by Robert Pobi
Hemingway picked up the box of the largest one, a beige cardboard carton with black writing. Deacon’s name was on the box in felt tip marker. “Nikon f 2.0, five hundred millimeter.”
“The sports guys use them for fieldwork. Ten grand new. Maybe five secondhand. What’s this about?”
She didn’t have time to explain. “Work. I can’t talk about it.”
“I see,” he said, but it was clear he didn’t.
She read the next box to him, “Nikon F2 in two hundred millimeter.”
“Another sports lens. It’s got a fixed focal length but it’s perfect for low-light shots—say if you were shooting volleyball in a gym. Five grand retail, three used.”
“Thanks, baby, you’re the best. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up and pocketed the phone.
She took the lenses out of the boxes and Deacon’s name was professionally etched into the focus ring that ran around the optics of each. The warranty registration cards were in both boxes, stamped by B&H Photo in Manhattan. She took a snapshot of each card with her phone and returned the lenses to their hiding spot.
Where was his camera?
Phelps was still going through the kitchen cupboards, working with slow precision.
The kitchen chair still had the protective box over the seat, the single crescent of dried blood from a shoe sole visible on the vinyl under the protective capsule. Man’s ten or ten and a half.
The focal point of the room was still the spider scrawled onto the door to the garage, as haunting as when she had first seen it.
She opened the locks and stepped into the garage.
The space was as neat and sparse as it had been when Phelps had called her in to see the freezer full of feet. The single red crescent of the leather-soled man’s shoe was there, under a protective polycarbonate box fastened to the floor with yellow tape.
The freezer stood in the corner. Unplugged. Door propped open. The lengths of welded chain still hung on rusty spiral spikes.
The workbench was back in the lab, secrets being pried from its wood. There were the feet of the children that they knew about of course. But what about children who hadn’t shown up in the freezer? Maybe they’d be able to isolate their DNA from samples taken from Deacon’s improvised operating table.
She held up the photo and the wood looked like it was swollen with old motor oil. So far they had identified thirteen different sources of DNA—and all had been matched to feet in Deacon’s collection. Maybe that’s all there were.
Had she really just thought that? “All there were”? Had she examined the remnants of the broken and ill and plain old evil for so long that she no longer thought in terms of right or wrong—only in terms of numbers?
Don’t get all girly, she told herself. Do your job.
Her hip buzzed and she pulled her phone out. “Hemingway,” she said automatically.
“Detective, this is Dr. Marcus. I’ve got news from the FBI’s CODIS database on the Deacon victims.”
“That was fast.”
“We got lucky.”
“How lucky?”
“They identified all but two of the boys. We don’t have the case files yet but I can give you the dates they disappeared. The first case dates back to July of eighty-eight. It looks like Mr. Deacon was responsible for the disappearance of two children a year from that point on. There are holes in the schedule—I only have one child from 1994, 1997, and 2004 and there are no children for 2006. Other than that, it’s pretty close to a schedule. I’ve e-mailed you the spreadsheet.”
Hemingway pinched the bridge of her nose. “So the guy was active for a quarter century?”
“Whoever killed Trevor Deacon just cut down child abductions in New York City by eighteen percent.”
Hemingway looked down at the empty space where the dirty, bloodstained workbench had sat. Whoever had killed Deacon seemed intent on carrying the torch, only at an accelerated rate. “Dr. Marcus, I appreciate it.”
Back in the living room she paused in front of the four holes where the yellow pushpins had held a photograph. Less than twenty-one-month-old HP personal printer, Fuji paper, no discernible image, Deacon’s thumbprint on the front surface.
She took out her phone and dialed the precinct, clicking through to the evidence department.
“Evidence, Rhea here,” a man said in the bored tones of someone marking off time.
“Rhea, this is Hemingway. We found a Parkay container filled with baggies of heroin at the Deacon murder scene yesterday.”
She heard the tap-tap-tap of fingers on a keyboard. “Yeah, got it here. Sixteen baggies, three grams a crack. Pink heroin. Never seen pink heroin before. What about it?”
“I need to check one out. Prep the paperwork and have it waiting for me.”
“Hemi, this is a class A narcotic. You’ll need to process the reqs and they gotta go through the prosecutor’s office. After that you’ll have to—”
“Call Dennet. If it’s not ready when I get there in half an hour, I’m going to pull you through that little hole in the window on your cage. We clear?”
There was a moment of awkward silence followed by, “Sure thing, detective.”
When she got off the phone, Phelps was staring at her. “You okay, Hemi?”
“Yeah, why?”
He stared at her for a moment.
“No reason.” Then he opened the door and stepped into the light.
||| FORTY-TWO
THE DISTRICT attorney was a man named Edward Schlesinger, a perfectionist extraordinaire. Hemingway, Phelps and Dennet stood off in the shadows, conserving energy and trying not to distract the man from his task. He was going over the warrant, ticking off points, underlining sections, and making corrections in the margins.
No one wanted an oversight rendering the investigation null and void. Not only did all the t’s have to be crossed and all the i’s dotted, but there had to be a scope of seizure that was defensible as legitimate and broad enough to net them the information they needed. There would be no going back to the judge for a second warrant because the first one had overlooked something. And since the DA was the man to defend the writ, he had to be certain that they hadn’t missed anything.
