The Dreaming Tree

by Matthew Mather

  In just a few minutes, it had zeroed her in on a set of cameras over a bodega on Eleventh and Avenue C. She had distilled the images. That was definitely Roy in a few of those frames. Down the street, too, from some cameras over a traffic light, more images of Roy.

  She and Coleman had spent yesterday canvassing the street, until the lady upstairs from this place said the picture of Roy looked sort of familiar. That maybe it was the guy she had rented the apartment downstairs to.

  Maybe. The guy paid cash. No ID. It wasn’t illegal, the old lady had reminded them.

  The events of two nights ago had added urgency to their search.

  “War Hero Gutted like a Fish in Front of Commissioner,” was one sensational headline in the local papers yesterday.

  Angel Rodriguez, a decorated former Navy SEAL team member, had been stabbed in front of One Police Plaza. Right at NYPD’s headquarters, with a dozen cameras watching it happen. Angel had been gravely wounded and had lost a lot of blood, but he was tough and had managed to fight off his attacker long enough to save his life—maybe. Angel was hanging on by a thread in a hospital uptown, in a coma.

  The suspect had just strolled away into the City Hall subway station as if he were on a Sunday walk. The cops streamed out, but in the ten minutes it took to react, the suspect was gone, melted into the Saturday-night crowds on the station platform. He could have gone out to Brooklyn, uptown, or downtown. Become one of millions.

  His face was covered by a parka and scarf and didn’t show in the video.

  Del and her partner were the only ones who knew that Angel was working for Roy—at least, the only police who knew.

  Forty thousand other officers of the NYPD might like to know what she knew. The largest police force in America was on the case. In effect, it was the fourth-largest army on the planet, and someone had just kicked the beehive, but if she brought up anything else about Royce Lowell-Vandeweghe to her boss, it would not go well for her.

  So she and Coleman had waited in their car.

  Maybe she could have checked Angel’s apartment, but he was listed as single. Also, the NYPD would be all over his place. She was a long way from her jurisdiction of Suffolk County. So she decided just to wait and hope they could catch Roy coming back to his apartment—or the apartment they thought he was renting.

  But Coleman had nodded off on his watch.

  When Del woke up, right away she spotted the fresh tracks in the snow, leading into the apartment.

  She banged on the door again.

  They waited a few seconds for a couple to walk by. When the street was empty once again, she yelled, “Roy, come on out. We just want to talk.” If Roy complained to his billionaire friends, she might be out of a job—unless she was right.

  Silence. No lights inside the apartment.

  “Is there a back way out?” she asked Coleman.

  “No way. I checked. Just one way in and out. What do you want to do?”

  Snowflakes drifted.

  “Kick it in,” Del said.

  “We got no warrant. You sure?”

  “I’ll take responsibility. You kick it, and I’ll go in first.”

  She unholstered her Glock.

  “You sure you need that?” Coleman asked.

  “You sure you don’t?”

  He thought about it for a good second before unholstering his own weapon. “We’re coming in,” he announced.

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” Del whispered just as Coleman lunged forward to piston-kick the door. It was cheap and splintered right away, swinging straight in.

  “Whoever’s in here, just stay cool,” she said.

  She swung her pistol out. The door had thudded against the wall and swung slowly back.

  Inside, it was pitch black. Still not a sound.

  Del edged forward, then back, but had to move in before the door swung closed again. She took a step over the threshold, down a step and then another.

  Coleman came in behind her.

  Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and then to the subdarkness. Even in what other people perceived as utter blackness, she could discern shapes, especially if they were warm.

  There was a faint glow in the middle of the room. A bed?

  She took another step forward. Coleman came beside her, and she heard him groping around on the wall for a light switch. Something was in here with them. Some presence. She sensed it too late—the glowing outline of a hulking figure hurtling toward her.

  “Coleman!” she yelled as she ducked sideways.

