by John Griffin
Clive stopped, turned to the journalist, and smiled. “Fun, no?”
“This wouldn’t have happened in London?” she asked.
“No,” Dr. Chan said. “British people are polite enough not to die mysteriously.”
“What my glib friend means,” Clive said, pulling back the cover and revealing Vera’s naked body, gray, with a slick sheen, “is that when you are a pathologist, if you are not a pathologist in New York, you’re a country bumpkin who just hasn’t seen it all. And I wanted to see it all.”
“Beginning dissection,” Dr. Chan said.
“Cutting into pharynx,” Clive said. He pressed the scalpel into Vera’s skin and pulled gently, his finger trailing and opening the throat as he went. His finger stopped suddenly and his eyes furrowed.
“Is that—?” Dr. Chan said.
“An obstruction,” Clive said, pulling Vera’s throat apart. “Was this reported by Schweinsteiger?”
Dr. Chan looked to the notes. “No.”
“It’s round. A cylinder. I’m removing it.” Clive pulled out a long, thin glass tube. “Turn off the recorder.” He pulled down his mask, blood-patched gloves leaving fingerprints behind on the blue mask. “Everyone out.”
Dr. Chan and the journalist stood staring at the tube. “Get the fuck out!” Clive yelled, pulling his gown open. Dr. Chan and the journalist left abruptly. Clive pulled out his phone without removing his gloves or taking his eyes off the tube. He dialed.
“Yeah, me. Come. Now.”
Clive held the cylinder in his hands as he walked down the hall still dressed in his surgical gown. In the hallway on the way back to his office people gave him a wide berth, most pressing their backs entirely against the wall. He was not covered in blood, but he was transfixed by the cylinder, wiping the congealed blood from it, and it was a frightening enough scene that no one wanted to be a part of it.
Back at his office, Linda did not look up from her desk when he passed. He went by her and into his own office and closed the door hard. He was at his desk digging for a clear plastic bag when Linda followed behind, asking, “Why on earth…” before seeing him still in his surgical gown and trailing off.
“Doctor,” Linda said, crossing to him. She turned him around so that he was facing toward the window and stripped off the gown and untied the mask. She tossed them into the garbage can and then tied up the plastic garbage bag and took the mess out.
Without taking his eyes off the cylinder, Clive reached into his desk and pulled out a flask, unscrewing the top and taking two large gulps. He sat, but there was no chair, and he hit the ground hard and started to swear. He dropped the cylinder in the plastic evidence bag onto his desk and marched out to the hall, back past Linda at her desk. In the hall he found a bench of three orange chairs and tried to pick it up, grunting and swearing. “Damnit, Linda!” he yelled. “Help!”
Linda came out and together they lifted the bench and brought it into his office, heaving it over his desk and placing it in the space behind. “Chairs,” Linda said. “That serious?”
“Bring me the Psycho files,” Clive said, reaching into his pocket for his flask and taking another drink.
Linda left the room, and Clive turned to the window, opening it as far as it would go and then reaching into his desk for a pack of cigarettes. He took one out, lit it, and craned his neck as best he could to point the smoke out of the window. Linda returned a minute later. “No smoking, Doctor,” she said.
“Damnit, Linda, this is a fucking emergency.”
He took the files from her, and she took his cigarette and tossed it out the window. She left the room and closed the door while he took another out of the pack and lit it. He sat on the bench and opened the file. It was a few hundred pages long. He had reviewed it before and had been the lead pathologist on any crimes either confirmed or suspected to be related to Psycho.
When he was first on the case, it was just the two girls that he had examined. Both asphyxiated. Both teenagers. But then Solomon had saved that third girl, for a while, anyway. Sol saw Psycho’s faced and placed who he was, but the kid — and he was a kid — lawyered up hard, and it took another week before they could find any better evidence. By then the kid had run.
When his parents finally let them do a proper search, they found eighteen bodies at their country home. Clive was called in to figure out which body parts belonged to whom, and how they all died. Examining those bodies was like watching the evolution of serial killer finding himself — the stutter-steps of learning and perfecting an MO. Few of the bodies could be identified. Those they could identify were itinerant; almost certainly, the others they could not identify were as well. None had been reported missing. They had all been killed over the last fifteen months, from what Clive could tell.
Most died of starvation. Some lived for a few weeks, obvious intravenous sloppily punctured into their arms to keep them hydrated and to administer propofol, Psycho’s anesthesia of choice. Others died overdosing on the anesthesia. The four most recently dead almost certainly died of asphyxiation themselves.
The bodies were buried just outside the small concrete shed on the property that had been sealed on the inside with layers of plastic. Once the door was closed, the air slowly ran out — or that was his goal. Eventually, he got it working.
The last four bodies were recent and preserved well enough that a more fulsome examination was possible. Each of them had a glass cylinder, as simple as the one he had pulled from Vera’s throat, with a cork stopper, in its mouth. Inside the cylinder each time were notes, hardly comprehensible to a doctor that dealt exclusively with dead people. The psychiatrists that interpreted them said they were indicative of a high-functioning sociopath with narcissistic rage.
