The Russian - SETTING

by Patterson, James

  “Enduring that conversation was more painful than breaking my nose,” Hollis said, and I laughed.

  “Now we need to meet with library IT so that we can check the video surveillance to see if our runner shows up.”

  Chapter 51

  Hollis and I turned the corner from the library entrance to find a coffee shop on 41st, just off Fifth Avenue. The place was nearly empty of customers. We headed toward the rear and commandeered two wide tables, where we spread out our papers.

  I had a cup of plain black coffee and some kind of cruller. Hollis opted for a healthy and hydrating bottle of water. He never would’ve made the grade when I was a rookie. Back then, drinking coffee during our shifts and alcohol in the evenings felt mandatory. Frankly, I don’t miss the old days.

  We’d spent more than an hour talking with the head of library security and his IT guy. We’d searched through the available video feeds. I’d noted the dummy cameras, but I was still surprised at how few active feeds they actually maintained.

  The head of security had looked at me and shrugged. “We’re a library, not a central bank. We have a decent budget, but it’s not spent on security cameras. Our biggest expense is staffing exhibits of our permanent collections. Some of the items—like first-edition books by famous authors, or one-of-a-kind photographs and artwork—are quite valuable. We have to prevent tourists from trying to steal a piece of library history. On the flip side, we also need to patrol the quiet spaces where homeless people sneak in to sleep during the day and overnight. But if the guy you’re looking for passed by any of the display areas, we may have captured his image.”

  Not likely, I thought, but I thanked the security head for his time.

  At least we had a little more information to work with.

  The outburst from the concerned citizen outside the library underscored my biggest worry. New Yorkers aren’t shy about criticizing the police, and that guy had felt free to curse us out. God knows an ass like John Macy would use any public outcry as a reason to screw with me, especially as the unsolved murders kept mounting.

  I slapped a legal pad down on the table and started writing. The lists of what we were missing and what we still needed to do were far longer than the list of what we had.

  When I wondered out loud if I’d caught a glimpse of the killer at the library, Hollis talked me down, reminding me that there was no reason to assume the killer had even been there today, only a case of mistaken identity with the vending machine rep.

  With an audible sigh, I conceded his point and then said, “So what’s our next move?”

  “Maybe the answer lies in the earlier murders. We need to work those connections until we forge a clear link.”

  It was as good a plan as any. And one that would take us back to the office.

  As we started to gather up our stuff, the manager of the coffee shop, a well-built young black man, approached. He said, “I noticed your badges. I was wondering if you guys might help me out.”

  I said, “What’s the problem?”

  “There’s a homeless guy who sits for hours right in the doorway of my shop. The guy’s killing my afternoon business. I called the local precinct a couple of times, but one of the cops I talked to said that the truth is, they don’t consider loitering or harassing my customers for change enough of a crime to warrant an arrest.”

  The manager blew out a frustrated breath, admitting, “I once made the mistake of paying him off. I gave him five dollars to find another spot. But he was back the next day, and he told me it would take ten if I wanted him to move again. He just sat down now. Is there anything you guys can do?”

  I looked past the manager to see a white guy with a scraggly gray beard who’d propped himself right in the coffee shop’s doorway. He wore an old olive-drab army-surplus jacket. As I watched, two different customers walked toward the front door. First one, then the other, turned away and left rather than step over the man’s legs. I could see the manager’s point.

  I turned to Hollis and said, “This is a good lesson for us as members of the NYPD. The store’s owner has made a legitimate request, and I’d like you to handle it. The faster it’s taken care of, the faster we can get back on our case.”

  I purposely hadn’t offered any advice to Hollis, and he didn’t say a word. He simply jumped to his feet and headed to the door of the coffee shop.

  So far, I’d been impressed at how Hollis handled difficult coworkers and even an ass like John Macy, but I wanted to see more of how he dealt with the public. This was a sensitive, potentially volatile situation. He was on his own. I just hoped his solution wasn’t too harsh.

  The way he barreled through the front door and spun on the sidewalk to confront the man didn’t give me much hope. Then the homeless man stood up and faced Hollis. I wondered if I might need to go defuse the situation. But I waited.

  Just as he had done with Van Fleet, Hollis put his hand on the man’s shoulder. He spoke to him quietly. I saw the man’s head nod, and then he shook Hollis’s hand. I also noticed something Hollis probably didn’t want me to see: my young partner slipping the man a card for the VA New York Regional Office on Houston Street and some cash as he was walking away.

  Hollis had done some practical problem-solving. And shown some compassion. I was impressed.

  Chapter 52

  Back in the office, I looked like a crazed hoarder with towering stacks of paper and crime-scene photographs piled high and spread around my desk, on my guest desk chair, and all over the surrounding floor. Other detectives veered around me and avoided eye contact. I’d have to remember this trick in the future when I didn’t want to chat.

  I was comparing five case files. The two San Francisco homicides were on the desk directly in front of me. I had three of the five total Atlanta-area homicides on the chair next to my desk—two from Detective Carter and one from his cooperative suburban counterpart. Neither of the agencies investigating the other two murders down there were interested in sharing their files with the NYPD. Fine. I didn’t have time to argue.