  An elbow glanced off the side of her face. Then the figure grabbed Coleman and literally threw him into space. Del sprawled sideways and crashed over a table. By the time she got back to her feet, the attacker, whoever it was, had gone. Her partner said he was okay, so she dashed out to the sidewalk.

  Her hands shook. She saw nothing out there, not left or right.

  A man came out of the bodega and froze, staring at the woman with a gun in her hand. Del looked at the footprints in the snow. People were already out, going to work. Too many footprints to pick out one set.

  “Damn it.”

  * * *

  “You okay?” Del asked Coleman.

  Her partner was shaken but didn’t look hurt—at least, he wasn’t cut anywhere. “I’m fine.” He sat on the edge of the bed, nursing his elbow. “What on earth was that? That thing threw me ten feet in the air like I was a bag of laundry. Did you get a look?”

  “I just saw an outline,” Del said. “A man.”

  “All I knew, I was suddenly airborne. Do you want to call it in? Get some backup?”

  “We just broke in illegally. Who, exactly, would we call?”

  They had just turned the lights on. The place was a mess. Which was probably to be expected, given the state of the rest of the building and the chain-smoking landlady upstairs. Papers were scattered all over the floor. They looked like receipts.

  Coleman picked one up. “Who the hell is Jake Hawkins?”

  40

  God, it was cold. Roy stumbled forward and slipped on a patch of ice, putting one hand against a lamppost to keep from crashing onto the sidewalk. A woman in a heavy coat and matching scarf, latte in one hand, recoiled, crinkling her nose. She gave Roy a wide berth on her way into the Astor Place subway station.

  The morning commuters streamed around him, parting like water around a rock, giving a wide berth to the undesirable in their path.

  What were all these people doing out on a Saturday morning? Buying Christmas gifts?

  He wrapped his arms around his body in a vain attempt to stay warm.

  He had on only a thin cotton T-shirt and jeans and his backpack, while everyone around him wore parkas and scarves and heavy boots. He had run blindly through Tompkins Square Park, where some of the kids paused from their sledding to gawk at him, and before he knew it, he was on the Bowery. The street used to be the most notorious junkie jungle in America, but now it was all glass storefronts and Starbucks. Not a place someone like Roy could hide.

  He scampered north to St. Mark’s Square, hobbling a little without the exo-suit. There would be more street people around St. Mark’s. There always were.

  Had he hurt that cop? He hadn’t wanted to. He just needed to get away.

  They didn’t seem to have followed him, but he saw a city cop at the base of the subway stairs. Roy reversed course back onto the street, where he spotted a McDonald’s. The snow was falling faster now, whipped into flurries by the wind. He ran across the street, huddled over against the storm, and banged through the door of McDonald’s.

  The line of people inside glanced his way, then went back to whatever they were doing. This was New York City, after all—there wasn’t much they hadn’t seen.

  Roy went into the bathroom and closed the stall door. He checked his bulging pockets: four t
housand, three hundred eighty dollars in cash. He still had Jake’s passport and his own, and he still had his wallet, though he didn’t dare use the cards.

  He had a pocketful of antirejection pills, but no idea when he last took them. Maybe that was the reason for the ripping headache.

  “Sir, you can’t stay in there,” said a young voice outside the stall. “The bathrooms are for paying customers only.”

  Apparently, the kid had drawn the short stick to have to come in and talk to him.

  “One second.”

  He flushed the toilet to maintain the fiction that he had come in to relieve himself. He tried to slick his hair down and straighten his T-shirt before opening the door.

  “I had a really bad night. Drinking, you know? Too much partying.”

  The pimple-faced kid shrank back but dutifully held his ground. “But like I said—”

  “How about this?” Roy held out a hundred-dollar bill. “Go get me a few bottles of water, a coffee, and an Egg McMuffin. And keep the rest for yourself. I just need to clean myself up. Can I do that?”

  The kid paused a beat, but again, this was New York. He took the hundred and said, “How about I put the cleaning sign out front? Give you some privacy? For another hundred?”

