by Steven James
In New York, we had Blake on the move and a dead bioweapons scientist. A source had tipped Gaviola off that Blake would be at the house, so was it bad intel? If not, who warned him we were coming? What was the Russian scientist’s name and connection to Blake? Had it been a homicide, or a suicide, as it appeared?
In Detroit: five bodies and almost no clues.
I ran through the specifics again: One male victim, four females. Age range from early twenties to early forties. Two African-Americans, three Caucasians. Mechanism of death— GSW, blunt force trauma, and the stab wounds to the chest that two of the victims died from.
No trace evidence left behind.
The victims were from disparate neighborhoods and had vastly different income levels: from below the poverty line with the first one, Maxine Nachmanoff, to nearly a quarter of a million a year, with the fourth, Dr. Meredith Getz.
By all accounts the offender didn’t appear to be choosing his victims based on gender, race, age, geography, or socioeconomic class.
So then, what?
We were tipped off about the first four bodies approximately forty-eight hours after the time of death. However, the latest victim, Jamika Karon, was found after twenty or so. In that difference, in that incongruity, lay the relevance. The discovery of the body appeared to be happenstance, but was that really all it was?
What was the killer trying to communicate by posing the bodies as he had and carving those letters in the foreheads of the earlier victims?
Did those four teens or Igazi, the street artist, have anything to do with Jamika’s death?
And how did the suspect get out of the neighborhood last night after falling to that gym floor?
All fault lines to explore.
________
On my way back to the motel, as I passed that strip of failed businesses, I couldn’t help but think of the dead dreams that each one represented. And, for some reason, it brought to mind that trophy case that I’d seen yesterday in the abandoned high school.
All those trophies left behind. Even when the school closed, none of them meant enough for anyone to keep or even just throw away. Not even the scrappers were able to come up with any use for the trophies. And so they left them, and even now, years later, they still sat there gathering dust, testaments to accomplishments that meant nothing in the end.
There really is a fleeting impermanence to everything we do, and what seems so important at the moment, often in hindsight doesn’t turn out to be really that important after all.
Failure and detours and dead ends.
On our way to a destination we can’t even be sure exists.
With that, my thoughts switched back to Blake again.
Dead ends.
Detours.
Dead end number one: When I was reassigned from a case last month, I did some checking and found that, oddly enough, the order had originated in the Office of Professional Responsibility before DeYoung signed off on it.
Dead end number two: Some of the information regarding leads on Blake’s past had been buried in an almost insurmountable pile of red tape, and all of my repeated attempts to get clearance for it were denied.
Dead end number three: From what I’d seen, Blake had access to the Federal Digital Database. A confidential informant that I was supposed to meet with one night never showed. He was later found dead, killed execution-style. Computer forensics tracked down his laptop and found evidence that he had the password for the FDD that had been active in the week of June when I first ran into Blake.
But now it struck me that it was also the week I first met Maria Aguirre, an OPR lawyer who’d recently transferred to New York City from L.A.
Huh.
Timing.
Location.
At first she seemed like she might be a stickler for protocol, but not long after we met, she asked me to falsify the details in a report, making it clear that she valued expediency over the truth.
Which didn’t jibe with the tortuous red tape that was coming out of her office in regard to the search for Blake.
And the last time I saw her, she’d mentioned something about Blake’s silent ladies, and now it occurred to me that it was a term he’d used in a conversation with me, but I couldn’t recall ever mentioning it to Maria or specifically delineating it in the case files.
That comment, along with the Federal Digital Database access and the confluence of timing and circumstance, left me unable to shake the thought that there was more going on than met the eye regarding the connection between Maria and our unsuccessful search for Blake.
Maybe it was enough, maybe not, but it certainly justified a discussion.
In this job you learn that sometimes an investigative route might not seem to lead anywhere, but when two or more of those dead ends converge on the same location, it’s a clue in itself—because that doesn’t usually happen unless someone has taken specific steps to cover his tracks.
His fault lines.
Or hers.
And here, a few too many of the dead ends I’d run into so far in the Blake investigation ended at Maria’s office.
I hadn’t seen her around for the last week or so, but it appeared that there were enough dots connected for me to text a request to her secretary to set up a meeting on Monday when I was back home.
So I paused by the gas station and sent it in.
If she agreed to meet, that promised to be an interesting meeting.
To say the least.
++++
As Blake and his associate were on their way to meet their pilot at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, he heard from Fayed that there’d been a slight problem last night in Atlanta with his man, and that he would be driving up rather than flying.
“What kind of problem?” Blake asked.
“One that need not concern you. He is through border control. He will be in Michigan tonight. We have reorganized the schedule. It’s all in place. And so is our cell.”
“The oxygen tanks? The respirators?”
“They will be taken care of before dawn.”