  And I didn’t have any more time to spare making certain that the killer who’d likely hit first San Francisco and then Atlanta was probably the same one still at large in New York. The one who in a published letter had threatened the entire city that he would kill again.

  The city was in a panic, and John Macy was breathing down our necks.

  I had a full range of law-enforcement tools at my disposal. Photographs, forensic reports, interviews, even security footage, though nothing identified the killer. The local agencies had also done video walk-throughs of each crime scene. Some were excellent and gave complete views of every surface and angle. Some were rushed and cursory. Not that the detectives and PD photo techs could have ever imagined that the images they were capturing might prove part of a multistate serial-killing spree.

  I stared at a set of novelty shot glasses in the crime-scene photos from one of the San Francisco victims. Souvenirs, I assumed, from the victim’s travels, advertising Cancún, Kingston, and Key West. One lone shot glass stood about a foot away from five others. Once again, my mind went back to the strange, asymmetrical arrangement of the bobbleheads in Elaine’s apartment here in New York…and the ballerina and musician figurines in the other San Francisco victim’s apartment.

  Once I started searching, I discovered similar arrangements in the other crime-scene photos, from the Bronx and Brooklyn, and in the three Atlanta-area scenes.

  For instance, in one of the Atlanta crime-scene photos, I spotted a shelf where three teacups were lined up on the left, and nine were on the right, with about a foot-wide space between the two groups. In one of the other Atlanta victims’ homes, a collection of small vases was divided into clusters of two and seven.

  There’s always a certain amount of luck and chance involved in any investigation. And this methodology of dividing the victims’ collections seemed too deliberate not to be significant.

  Looking for more evidence to bolster my theor
y, I brought up the walk-through videos from the third victim in Atlanta. The footage did a pretty good job of covering her entire apartment, though the detective working the camera had been more focused on getting close-ups of the victim’s injuries and body than views of the crime scene. I could understand this victim-centric technique, but for my purposes, it was frustrating not to see more of the house.

  I let out a short groan of annoyance that caught Brett Hollis’s attention.

  He stood up from his desk and stepped over to mine. “What are you looking for? Anything specific?”

  I pointed to the crime-scene photos. “See those bobbleheads? And these shot glasses? The vases, the teacups, and the figurines? A number of similarly strange-looking setups at different crime scenes, and I’m wondering if the items might’ve been separated like that deliberately.”

  “You think the killer was sending a message?”

  I made a face. “That’s what I’m starting to think, yeah. But I’m just not sure what.”

  Hollis looked intrigued. He stood behind me as we watched the Atlanta video again. We divided the screen so he looked at the right side and I looked at the left.

  About two minutes into the video, Hollis yelped, “There. There it is. Hit Pause.” His finger tapped the screen of my laptop.

  On a windowsill in the far background there was a barely noticeable line of grayish dots. We froze the image and tried to enlarge it. There was one dot to the left, and three to the right, a gap of about five inches between them.

  Hollis stared at the screen. “What are those? Buttons?” After a second he said loudly, “Coins! Those are dollar coins.”

  “Nice catch. Good eye.”

  Hollis said, “We still have no idea what the killer is trying to tell us.”

  It was something about staring at the dollar coins that made my swirling thoughts click into place. It was as close to an epiphany as I had ever had, at least in police work.

  I said, “He’s counting his kills for each location.” I quickly grabbed the Atlanta-area crime-scene photos. “See? The video is of the first crime scene in the Atlanta area. Look at the date. Then it’s three weeks before the next crime scene, in the actual city of Atlanta. That crime scene shows these two little vases on the left. The next crime scene is in some place called Dunwoody, about six days later. It’s the set of teacups with three on the left and nine on the right. His third murder in the Atlanta area. Now it all makes sense. Like the bobbleheads at Elaine Anastas’s apartment. She was the fourth murder in New York.”

  It felt right, like we had solved one important piece of the puzzle.

  Now I had to find out if the other cases also fit the pattern.

  Chapter 53

  Daniel Ott sat in a McDonald’s on 42nd Street, a few blocks from the New York Public Library. About every ten minutes, waves of customers entered and exited, effectively switching places. That’s what Ott wanted right now: a lot of people around him. He looked at the crowd. He listened to their conversations.

  A TV sat high on the wall, playing the news on channel 1. The anchor was quizzing someone from the mayor’s office about the investigation into the murders. His murders. The city staffer, a man named John Macy, didn’t sound particularly confident that an arrest would be made any time soon.

  Ott sipped a Diet Coke and realized the sweat that had soaked his collar and under his arms was now dry. No one seemed to be looking for him. He was safe—at least for the moment. He swiveled his head, trying to work out one of the kinks he’d developed after hiding in that junction box for over twenty minutes. Then he straightened out both legs and heard his knees click with relief.

