Tyrel almost fainted when he saw what Ricky was carrying—a huge boulder.
“Come on, Rick,” one of his friends said. “You’ve gone far enough.”
“I’m going far? This skinny homo tried to kill me, didn’t he? If he was a little stronger, he could have strangled me.” He put his shoe on the back of Sandy’s neck, pinning her down.
She couldn’t even try to crawl away with just her hind legs.
“He needs to be taught a lesson he never forgets.”
In spite of Tyrel offering more money, amid more tears and snot, the drunken teenager lifted the boulder over his head.
“It’s high-time you reckon who the boss around here is.”
Tyrel turned toward Sandy, hopelessness gushing out of his eyes as salty rivers. She looked straight at him, through him, like she was addressing not him, but his soul. Her mouth was closed and she wasn’t whining. In fact, she looked serene. If Tyrel wasn’t mistaken, he could have sworn she smiled.
And then the rock fell.
Sandy’s head squashed with a spine-chilling crunch. One of her eyes popped out of the socket and hung on her face. Her mashed pink brain spilled out of the busted skull. Her legs—hind and the stumps where her front legs used to be—thrashed and cleared the leaves under her.
“No!” bawled an animal within Tyrel.
Then he was let go and he dropped on his knees. He crawled on all fours to Sandy and pulled her body over his lap. The reddest and thickest blood he had ever seen stained his T-shirt and jeans. Shaking uncontrollably, he cradled her, whispering, “Sorry,” a dozen times into her torn ear. As the whining ceased, her body slowly stopped twitching.
Tyrel had gone deaf. His jaws and throat ached. Ricky squatted in the front and slapped him a few times, but Tyrel didn’t even feel it. Then for some reason, Ricky tried covering Tyrel’s mouth and nose, but got frustrated and ran away from the spot, his friends leading the way.
Only when the watchman from the cemetery shook Tyrel and shouted his name did he realize he had been screaming all this time.
And then he heard a disconcerting sound. The feeble sound of glass or ice cracking. He knew then and there that something fundamental inside him had been broken. The thing that gave a body its life, the thing he needed to have to be permitted into heaven and be with Ben and Sandy. When the cracking stopped, Tyrel dropped on top of Sandy and passed out.
* * *
Tyrel knew he was in a hospital even before he woke up. He hadn’t forgotten the sick smell. To his surprise, Mel was sitting beside him. Not to his surprise, she was smoking.
“Where’s Sandy?” he said.
A thousand pins poked through his throat when he spoke. But he didn’t care. Fuck pain. He closed his eyes and promised himself he would never fear pain again. Pain was the liability this world used to make him its bitch.
“She’s dead.”
“That wasn’t my question. Where. Is. She?”
Mel tried to touch his head, but he turned away.
She took her hand back. “Buried in the backyard.”
“You had the decency?”
“What?”
He sighed and looked down. He was in a hospital gown. The clothes that had Sandy’s blood on them were nowhere to be found. His body had been scrubbed clean, but little did anyone know that Sandy’s blood had tainted something else, too. Something deep inside him. And nothing could scrub that stain off. The camel’s back was finally broken.
“I want to go to Uncle’s,” Tyrel said.
“My brother’s?”
“Do I have any other uncle?”
“But Charlie is in California.”
“I know.”
“Why you wanna go there?”
“He owns a dojo, and I want to learn how to fight.”
“Go learn boxing or something.”
“No. I want to go to LA.”
“Why? I can get you a full year’s membership in some class here in Apex.”
Tyrel knew he had to give her an explanation, or else she wouldn’t stop with her questions. So he took a deep breath. Another thousand pins stabbed his throat.
“You don’t know this, Mel, but I’ve been bullied for as long as I can remember. For being a shrimp. For being gay. For being good at math. So naturally imagining fighting these bullies and defeating them keeps me awake at night—”
“Good. You fight them, hon.”
“Don’t interrupt me.”
Mel nodded and lifted her hands.