Before beginning on this project, he and Mannie had been vaccinated, so being in the area would be safe, at least for a couple days.
And after that, because of the virulence of the virus and how contagious it was, after its dispersal, it wouldn’t matter where you went. If you weren’t vaccinated, there really wouldn’t be any safe place at all. Anywhere.
22
I arrived at the motel parking lot right before seven, both worn-out and rejuvenated at the same time in the way that good workouts make you feel.
A cruiser and a white, decade-old, unmarked Crown Victoria were waiting out front.
An officer I hadn’t met stood beside the squad, absently swiping across his phone’s screen. He was the man who’d been standing beside Kramer and the three teens last night.
As I crossed the lot, Kramer emerged from the motel lobby balancing a stack of sweet rolls and two cups of coffee in his arms.
“Hey,” he called to me, his mouth full. “Bowers, right?”
“Yes.”
“Got your car here. You try these sweet rolls yet? Killer. There’s coffee in there too.”
Over the years I’ve developed a, well . . . a bit of a discerning taste when it comes to coffee, and I didn’t have overwhelmingly high expectations about the quality of beans that a chain motel on this end of the price range would offer. “Thanks. I’ll have to check that out.” I tapped my watch. “You guys are early.”
“Didn’t want to make you wait.” That might have been sarcasm, but I couldn’t tell for sure and I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
“I appreciate that,” I said.
At his car, Kramer handed the coffee and pastries to his partner, then dug a set of keys out of his pocket and tossed them to me. “Enjoy Detroit, Agent
Bowers. It’s a city with, oh, so much to offer.” This time the sarcasm was clear.
“Yeah.” His partner spoke up. “If you like feral dogs and drug deals and gun crime. And grenades.”
“Grenades?” I said.
“Detroit is the carcass of a once-great city,” he replied glumly, but also with a touch of poetic introspection. “You ever see someone get treated for gangrene? You gotta excise all the parts of the body that are rotting. Hurts to cut ’em out, but if you don’t, she won’t last long. Pain is her only hope of survival.”
I couldn’t see his badge.
I decided he would be called Officer Sunshine.
“What does that look like with a city this size?” I asked.
“Huh,” he said derisively. “You deal with crime with kid gloves and you get kid-size results. Deal with it like a man, maybe you’ll make some progress.” He spit on the parking lot, then smeared the saliva back and forth harshly with the sole of his boot.
Okay.
“Have a good day, Agent Bowers.” Kramer swung open the driver’s door of the cruiser. “See you at the briefing.”
“When is it?”
“Haven’t heard yet. Sometime this morning. Lieutenant Sproul is gonna send out word.”
“By the way,” I said, “did Agent Weist requisition a firearm for me as well?”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Alright. Thanks.”
They pulled out of the lot. And, as if in a blatant attempt to propagate the stereotype, by the time they reached the street, Kramer was already making his way through another pastry.
Grenades?
Seriously?
________
In the lobby: four of the sweet rolls Kramer was raving about awaited me, still in their $1.99-per-dozen grocery store box.
Pass.
Three overripe, darkening bananas on the counter.
Pass.
Coffee: instant. Decaf.
Ouch. Pass.
Three for three.
On the way down the hall, I snabbed some ice.
________
Back in my room, I took some ibuprofen and had just positioned myself on the bed to ice that ankle when my phone buzzed with an incoming text from Christie’s daughter: Call me as soon as you can.
Tessa was on summer vacation and when she didn’t have to get up for school, this girl didn’t typically even make her way out of bed until at least ten o’clock, let alone manage to be awake and coherent enough to string a sentence together before seven thirty.
Also, like so many teens these days, she wasn’t much of a phone talker—more of a texter, so clearly something was up.
I speed-dialed her.
She answered. “’Bout time.”
“Tessa, your text came through fifteen seconds ago.”
“Yeah?” She said that as if it proved her point. “And?”
“What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
“Only if you count Mom crying herself to sleep last night.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What did you say to her? Did you two argue or something?”
“No. Tell me what happened.”
“All I know is what I heard from the other side of her door. It was like eleven thirty or so and I had to pee, so I walked to the bathroom, and then on my way back past her room, I heard her crying—muffled, though, like she was trying to hide it. It went on for a while. Tell me what’s up with that.”
“I don’t know why she would have been crying.”
The lateness of my text exchange with Christie last night came to mind—that, and the fact that I’d forgotten to call when I first arrived in Detroit. But she wasn’t petty or overly sensitive to those types of things and I doubted that either of them would have brought her to tears.
Tessa said, “You two have been fighting.”
“That’s not true.”
“Um. Yes. It is. I heard you two nights ago. I’m not deaf.”
“We’ve just been trying to sort through some things.”
“Yeah. Loudly. And angrily. That might count as fighting to some people.”
