They always left someone behind. Someone to remain in the storefront synagogue, to be ready in case someone appeared to ask questions, to show interest.
He opened the door slightly, hoping it would not be a woman who was left behind. Yes, a woman would confuse the police, but it would also slightly change the pattern he wanted to establish. Luckily, it wasn't a woman. It was a thin, young man with a beard, dark slacks, a clean, neatly pressed short-sleeved off-white shirt. The young man's back was to the storage closet. He was absorbed in what he was reading. He had no sense of the person in the rubber-soled shoes who, leaning low, silently crept up behind him.
When he was no more than two feet behind the young man, he pressed the palm-sized.22 caliber semiautomatic Walther in his hand against the man's head and fired two hollow-point bullets, knowing the sounds of the street and the dying man's thick hair and skull would muffle the shot. The young man slumped forward, clinging to the book. The man pushed the body to the floor and looked out the window. He picked up the brass bullet casings and pocketed them.
Satisfied that no one was looking, he stepped over the body, moved quickly to the door to lock it. He swiftly dragged the corpse to the storage room. Once inside, he opened the briefcase he had left there, put the gun inside and took out a heavy hammer, four thick pointed bolts and a piece of white chalk.
Then he went back into the alley and through the door to the narrow magazine shop. He had something to tell the man behind the counter, something that would change his life.
* * *
"Possibilities?" asked Mac, a cup of machine-brewed cappuccino in his hand.
He was standing next to Danny Messer in the spotless chrome snack room with uncomfortable black plastic-covered chairs. Along one wall a battery of machines- sandwiches, candy, soft drinks, coffee- hummed and glowed colorfully. They were the only people in the room.
"Shelton killed the boy, buried the body," said Danny, working on a Diet Coke he held in his non-trembling hand. "We just haven't found it. Went over the ground where we found the clothes and bikes with probes, detection machines. Nothing."
"Maybe Shelton buried him somewhere else," said Mac.
"Why? He gets the kid to take off his clothes. Now he has a naked scared kid. Why not just kill him there and bury him?"
"Maybe the boy's not dead," said Mac.
Danny nodded. He had considered it.
"Shelton's hiding him somewhere?" asked Danny. "Pedophilia?"
"Nothing in his record that would suggest it," said Mac.
"The girl?" Danny tried.
"Hawkes says there are signs of recent sexual activity," said Mac. "Interrupted or stopped. Shallow penetration, no semen."
"Could still be sex," said Danny, taking a deep gulp, trying not to look at his hand.
"Could be," Mac agreed, "Or maybe he's into torturing children."
"Again," said Danny. "Nothing in his record to support that."
"Okay," said Mac. "That still leaves us with four questions. One, where are the boy's glasses? Two, why did I find the boy's single bloody shoe fifty yards from the crime scene? Three, why would Shelton kill the Vorhees family and lay the women out respectfully and leave the father in a twisted heap on the floor? And four, why kill the father last instead of first?"
"Want to play a video game?" asked Danny.
Mac shrugged, gulped down the last of his nearly tasteless cappuccino. Mac knew that Danny was suggesting creating a virtual room on the computer in the lab. Danny finished his Diet Coke and dropped the empty bottle in the recycling bin.
The two men walked down the hall to the computer lab. There was no one else in the room. Danny moved to one of the computers, pressed a key and watched as the desktop images began to appear. Both men sat.
"I've got it programmed in," said Danny, controlling his right hand, which seemed to be somewhat better. He had taken the pills Dr. Pargrave had given him. They made him feel lightheaded, or maybe he just hadn't had enough sleep.
Danny moved the mouse to an icon marked VORHEES HOME and clicked. A photograph of the outside of the house appeared almost instantly. Danny hit another button and the image became a photograph of the foyer of the house, dominated by fresh white paint on the walls, a brightly lit, carpeted stairway to the left.
Using the mouse, Danny moved them up the stairs onto the upstairs landing and into the murder room. On the screen, the bodies of the two women were laid out on the bed, hands folded on their stomachs, eyes closed. The man was on the floor at the foot of the bed, contorted.
"Hawkes says the man had a badly bruised and cracked bone in his right arm," said Mac. "There's also a bruise, a cut and a cracked bone in his right cheek."
"Killer hit him," said Danny. "No blood on any object in the room that could have caused the blow."
"So," said Mac. "We may be looking for a killer with bruised knuckles."
Danny nodded.
"Finally, the knife wounds," Danny said, zooming in on the body.
"The knife wounds," Mac echoed. "The two women were stabbed, but not otherwise touched, except for the attempted penetration of the girl. Give me the room without the bodies and blood," said Mac.
Danny nodded, made the adjustments, and the girl's bedroom on the screen was now clean, the bed made, the blood gone, no bodies.
"Likely scenario?" asked Mac.
Danny moved the mouse, punched keys and a reasonable but not photographic likeness of the dead girl appeared on the screen. She was on the bed, clearly alive.
The door opened. A male figure stepped in. Danny hit more buttons on the keyboard and a knife appeared in the right hand of the male figure.
"Shelton?" said Danny.
