I nodded. It’s not unusual to help a fellow cop get through a divorce.
“It was tough. He was a really good mechanic.”
Chapter 37
It had been months since I’d left the office this early. It was odd to see the sun still shining as I got into my city-issued Chevy Impala. I wasn’t ready to explain my early arrival to Mary Catherine. Which was one of the reasons why I took a detour to Holy Name, swung by to visit my grandfather.
I was in need of counseling, or at least a little verbal abuse. Seamus was always good for both. Especially the abuse.
It took a while to get to him, though, as I first had to say hello to several different nuns I had known since I was a child. Basically, every conversation I’d had at Holy Name in the last six months had been about the wedding. And the nuns all said the same thing: “I can’t believe little Michael Bennett is getting married!”
I had no trouble not being a smart-ass with the nuns. I didn’t feel the need to remind them that little Michael Bennett had actually been married before, or that ever since I’d lost my first wife, Maeve, I’d been a widower with ten children—all of whom these self-same nuns had personally educated. But since happy talk of the wedding made them smile and laugh, I went along with it. I know that’s what Mary Catherine (and Maeve) would have wanted.
I found my grandfather in his office, looking over the shoulder of a twenty-something African American in an Avengers T-shirt working on Seamus’s computer. I knew the young man’s name was Elgin Brown, and he had a degree from Stony Brook in computer technology. Elgin was by all accounts a great kid (I’ve noticed as I get older that anyone under thirty is a kid).
I said, “What’s going on here? Elgin trying to erase all your gambling websites before they’re subject to some kind of audit by the Catholic Church?”
My grandfather looked up at me. “Don’t be ridiculous. I keep all those websites on my phone only. Elgin is showing me how we could create a website to help kids in the neighborhood who need access to tutors and after-school care.”
I smiled. Not only because my grandfather was always trying to do something for the community but also because even in his eighties he wanted to learn new things. He could have just asked Elgin to summarize the information for him. Instead, he wanted to master the skills himself.
Joining the priesthood really hadn’t changed Seamus at all. Gone straight from hell to heaven, he took to saying when he sold his Hell’s Kitchen gin mill and became a man of the cloth. The first thing he learned back then was how to hide his mischievous streak in public.
I waited for a couple of minutes while they finished up their work. I had to admit, my grandfather looked pretty good for his age. At least for now. He’d had a few health scares in the last couple of years. Losing him was one of the scariest concepts I could fathom. The very idea of life without the man who raised me, encouraged me, and always kept me grounded was terrifying. For now, there was nothing I liked more than surprising him at his office.
Seamus again looked up at me. “Shouldn’t you be at work rather than bothering an old man?”
Elgin stood up. My grandfather patted him on the back and thanked him. The kid slipped out of the room like a ghost.
I said, “He never makes eye contact with me.”
“You intimidate him.”
“How?”
“Just being a cop.”
“He’s never been in trouble. Why’s he afraid of the police?”
Seamus shrugged. “It’s just how he feels. I think the cops need better PR.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Seamus sat on the edge of his desk and said, “So what brings you over here this afternoon?”
I told him all about my struggles with John Macy. Took about five full minutes. I let my anger roll out while telling the story. When I was finished, my grandfather looked at me and said, “Ask God for strength to deal with morons.”
“That’s it?”
“And if that doesn’t work, plant cocaine on him.” Seamus waited for a response. When he didn’t get one, he said, “What? Isn’t that what cops do in movies to get someone in trouble?”
I kept a straight face and said, “In real life we’d plant child pornography on his computer.”
“Ah, the new millennium.”
“Seriously, any ideas?”
“Jerks like him almost always ruin themselves. Leave him be. Do your duty and it’ll all work out. Of that, I have no doubt. Think about your wonderful family and your impending wedding. Tell me you’re not just whining to your grandfather about a bully you ran into today.”
I couldn’t believe it, but I felt better. No one had a handle on humanity like my grandfather.
Chapter 38
Another restless night’s sleep did little to improve my perspective as I trudged into the office early the next morning. I was determined to go about my job as best I could. My grandfather was right. I just needed to do my duty. Forget the power play by some political hack.
Harry Grissom stood by the door reading some notice from the building manager. He looked up at me and said, in a way only he could, “Have you pulled your head out of your ass yet?”
“Hope so.”
“Good. Because your new partner is on a roll and the two of us have to keep pace.” Without another word, Harry led me through the office to the rear conference room, where Hollis had established his tip-line headquarters.
Hollis stood outside the room. He now wore only a simple strip of surgical tape across his nose. The circles around his eyes had turned yellow, a move up from the black eyes the broken nose had given him. He was smiling and looked like a kid bursting to show off for his parents.
He pushed open the door to the conference room, raised his arm like a model from The Price Is Right, and said, “Behold, Task Force Halo.”
When we stuck our heads in the door, we saw a couple of patrol officers in civilian clothes and two detectives One Police Plaza had sent over. Hollis explained that he had all of them now working on the leads taken from the tip lines.