“Like I was saying, I imagine kicking their asses every single night. Then I researched fighting. You know what I found?”
“What?”
“Boxers use their arms—no, not even their arms, but just their fists. But I want to make my whole body a weapon. My head, feet, knees, elbows—everything. And I want to learn the kind of fighting that I can actually use in the streets, against ten assholes at the same time. Not something I just use in rings against one opponent. Fairness is not what you’d expect from motherfuckers like Ricky. So boxing won’t do.”
“What’s better than boxing?”
“Krav Maga,” Tyrel said to the ceiling fan. “It’s the fighting technique of the Israeli military, borrowed by many special forces around the globe, including the SAS and our own marines. You can use it in real world situations. It’s new here in the US, but Uncle Charlie is trained in it and he has a black belt. I wanna train with him.”
Mel shook her head. “No, I ain’t sending you away. You can’t leave me alone.”
“It’s always about you.”
“Not like that—”
“Listen to me, Mommy,” Tyrel said, still addressing the fan. “You aren’t alone as long as you have Gregory. Anyway, I don’t care. So fuck you, fuck him, and fuck this rotten world.”
Mel raised her hand, but stopped when Tyrel glared at her. Her face registered primal fear. Evil emotions roiled inside him. He felt the purest anger—a blistering rage so vile he would claw Mel, gouge her eyes out, bite her flesh and tear it off and eat it like a starving rabid dog if she ever laid a finger on him. She dropped her hand.
“You’re sending me away tomorrow.” Tyrel closed his eyes. “Else I’ll lock all the doors and set the house on fire when you’re riding your pig.”
Chapter 6
April 5, 2019. 11:07 A.M.
As he pensively massaged his wrists, Gabriel stared at a snoozing Dell monitor in his office at the 122nd precinct, the morning’s events playing back in his mind. Raymond, though disappointed, helped Gabriel with his release. Conor released him, but promised he’d make Gabriel pay. Of that, he had no doubt.
Detective Emma Stein wandered into the office, with Officer Bill Lamb on her tail. Gabriel had been Emma’s trainer when she was moved to the Homicide Squad from the Auto Crimes Division three years ago. Trainee then, partner now.
She had short blond hair faded at the back and sides. Bill sported the same hairstyle, looking like her younger brother.
She sat across the table and sighed.
“What’s up?” Gabriel fished for the inhaler in his pocket.
“Just filed a report. Vic was stabbed twenty-one times by his friend, over half a bottle of Jim Beam.”
Gabriel nodded. It never got easy.
“You know,” Emma said, “I understand the first, maybe even the second stab. But why the other nineteen? Vagrants—they constantly remind me how cheap and fragile life out there is.”
“She been like this all morning, Bill?” Gabriel returned the inhaler to his pocket.
Bill was the son of Peter Lamb, the detective with the highest clearance rate in all the NYPD’s homicide squads. Peter had retired two weeks ago, but he and Joshua Chase, Gabriel’s father, were already immersed in their retirement project—catching a notorious robber. With the old man gone, Gabriel, who had the second-highest clearance rate, was now officially the smartest homicide detective in New York City.
“No, Detective Chase,” Bill said. “She gets all p
hilosophical-like only when she sees you.”
“Oh, screw you,” Emma said.
“Screw you, too.”
“All right, brats,” Gabriel said. “If you want to pull each other’s hair out, go do it outside.”
Emma and Bill hadn’t had much to do with one another while Mr. Bunny’s investigation was underway. When the case was wrapped up, the other detectives who’d worked on it went back to their respective precincts. Only Bill and Emma remained. Well, Gabriel was there, too, but he wasn’t a chatterbox. He wouldn’t indulge them in reminiscing on the finer parts of the investigation. So Emma and Bill had sought one another out and become close friends.
“Still searching for your phantom?” Emma nudged Gabriel under the table, with her foot.