The murders had stopped with Psycho on the run. Clive compartmentalized the images in his head the way the training told him to. He moved on to other cases mundane and gruesome, accidental and purposeful. It was easy for him — he coped with whisky and cigarettes and gallows humor, like most of the pathologists he worked with on either side of the pond. But he remembered that detective, Sol, and everything he went through. He heard about the jumper and had reached out to Sol. They had a few pints, and if they were not friends, they were as close as you could get in professional circles before crossing into friendship. They had both stood over a pit filled with eighteen dead bodies, and that means something.
So when Clive reached into that girl’s throat and pulled out the cylinder, wiped off some of the congealed blood, and saw inside a piece of paper with a picture of the Roman Sun God, Sol Invictus, he called Sol.
Chapter Four:
Solomon
Solomon walked down the hall, almost jogging, his shoulders hunched forward trying to keep balance. He reached Clive’s office and ran past Linda. The door was locked. Linda opened it for him. Inside, Clive was sitting on a bench matching others Solomon had seen in the hallway.
Clive had the tube in one hand, a flask in another.
Solomon closed the door behind him and stood. “Did you open it?”
“It’s not addressed to me, mate,” Clive said. “You smell like you don’t need this, but…” He offered Solomon the flask.
Solomon sat on the bench and took the tube from Clive. “What do we know?”
“It wasn’t there when the autopsy in Brooklyn was done. Sol, someone in the chain of possession — or with access to it — must have put this here. Think Psycho’s working with a doctor? I mean, he has fairly advanced pharmacological knowledge. I’ve always wondered.”
“It isn’t probable,” Solomon responded.
“So, not a doctor?” Clive said. “Someone who could get in?”
“Anyone can get in. I got in just now. Walked in off the street. Passed the cooler. No one stopped me.”
“But he must have known this would come to me. Anyone else, they call police, right? I mean, he must have known this would come to me. There’s a small list of people…”
“You’re not
so unique, Clive. Any of a dozen people would have called me on this. He didn’t have to know it was you. Hell, even if no one came to me with this, it would go to the captain, and she’d at the very least ask me to consult.”
“No, she wouldn’t,” Clive said.
“Why?” Solomon asked, confused.
Clive was silent for a moment, looking Solomon up and down, and the tension gave Solomon his answer. He took the bottle out of his coat pocket and placed a pill under his tongue.
“But still, it limits the list of suspects. That has to be helpful; to help you figure out where he is,” Clive said.
“It’s not what I know,” Solomon said. “It’s what I can prove.”
“You know where he is?” Clive said. He brought a flask to his lips and then lit up a cigarette.
“Not inside,” Linda called.
“Not now, Linda!” Clive yelled back. “I’m in the middle of a crisis, for fuck’s sake!”
Solomon regarded the tube. It was a simple test tube with a cork stopper. Inside was a note. He could see a face ringed by rays of sunshine. He opened the stopper and removed the note, reading it.
“What does it say?” Clive asked, taking a swig and a drag.
Solomon stood. “It says it is going to be over soon.”
“What?” Clive said. Solomon handed Clive the note. “I don’t get it. It’s a sheep, a lump of iron, and an eye? And it looks like a child drew it.”
“A child probably did draw it.”
“Oh, that’s creepy,” Clive said. “Why do you have to creep me out? And how does this say it is going to be over soon?”
“You or I,” Solomon said, taking the note back and leaving the office. Linda shut the door behind him.
He left the building and got onto the subway, coming up at 68th Street and making his way to 19th Precinct. He walked by the desk sergeant, who nodded, and onto the floor. At the third desk was a woman in her mid-forties, short, stout, wearing a leather bomber jacket and blue jeans. She looked up and saw Solomon coming, leaning back in her seat. “Sol,” she said. “I hear Reginald worked out just fine. Maybe we’ll draw Mr. Bossman out? You think?”
“Psycho’s back,” Solomon said. The woman stood and took him to a private office. Before she could sit, she was asking what he needed.
“He’s taken someone,” Solomon said.
“So who am I looking for?”
“Clive found a note in a body. She had been dead a week, but the note was slipped in over the last three days.”
“So we’re looking for someone who could have accessed the body?”
“No,” Solomon said. “We’re not looking for Psycho — we won’t find him. It’s a dead end, and we don’t have time to waste. We are looking for a young woman who won’t be missed — too old to be an amber alert. Young enough, twelve to fifteen, and with a history of running away so the police won’t take the missing persons report seriously, if a report has been made at all. Just enough attention to get my attention. She’ll be poor, too.”
“And who’s the target? Who has he asked you to kill?”
Solomon put the note on the table. “Ewe. Ore. Eye?” Lisa said.
“It’s me or him. This is it, Lisa,” Solomon said, taking the note back.
“How long do you have?”
“Almost precisely too little time. If it has already been three days, then I have four before she suffocates. But she won’t suffocate.”
“Sol…” Lisa said. “You can’t let him win.”
“It’ll be him, not me, Lisa.” Solomon stood. “But if it can’t be him, then it’ll be me, not her.”
“This isn’t on you, Sol.”
“Lisa,” Solomon said, “I don’t want you doing anything on this. Leave it with me.”