I could tell Harry was impressed, though all he said was “Halo?”
Hollis was still grinning. “The name may have come from FBI ASAC Robert Lincoln, but we’ve made it our own. Halo has two meanings: our task force members are angels trying to stop the devil, and we’re going to pound that devil like in the video game Halo.”
Harry nodded, though I’d put money on him never having heard of the video game.
It can be tough being honest with yourself first thing in the morning, but I had to wonder if I had resisted the idea of a task force only because someone else—specifically the FBI—had suggested it.
At least having Hollis and the task force handling all the out-there leads left me free to pursue the one from Jill St. Pierre, about the blood from an Atlanta victim somehow ending up at a Manhattan crime scene.
I connected with Detective Alvin Carter, the lead detective from Atlanta, and spent an hour on the phone talking to him about his homicides.
Carter said, “We had two similar murders in the city of Atlanta proper, but then there were another three that happened in different suburbs—and out of my jurisdiction. I couldn’t get those three suburban PDs to coordinate with me. You ever try to deal with competing agencies? It’s no fun.”
I let out a laugh at the recognition of a kindred spirit. “I have a hard time negotiating with competing precincts, let alone agencies.”
“The chief of one of the wealthier suburbs told me he didn’t want city crime tarnishing the reputation of his town. He said they would handle their own homicides and basically kept me out of their investigation. The other two suburbs got in line with that stance.”
I shared with him Hollis’s theory that the killer may have left Atlanta for New York.
“Sorry to say it, but I agree,” Carter said. “Sounds like our killer moved to New York. I hope you have better luck catching him than I did.”
“It’s going to tak
e some kind of luck to figure out how he took blood from a crime scene, stored it, transported it hundreds of miles, and reintroduced it at a second scene. Even if he took the sample in a sterile vial, he’d have to have maintained it under perfect conditions for the blood to be analyzable.” I then asked, “Did you get any impressions or ideas from the crime scenes? I don’t mean stuff you might put in a report; I’m talking about opinions.” There was a long silence on the phone and I was afraid I had lost the detective. Then I realized he was taking the time to consider every angle.
Finally, Carter said, “They were…disturbing scenes. A lot of blood, and the killer seemed to have deliberately spread it around each of the scenes. All five victims were stabbed in the neck or chest, and in their left eyes.”
I was taking notes, and I triple underlined that last detail. It was all too familiar.
“Of course we kept that detail from the media,” Carter said. “A signature that distinctive risks inviting copycats.”
I made another note. New York was following the same plan of keeping the eye stabbing confidential. But I needed more information to be sure.
“Were there any similarities between victims?”
“They were all young women, one black and four white. The black woman was killed in her office—the only one who was—and that scene was the least bloody, as if the killer was pressed for time. The other four victims were found dead in their own homes. I suspect the killer did some surveillance before he struck.”
“How long between the first homicide and the final one?”
Carter didn’t hesitate. “Almost two months. Fifty-four days to be exact.”
I knew what it was like to live through a case like this. It didn’t surprise me at all that he knew the exact number of days it had lasted.
“Then the killings stopped as abruptly as they began. We started to wonder if maybe something had happened to the killer, if maybe he’d died. Now it looks like he moved on to New York City.”
I said, “Regrettably, he seems to be alive.”
Carter said, “The NYPD has serious bragging rights when it comes to the size of their force and resources, and they’re not shy about letting smaller PDs know who’s the biggest and the best. I hope it’s true.”
“I hope so too.”
Chapter 39
Detective Alvin Carter from Atlanta had given me some ideas, and I was becoming convinced that these blood-soaked homicides were all related. I again compared the reports from New York, Atlanta, and San Francisco. I gathered all the files and laid them out on my desk. The crime-scene photos were horrific. I kept studying them, looking for the meaning of the killer’s distinctive signatures. The blood. The stabbing of the eyes. The arrangement of knickknacks at the scene. And now the introduction of the blood of a previous victim.
I made a list of follow-up questions for Carter. I wondered if there had been more than one blood sample found at any of the Atlanta crime scenes, and if so, if we could find out whether that blood had come from either of the San Francisco victims.
Hollis approached my desk. I looked over my shoulder at the conference room where Task Force Halo was operating and asked him, “Any new leads coming in?”
“There are new leads, but a lot of wacky leads, and the hardest thing is trying to organize them all,” Hollis said.
That’s the way it always happened. Someone above you in the chain of command had the idea to open up phone lines for some tips, and the next thing you knew, all you were doing was listening to crazy people jabbering about their weird neighbors or how they were “psychic” and wanted to help the case.
I didn’t miss the irony that we were actually using a task force that had been designed to fake out and shut up the mayor’s office. Hollis showed me that the tips weren’t only coming in via the phone lines—some helpful citizens were even sending in pages of Cutco and L.L.Bean catalogs with circles around pictures of knives that might be the murder weapons.