"Why did he stop in the kitchen to get a knife?"
"He planned to kill her?" Danny asked, moving the figure across the room.
"Why come through the house?" asked Mac. "He could have come through the window," said Mac. "It's not much of a climb."
The male image disappeared and suddenly the image on the screen was the side of the Vorhees' house. The male figure appeared at the window, opened it, climbed in and moved to the bed, where the image of the girl smiled up at him.
"The knife," Danny said. "If he came through the window, he'd have to go downstairs, get the knife and come back."
"Maybe he visited the girl regularly. She left the window open. He climbed in," said Danny.
"Let's play that one out," said Mac.
"Now," said Danny, working on the keys. "Mom hears them, comes in."
An image of Eve Vorhees came through the door, looked at the bed where there was now an image of her daughter on her back with the Shelton figure on top of her.
"Shelton panics," said Danny, manipulating the image. "Gets off the girl, kills her and then kills the shocked mother."
"And why kill the girl first?" asked Mac, looking at the screen, trying to come up with an alternative tale. "Hawkes says the wounds show he did. You'd think he would shut the mother up instead of continuing to stab the girl. The knife would have taken at least ten seconds to make those wounds, plenty of time for the mother to scream, rush out of the room."
"But she didn't run. He killed her next," said Danny.
"Where was the father?" asked Mac. "The odds are good that the mother or daughter would have started screaming."
The Shelton figure stabbed the girl, hurried toward the stunned wife, stabbed her and the door opened. A figure representing the father stood there, struck with horror. Before he can move, Shelton strikes.
"The stab in the back," Mac said.
The father figure, now with blood coming from his chest, turns, reaches for the door. The killer plunges the knife into the dying man's back.
"Won't play," said Mac. "The man's body was found at the foot of the bed. No blood by the door. He came all the way into the room."
Three dead figures on the screen. Danny manipulated the images and watched Shelton remove the knife from the dead man and place it in his belt. Th
en he laid the women out on the bed.
"The boy had to hear," said Mac.
No image of a boy appeared on the screen.
"Maybe," said Danny, "the boy heard, even opened the door, saw and ran for his bike. Shelton heard him and went after him."
"The boy was fully dressed at two in the morning?" asked Mac.
Danny shrugged and adjusted his glasses.
Mac sat silently, thinking about the knife, the problems with the scenario he had just witnessed, the leaf of the linden tree in the boy's bedroom, the leaf with the tiny bite marks of a cankerworm.
* * *
For more than an hour, in a small interrogation room, Flack talked individually to all of the nine people who had gone to lunch in the park. Many of them cried, not just the women.
One man, Morley Solomon, in his forties with curly white hair, a weathered face, and a deep white scar on his nose, said, "It's a test of our faith."
"By whom?" asked Flack.
"Perhaps Yeshua," said the man. "Some human instrument of his power, his dominion over the earth. A few will quit, but just a few."
"Not you," said Flack.
"No," said Solomon. "What proof is there of the power of one's beliefs unless those beliefs are tested? Like science."
"Science?"
"I used to be a physicist," said Solomon. "Princeton, theoretical research. I was a Jew. I remain a Jew. I will always be a Jew, but my faith will determine what a true Jew is, not the mandates and dictates of others. We observe the holy days, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year; Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement; all of them."
There was only one person remaining to talk to. Flack told everyone that they could go. All of them looked at Joshua, who nodded, smiled, made it clear that he would be all right.
"His name was Joel Besser," said Joshua in the interrogation room when the others were gone. "He was twenty-one years old."
As the others had said, Joshua confirmed that Joel had volunteered to stay behind only minutes before the others had left to have lunch in the park. Joshua also confirmed that Joel was more than liked. He was loved.
"He was murdered not for personality or spirit," said Joshua, "but because of what he represented."
"Which was?" asked Flack.
"Heresy in the eyes of the closed-minded and ignorant," said Joshua. "He was a Jew for Yeshua and that threatened people."
"People?" asked Flack.
"Need I say it?" said Joshua, closing his eyes. "The Orthodox, not two blocks from here."
"We'll look into it," said Flack.
"When can we have Joel's body?"
"Up to the medical examiner," said Flack. "Would you please pull your hair back from your forehead?"
Joshua complied.
There was a swollen and cut red bump at the man's hairline.
"When did you get that and how?" asked Flack, indicating that Joshua could release his hair.
"About an hour ago," said Joshua calmly. "I beat my head against the wall. You can see over there."
Flack turned and saw the indentation in the plaster board. He also saw what appeared to be a slash of blood.
"Why?" asked Flack.
"To show my grief over our loss," Joshua said. "The congregants watched and wept. When one of our people die, we want to share their pain. The Orthodox tear their clothes.
"We are Jews," Joshua said, his voice starting to rise, "Jews who suffer from discrimination by other Jewish denominations and by Christians."
"Where were you when Joel Basser was murdered?" Flack asked.
Joshua smiled knowingly and said nothing.
"Every person in your congregation says you left after five minutes in the park and didn't come back till it was time to head back to the synagogue."
"I left Morley Solomon in charge to talk about Einstein and the Messiah," said Joshua. "It's a passion of his."
