The Caller jl-2

by Alex Barclay

  ‘We were responding to a possible break-in. Please, ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step back. If you could go talk to one of my colleagues.’ He pointed to a second patrol car that was pulling into the lot. ‘They’ll take care of you. It’s not safe for you to be in the building right now.’

  Joe dialled Rufo’s number from his cell phone.

  ‘Boss? It’s Joe. We’re at Colt-Embry. Looks like Blake was here. No sign of Mary Burig. We got some blood on the floor. That’s it.’

  ‘You think the perp’s still in the building?’

  ‘We don’t know. We’re waiting on more backup from the One-One-Four.’

  ‘Let me round up the guys from the bar. Be right over.’

  Julia Embry pulled up to the scene in her car and jumped out. Magda got out of the patrol car and ran towards her.

  ‘Is it Mary?’ said Julia. Her eyes were sunken in her pale face.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Magda, crying. ‘I don’t know what’s happening.’

  ‘Oh God, I hope Mary’s OK,’ said Julia. She started to run towards the building.

  Magda held her back. ‘They’re not going to let you in.’

  ‘Why not? I need to get in there. I need to see what’s going on.’

  ‘Everyone’s at the movie. Mary had left but was to follow on from the church. I left one of the girls to wait for her in the foyer. She said Mary was there. I mean, it was the cinema, it was dark, I should have checked.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Julia.

  ‘I should go to the church-’

  ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ said Julia. ‘The police will tell us what we need to do.’

  ‘I’ve been trying Mary’s phone, but she’s not answering,’ said Magda.

  ‘This is so terrible,’ said Julia. She watched the detectives moving around inside the lobby. ‘There’s nothing we can do. Someone has to tell us something.’

  Joe ran through the lobby and hammered on the glass door for the uniform to stand out of the way. He jogged down the path to Julia and Magda.

  ‘Detective Lucchesi,’ said Julia. ‘What’s going on? Where’s Mary?’

  ‘We’re trying to find her,’ said Joe. ‘She called us. Someone broke in-’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Julia.

  ‘Mrs Embry, are there keys to all the apartments?’

  ‘Yes. They’re in my office.’

  ‘I can’t let you go in there right now, but if you could let me know where they are…’

  ‘Bottom left-hand drawer of my bureau, inside a makeup bag.’

  ‘OK. That’s great. Are your security cameras operational?’

  ‘No,’ said Julia. ‘Sorry. They’re temporarily down because of the rewiring.’

  ‘OK,’ said Joe. ‘What I’m going to need you to do is one of the uniformed officers is going to take you and Miss Oleszak to the hundred and fourteenth precinct. If you could wait for me there, I’ll come by and speak with you in a couple hours, OK? I know that’s hard at this time, but I’m afraid that’s what we’re going to have to do.’

  Julia nodded. ‘That’s OK. We can do that.’

  Rufo stood in the lobby with the rest of the task force. Most of them were straight from the benefit.

  ‘I’m feeling a little overdressed for this particular party,’ said Rufo. ‘March of the fucking Penguins. And someone, open the door, get the fumes out. Jesus.’

  Joe walked over.

  ‘What happened?’ said Rufo.

  ‘We got here – no Mary,’ said Danny. ‘And she hadn’t called 911.’

  ‘We called it in to the One-One-Four twenty minutes later when we got here,’ said Joe. ‘We’re waiting for more of them to show.’

  Rufo looked down. ‘One streak of blood, that’s it.’

  ‘Crime Scene’s on the way,’ said Joe.

  ‘So talk me through this again,’ said Rufo. ‘She called, said there was someone in the building, said specifically it was Blake?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Joe.

  ‘I have to ask the question. This Mary is… challenged. So can we believe what she’s telling us? I mean could this be all in her head?’

  ‘No way. I heard her voice,’ said Joe. ‘She was terrified. I don’t think she’s going to be that freaked out by something she’s imagined.’

  ‘If I find out I could have stayed at the bar…’ said Rencher.

  ‘How many apartments are there?’ said Rufo.

