Founders' Keeper (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 1)

by Ed Markham

  When he got it, he called “Deck is clear!” to Lopez, who flashed him a thumbs-up. Her face was scrunched up two inches from the screen of her security monitor.

  “My poor eyes,” she said. “They get so damn tired staring at this stupid thing all day.”

  Torowitz chuckled and gave Lopez’s huge rump a pinch as he walked past her toward the building’s entrance. Lopez let out a little squeal. “Baby, don’t tease me!” she called to him, and then returned to squinting at her monitor.

  Torowitz reached the pair of circular glass doors that spun out onto 33rd Street. He locked the left doors first, sliding both the floor and ceiling bolts into place. He jostled the door’s handlebar a few times to make sure it was secure, and then he stepped to the second door. He was about to slide home the first bolt when something caught his eye.

  He peered through the revolving glass and grinned. “Check out this shit,” he said to himself, and pushed through the door.

  Outside, a slight breeze forced warm night air into the vestibule that separated the sidewalk from the entrance to the building. Although Torowitz could hear traffic rumbling in the distance on Park Ave and Broadway, the street outside of the building felt deserted. Taped to the smooth wall of the vestibule were three photographs that made him chuckle. The women in the photographs were dressed as police officers or military personnel, their breasts thrust out from unbuttoned navy or camo-colored uniforms. Each held a weapon; one had some kind of handgun, while the other two aimed assault rifles and bedroom eyes at the camera.

  Torowitz whistled and bent his head closer to get a better look. Then he heard a woman’s voice at his back.

  “Pardon me, officer.” The voice was soft and mellifluous, almost coaxing.

  Uh oh, caught peeping, Torowitz thought as he turned to the voice, the residue of a grin still bunching his cheeks.

  A woman in a long, tan-colored trench coat stood just outside the vestibule. She wore a wide-brimmed hat that covered her hair, and her eyes were grotesquely large in her pale face. Her hands were tucked into her coat’s pockets.

  Torowitz’s grin dissolved.

  Something about the woman unsettled him. It had to do with her face, and the whiteness of her skin. He felt his mouth go dry. “What can I help you with?” he said, his hands falling dumbly to his sides. His internal alarms were sounding, but he felt almost hypnotized, unable to move.

  “You were enjoying those photographs,” the woman said, “so I thought you might be interested in this.” She started to withdraw one of her hands from its pocket.

  Torowitz saw the dark wood of the grip, and then the twin cast-iron hammers. By the time he recognized the huge pistol for what it was, both of its ten-inch barrels were leveled at his chest.

  Just before the pistol fired, the night seemed to go pitch black. The muzzle-flashes illuminated the woman’s white face. Once. Twice.

  The first shot lifted Torowitz back and into the pornography-covered wall of the building. He felt as though a battering ram had been heaved into his chest. The second shot, lower, sent pieces of his upper intestines splattering against the marble. He slid to the ground, his lungs grasping for air and finding none, his insides destroyed.

  He heard the woman with the white face—her voice now startled and afraid—screaming for help. As she did, she stepped toward him. Torowitz’s mind braced for another blow, but none came. Instead, he felt something thud against what was left of his lap. He tried to look down at it but couldn’t, his head felt too heavy to move.

  People began to gather almost immediately. Some of them screamed, while others spoke into cell phones, calling for help.

  Torowitz’s eyes tried to roll back in his head, but he fought against it and brought them back into focus. He scanned the dozen frightened faces that had collected around the entrance to the building, but he didn’t see the woman with the white face. Then the other faces were gone, too.

  Chapter 40

  DAVID WOKE TO darkness.

  Lying on his back, he blinked a few times as he stared at the ceiling of his bedroom. Each time he closed his eyes, the face of the pale woman from the gas station video flashed in his head. He also thought of Jay Anthony Carmichael, and the previous day’s false arrest. These new memories mixed with the old and chased away any chance at further sleep.