"And where did you go?"
"A bar," said Joshua. "Babe Bryson's. You can ask the bartender. I was there for about forty-five minutes."
"Doing what?" asked Flack.
"Drinking," said Joshua. "I'm an alcoholic."
* * *
The well-worn wooden floor was decked with numbered red cones, which Aiden Burn had carefully placed around the chair where Joel Besser had been shot, as well as in a semi-regular line along each side of the continuous blood trail that led back to the storage room where the victim lay crucified on a cross drawn in chalk on the floor.
There was a single, creaking overhead fan turning slowly, producing nothing but noise. The smell of blood was warm and thick.
Aiden had taken photographs and blood samples and sprayed for fingerprints, although both she and Stella were reasonably sure the killer had worn gloves, an assumption supported by the fact that Aiden had found no prints on any of the four bolts driven into the dead man's hands and feet.
Stella leaned close to the body of the young man and used a Sirchie vacuum on his shirt, pants, arms. Back at the lab they would compare the photos of the chalk marks at each of the crucifixion murder scenes. Stella could already see that the marks were a match, but with a difference. These chalk marks were done more evenly, straighter.
The words in Hebrew were printed with much more care than at the earlier crime scene. The killer had taken some time.
As for the finger-thick nails through the dead man's palms and feet, they were much larger than those that had been used on Asher Glick. But they were driven in deeper. She had no doubt that Sheldon Hawkes would come to the same conclusion: the nails were driven in by someone using his left hand, someone powerful.
Aiden stepped into the storage room and looked around, taking more photographs. They had found no hammer, no extra nails. This time the killer had come prepared, brought his own tools.
Stella stood up and said, "He came through that door and went right up to Besser and shot him twice. Daylight. Windows uncovered. Could have been seen. Then he dragged the body back here. He picked a bad time and place to kill."
"Killing Glick and crucifying him in a synagogue on a weekday morning took time. That was a bad time and place to kill too, but he got away with it," said Aiden. "At least for now."
"He likes to take chances," said Stella. "Why?"
"Let's go back to the lab, wait for the ME's report and see what we've got," said Aiden.
Stella nodded her agreement.
The paramedics were parked on the street. The street was full of people of various colors, sizes and ethnic clothing. Aiden had taken photographs of the crowd. Not likely the killer would be out there, but she would check them against the photographs of the crowd outside the synagogue in which Asher Glick had been murdered.
Aiden knew it was possible that several innocent, curious people in the photographs were at both crime scenes. The murders had taken place only a few blocks from each other.
Aiden signaled to the paramedics, who came in with a body cart. She guided them around the cones to the small back room. One of the paramedics was a woman, black, pretty, no more than twenty-five. Her shoulders, arms and legs were well-muscled. The man was about the same age, white, big, strong.
They looked down at the body, showing no emotion as Stella said, "Leave the nails in the body. Move them as little as possible. Pry them up slowly. It's going to be a little tough. They're deep in the floor."
Both paramedics nodded. They had the tools and the experience and now they had a new story, one of the more interesting ones, something they could tell their family and friends.
" 'Sheep follow sheep,' " said the man, whose black-on-white plastic nameplate identified him as Abrams. He was looking down at the words written in chalk at the foot of the body.
All three women looked at him.
"That's what it says," said the man. "Hebrew. I think it's from the Talmud. He spelled sheep wrong."
* * *
The phone call came late in the afternoon while Mac was sitting alone going over the computer-generated crime scene images Dann
y had created, checking the Internet for information on linden trees and their parasites.
"Someone wants to talk to the CSI in charge of the Vorhees case," the lab tech who had taken the call said.
"Man?"
"Yes."
"And he said 'CSI'?" asked Mac, who was looking at the screen, where a pulpy white creature was inching its way along the rim of a heart-shaped leaf.
"Right," said the lab tech. "You taking it?"
"Put it through," said Mac. When he heard the click indicating an open line, he said, "Detective Taylor."
"Kyle Shelton," Shelton replied calmly.
Mac hit a button on the white phone carrier and put the phone back in its cradle. The call, now on speaker, was being automatically traced.
"What's on your mind?" asked Mac, who was busily going to the desktop file on the Vorhees case. He opened it and quickly found the pages on Kyle Shelton.
"You ever serve in the military?"
"Marines," said Mac.
"Me too," said Shelton, "but you know that."
"I know it," he agreed. "Is the boy alive?"
"Depends," said Shelton. "Life and death are transitions, a continuum."
"Is he alive?" Mac asked again.
"Yes," said Shelton wearily.
"You killed his family," said Mac.
" 'I am become Death, shatterer of worlds,' " said Shelton. "You know who said that? J. Robert Oppenheimer when he saw the first atomic explosion."
"You've been playing games with us," said Mac. "Why?"
"Games aren't over," said Shelton. "I have a present for you."
"What's that?"
"You've had time to trace this call," Shelton said. "Come here and find it."
"Shelton," Mac said.
"Sorry," said Shelton. "Out of time."
He hung up. Mac pressed a button and a voice answered.
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