  ‘Twenty – some of them are empty, they’re being renovated,’ said Joe. ‘Then there’s a communal room on every floor opposite the elevators – a library, a dining room, a TV room.’

  ‘Right,’ said Rufo. ‘They haven’t all been searched. Let’s go.’

  ‘Where’s Bobby and Martinez?’ said Joe.

  ‘Martinez is not exactly in great shape. I told him to stay where he was,’ said Rufo. ‘I left him hanging out with some old lady.’

  ‘Bobby didn’t show,’ said Pace. ‘I think he’s doing security at a runway show in Bryant Park.’

  Joe shook his head.

  Mary lay in the darkness, deprived of most of her senses; her body was cold and numb, her eyes useless, her ears ringing with the endless drone of an engine. ‘Just a short trip, everything will be fine, nothing to worry about,’ he had said. Twice. But he was shaking and he knew she’d made the phone call and he couldn’t look at her. When he reached over her, a droplet of sweat had trickled down his face and landed, stinging, into her eye. He didn’t notice.

  She could not stop crying. ‘Where are you taking me? Where?’

  ‘Please be quiet, please, please.’ He kept saying it over and over.

  ‘I can’t,’ she screamed. ‘I can’t.’

  He stayed silent, just glancing back at her every now and then to make sure she hadn’t twisted her way out of the restraints. She was curled on her side, her legs tied together at the ankles, her hands bound tight at the wrist.

  ‘I am all alone in this world now,’ she roared. ‘I have no-one! I have no-one! Why are you doing this to me? Why? Why? Why?’ She started retching.

  ‘Try not to throw up. You’ll have to stay that way. I can’t stop.’ He hadn’t gagged her because she looked so fragile. He knew she was the type to be sick.

  She pitched forward and retched again. Her mind couldn’t handle any more. Her body was taking up the fight. She had felt so close to being taken away from danger. And now she was in total blackness with rain hammering loudly on the roof and on the windows, drilling into her head, making her struggle harder and harder to be heard. Words didn’t work. He didn’t want to hear them. She knew she could stop speaking. But she had no control over the rest. Her sobs cut right through him, agonizing wails that trailed off into whimpers, like a sick child without the voice to express her pain. But Mary did have a voice, she just lost the will to use it.

  Hope was a white light to Mary. It was a guide. It was visitation and resurrection and redemption and ascendance. It was all good things. Here in the dark, she searched for it inside. There was no other way. Prayers ran quickly through her mind; to St Joseph, St Pio, St Anthony, St Jude. She moved on to the rosary, ten decades, fluent words her memory had never let go of. She finished with the Confitior; ‘I confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters / That I have sinned through my own fault / In my thoughts and in my words / In what I have done / And in what I have failed to do…’

  She thought about what she had done and what she had failed to do.

  It was 5 a.m. when Joe and Danny got back to the office. Rencher, Blazkow, Martinez and Pace were all still at their desks. Joe rubbed his eyes.

  ‘Anyone got anything?’ said Joe.

  ‘Nada,’ said Rencher.

  ‘A hangover,’ said Martinez. ‘Already.’

  ‘Yeah, and some grandma’s phone number,’ said Rencher.

  ‘Anyone get a hold of Stanley Frayte?’ said Joe.

  ‘No.’

  ‘All the other squads have been told
what to look out for,’ said Danny.

  ‘So,’ said Joe, ‘we’ve got no Stanley Frayte. No Mary Burig. No Preston Blake. Fucking great. Blazkow – can you do a victimology on Stanley Frayte?’

  ‘Sure. But I can sleep now, right?’

  ‘We all need to get some sleep,’ said Joe.

  His cell phone rang.

  ‘Joe? It’s Taye Harris, fire marshal.’

  ‘How you doing?’ said Joe. ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier. Things have been crazy.’

  ‘I heard. That’s why I’m calling so late, early, whatever. Joe, I don’t think your perp made it out of the building alive. I think we got your perp.’

