The Hook

by Tim O'Mara

  ‘You want me to warm it up?’

  She gave me a hungry grin and wiggled her fingers in a come hither way. ‘Just bring it out.’ I went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, went over to the cabinets to pull out two plates, and got a roll of paper towels for napkins. I had to put the bag of barbecue between my teeth to manage everything.

  ‘There’s next year’s Christmas card,’ Allison said, taking the bag from my teeth and giving me a kiss. ‘How was the traffic, honey?’

  ‘Ugh,’ I said. ‘This city needs less cars and more moving people.’

  ‘Look at you. Almost correctly quoting lyrics from the eighties.’ She placed the food on the small patio table and finished her wine. ‘Don’t you dare open that bag until I get back.’

  By the time she returned, I had finished half my beer and, against her direct orders, had equally divided the barbecue between the two plates. She sat down and we ate in silence for a few minutes before she spoke.

  ‘How was the service?’

  ‘Not too much God stuff. But the way people talk about Newer Leaves, you’d think it was a religion.’

  ‘I heard about them a while ago,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of doing a piece on them when I was still with the paper.’

  ‘You could do one now. You mentioned it the other night.’

  ‘My partners want to stay focused on more city-ish stuff. That’s our … niche.’

  I took another bite of rib and followed it with the last of my beer. I stood up. ‘You tell them about focusing on former clients who live in the city?’

  She finished her wine. ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘It’s another way of keeping MoJo’s story moving forward.’

  ‘I’m too tired to think about it,’ she said. She handed me her empty glass. ‘While you’re up, this’ll help me think better.’

  I leaned in and kissed her. ‘Whatever you say, Allie.’

  ‘That’s what I love to hear.’

  I came back and Allison was piling up the remains of our meal. We were in the habit of whoever cooked, the other cleaned. Since I had technically provided the meal, it fell to her to clear the table. When she came back outside, the sky behind the city was a fading orange and the breeze had picked up a touch.

  ‘How was your trip today?’ I asked. ‘To the crime scene.’

  She paused looking for just the right word. ‘Enlightening.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain. I’m still processing it before I put the words down. I’ve never studied a location where a murderer waited for his victim. It reminded me a bit of sitting with my dad in his hunting blind back home. We’d wait for hours sometimes until he was ready to shoot a deer.’

  ‘Only here,’ I said, ‘the prey was human.’

  She gave me the Shut-Up look. ‘I know that, Ray. That’s what made it so … I hate the word weird. It was … almost surreal. What kind of person does that? It’s the textbook definition of premeditated. After a few minutes, I could almost feel it. Someone – maybe someone evil – was in the same place I was about to commit an evil act.’

  ‘Are you saying you could feel the killer’s presence?’

  ‘If I hadn’t known what had happened from that window, I don’t know if I would’ve felt anything. But it’s in the knowing, isn’t it?’ She paused for another sip. ‘Since I knew what had happened there, I kinda did feel something. I just need to be a good enough writer to get that down on paper.’

  I put my arm around her. ‘You are a good enough writer, Allie. But I was a cop for five years. I was constantly asking myself why people did the things they did. Lucky for me, that wasn’t part of the job description. I didn’t have to know why, just the who.’

  ‘And how did that make you feel?’ she asked.

  ‘We doing therapy, now?’

  ‘No. Not really. But how did it make you feel? You told me yourself that you could have gone back to being a cop.’

  ‘I also told you I didn’t like the feel of sitting on my ass all day or the smell of paperwork and fingerprints.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I remember that answer. That was a while ago. I know you so much better now and I know that’s not the whole answer. You know it’s not.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘We are doing therapy.’

  She gave me a playful slap on the arm. ‘It’s not therapy because I understand you more now that we’re closer. It’d be therapy if I didn’t.’

  She had a point. Again. I processed it by sipping from my beer. Amazing how that almost always seemed to help.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Yes,’ I repeated. ‘Not knowing why people did the things they did bothered me. Yes, not being able to get out of the gray and into the black and white bothered me. Yes, I could have done some good if I’d gone back to being a cop, even if it was behind a desk. And, yes, I believe I do more good now that I’m a teacher.’

  Allison looked at me as if we’d just met. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That is the most you’ve ever said about that subject. At least to me.’

  I let out a deep breath. ‘It’s the most I’ve ever said about the subject to anyone. Myself included. You sure this isn’t therapy?’

  She squeezed me tighter. ‘I’m sure, Ray. This is what couples do. They talk about things and unexpected stuff comes up.’

  ‘If you weren’t such a kickass reporter, I’d say that you were in the wrong business.’

  ‘Now that’s how a boyfriend is supposed to talk. Was that so hard?’

  Another sip. ‘No. No it wasn’t.’

  ‘Good for you.’ She kissed me. ‘I was researching deaths by arrow today.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You said you found nothing in the city for almost ever.’

  ‘Just that guy out on Long Island back in 2006 and the Jersey thing a few years ago. Not a popular way to commit murder.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ I asked. And realized the accidental pun, which we both decided wisely to ignore.