  He climbed out of bed, walked downstairs to his kitchen, and retrieved from the freezer the package of Eight O’clock coffee—his father’s favorite brand. He started the coffee brewing and stood waiting, feeling the stillness of his house as the drip maker performed its daily duty. The early morning calm comforted him, as it had during his time in Kosovo. Almost anywhere in the world, daybreak was a peaceful time. But the peace was spoiled for him now as he thought about the likelihood of the pale woman claiming another victim while he’d slept.

  When the coffee was ready, he poured himself a cup and returned to his bedroom. The clock on his dresser read 5:30, and he called the Quantico switchboard, asking to be connected to the print department. As he waited for someone to pick up, he heard his father moving around in the bathroom down the hall.

  The man who answered sounded half-asleep. “Progress?” he said to David. “Uh, yeah. Maybe. I mean yes, definite progress.”

  David sympathized with the young techs who were called in on short notice to spend the night blowing up computer images of loops and whorls. It was no wonder the older print team members invariably wore thick glasses.

  “Tell me,” he said, his tone patient. He took a long drink of his coffee.

  “We’ve isolated some common ID—” the man started to say, but was interrupted by a yawn. “Excuse me, long night. We’ve isolated some ID points on each of the prints found on the currency. Now we’re side-by-siding those with the print on file from the Jacobsen site. An approximate match, if we find one, should take us at most another six hours.”

  “Good,” David said. “I’ll be in-house within the hour. Let me know when you find a match.”

  “If we find a match,” the man said.

  As he hung up, David turned and saw his father standing in the bedroom doorway. Martin wore boxer shorts and a T-shirt, the American Flag tattoo on his forearm faded but visible beneath his matted white hair.

  “Any news on the prints?” he asked, his voice coarse from sleep but loud as ever.

  “They’re still working on them.”

  “You bring in the paper?”

  “Not yet.”

  Martin grunted his displeasure and headed back down the hallway.

  David showered and dressed and walked downstairs to find his father sitting at the kitchen table, coffee mug in hand, reading the morning’s news.

  “ ‘Colony Killer still loose,’ ” Martin read out loud. “ ‘At least three dead as federal authorities, scrambling for answers, mistakenly arrest innocent father of two.’ ” He tossed aside the paper in disgust and took a sip of his coffee. “Scrambling. Goddamn journos love that word. Scrambling. Where do you ever see that word apart from a newspaper story? And why hasn’t the Bureau released info on the latest victims?”

  David started to answer, but his cell phone’s ringing interrupted them.

  “Morning,” Lauren said. Her voice sounded coffee-charged and alert. “I woke up around four and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I came in early. I stopped by Prints, and one of the techs told me you were on your way in. Are you here?”

  “Not yet. Have they found a match?”

  “No, but that’s not why I’m calling.” She spoke quickly, and David realized she was anxious to tell him something.

  “What is it, Butch?”

  “I put in calls to our Hartford, Albany, and New York City Bureaus. New Jersey to New York or Connecticut seemed like a logical next stop for our subject.” She paused. “Our girl had a busy night. I’ll be waiting in the conference room when you get here.”

  “Our girl?”

  The phone was silent for a moment before Lauren said, “You don’t hav
e a feeling about her?”

  David didn’t answer right away. “We’ll be there in thirty minutes,” he said, but then reconsidered. “Actually, stay where you are. Your office is closer to the print department. Martin and I will come to you.”

  Chapter 41

  WHEN DAVID AND Martin arrived at Lauren’s office, she offered them each a seat in front of her desk, which was loaded with two laptops and innumerable computer printouts, file folders, and other scraps of case-related detritus. Layers of tacked-up paperwork covered the office walls like feathers on a bird’s wing. There were even stacks of files on the floor.

  “Sorry for the mess in here,” she said. “It may not look pretty, but there’s a method to the madness.”

  “More madness than method, by the looks of it,” Martin said, grinning. He declined the seat Lauren had offered him, and stood with one hand gripping the handle of his coffee mug.

