by Oliver Stark
Detective Gauge stood. ‘We’ve got her diaries. She mentioned you in there too. Not so much about the Psychology. She seemed to like your style, the way girls do. Thought you looked beautiful and confident. That’s what she wrote.’
Munroe pulled out a copy of the diary entry and handed it to Denise. ‘She was quite affected by your abduction too. She followed the case on the news. She wrote a few prayers for you.’
Denise felt her emotions stir and she tapped the wall hard.
‘Dr Goldenberg has this theory that she might be disappearing to emulate you in some unconscious way. Maybe she sees it as a means of getting some attention. Her mother’s a real live-wire. Doesn’t have much to do with Abby.’
Denise shook her head. ‘That’s bullshit.’
‘He’s trying to imagine why she’s not come home. He doesn’t want to think she’s just cut loose on him and run away with some guy.’
‘And what do you think, Detective?’
‘Looks like she planned to go away. She stowed her books and a set of clothes in a tree in the woods near her home. A dog-walker found them. She faked a phone call to a friend to get out of the house. We think she was going to meet someone. Maybe it was to run away, maybe she got into trouble.’
‘If she was planning to run away, would she leave her diaries? This stuff is quite intimate. She’d know it’s the first place you’d all look. She mention any boyfriend in the diaries?’
‘No, she didn’t.’
Denise turned. ‘She’s not a runaway. But you’re not here for an opinion, are you?’
‘Listen, we’re ticking boxes here, Dr Levene. We’ve got a list, your name’s on it. We got to ask. Have you seen her? Has she contacted you? Anything? This would’ve been a phone call if you ever picked up.’
‘No. Nothing. As you know, I’m not easy to get hold of.’
Denise used the towel around her shoulder to rub her hair. She looked at Abby’s picture again. She saw a bright, kind face, both cheeky and prepossessing. If she was to take a guess on the girl’s attitude, she’d say that she was a fun-loving risk-taker who had her father wrapped round her little finger. The smile would get her a long way, not necessarily in the right direction.
‘Is that all?’ said Denise. ‘I’ve got an appointment to keep.’
Chapter Seven
Apartment, East Harlem
March 7, 8.51 a.m.
The door to Harper’s bedroom opened. The drapes were drawn back and Eddie Kasper stood over his partner, saying, ‘What the hell happened?’
Harper’s eyes remained shut. He lay flat out on his bed, his face all cuts and bruises, each one of which he felt reverberating through his head.
Eddie flicked the switch on the radio that lay askew on an old crate and turned the volume high. It blared out a news report complete with high-pitched crackles. The man on the bed failed to stir.
‘The parents of the missing high-school girl, Abby Goldenberg, have made a fresh appeal for witnesses. Abby’s mother and father have come together to make a video appeal to help find their daughter who went missing at 5.15 p.m. on February 26.’
‘She’s probably already lying dead someplace,’ said Eddie and turned the radio off.
‘Optimist.’
‘So now you’re awake.’
‘What do you want, Eddie? I’m not on shift for two days.’
‘Leave has just been cancelled.’
Harper turned and moaned. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Just get up, Harper. I’ll tell you all you need to know on the way. Come on, we got to go.’ He threw a bag of grapes on to Harper’s stomach. ‘And there’s some get-well-soon food for you from the girls at the precinct. They love a loser. Shirley was almost weeping when I told her about the fight, Harps. Weeping. You should think about it. She’s not a bad-looking woman.’
Harper listened without response. He was finding it difficult enough to open his right eye. The left one was completely closed over. All he could see was a cloud of pinkish red. He was almost blind.
‘I need ice,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t fucking move.’ He lifted his head and it shrieked like a train rushing towards a subway station. ‘Get me something, Eddie. Codeine. Anything.’
‘Hell, you’re a sad mess of a man,’ said Eddie. ‘And it smells like a goddamn locker room in here. Harps, come on, what the hell are you doing to yourself?’ Eddie threw open a window and headed into the tiny kitchen that was hidden behind a torn drape.