“Listen, I can’t think of anything that would have troubled her that much.”
“Uh-huh. Well, then you better talk to her and see what’s going on. Because something’s eating at her. And it’s making her super upset.”
I doubted our recent disagreement would have affected her that deeply and wracked my brain trying to figure out what else might’ve happened. Since Jodie, one of my coworkers from the Field Office, was sharing the apartment with them, I wondered if there might’ve been some sort of misunderstanding on that front. “Is Jodie around? Has she been—”
“Jodie’s been at work. Basically, always at work. We hardly ever see her—she’s gone when I get up, and pretty much keeps to herself. Besides, they get along fine.”
“Okay, I’ll give your mom a call. Is she up yet?”
“I haven’t heard her moving. Besides, I didn’t mean call her this second. Wait so it’s not too weird with you calling too early.” Tessa yawned dramatically. “You know, it just hit me. Literally, there are two kinds of people in the world: morning people—who are beyond irritating, by the way, and oughta be shipped off to their own chipper little continent somewhere where they can all be perky and affirming together. Or their own planet. Even better.”
“And I suppose the second group isn’t evening people—it’s sane people.”
“Huh. Wow. That’s actually better than what I had. I was just gonna say anti-morning people. Anyway. I know which group I’m in.” Another yawn. “I’m going back to bed. But I’m telling you, Patrick, I’m worried about Mom. Don’t break her heart. She deserves better than that.”
Then without another word, she hung up.
I made a mental note to call Christie at nine thirty—not too early, not too late. But then, acknowledging the very real possibility that I could become busy or distracted, I also set a reminder alarm on my phone.
Then I finished icing my ankle, hit the shower, and sorted through what I needed to do this morning regarding analyzing this case’s data to start developing a geoprofile for these crimes.
23
7:34 A.M.
Dispersal in 31 hours
Last night, out of an abundance of caution, Ali had closed his hotel room’s shades before climbing into bed, and now, despite the time, only a faint smear of sunlight had managed to ooze in.
He hadn’t fallen asleep until nearly three o’clock in the morning, and even then sleep had only come fitfully, until five or so when he finally dozed off for good into the disorienting, surreal world of dreams.
A mixture of memories and imagination and longing, smearing themselves across the craggy dreamscape of the subconscious.
Dreams.
Thousands of soldiers dying outside the sixth-century Arabian city, the black sores covering them like rough, obsidian pebbles stuck to their skin.
Bodies in the sand.
A decimated army.
Rotting in the sun.
Then the birds that had flown in, that’d brought death to this army of Abyssinians, now swooped down en masse to pick clean the corpses.
Then the dream tore loose from the past and spun forward into the future as those splintered images of the desert merged with Ali’s dread of what was to come.
Fear that would not stay caged.
Thousands more of the dead and dying, scattered across sidewalks and parks, decomposing in office lobbies and high-rise hallways and cruelly stained hospital beds.
At last, with the dark descent of a thousand thousand birds into the landscape of a modern skyscrapered city, the dream ended without any closure, but just the unsettling portent of suffering to come to the waking world, a d
estination pregnant with screams and pain.
Ali had been told enough about the progression of the virus to know that insomnia and troubling dreams were symptoms, but it was far too early for him to be symptomatic. It must have just been stress.
“You will have general malaise after three days or so,” the Russian doctor had told him. “Fever. Muscle aches. Flu-like symptoms. Those will precede the rash.”
So common. So inconspicuous.
Which is why the disease had so often gone undiagnosed throughout history, untreated until it was too late. But then again, the treatments wouldn’t have mattered much, since there was no known cure for smallpox.
Nearly half a billion people killed by it since the beginning of recorded history.
Ali rolled over and tried once more to sleep, but could not.
He needed to know what step to take next, and just hoped he hadn’t compromised the mission by using the inhaler last night.
He rubbed a drowsy hand across his eyes, then checked his phone.
No messages.
Scrolling to the airline’s website, he found that the first flight to Detroit had already departed.
Do not worry. Fayed will tell you what you need to do when the time is right. It is all in Allah’s hands.
He unrolled his prayer mat, directed it toward the Kaaba in Mecca, washed his face for the partial ablution, raised his palms close to his ears, pronounced the opening exaltation, and then began to recite the Surat El-Fatiha.
++++
I toweled off, threw on some clothes, and updated my files with the information we knew regarding the times of the homicides.
However, my thoughts kept gravitating back to Christie.
I’ve never really understood women all that well, so I decided that before contacting her, it might be smart to pick the brain of someone with more experience than I did at making things work with the opposite sex.
Ralph and Brineesha had been a couple for nearly twelve years and had weathered lots of ups and downs together. Also, Ralph had met Christie and knew me better than just about anyone did.