of blood a vivid red.
Rasche looked at the scattered arsenal. "They were packing enough hardware."
"Didn't do them much good, did it?" Schaefer replied.
Rasche had meant the attackers, but now he realized that Schaefer was right-the weapons on the floor matched up with the bodies.
Struggling to keep himself from screaming, Rasche said, "I think I knew some of these guys."
Schaefer glanced at Rasche. "So did I. This makes it personal." His tone was flat and dead, but Rasche was too stunned to notice.
"Last time, when they hit the gangs," Rasche said, talking to keep from screaming, "I figured maybe it was, you know, some sort of vigilante thing-but I guess not. This time it was our turn."
"Guess whoever it is doesn't like much of anyone," Schaefer said.
For a moment they stood there contemplating the situation; Rasche shivered. The firing range was about a hundred feet long, but the far end was completely lost in the darkness, so that it seemed to go on forever. A darkened room full of dangling, mutilated corpses, where whatever killed them might still be lurking . . . what was he doing in a place like this?
This was much too close to those monsters 'in the night that his mother had told him weren't real.
"Come on," Schaefer said. He took a step through the demolished door.
Just then the door of the gunsmithing room opened, and four men stepped out, one after the other.
One of them was Captain McComb.
Schaefer turned at the sound of the door, just as McComb saw the two detectives.
"What the . . . ," McComb spluttered. "Schaefer! Rasche! Who the hell let you in here? Who gave you authorization for this site?"
"Great," Rasche muttered, as he stood beside Schaefer, "just great."
"Come on, McComb," Schaefer said, "these were our own people here! Don't tell me you're going to turn this one over to the feds!"
"Don't you question me!" McComb bellowed. He glanced around for support, then shouted, "I want these two detectives removed from the premises immediately. If they won't go peaceably, then physically eject them!"
Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Predator 01 Page 4