  ‘What?’ said Joe. ‘Can’t be…’

  ‘Well, we got a body…’

  ‘But the scene was clear. I thought there was no-one-’

  ‘I know. I know. I’ve talked with the officers involved and because it was a crime scene and the search was expedited, the primary and secondary search reports were given as negative. They didn’t have a lot of time. The body was in the curve of the bay window at the front of the house. Behind a large sofa. When my men went in to ventilate the place, they had to pull down some heavy curtains covering the window to get the air circulating. No-one saw him. He was concealed there for several hours.’

  Joe paused. ‘The bay window. He was in-’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harris. ‘The dead man’s room.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Joe and Danny drove to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

  ‘We have been up twenty-four hours,’ said Danny as they walked in.

  Joe yawned. ‘I know.’

  Dr Hyland came down and led them into the room where a body was laid out under a white sheet.

  ‘Just to warn you, he’s in pretty bad shape,’ said Hyland. He lifted the sheet. The first thing Danny and Joe saw was a badly burned arm and hand. Something gold glinted on the finger. They both leaned closer. It was their high school ring. They locked eyes.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Danny.

  ‘It’s Bobby.’

  At the twentieth precinct, Pace checked Bobby’s desk where his notes were still laid out. He had come to the same conclusion as Cullen about Blake’s address.

  ‘He must have just decided to call into Blake on his way home from work,’ said Joe. ‘Blake freaked, knew we were on to him.’

  ‘I should have been with him,’ said Pace.

  ‘If he didn’t say anything to you…’ said Joe, shrugging. ‘Jesus Christ. He’s got two little boys.’

  Danny shook his head.

  ‘I better take care of notifying Old Nic,’ said Joe.

  Most people knew that Bobby Nicotero and his father weren’t close. But everyone knew that didn’t matter today and it would never matter again.

  Victor Nicotero knew when he saw Joe at the door at 8 a.m. His hand was shaking as he let him in.

  ‘Nothing about this is right. It’s all wrong,’ he said, struggling. ‘I’m at the wrong end of a notification here. Jesus Christ. What happened?’

  Joe tried to clean up the details. Old Nic didn’t buy it, but pretended he did. He sat in silence, staring.

  ‘Patti’s up there, sleeping away her last night before her whole world is turned upside down. I don’t ever want to wake her up, Joe.’ His voice cracked. ‘When he was a kid, Bobby worried about me all the time,’ said Nic. ‘Used to drive me nuts. He’d cling on to me, wouldn’t let me go.’ Tears welled in his eyes. ‘I know how he feels.’ He let out a desperate, mourning sob. ‘I don’t want to let him go.’ He searched his pocket for the handkerchief. ‘We were getting somewhere,’ he said. ‘I think we were getting somewhere.’ He looked up, his eyes red and watery. ‘What was his problem with me, Joe? Where did I go wrong? I don’t mean with him, he’s a good kid, but…’

  ‘Families,’ said Joe, handing him a Kleenex. ‘We don’t ever know, do we? But I know when a son loves his father, Nic. I do. And Bobby did. He looked out for you. In his… his own way.’

  Nic smiled. ‘Angry way.’

  ‘I’m not saying that,’ said Joe. ‘But yeah, he wasn’t straightforward about it. But he gave a shit. You know, he went crazy with me last week.’

  ‘He did?’

  Joe nodded. ‘Yup. Made me take it outside.’

  Nic smiled. ‘That’s my boy.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t give a damn,’ said Joe.

  The office was quiet. No-one knew what to say.

  Pace had gone home. Cullen had arrived in.

  ‘I can’t believe they just didn’t find him,’ he said.

  ‘It was chaos,’ said Joe. ‘We didn’t want them tramping all over any evidence. We didn’t know what could be in there.’

  ‘Yeah, Blake’s whole life was run from that home. The dental work for Valtry, the-’

  ‘Whoa,’ said Joe. ‘Did you see any dental stuff down there?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Danny. ‘Remember? The pliers, the burrs-’

  ‘Yeah, but there were no teeth, no models, no porcelain – none of the shit we saw in the lab.’ He looked at Danny. ‘We need to get back to the house… I think he’s got Mary in there.’

  Danny and Joe parked the car on Remsen Street and walked to Willow Street. They stopped a short distance from Preston Blake’s house.