  ‘It got me thinking about another angle on the story,’ she said, and took a sip of wine. ‘Before you say anything, I know it’s a bit morbid, but I started thinking about unconventional ways of killing people.’

  I considered that, squinted at her, and said, ‘But we’re OK, right.’

  ‘After all that nice stuff you just said, yes. For now. You know what the three most common ways of committing murder are in the US?’

  ‘Number one is guns.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Second …’ I thought back to my time on the streets. ‘Stabbings.’

  ‘Yep.’

  I had to think harder now. There’s murder in real life and then there’s murder on TV and in movies and books. ‘Poisoning?’

  ‘Suffocation,’ she said. ‘Mostly physical strangling and that’s usually by people who knew the victim. Quote, unquote: loved ones.’

  I took a sip. ‘So your piece would be on …’

  ‘The uncommon ways people do away with one another. I hate to say it, but MoJo’s murder was an extremely rare, and not that efficient, means to an end.’

  ‘Efficient enough,’ I said.

  She waved that off. ‘That came out wrong and you know it is not what I meant. The more I thought about the way Maurice was killed, the more I thought that there were only really two advantages to the method. The first being it’s a pretty silent way to do it. No one hears an arrow, right?’

  ‘Not unless you’re really close to one, I guess. What’s the other advantage?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘This is clearly speculation on my part. But what if someone wanted to send a message?’

  I felt my forehead crease and my eyebrows come together. ‘What kind of message?’ I asked. ‘And to whom?’

  ‘That’s as far as I got, Ray. It may be my imagination getting the better of my journalistic instincts.’ Another sip of wine. ‘I’m trying to set up a meeting with a forensic psychologist over at John Jay this week.
’

  I told her about the archery course up at Newer Leaves and what Lisa had told me about its use in therapy.

  Allison nodded. ‘I can see that. Mindfulness, staying focused, and whatnot.’ She got up and stretched. ‘Do you know what piquerism is?’

  ‘Isn’t that,’ I said, ‘a style of painting that uses a lot of dots? Sunday in the Park With George?’

  ‘That’s pointillism. Piquerism is a sexual fascination with piercing the human skin. Your own, or more commonly, someone else’s.’

  It came back to me now, at least a little bit. ‘I heard about that at the academy in a criminal psych class. It’s why some serial killers stab their victims over and over again. The blade becomes a substitute for the penis. What does this have to do with MoJo? You think some sicko’s out there shooting people with arrows and getting off on it?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That would be on the news. It just came up in my research. Did you hear about the body the police found along the Hudson last week?’

  I had, but it took a while to recall, as I had actually been at another murder scene this week. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Guy got hit in the head and fell into the rocks along the river. Official cause of death was blunt-force trauma, right? He never made it to the water.’

  ‘You know my friend at the medical examiner’s office, right?’

  ‘The one who told you about the drugs they found on MoJo?’

  ‘That’s him. He called me this morning after you left and I took a quick trip over to his office. He was able to tell me they are about ninety-percent certain that the blunt instrument that caused the blunt-force trauma was not always so blunt.’

  ‘I’m not following you,’ I said.

  ‘Based on the shape and depth of the head wound, they think it was an ax.’

  I thought about that. ‘Axes do have blunt sides, Allie.’

  Is this what other couples talk about while sharing after-dinner drinks on a balcony in the fading sunset?

  ‘No, he got hit with the business end, Ray. A very dull and possibly very old business end. It only penetrated four centimeters into the lower part of the skull. Not too deep, but deep enough where the victim bled out.’

  ‘So the killer found what was around and used it on his victim. Happens all the time. Most murders are not thought out. Find an old ax, use an old ax. Is that all your friend at the ME gave you?’

  ‘Not every reporter’s friend at the ME gets access to crime scene photos.’

  ‘And yours does?’

  She sipped and nodded. ‘I wasn’t allowed to make a copy – you don’t wanna know what I’d have had to do for that – but he did show me one interesting photo.’

  ‘Interesting in what way?’

  ‘On one of the rocks where they found the body, somebody had scrawled the Roman numeral one. One horizontal line connected to two vertical lines.’

  ‘Sounds like graffiti to me.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, but my friend told me the marks had been made fairly recently. There was still rock dust around the number.’

  I let that sink in. ‘That’s interesting.’

  ‘Wanna know something else interesting?’

  ‘Why do you tease me this way, Allie?’

  ‘Sorry. It’s kinda fun, but given the circumstances …’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘When I was at the crime scene earlier today, I took some photos on my phone.’

  ‘Royce allowed that?’

  ‘He didn’t know.’ She reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and went to the camera app. She swiped a few times and handed it to me. ‘What do you see there, Ray?’ She pointed at the picture on the screen. ‘To the right of the window.’

  I looked at where her finger pointed. The Roman numeral two: two horizontal lines connected to two vertical lines. An uncomfortable chill went up my spine.

  ‘Holy shit,’ was all I could think to say.

  ‘I didn’t think anything of it until I saw the crime-scene photos from the Hudson. I thought this’ – she pointed at the numeral on her phone – ‘was a gang thing or, like you said, just random graffiti. Now I don’t know what to think, but I’m going to see Royce tomorrow morning.’