“Oh, please,” Bill said. “You know Detective Chase is onto something big here. If you can’t help, at least don’t be an asshole.” His left eye twitched while his jaws stiffened.
Bill was offended whenever anyone disrespected Gabriel. Budding big brother complex. So working him up by insulting Gabriel had become one of the ways Emma lightened herself up. No one won here except her.
Emma smirked. “If you love him that much, why don’t you ask him out?”
“I’m going to pretend you aren’t here. How’d the meeting go, Detective Chase?” Bill looked like a puppy eyeing a new tennis ball. “Did they accept your theory? When do we start?”
“I don’t know all that, but I do know Conor’s nose is going to heal before his pride does.”
Gabriel’s audience exchanged confused glances. He told them about the fiasco with the FBI.
“Oh, shit!” Bill said. “Now how are we going to assemble a team?”
“There is no we. My bosses think I’m chasing a ghost as it is, so they’ll never approve of this investigation. As much as I hate to admit it, I have nothing to prove this guy’s existence, let alone form a special team to catch him.”
“And Billy boy?” Emma said. “Don’t you have anything to do? Like performing random frisks and planting baggies on minorities? Let us grown-ups handle this.”
“I’ve never done that! You come down and ask my partner—” Bill took a deep breath. “You know what? I don’t have to prove you shit.” He stormed out.
“You gotta stop this, Em. He’s going to shoot you one day.”
They both laughed.
When the room was quiet again, Emma spoke, her tone grave.
“This isn’t going to go unpunished, Gabe. You know that, don’t you? Punching a Fed? Damn! Are you crazy?”
“Milk’s spilled. Nothing we can do about that now.”
Emma clicked her tongue and shook her head. “In this case, it’s blood. Royal federal blood. And he’ll want yours in gallons.” Then she got up. “It’s time I get back to my work. Which I’d like to point out is your work.”
“Just until I get this guy, Em.”
She grunted and left him alone.
Gabriel pressed the side button on his cell phone. 11:21 a.m. New York City’s DA, Steve Bastian, should be in his office, starting his first day after a long leave. Gabriel grabbed his keys and headed out. Time to welcome him back.
* * *
Gabriel rode over The Narrows Bridge for the second time that day, but the frequency of vehicles passing over it had increased tenfold. Soon he was climbing the steps of One Hogan Place, which was the official title for the DA’s office.
Steve Bastian was around fifty, his hair balding in the center. Even after his leave, he looked sick and yellow. Excessive drinking, lack of sleep, and late-night crying in the bathroom—not uncommon among those closely related to murder victims.
“Chase. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Steve motioned at the chair across the table from him. “Take a seat.”
Gabriel sat. “I’m sorry to drop in unannounced like this, sir, but I’ve tried calling.”
“I just got back today. Colleagues were bringing me up to speed on my work. What’s up?”
Gabriel told him everything, from the confession email Noah had sent him before his suicide, to how another psychopath might be stalking his next victim right now.
“This new serial killer, he hasn’t killed anyone in New York, has he?”
“Not to my knowledge, no, sir.”
“Then why bother?”
“It’s something I have to do to get closure on this whole Mr. Bunny thing. Like I said, this guy was tutored by Noah. Part of that psychopath is still out there doing what it did best—killing innocent civilians. Since we knew Noah, it would be easy for us to find the guy.”
“I’m tired, Chase. Utterly exhausted and emotionally drained. I don’t want to dwell on this. Let the appropriate department handle it. This isn’t worth your time. Or mine.”
Gabriel stared at Steve, unable to say anything. Steve had the same sense of justice Gabriel did. That made him the best at his job. But since his son had been hanged to death by Mr. Bunny, he’d become weak and had lost hope in life.
At last Gabriel found the right words. “I believe investigating serial killers is the ultimate form of doing good. I mean, robbers, drug dealers, gangsters, and pimps, they kill for a reason. But serial killers kill just because it makes them feel good. So chasing them is the closest thing we can get to fighting evil. I’m sure that’s worth our time.”