  “Tell us,” David said as he took a seat.

  She leaned back in her desk chair and looked from him to his father. “Late last night, someone killed an NYPD officer just outside the entrance to the Empire State Building. Paramedics found a hunk of snake lying in what was left of the cop’s lap.” She lifted a few printouts off the top of a large stack and handed one to each of them. “The officer’s name was Jason Torowitz. Twenty-eight years old. Five-year veteran of the force. He’d spent the last year manning the lobby of the Empire State Building.”

  “How was he killed?” Martin asked.

  “Shot in the chest and stomach. Forensics recovered both bullets.” Lauren sat forward, resting her forearms on the mess of papers on her desk. “Okay, you ready? The bullets were lead balls, like the kind fired from a musket or some kind of old pistol. The forensic pathologist said one of them entered through Torowitz’s breastplate and just blew everything to pieces. Those old bullets are round, not pointed like modern ammo, so they smash bone instead of boring a hole through it. Gross, right? The slug even dragged pieces of Torowitz’s shirt into his chest cavity. The FP said they found bone shrapnel lodged in his heart, his lungs—everywhere. The second bullet missed hitting any bones but made a mess of his intestines before leaving a three inch hole in his lower back.”

  David scanned the printout of the police report. His insides felt cold. “DOA,” he said.

  Lauren nodded. “Pathology said the cop couldn’t have lived for more than thirty seconds with wounds like these.”

  “What do we know about him?” Martin asked.

  “You remember earlier this year when that marine was arrested at the Empire State Building for carrying a hand gun?”

  “Remind me.”

  “Concealed weapons are illegal in New York unless you have a permit,” Lauren said. “That’s true in a lot of places. But New York, unlike almost everywhere else, doesn’t recognize permits issued in other states. The marine had an Ohio permit for his weapon and assumed he was in compliance. When he declared his gun to security, the cop on duty told him he was under arrest for carrying without the proper paperwork. Big surprise, the marine wasn’t pleased, and he ended up with a broken shoulder after the cop tried to restrain him. That cop was Torowitz.”

  “What did the message say this time?” Martin asked.

  Lauren shuffled the papers on her desk until she found the one she was looking for. “ ‘The best we can hope for the people is that they be properly armed.’ It’s Alexander Hamilton. I looked it up. And we’re down to nine days.”

  David turned to his father and said, “Wasn’t Hamilton killed in a pistol duel?”

  Martin looked pleased. “That’s my boy.” He patted David’s shoulder roughly. “Aaron Burr shot him.”

  “Why?” Lauren asked him.

  “If I remember right,” Martin said, “Burr accused Hamilton of slandering him while he was campaigning to be governor of New York. Not wanting to back down, Hamilton denied it, and Burr challenged him to a duel. Burr won.” Martin paused to take a drink from his coffee. “Hamilton’s son was also killed in a duel, and on the exact same patch of Hudson River real estate.” He grinned. “It’s no wonder New York’s so uptight about gun control.”

  “So our killer has a sense of irony?” Lauren said.

  As Martin laughed appreciatively, David asked her, “What else did you hear from ballistics?”

  She picked up a notepad filled with her almost-indecipherable handwriting. “They found gun powder and burn marks on Torowitz’s neck and upper body, so the gun was fired at very close range—a couple of feet at most. Apparently older weapons send out a much longer plume than guns do today.”

  “So Torowitz leaves the building,” Martin said. “He’s confronted by our subject, who shoots him twice at close range with some kind of old-fashioned handgun or musket. Is that it?”

  “Not quite,” Lauren said. “Police found some pornographic pictures of women dressed in military uniforms taped up to the wall of the building where Torowitz was shot.”

  Martin had been raising his coffee mug to his lips. But what Lauren said made him lower it. “Come again?” he said.

  “All the women in the photos were holding guns. It was, like, gun porn or something.” She shook her head. “Guys are disgusting.”

  “So Torowitz was lured out,” David said.