“One caller said he has a strange, secretive neighbor in Red Hook who gave him a weird vibe, and who had girls coming and going all the time,” Hollis continued. “It turns out that the neighbor is a photographer of high-end nude models. The local precinct detective followed another lead, up in the Bronx, and uncovered a counterfeiting operation. Turned out to be pretty big-time. The detective is going to be recognized by the commissioner.”
I could see that the young detective had done a good job managing the onslaught.
“That’s always the way—poke around places we normally don’t and find all kinds of shit. Opening cases NYPD doesn’t even know they have. And then we end up clearing everyone else’s cases but not our own.”
I was starting to get back in my groove when I noticed someone skulking through the office.
It was the mayor’s aide, John Macy.
Chapter 40
As soon as I saw John Macy, my mind raced. How to handle him? Should I simply pretend yesterday’s encounter never happened? Ignore him and hope he did the same with me? Then I started thinking reasonably, like an adult human being.
He seemed to be walking directly to my desk. Before he reached me, I said, “Hello, John. I’m sorry about yesterday. My jokes got a little out of hand. I was wrong, and I apologize.”
Macy was dressed in another stunning designer suit and carried a leather satchel. I wasn’t sure what his reply would be. Would he apologize in return? Strike back savagely and inform me I’d been removed from the case?
But Macy’s choice was essentially to ignore me. He nodded in acknowledgment that he’d heard me but said nothing. He walked right past my desk and took a seat in front of Brett Hollis.
Hollis looked as surprised as I was.
Macy didn’t waste any time. “As I understand it, Detective Hollis, you are now my contact on this case and, for all intents and purposes, the lead detective. At least as far as the mayor’s office is concerned.”
Hollis started to answer, but Macy cut him off.
“First, I’d like to have an overview of the case. Second, I’d like you to show me exactly how the task force is working. This afternoon I will have a photographer from the mayor’s office with me to take pictures, which we will make available to the media.”
Hollis fumbled for a reply. I had to bite my tongue. Literally. What kind of moron exposed an active investigation and its tactics while a killer was still out there targeting victims? Politicians and the news media didn’t care about the consequences when there was a chance to make a splash or grab a headline.
Macy kept the freight train rolling. “I’m going to check in with you at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day,” he told Hollis. “Before each check-in, I expect to have received from you by email a one-page memo summarizing your investigation during the preceding hours.”
“I don’t have access to the entire case,” Hollis demurred. “I’m just running leads off the tip line.”
I was impressed at Hollis’s misleading statement. The young detective was learning the ways of bureaucracy. I felt a little like Yoda.
Macy didn’t miss a beat. “You will confer with Lieutenant Grissom as needed to fill in the gaps in your knowledge.”
Hollis sat there, unsure what to do or where to turn. Every cop has been in this spot: a superior from the police department, or a local political hack, pressuring you for information you’re not comfortable disclosing.
Macy’s face turned more severe as Hollis hesitated in his response. “Was there anything I said you didn’t understand?”
“No.”
I was secretly glad Hollis didn’t add a sir. Macy didn’t deserve that kind of respect.
Macy eased up and said, “I’m trying to help you, Son. Right now the police have a serious PR problem in this country. The public doesn’t rate them as highly as they used to. I want to fix that.”
Hollis gave Macy another confused look. “We may have bad PR right now, but we’re still way ahead of politicians and lawyers. So at least the people have some commo
n sense.”
It was hard not to cheer when I saw the scowl on Macy’s face. I was also thrilled to witness that my new partner could handle himself just fine.
Macy said, “It won’t take much for this killer to push the city into an all-out panic. We need to calm people down and catch this guy before he takes another victim. And smart-ass comments from the local cops won’t help the situation. You have your orders. I expect you to carry them out.”
On that subject, at least, I agreed with this pompous ass.
Chapter 41
My alarm clock went off before sunrise, and I groggily faced the new day. Last night I’d gotten home after dark. It had been too late for dinner, and I’d barely had the energy to interact with my kids. I missed them, and I missed Mary Catherine. This was not how I wanted to live.
I jumped out of bed quickly and got dressed. I wanted to spend at least some time with the kids this morning. When I stepped into the living room, though, it took me a few moments to process an astonishing sight: all six of my daughters—Juliana, the oldest, plus Jane and the twins, Bridget and Fiona, even Shawna and Chrissy—were lined up facing Mary Catherine.
They were standing at attention, looking like marine recruits about to be inspected by their drill sergeant. All six wore flowy yellow dresses with white lace around the neck and the sleeves. Only the two youngest, Chrissy and Shawna, looked happy about the exercise.
I said, “What’s this? Am I having a dream where there are nothing but beautiful women in the world?”
The older girls did not appreciate my comment. Shawna and Chrissy giggled.
Mary Catherine said, “It’s so much easier to coordinate bridesmaids when your groom can provide the entire wedding party. The girls and I have been getting separate fittings, so this is my first chance to see what they look like as a group.”
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