  Roy attempted a grateful smile, but the kid’s eyes went wide. He realized he didn’t have anything around his neck. In the mirror behind the kid, he saw the neck scar, purple and red against his pallid skin. He tucked his chin.

  “And do you think I could buy a coat from one of your friends? A hat and scarf?” Roy waved a few more hundreds.

  Working at McDonald’s had made the kid a pragmatist. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “One more question. Why are there so many people here on a Saturday morning?”

  The kid gave a knowing grin. “Because it’s Monday, dude.”

  * * *

  “Three days,” Roy muttered aloud. He looked into the bathroom mirror. “What have you been doing for three days?” He was looking into his own eyes but speaking to Jake somewhere back in there.

  For two hours, he’d had the kid block off the bathroom and shuttle in coffee and eggs. He had cleaned the blood from his hands—his own blood? His hands and forearms looked like a junkie’s, complete with the tremors and full of cuts and scratches. He shaved with a razor the kid provided, and he had a new shirt and even a sturdy winter coat that he had to pay five crisp C-notes for, but then, he wasn’t in a good position to negotiate. He thought about plugging in the exo-suit, but he didn’t really need it anymore. It had become more of an encumbrance than anything else. Not sure how many antirejection pills he should take, he downed five.

  He stared into the depths of his own eyes.

  He remembered being tired at Shelby Sheffield’s house. Was that how Jake got out? When he went to sleep or when his mind grew fatigued?

  And how had they found him? How did Detective Devlin know where he was? Did Hope tell them? That was possible, but it didn’t make sense.

  The sensors in his head.

  He looked at the small bubbles of skin where the devices were inserted. Two on his temples, two high on his forehead, two over the ears. One each at the big joints. What were they doing? Were they even now broadcasting his location to the police? No. If they were, the cops would already be here. But he would bet Danesti was tracking him.

  The doctor had his own agenda, Roy was sure of it.

  Even here, he had the feeling he was being watched—as if someone were in here with him.

  Which they were.

  He tried calling Angel but got no response. He didn’t leave a message, and on second thought, he dumped the cell phone into the garbage.

  * * *

  “How much for the big one?” Roy pointed at a knife in the display case. Its point looked sharp.

  The pawn-shop manager replied, “That’s, ah, fifty bucks.”

  “Forty?”

  The man leaned back and stroked his gray goatee. A wall of guitars hung behind him. Glass cases lined both walls, with steel cages above them.

  The guy said, “Sure. Forty.”

  Roy paid, pocketed the blade, and left the shop. It was afternoon already. He had spent the day hiding out in McDonald’s, his back to the wall, sipping coffee. Trying to think. What was real? What wasn’t? Maybe his mind was playing tricks again. He needed to go back out to that storage locker, see if he had really seen what he thought he saw. Bring one of the jars back. Take it to the police?

  First, he needed to do something.

  He walked down St. Mark’s Place and crossed a few alleys to get back to Tompkins Square Park. He had a wool scarf tight around his neck again, sunglasses on, his thick new winter jacket pulled tight around him. He was warm, at least. He spied some of the kids he had talked to before, when he got the painkillers. Two of them scattered, but one remained on the park bench.

  “Don’t got no more Oxy, man,” the young crustypunk said.

  “Where’s Rudy?” He meant the Afro-haired kid Roy had met first in the park. The one who got him his OxyContin.

  “We don’t know. People been disappearing, you know?” The kid looked scared.

  “I need something to keep me awake. You got some amphetamines?”

  The crustypunk frowned. “You mean like Adderall? Vynase?”

  “Will it keep me awake?”

  “Like Scarface and his little friends, bro. How much you want?”

  “Everything you got.” Roy pulled out his knife. “I need help with one more thing, and you’re not going to like this.”

  41

  “Hey, guy, you need a doctor?”