Harper moved his legs to the floor and lifted his torso off the bed. He sat for a moment, feeling the thumping of pain, then coughed violently and felt his ribs ache like they were broken in several places. He spat blood on to the floor, then looked out through a thin slit of light at the tall, slim figure of Eddie Kasper looming above holding a glass of water and a handful of pills.
‘I’m guessing I didn’t win,’ said Harper.
‘There we go. Make a joke of it. You could have got seriously hurt and I’m not going to be pushing you to no crime scene in a wheelchair.’
Harper grunted and tried to rouse himself from the bed but as he moved, his head thudded with bolts of pain. Every part of his face felt too large: his lips, gums, jawbone, and eyes. His chest, kidneys and stomach felt raw. Every muscle was yelling at him.
Eddie passed him the glass of water. ‘Shit, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, Harps. I was not prepared. I am upset, man. I was feeling emotional for you last night. Nearly jumped in the ring myself.’
‘Should’ve helped me out,’ said Harper out of the corner of his mouth. His lips cracked and he tasted blood on his tongue.
Eddie walked close and pushed Harper’s head back. Harper struggled with the pain. ‘What the hell, Eddie?’
‘I lost a hundred on you, Harps. I’ve got a very expensive date tonight and I’ve been promising her some fancy place. Now I got nothing. So much for a sure bet.’
‘Then don’t gamble.’
‘What am I going to tell her?’
‘I don’t know, Eddie, just cut out the middle man and take her to bed.’
Eddie stood up straight for a moment. ‘Not a bad idea, maestro. Looks like that little Italian didn’t mess your head up too bad.’
Harper tried to stand and felt a fresh stab of pain across his chest and stomach. He sat down again and breathed deeply.
Eddie looked at his partner’s face. ‘You were never handsome, Harps, not like me, but you weren’t no monster, either. But now, I gotta tell you, you look like someone took that ugly stick and beat you half to death with it.’
‘You’re way too sympathetic, Eddie, you know that?’
‘What you want sympathy for? No one forced you to fight. We all told you to stay clear.’
‘You’re right, no one forced me.’
‘A hundred bucks, Harps – where’s the sympathy for my losses?’
‘It’s boxing, Eddie – remember not to bet on the white guy.’
‘The other guy was a white guy, Harps.’
‘Then I really was no good.’
Eddie took one of the coffees he’d brought with him from the deli in the street outside and handed it to Harper. He sat down and shook his head. ‘Man, your face is like some close-up of a fungus. You should see a doctor.’
‘I’ll survive.’ He threw four pills down his throat and gulped back water.
‘And when the doctor’s finished with you, you should go see the psychiatrist and get your head mended. And when the shrink’s finished with you, you should take your gloves and throw them in the Hudson. You stank, man.’
‘That bad?’
‘It was like someone had switched you off. You didn’t land a single punch, Harps. Not a single punch. You let him boss you round the ring. He was taking pot shots at you. Using that pretty face of yours for target practice. It was a massacre.’
Harper stared across, unable to smile. ‘First time I slept that well in a long while, though.’
‘Being unconscious doesn’t
count as sleep.’
‘It gets you from night to day just the same. Look, these injuries may look bad, but he wasn’t packing much in those punches. No lasting damage.’
‘It upset me, man, and I don’t like that. Come here, big guy.’ Eddie pulled Harper to his feet, wrapped his arms around him and squeezed him tight.
‘Go easy, Eddie,’ said Harper, pulling away and reaching out for his phone. ‘And where’s that ice pack?’ Harper looked down his messages. Lots of messages, probably heckling his performance, but nothing from Denise Levene.
He felt something like the beginning of grief again. Then it passed as the pain started up. He couldn’t move his neck too well, so he presumed he’d been caught on the point of his jaw from a right hook, snapping his neck fast and twisting the spinal column. Rotational force. Sudden drop in blood pressure, brain slamming to the right as the skull went left – concussion maybe. He must’ve been out for the whole ten count.