Eventually Steve looked away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He cleared his throat. “I will help. What have you found so far?”
“I’ve tried everything from Noah’s angle.” Gabriel felt a rush of energy in his mind. “His laptops, his call history, and messages in his cell phone. I got nothing. You know how he was. He never left a trace whenever he did something criminal.”
“So you have nothing? Then I can’t think where to even begin looking.”
Gabriel didn’t answer.
Steve narrowed his eyes. “But I suppose you already have a plan.”
“I do.” Gabriel nodded. “I have a theory.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“In his letter, Noah said he found the killer by himself.” Gabriel stooped as if telling a secret. “In between his busy schedule of planning to become a criminal legend and coming to his day job here, how did he find the time required to investigate a murder in South Korea and discover a serial killer?”
“Simple. Noah must have known about it beforehand. Which means he knew the killer before he killed in South Korea.”
Gabriel snapped his fingers. “That’s my hypothesis, too. But how did he know him? He had no friends. Plus, he wouldn’t include someone he knows from his personal life in his criminal world. It’s a liability.”
“That sounds like him.”
“So Noah must have picked this killer from work.”
Steve’s breath shortened. “Wait. Are you telling me another one of my assistants is a serial killer?”
“No. I just think he picked the killer from his work.” Gabriel leaned on the table with his elbows. “What kind of people does an assistant district attorney come in contact with at work? Other ADAs, judges, cops, and criminals?”
“That’s the essence of it, yes.”
“Noah would never in a thousand years pick someone who knew him. He might have coached this killer over the phone or something. But he would be a complete stranger.”
“That takes ADAs, judges, and cops out of the equation, leaving us only with criminals.”
“It does.”
“But I still don’t see how that’s gonna help. We’ve prosecuted tens of thousands of criminals.”
“For Noah, imparting his knowledge to someone was a huge deal. His legacy. So he wouldn’t give it to anyone he deemed unworthy. He’d want that particular criminal—his protégé, in his own words—to be uncatchable. Meaning, he should be inaccessible to us.”
“This new serial killer, he’s not new to the system, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t be a criminal, and Noah couldn’t have known him.”
“Yes.”
“Not every criminal’s.”
Steve frowned. “Wait… you mean juvie? Whose records are expunged?”
Gabriel nodded. “That’s right.”
“Our job is prosecution. Not expungement. As wild as Noah was, this applied to him, too. He wouldn’t know who got their records expunged.”
“Noah didn’t know, but defense lawyers do. I mean, juvenile records don’t just magically disappear. Lawyers file petitions on behalf of their clients, don’t they? I think maybe Noah had some kind of link to defense lawyers.”
Steve thought for a moment. “That’s plausible. We all see each other in court. Prosecutors or defenders, we’re all lawyers.”
“But when I searched Noah’s cell phone records, there wasn’t a call or text from any defense lawyer or law firm. So I went to the college where Noah got his degree. But they wouldn’t tell me who his dormmate was, or who played with him on his football team, or even if he made it in serial killer tryouts. They’re all lawyers, and they all screamed ‘Warrant’ in my face.”
Steve gave a lazy smile.
“Yeah. And as a last resort, I came here and asked Noah’s secretary about his schedules—meetings, lunches, or phone calls to or from any law firm that specializes in defense. I even lied by telling her this is related to the Mr. Bunny investigation.” Gabriel sighed. “Care to guess what she said?”
“Warrant.” Steve’s lazy smile transformed into a dry chuckle.
“No sane judge would give me a warrant with what I have. So I dropped it temporarily.”
“Not every cop is a good cop, Chase. Corrupt bastards come here snooping around for information about witnesses and such so they can pass it along to some mob boss in Sing Sing. So, our secretaries don’t just hand out things.”
“I completely understand. And that’s why I waited this long.”
Steve rubbed his hands. “All right. You just need to know if Noah had any contact with defense lawyers? Work-related or otherwise?”
“That’s pretty much it.”
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