  He smiled at a very cute Asian child whose mother had her strapped in a harness, with a leash attached. An older daughter carried shopping bags from inexpensive chain stores, like Claire’s and H&M. The little girl on the leash paused right in front of Ott’s table, level with his french fries. Her eyes cut from the fries to Ott, and back again.

  All Ott could do was smile and nod his head. The little girl snuck two fries and rewarded him with a beautiful smile.

  That happy smile reminded him of his own young daughters, waiting for him at home. He would be there with them soon. Now he was starting to feel normal. He relaxed slightly, allowing himself some perspective on the uncharacteristic stumble he had made back at the library, the moment the police had gotten close.

  He was still a little freaked-out to have been reading an article about one of the city’s best detectives, Michael Bennett, the one working his cases—only to look up and see the man in person. But even the so-called great detective hadn’t been able to find him in the lower level of the library.

  Daniel Ott sat at the table, finishing the last of his Diet Coke and fries and thinking about what needed to be done. Maybe he’d been thinking too broadly. He didn’t need to send more emails to other newspapers. He could stir things up and disrupt the police investigation via more decisive and specific action.

  He got out his burner smartphone to do a little research. There was one plan of attack that would surely rock the city. Killing Michael Bennett.

  He knew the detective worked out of the Manhattan North Homicide office. Had to look at a few city maps to find the exact location of that office, but he was able to discover that the NYPD operated that department from a rented floor and four extra offices in an office building owned by Columbia University on upper Broadway near 133rd Street. Bennett’s home address was unlisted, but Ott was good…and smart enough to know that hunting a target who lived in a city apartment with eleven other people was too risky. And he didn’t like the idea of threatening children to incite panic.

  He reassessed. Okay, maybe killing Bennett was too complicated.

  Briefly, he thought about Bennett’s family. Ten kids was a lot of children. Ott didn’t care what culture you were raised in or how big a farm you had to work—he didn’t see how raising ten kids was viable. Especially for a NYPD detective with a high-profile caseload. But Ott dismissed the idea of harming the kids. Besides, if Bennett were sidetracked by a personal issue, another detective would just take his place. And Bennett would probably still be available to consult.

  He just needed to get Bennett off the case for a while. If Ott succeeded in injuring the detective or one of his colleagues, he could really throw a monkey wrench into the investigation. If he could do it without making it look like an intentional act of violence, no one would even connect him to the sneak attack on the NYPD.

  He enjoyed having a problem like this to work on. His engineering background helped with almost any decision.

  Chapter 54

  I felt like a Christian walking the halls of the Roman Colosseum on my way to judgment in the arena. Every pair of eyes that set on me made me feel uncomfortable. For some reason, all FBI offices made me feel this way.

  A lot of people don’t realize that when it comes to law-enforcement agents and employees, the NYPD is much larger than the FBI. We number almost forty thousand cops, while the FBI has only approximately fifteen thousand agents active at any given time. The NYPD even has offices outside New York City. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, NYPD and city officials felt the FBI could have done a better job providing them with information prior to the attacks, so now NYPD detectives are in several Middle Eastern cities as well as European cities. There’s even a contingent of uniformed officers at the Vatican so visitors from New York City can feel reassured if there’s a problem and they need to turn to a trusted element.

  I was here at the FBI offices today to meet with Emily Parker. She knew my preference was to meet at a restaurant or coffee shop so I didn’t have to venture into federal offices like this, but today she’d forced me to come here. Her “invitation” was making me feel like she was playing a prank on me.

  Emily greeted me with a hug as she met me in the hallway and led me back to her cluttered cubicle. Before I could sit on the hard plastic chair next to her desk, I had to move aside a pile of files and
notebooks. Though who was I to criticize, given the unruly stacks currently covering my desk and floor? Especially since I understood she probably knew exactly where to locate everything she needed. With a mind like hers, filing systems were a waste of time.

  Emily smiled and said, “What’s so important that I got Michael Bennett to actually come to the FBI office voluntarily? Honestly, the only thing that surprises me more is that you’re not in custody.”

  “Ha ha,” I replied. “All jokes aside, I need a sharp brain like yours to consider something we discovered about the killer.”

  “I can’t wait to hear this one.” She scooted her chair away from her desk and closer to me.

  I cleared off a space on her desk and carefully laid out copies of the crime-scene photographs from New York, San Francisco, and Atlanta. I explained in great detail exactly what Hollis and I had discovered, not only about the bloody crime scenes but also the deliberate arrangement of the collections of objects found inside the victims’ homes in each location. I explained our interpretation of them as the killer’s way of tallying up his murders.

  Emily was attentive but silent, never interrupting me as I explained our theory. That was a sign of a professional law-enforcement agent. Too bad more FBI agents didn’t follow her example.

  When I was finally finished, she looked me in the eye and said, “Impressive. I usually only hear about a personality mosaic this elaborate being pieced together by one of our people down at the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico.”

  “What do you think of our theory?”

  “It’s pretty convincing,” she said. “And I’m even more impressed knowing you guys came up with it on no budget, very little time, and using only crime-scene photos and public newspaper databases. But not all of the crime scenes have these messages. Like the one on Staten Island.”