“I’m telling the captain.”
Solomon smiled. “That’s the best thing you could do. That incompetent fuck won’t get in my way — won’t even get within a hundred miles of me. Has no idea what she’s doing.”
“Sol, you should leave this to us.”
“Get me the leads. And on the off chance there has been a sighting reported, let me know if Psycho has surfaced.”
“I guess we’re calling off the robbery?” Lisa said. “We’ll find Captain Crime another time?”
“Fuck, no,” Solomon retorted. “A man’s gotta eat.”
Chapter Five:
Reg
Reg was coming out of the bodega in the apartment building next to his own when his phone rang. He shifted the coffee from his left hand to his right and then took the phone out of his pocket. He briefly considered taking the Bluetooth headset out of his pocket but muttered under his breath, “I’m not that guy, I’m a criminal,” and answered the phone.
“Lisa?” Reg said.
Lisa told him to meet her at a greasy spoon not far from Reg’s Williamsburg home. The seats were vinyl, the coffee was cheap, and a whole breakfast cost eight bucks. When he sat, he asked if they had espresso. The waitress twisted her face and stepped back on her heel before he realized it was a stupid question. “We have coffee,” she said in an accent he could not place. “Want coffee?”
“Yes.” She turned over the mug already on the table and poured from the carafe she kept on her hip, ready to sling at a moment’s notice. As she walked away, she topped up four more customers, barely slowing her walk as she went.
Lisa arrived thirty minutes late. “Only thirty minutes,” she said as she sat. The waitress followed shortly behind her, and Lisa flipped over her mug and tapped on the lip. The waitress poured the cup full, and as she pulled back Lisa emptied in a small disposable container of cream. The exchange took on the professional deftness of the ballet that Reg had watched the year before at the Lincoln Center.
“So what did you think?” Lisa said.
“Professional opinion or personal?”
“You’re going to be a cop,” Lisa said. “So one needs to be the same as the other.”
Reg shook his head and hoped Lisa did not notice. “Sol got fucked,” he said, shrugging. “That’s it. Had his whole life, lost his family’s fortune, then his dad disappears. Chases down this serial killer and gets caught in his web. Partner killed, watched that girl die. If that doesn’t break a person, nothing will.”
“Think he is the head honcho?” Lisa asked, using another of the many names she assigned to the person Sol insisted was running the heists. “I’ve wondered. Sol goes off the grid — at least, leaves the force, goes incommunicado, and then comes back with insider knowledge of all these crimes, insists they are related — something we did not think ourselves — and tells us he can get us the ringleader. Suspicious, no?”
“No,” Reg said.
“Why not?” Lisa asked.
“Because I spoke to the ringleader.”
“You spoke to him? When?”
“When I met Sol. He handed me the phone and told me to speak to the guy. It was part of the interview process.”
“What did he say?”
“A lot, without saying much. Didn’t tell me anything about the score. Just told me a few stories of him coming up in the world — almost certainly none of them were true. And then he kept telling me the only way to get longevity is not to be greedy. To know when enough is enough. Stick to the plan. That sort of thing. Crews live and die on each person sticking to the plan, and he made it clear I’d die if I fucked up the plan. He likes Sol, too. Thinks he has what it takes to stick around for a long time.”
Lisa turned up the side of her head and winked, then put her hand in the air. The waitress glided by and refilled her cup, while Lisa added more cream.
“And how do you know it was really the Man?” Lisa asked, stirring her coffee and cream together.
“I don’t, I suppose.”
Lisa nodded. “Sure don’t. It could be an interesting ruse to put us off the case. Could be you spoke to the Jackal himself, or just one of his associates. Either way it tells us something.”
“Sure does,
” Reg replied.
“What?”
“Pardon?”
“What does it tell us?”
Reg paused. He did not actually know what it told them but had agreed with Lisa because it felt like the right thing to do. Still, he guessed at an answer. “That Sol’s willing to lie to us.”
“Good. So what’s the score?”
“Rich old people,” Reg said.
“Where?”
“He didn’t give me any details beyond that. Said we are robbing a house with as much money or valuables in it as a bank. Called it another perfect score because it is just a house. Not a bank. Something that is made to allow people in and out, not to protect valuables.”
“Dumb mark,” Lisa said. “But he’s right. It amazes me what people keep in their homes. When you find out where it is?”
“Let you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Has Sham done this yet?”
“Sure did.”
“He in?”
“Yup,” Lisa said, throwing a five-dollar bill onto the table between them.
“That’s it?” Reg said.
Lisa stood for a moment. “You sound disappointed. Don’t. These will be brief. Mostly, they’ll be by phone. This is probably the last time we will be seen together for a while.”
Reg nodded as Lisa turned and left. He waited five minutes, watching the digits change over on his phone, and then left when he felt enough time had passed. He had not touched his coffee, but the idea of coffee gave him a craving. On his way home he went into Blue Bottle on Berry Street and ordered a Cortado. It was his standard drink. If a shop did not know how to make it, he did not drink there. So he never drank at Starbucks. And he sure as hell did not drink at Dunkin’ Donuts like the rest of the world.