  “Just drive,” Roy said. “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. There’s a hospital—”

  “I fell down some stairs. I need to get home. Please, just drive.”

  The Indian driver didn’t look convinced. Roy could see his brown eyes glancing back at him in the rearview mirror. He had a red turban on. Didn’t that mean he was Sikh?

  They don’t cut their hair, right? Roy had an internal monologue going again. No, a dialogue, actually. Questioning and answering himself.

  I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just a big hat.

  Roy’s knowledge of India was embarrassingly weak considering his new knowledge that he may well have been born there. He’d better start learning.

  He had made two more calls from pay phones, but Angel hadn’t picked up.

  The taxi rumbled along the Cross Bronx Expressway, a concrete-canyon-walled racetrack for semis that mere cars entered at their own peril. Even with the windows rolled up, the roar and echo of the thousands of vehicles screaming through made it difficult to talk to the driver.

  This was his third taxi.

  It was too risky to go back to his Chevy, and anyway, the keys were in the apartment, now a no-go zone.

  So he had taken a taxi, first out to Union City in New Jersey, through the Lincoln Tunnel, and jumped out to run through alleyways before grabbing another cab north to the George Washington, and then a third to double back. He had dumped the exo-suit and backpack in Jersey. It was the first time since coming out of the coma that he felt free.

  He touched the wound at his left temple and winced. Blood oozed down the line of his scalp. The driver’s concerned brown eyes flashed again in the rearview. Roy tried to get a look at himself in the scratched plastic mirror against the divider behind the front seat.

  The Tompkins Park kid had done his best digging out the sensors, but the holes were deep, and the skin had flayed around the edges of the wounds. Six of them in his head. He pulled his wool cap back down and wiped away the blood. His jeans had dark patches of blood on them as well. Eight more wounds in his arms and legs. Good thing he had a big supply of Oxy.

  The taxi wound its way through Throg’s Neck, over the bridge, and t
hen down onto the Long Island Expressway. If it wasn’t there, if he couldn’t find it, he would just turn himself in.

  * * *

  “Mother of God,” Deputy Chief Russ Alonzo said to Detective Devlin.

  With a latex-gloved hand, he held a mason jar aloft. A slightly decomposed finger floated in a transparent but slightly greenish liquid.

  “How many more of these are there?”

  They were on the second floor of a self-storage facility outside Calverton. Two junior officers were setting up floodlights.

  “At least thirty containers,” Coleman replied. “Ears. Eyes. Worse. And a bunch of bags of clothes—all sorts of stuff.”

  The junior officer couldn’t hide his excitement. “Gotta be the Fire Island Killer, right? This is his treasure trove?”

  Ten years before, seventeen women’s bodies had appeared, one by one, on beaches on Fire Island, and others on Long Island. Wrapped in sacks and dumped into shallow graves between the sand dunes, cut up in pieces, with some parts missing. It was one of the biggest unsolved and still-active serial-killer cases in America.

  “Totally different MO,” Del said. She turned to the junior officers setting up the lights. “Hey, keep back. Don’t disturb anything. This whole area is a crime scene.”

  “Put this back, then.” The deputy chief handed Del the jar, grimacing as he did. His black mustache twitched in disgust.

  “I’m going to take this one into Forensics right now.” She held a larger glass jar in her hand. The liquid was clearer than in the others. A fresh ear, the edges ragged and pink. “This one looks more recent. Might be tied to the hiker we found.”

  From the pungent and slightly irritating smell of the jars, she could tell they were stored in formaldehyde. Or rather, formalin, which was a mixture of formaldehyde—a gas at room temperature—with water and methyl alcohol. This by itself was interesting, since modern labs mostly used a formaldehyde-free alternative for storing biological samples, so this had an old-school feel to it. Some of the samples were different colors, which meant that not all the formalin concoctions were of exactly the same proportions. And that was about the extent of Del’s knowledge on the topic. Surely the forensic teams would have a lot to go on here.