  I was quite often amazed at how my girlfriend’s brain worked. She would have made a great cop – except for her stubborn refusal to see the world in black and white. Nobody is all bad and nobody is all good. Sometimes a cigar is more than just a cigar.

  But sometimes horizontal and vertical lines are just horizontal and vertical lines.

  And sometimes they are Roman numerals that just might connect two murders.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Sometime during the dark of night, Allison got up without waking me and found just the right words she’d been searching for only hours before. When I woke up, I got to read them along with about a thousand other people.

  A KILLER VIEW

  What’s it like, lying in wait to commit murder?

  What goes through the mind of the killer? How does their body react? How does it feel to know that at any moment you are going to be responsible for one less soul living on this planet? Does your breathing get quicker? Deeper? It’s early afternoon and I’m looking out of the fifth-floor apartment window from where, last Thursday, an unknown archer released an arrow that killed Maurice Joseph, a middle-school aide who was working on the school’s rooftop across the street, tending to his hydroponic garden and his pigeons. I estimate the distance between this window and the spot where Mr Joseph’s body fell to be around fifty yards.

  According to a hunting expert I spoke with, once the archer released the arrow, Mr Joseph had about half a second before it entered his body. That’s factoring an average arrow speed of three-hundred-feet per second. That’s a little less time than it takes to sip from a cup of coffee and a little more than a blink of an eye.

  Isaac Newton would have been perversely proud. All three of his laws of motion were in play: an arrow at rest stays at rest until it’s released; the pullback on the arrow equals the spring when the grip is let go; the force of the arrow that ended Mr Joseph’s life was equivalent to its mass times the acceleration.

  Still, I am looking out of the window where last week someone took aim and ended a life. I won’t be thinking about Mr Newton or physics until much later.

  Below me, on the busy avenue, a young man walks by, possibly on the way to the bodega on the corner for a cup of coffee, or maybe to the subway. Two neighborhood women – side by side – are talking just a little too loud as they push matching strollers on their way to the playground in the courtyard of the houses. Cars go by, windows rolled down, playing loud music in defiance of last week’s unexpected visit from Old Man Winter.

  Ask any middle-school science teacher and they’ll tell you all about the potential energy and the kinetic energy of the arrow that ended Maurice Joseph’s life.

  But what about Mr Joseph’s potential? He was up on that roof as part of his re-entry into society after months in a drug rehabilitation program. He was changing lives – his own included – by teaching hydroponics, organic gardening, and animal care. His wife – now his widow – is due to have a baby in less than two months.

  No amount of science can measure Maurice Joseph’s potential energy. No understanding of the Archer’s Paradox – the natural bend of the arrow when released will affect its flight and accuracy, so never aim directly at your target – will soothe the future pain of another fatherless child in this, the greatest city in the world.

  Hooke’s Law: the weight of the draw is proportionate to the length of the draw. More physics. Was the killer’s heartbeat increasing in direct proportion to Mr Joseph’s heartbeat decreasing? Did they sweat more the farther they pulled back the arrow? How does any knowledge of physics play into the metaphysical?

  Maurice Joseph is the first murder victim by arrow the city can recall. This will ensure that his death will be remembered longer than most other victims’ deaths by violence – dru
g overdose, vehicular accident, suicide, or something boring like cancer.

  There were so many things the killer had to take into consideration before shooting the arrow across the street: wind speed and direction, humidity, air pressure, the trajectory of the arrow’s angle. So many factors. Those who knew Mr Joseph well said he had three major factors in his life: his unborn daughter, his wife, and his recovery.

  We can only hope that Mr Newton’s third law will apply here. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction: the killer of Mr Joseph will be caught and brought to justice.

  Meanwhile, I am looking out of the window where just last week a killer lay in wait and a life was taken.

  Allison Rogers for New York City Here and Now

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said, about half a minute after reading the last sentence. ‘Where the hell did that come from?’

  Allison took a sip of her coffee. ‘I couldn’t fall asleep last night. I kept seeing the school roof from the window. I kept seeing the arrow flying across the street and hitting Maurice. I got out of bed, turned on the laptop and it just came out.’ She paused and looked at the article on my laptop. ‘It usually doesn’t work that way.’

  ‘I’m not sure what to say. Would it sound like I was kissing your ass if I said it was poetry?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what happens when you say it.’

  ‘It’s fucking poetry, Allie. Absolutely fucking poetry.’

  She pretended to give that some thought. ‘That feels pretty good, Ray. I didn’t realize how much my ass needed kissing. It’s nice.’

  ‘Keep writing like this and I’ll pucker up anytime.’

  ‘Ha. That’s what they all say.’

  I decided against asking who they were. Instead I said, ‘This will keep MoJo’s story from fading away soon. You gonna bounce that Roman numeral idea off Royce today? I think he needs to hear it.’

  ‘I think so, yeah. I’m planning on taking a page out of your teacher’s handbook.’

  ‘Which page would that be?’

  ‘The one where it says to throw everything you can at your students and see what sticks,’ she said.