  Lauren nodded. “And last night, when he was murdered . . .” She paused. “Witnesses nearby said a woman was the first person at the scene. They say she started screaming for help after the second gunshot, but then she disappeared. A few people said they remembered her having bright red hair.”

  “There’s gotta be surveillance video,” Martin said. “We’re talking about downtown New York, for Christ’s sake.”

  Lauren started to answer him, but she was interrupted by a knock on her office door.

  Chapter 42

  “WE’VE GOT A match on one of the money prints.”

  Omar stood in the doorway to Lauren’s office, looking wired and tucking his black hair behind his ear so incessantly David wondered how long it would take for a track to wear through to his scalp.

  “Ninety-five percent match, good enough for government work,” Omar said. He let out a sharp, single-note laugh, but his expression sobered when he saw David’s face and remembered the previous day’s false arrest. His eyes moved over the jumbled contents of Lauren’s office. “Jesus, Butch. Isn’t this a fire hazard?”

  “Up yours, Omar,” she said.

  A minute later, the small man led them down a short corridor to a room occupied by lab techs, most of whom were dressed in light khakis and dark Oxford shirts with even darker ties. The room smelled mildly sulfuric, and was almost sickeningly bright; the ceiling was lined with enough fluorescent tubes to illuminate twenty chemistry labs. David knew the smell was carbon powder, which the forensic techs used to lift prints identified by electronic optical wavelength.

  Omar escorted them to a workstation where a woman in her early fifties sat in front of three oversized computer monitors. Clara Diggs had been with the Bureau for more than three decades and was affectionately referred to as “Digit Diggs” by most of the forensic technicians. When she saw David and his team approaching, she folded both of her hands in her lap and raised her chin. “I want you all to know I wasn’t consulted on the false-positive yesterday. I’m not saying anything bad about my colleagues, and I probably would have signed off on the print just the same. I just don’t want you to take it out on me.”

  “Mistakes happen,” David said. “What do you have on the new prints?”

  She turned back to her computer monitors, and he watched as she zoomed out on the areas of detail she’d been examining when they entered the room. Two of the screens now displayed what looked to David like completely dissimilar prints. The third screen showed the same prints slightly smaller and side by side.

  Clara said, “The partial fingerprint on the left was recovered from the rope at the Jacobsen site. Our Newark print team lifted the sample on the right from one of the bills recovered
from the gas station.”

  David thought the images of the fingerprints looked almost spectral in their digitalized black-and-whiteness. He watched Clara move her cursor to the screen that contained both prints. She clicked on one of several numerals that appeared to label various sections of the prints’ surfaces. As she did this, the two remaining monitors zoomed-in to show areas of each print in sharper detail. David glanced at his father, and saw Martin looking a little wide-eyed at the print software’s capabilities.

  “See these tented arches?” Clara said, moving her cursor over ridges that seemed to repeat themselves in each of the prints. “All-in-all, we’ve identified fifteen points of similarity.”

  “And that gives us a match probability of ninety-five percent?” Lauren asked.

  “Actually, it’s more like ninety-nine-point-nine percent,” Clara said. “But after what happened yesterday, I think we’ll all be erring on the side of under-exuberance for a while.”

  “Any matches on the new print in CJIS?” Lauren asked.

  “Not so far.”

  Lauren and Clara continued to discuss the print’s similarities, but David had already stopped listening. He took a step back from Clara’s workstation, and realized his father was looking at him.

  Martin nodded gravely, and David knew they were thinking the same thing.

  “The pale woman in the video,” Martin said. “Who the hell is she?”

  Chapter 43

  MARTIN PACED AS David and Lauren sat at the conference table, waiting for Omar to boot up the Empire State Building’s security footage. David could feel Lauren tapping her foot impatiently under the table.

  “All right, this is it,” Omar said.

  The picture was dark and a little grainy, but the camera appeared to be looking down from two or three stories above street level. A car passed by, and David could see two people walking arm in arm. The street was otherwise deserted.