Eddie returned and handed Harper an ice pack. He took it and held it to his worst eye.
‘Seriously, Eddie, it’s good of you to drop by. Appreciate it.’ Harper walked to the bathroom.
‘I care, Harps, you know that. But there was one other thing.’
Harper took a mouthful of water from the faucet and swilled it around his mouth, then spat it out. The white porcelain turned a translucent red.
‘What’s that, Eddie?’
‘Captain’s called Blue Team together again.’
Harper appeared at the bathroom door. ‘What is it?’
‘They found a body this morning in East Harlem.’
‘They called the whole team?’ asked Harper. ‘Something I should know?’
Eddie nodded. Harper let the thought swirl around in his head and compete with the pain. Blue Team was the elite unit of homicide detectives from North Manhattan Homicide. The last time the whole of Blue Team was on a case, they were chasing a serial killer. Harper looked at Eddie Kasper, ‘Well, you might as well tell me, I’m going to have to see it soon enough. What’s the MO?’
‘A body all wrapped up in barbed wire,’ said Eddie. ‘And Lafayette wants you to lead this one. It’s nasty. Welcome back to our world.’
Chapter Eight
East 112th Street, Manhattan
March 7, 9.22 a.m.
East 112th Street ran all the way to Second Avenue and stopped adjacent to Jefferson Park. On Saturday morning, the pace was slow. The big blocks of public housing stood quietly in the morning sun. On one side of the street a gang of youths sat on a stoop; five big guys all stretching out, baseball caps backward, watching. The few stores were open, but there wasn’t much going on. A couple of eateries, a grocery store with everything on sale, a mini-mart and a store selling nothing but wheel rims. But business was slow for the moment.
At the entrance to Jenson House XI across the street, a small dark alley ran behind the huge municipal trash loaders and led through to House VI. There was nothing remarkable about the alley, except for the single patrol car parked neatly in a 90-minute wait slot and a single uniformed NYPD officer standing beside a piece of yellow police tape.
Within seconds, the quiet street erupted with the sound of traffic. Left and right, trucks and cars started to stream towards the alley, except they weren’t police vehicles. They were all marked with the bright logos of television networks.
About a half-mile away a red Pontiac belonging to Eddie Kasper swerved through the corners towards the crime scene. Harper kept his head low and his eyes covered with shades. His head hadn’t let up the dance beat of pain. ‘Promise me you won’t ever drive an ambulance,’ he said.
‘I’d get to the hospital quick enough, wouldn’t I?’
‘Sure, but the question is – would you get there with anyone alive?’
Eddie turned to look at Harper and grinned. ‘You made a joke, Harps! That’s real progress. You keep up like this and you’ll be human one day.’
He reached out and slapped Harper on the arm. Harper winced. The painkillers were only keeping out half of the pain coming from various parts of his body. Eddie swung into 112th Street. They came upon Jenson House XI almost immediately and Eddie slammed on his brakes.
Harper pushed up his shades and stared out. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ The street was log-jammed with cars and trucks. There were rows of TV trucks, seven or eight TV crews with reporters, cameramen, sound crews and even a few executives, all milling between the street and Jenson House. The presence of the networks had attracted a crowd of thirty to forty people standing round the fringes and trying to see what all the fuss was about. There were only a few patrol cars at the scene and the uniformed cops were having trouble keeping order.
Eddie pulled up to the curb and switched off the engine. The two Homicide cops glanced at each other.
Harper pushed his shades down again. ‘What’s going down, Eddie? I thought this was a fresh kill. Why are they all here?’
‘I don’t know, Harps. And how did they hear about it so quick?’
‘Question is, why the hell are they so interested? There’s been no ID, right?’
‘Right.’
Harper pushed his body out of Eddie’s old Pontiac and on to the sidewalk, a grimace crossing his face. A cold breeze ran across the street even though the sunlight was bright. The effect, through his bruised eyes, was surreal. It was like a circus had come to see a homicide in action.
Eddie moved around and said to Harper, ‘Keep close, champ, or someone’s going to mistake you for the victim.’