The DA stopped, brought his pen up a paragraph, and reread a passage. He circled something in a broad flourish of his fountain pen, capped it, placed it on the leather surface of his desk, and leaned back in his chair. “We do not get a second chance at this, gentlemen—and lady,” he added with a nod. “You are asking for a very limited scope of information in what could turn out to be a much larger picture. I’m not complaining—this makes my job of selling it to Judge Lester much simpler—but there are still a few areas where you’re overreaching.”
Hemingway stepped away from the bookcase and came over to Schlesinger’s desk. He was a small man and sitting there, with Hemingway’s six-foot frame towering over him, he looked positively tiny. But not the least bit uncomfortable; true to his ilk, he relished confrontation.
“Mr. Schlesinger, we know from the parents of the three murdered boys that they were conceived at the same clinic and their parents were treated by the same physician—Dr. Sylvester Brayton.”
“And you are unable to find Brayton?” It was a good question.
It was Phelps who answered. “It’s obvious he doesn’t want to be found.”
“Or that Fenton doesn’t want him to be found,” Hemingway said.
At that Schlesinger held up his hand. “This is exactly what I am afraid of, Detective Hemingway. We all want this to go well. Don’t paint bogeymen on the wall unnecessarily.”
Hemingway stared at him for a moment. “Something’s wrong at the clinic. There’s something that Fenton’s not telling us.”
“What do you know for sure?”
“That the parents of all three boys were patients of Dr. Brayton; we need to know the names of his other patients because they could be on a hunting list.”
Schlesinger nodded. “Granted. But what
does that give you? That gives you a doctor and three children. What you are requesting here is the identity of the donor. This man, whoever he is, has not been implicated in any crimes. By asking—”
“Not been implicated in any crimes? His children are being murdered—as far as I’m concerned, he’s the only suspect we have.”
“Yes, but how do I sell that to the judge? It’s reaching.”
Hemingway felt the room get a little smaller. “The one common link we have here is the donor.”
“I agree. And I’m sure the judge will agree. But is it grounds for a warrant? The names of the boys I can sell; by all indications they are in imminent danger. But the donor has not been implicated in any of these crimes. There is no evidence to suggest that he knows anything about these children.”
Hemingway stared at Schlesinger for a few moments and she felt the muscles of her jaw tighten. “Where else are we reaching?”
“You cannot ask for a list of all the couples who had a child fathered by this donor. Again, there’s no evidence to suggest that they are all in danger. Not at this point.”
“No offense, Mr. Schlesinger, but you’re shitting me, right?”
Schlesinger steepled his fingers in what looked like a practiced pose. “I’m not the bad guy here, Detective Hemingway, I’m just telling you what the judge is going to tell me. If I can’t defend every part of this request, the judge will dismiss it and what do we have then? Wasted time.
“So far you have three boys who were fathered by the same sperm donor. That’s solid. But you can’t ask for the names of all children fathered by this donor, because that’s reaching. What about girls he fathered, if any? What about older children? Younger children? That clinic has been in business since . . .” He leaned forward, checked his notes. “. . . nineteen eighty-seven and Dr. Brayton practiced there since it opened its doors for business. Selmer came on board ten years back. This donor may have a history of providing sperm as long as that clinic has been around. Does that mean that children he may have fathered who are twenty-five years old are also at risk?” He opened his hands in a well-I’m-waiting gesture.
Hemingway’s jaw clicked again. “No, it doesn’t.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he repeated, a lilt of condescension in his tone. “So we have to be narrow in our scope of request. Since all evidence points to boys with a very narrow range of age, I would like to propose an age limit.” He leaned forward again, flipped through his notes. “All three boys were born in April and May ten years ago—they were all ten years and one to two months old. Would you be happy with a range of nine years and six months to ten years and six months?”
Hemingway stood up and backed away from the desk because in a second she was going to start swinging. “And what happens if a boy is found in the river who is aged ten years, six months and one day? Are you going to be the one who goes to his parents’ home to explain they weren’t warned that their son was on a psychotic hit list due to a decision you made?”
Schlesinger stared at her, his expression unreadable. “No, detective, that will be your job. My job is to go before Judge Lester and ask him to open the medical files that will help you solve these murders. Asking for every piece of paper in Dr. Selmer’s files is a mistake.”
Hemingway’s jaw clicked again. “I’ll settle for nine to eleven.” It sounded like betting odds.
Schlesinger looked over at Dennet who shrugged. “Try,” he said.
Schlesinger looked back up at Hemingway. “Okay, I’ll try. And I’ll be convincing.”