  ‘Our only way in is through the basement door under the stoop,’ said Joe, pointing. ‘The collapse has blocked everything off from the back entrance.’ They walked up to the door – it was padlocked and had a Gravoply tag slapped on it from the fire department and a number to call if you wanted to gain access.

  ‘I’ll call ESU,’ said Danny.

  Fifteen minutes later, two Emergency Services guys showed up and broke through the door into the damp basement, the smell of smoke still strong in the air.

  ‘There it is,’ said Joe, ‘the trapdoor down to the basement he doesn’t fucking have.’

  An overpowering stench hit them as soon as they lifted it. They jerked their heads away. Danny clamped a hand over his mouth.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Joe. ‘That is fucking-’

  Danny took his hand down, wiping the tears that streamed from his eyes. ‘Unbelievable. That is…’ He breathed out. ‘Christ.’ He stared down at the vertical ladder.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ said Joe. ‘Shine that flashlight down there.’

  He held the beam steady as Joe climbed down. He handed him the flashlight and followed him into the small cramped space.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ said Danny. Joe swept the flashlight left to right, its beam broken up by the bars of a prison cell. A TV was mounted on the wall in front of it. Joe reached out for the light switch beside it.

  ‘No!’ shouted Danny. ‘No switches.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Joe, snapping his hand back. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’

  Danny walked over to the cell, his throat constricting as he closed in on the source of the smell. In the corner beside the bed lay a bucket of human waste, the liquid almost evaporated, the solids breaking down, covered with breeding maggots. Adult flies swarmed around it, landing along the rim, travelling back and forth to a plate of spoiled food on a tray by the door. Joe shone the light on the pale china and could see the tiny olive-green specks of excrement they left behind. Danny rushed out towards the ladder, but managed to ride out the nausea without throwing up.

  ‘Why would anyone live like this?’ said Danny, holding his handkerchief loosely over his face.

  ‘He’s a broken man,’ said Joe. ‘Probably came down here only after the first victim. The guy hates himself, probably thinks this is all he deserves.’

  ‘What he deserves is his head shoved into that bucket,’ said Danny. He choked back another wave of nausea.

  ‘You’re making yourself sick.’

  ‘I have got to get out of here.’

  ‘Look,’ said Joe. He pointed to the dull plaster models of teeth scattered from a box on the bed. He shone the fla
shlight across two shelves mounted above it with neat rows of tiny animal skulls, jewels glistening in the cavities.

  Pinned to the wall above a small desk was a single cracked and yellowed handwritten note, the top of it ripped from a lined spiral notebook. Joe leaned in to read it: The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely. Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth: break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD.

  The rest of the industrial grey walls had been covered with photocopies of the same script, side by side, edges overlapping, layer upon layer.

  ‘I bet that’s the note,’ said Joe. ‘From Sonja Ruehling. That was his kiss-off.’

  Danny shook his head. ‘It is so fucked up… Jesus Christ.’

  Joe crouched down and looked under the bed. ‘Wallets,’ he said. He pulled some of them out, looking through them at the faces of the unchosen victims. ‘If they only fucking knew.’

  ‘And upstairs, you had this beautiful shiny home? Jesus Christ,’ said Danny.

  ‘You never know, do you?’ said Joe. ‘What shit people hide beneath the surface.’

  ‘Where are you, you fucking freak?’ shouted Danny.

  Rufo sat at his office with his head in his hands. Joe and Danny knocked and went in.

  ‘I’m in shock here,’ said Rufo. ‘I can’t believe Bobby.’

  ‘I know,’ said Joe. He looked down. ‘He probably went there because I was giving him a hard time, wanted to check it out before he came to me with the information…’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Rufo gently. ‘Where we at now?’

  ‘We’ve found Blake’s fucking dungeon, but no-one in it,’ said Joe. ‘Stanley Frayte’s home has been searched and nothing’s come up so far. No sightings of Mary.’

  ‘All we can hope is that Blake does something to draw attention to himself,’ said Rufo. ‘Our first contact with him was because he reached out to us.’