There was a battle going on up ahead, with the two police officers trying to push back the TV cameras and reporters. Harper lowered his head, held up his shield and muscled his way through, ignoring the pain.
A smiling brunette from CNN spotted the shield and turned her TV crew through 180 degrees. ‘We’ve got another detective coming through, let’s try for a comment.’ As she said it, a minor stampede headed Harper’s way.
She moved across, ahead of the pack. ‘Detective, can we get a statement? Can you confirm the identity of the body?’
Harper looked up. ‘I just got here. I haven’t even seen the body.’
The reporter saw Harper’s beat-up face and shrank away. ‘We all got an email, Detective, about a body found early this morning in a Housing Project in East Harlem. They are saying that it’s Judge Capske’s son, David. Email said it was a political statement for America. What have you got to say about that?’
Harper shook his head. ‘I don’t know nothing about this as yet. No comment.’ He pushed forward, more confused, wondering why the networks had been sent this information. The press rounded on him, coming from all sides at once, throwing lights and microphones in his way. ‘I’ll give you a statement, ladies and gentlemen, if you let me take a goddamn look at my crime scene.’
Harper and Kasper made their way through to the rising volume of eager and excited questions.
Inside the makeshift compound, there were four police cruisers and a white truck belonging to the Crime Scene Unit. All the red and blue lights twirled without sound, hardly visible in the lights of the TV crews. Over to the right, a dark rectangle of shadow marked the entrance to the alleyway. Canary-yellow police tape crossed the crime scene and flapped in the breeze. They’d managed to get a rudimentary screen up, but Harper guessed that the cameras would’ve caught the image of the corpse already.
‘Did the department get sent the same information about Judge Capske’s son?’ asked Harper. ‘Is that why the whole of Blue Team got the call out?’
Eddie looked around, scanned the trucks and microphones. ‘No, we didn’t get shit. Must’ve gone straight to the TV stations.’
‘Someone out there wants to cause maximum fucking chaos,’ said Harper. ‘Does anyone know what the hell’s going on?’ he shouted.
A tall cop standing in the shadow at the edge of the alleyway moved into the light, thumbs hitched in his belt. It didn’t matter that there were several cameras pointed his way, world-
weary nonchalance emanated from every pore.
Harper felt another sudden sharp pain cross his forehead, and he moved over the yellow crime-scene tape. ‘You know what’s going down here, Officer?’
‘They just rolled in about fifteen minutes ago,’ the officer replied. ‘Said they got a warning. We were here quick, so I’d guess they were told before we were.’
Harper stared out at the circus and felt anger rising in his blood. ‘I want this whole fucking street cleared, you hear? I need more patrol cars and uniforms right now.’
‘The whole street?’
‘The whole street. Every fucking TV truck. This is a crime scene, not a sideshow. Move them out now. Right out of my sight.’
Chapter Nine
East 112th Street
March 7, 9.28 a.m.
Harper spotted his team further up the alleyway, congregating as close to the corpse as possible, as if the lifeless body would somehow reveal the secrets of the crime as long as they got in tight enough. Harper knew that they weren’t just clinging to the case, but that they were standing around the corpse clinging to the fragments of the victim’s humanity.
Detectives Garcia, Greco, Ratten and Swanson, the other four members of Blue Team, were talking in brief sentences and looking around. No detailed forensics work going on – just experienced cops getting a feel for what had happened. Looking for the story, talking down options, trading insults and jokes. Each of them opening their account on the next dead body.
Harper moved towards his team. ‘They’re going crazy over there,’ he said. ‘The media said this is Judge Capske’s son David. Has anyone ID’d our victim?’
‘Can’t do it. Take a look for yourself. Can’t tell who it is.’
Garcia stopped as he saw Harper’s face. ‘Lafayette gave you the lead looking like that? You look like shit,’ he said. ‘And for the record, you fight like shit.’
‘I’m leading this, that’s right,’ said Harper. It was going to be a day of soaking up the jibes and jokes.