Phelps came forward and threw a photograph onto the district attorney’s desk. “Convincing’s good,” he said over the picture of Nigel Matheson laid out on the table at the morgue, his face opened like a mortar round had taken it apart. “Because this guy ain’t fucking around.”
||| FORTY-THREE
SELMER TURNED away from the electronic medical record and pressed his fingers to his eyes. He felt like his heart was pumping a viscid epoxy that was being rejected by his body. He concentrated on his breathing, taking deep gulps in through his nose and forcing them out through his mouth in a steady chug.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Over and over and over until he felt like his body was ready to breathe on its own again. He focused on his chest, ignoring the vomit he felt pushing at the back of his throat with its sour, coffee-tinted fingers. In a few minutes he felt better. Not perfect. But good enough, which was a minor miracle considering what he had just learned from the EMR of Tanya Everett.
He stood up, went to the fridge, and downed half a bottle of grapefruit Perrier. Selmer wanted to walk back to his desk, to look at the list with his notes scrawled in the margins, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to read it without feeling sick again.
He finished the water and dropped the bottle into the trash. Then he went back to his desk and looked down at the numbers.
He read the names over again, still making a conscious effort to oxygenate his blood.
The machinery of justice would roll over this place as soon as the ink from the judge’s signature dried on whatever warrants the cops were smart enough to write up. Somewhere in his files was the information the police needed to find a man who took little boys apart with a saw.
But they didn’t know about the girls.
The two detectives seemed bright and aggressive. But were they creative? Lateral thinkers? A court order could give them the information they requested but it wasn’t the key to the kingdom. They could only ask for specifics, for information that they knew existed and that they believed would help them solve these murders. They couldn’t fish.
They did not know about the girls. Ergo, they would not look into them.
Selmer looked at his wall of diplomas and citations and thank you cards and realized how deep inside the bubble he had become. Fuck it. His career was over anyway.
He swiped the pages of notes and the printed-out EMR into his messenger bag, slung it over his shoulder, and walked out into the hall.
The lawyers would do what they did, the media would do what they did, and he’d be able to hold his head high through the whole bloodletting even if he could no longer practice. It was just one of those things. Bad timing. Bad luck.
He knew that Fenton was upstairs, trying to slow the inevitable.
Fuck her and her little empire.
If he walked out the front with those two cops, she’d send one of the clinic’s lawyers with him. If he protested, she’d have one waiting for him at the precinct. He had to do this the old-fashioned way.
Before he left his office he took a piece of the clinic’s stationery to write Fenton a letter of resignation. The pen stayed poised over the paper for a second as he decided what to write. He finally settled on two words and an exclamation point.
Selmer took the small staircase at the back, the one they used to use back when they still hired people who smoked. He dropped down to the loading dock and out the back door, nodding a hello to a maintenance man in coveralls who was unloading paint from the trunk of an ancient, rust-riddled van—no doubt more beige and off-white for yet another useless “refreshing.”
The dark pewter sky vibrated with the coming rain. He cut across the alley, walked past a hundred feet of Dumpsters and back doors, then stepped out onto the sidewalk. A man on the corner was screeching like Chicken Little, hocking umbrellas for five dollars apiece to a sweating populace who did their best to ignore him.
Selmer crossed between the cars waiting at the lights and the heat off the radiator grills warmed his pant leg. He looked up at the sky again; it was bending under the weight of the rain in its belly.
There was a throng of schoolboys in front of the electronics store, ogling the latest gadgets. The boys parted to let him through and he squeezed by, ducking into the parking garage. The attendant, Eddie, handed him his key without being asked and Selmer gave him a ten and a thank-you, realizing that he might never see Eddie a
gain.
His leased Benz was on the second floor near the back. He threw his bag in the backseat, climbed in, drove down the ramp, and paused at the mouth of the garage.
By the time he got the car down to the entrance, the city looked as dark as the garage. The schoolboys ran by his grill and he thought of the boys who had died.
Maybe he could help stop it from happening again. He thought about how hard he had worked to get here. Then he thought about the note he had left for Frau Fenton. He was leaving with as much pride as he had started. Not a bad way to go, he thought, then pulled out into traffic.
Selmer hit a red light a block west of the garage and the schoolboys crossed in front of him, young and full of life.
Dr. Sylvester Brayton had sold the clinic’s wealthiest clients on the idea of purchasing their sperm from a catalogue of rarefied samples. High IQs, handsome, healthy. Five hundred thousand dollars a crack.
The profiles were fake—Brayton had simply provided his own semen.
Fenton had figured it out that night at the opera. The next morning Brayton was gone. From the city. From the country. No doubt shuffled off to some dark corner of the globe in exchange for keeping quiet. A classic example of the win-win Fenton was always talking about.
Only it wasn’t looking so win-win for Fenton now, was it? She looked like Charlie Sheen on a binge, spouting delusional rhetoric. Sure, Brayton was gone but his legacy would be around for a long time, like a curse lifted out of a fairy tale.
The heat came off the asphalt and licked up the side of the car.
He caught movement in the mirror, at the edge of his peripheral vision. He glanced at the reflection and saw someone come around the back bumper.
It was stupid to dodge the lights at rush hour, almost suicidal.
The engines around him changed pitch and he looked up. The light was green.
Traffic began to move.
He took his foot off the brake and once again saw something at the edge of his sight—this time it was a face. He turned. Recognized the face. Began the last expression that would ever cross his features—a smile. There was a flash and something whistled through his throat. He instinctively hit the gas.