by Oliver Stark
A personal motive seemed likely. It might well have been someone who had become obsessed with her. But the cops had exhausted that train of enquiry and found nothing. If it was a relative, a friend or a stalker, they’d kept their interests well hidden.
Abby had left the house in the dark just before it started to rain. It was not even a predictable event, as Abby rarely went out on a school night and this seemed to be a plan that she told no one about.
An opportunist would more likely be trawling in a car and would take someone waiting or in need of help, not someone rushing to meet up with the new man in her life.
No, Denise thought, Abby wasn’t just unlucky – someone had targeted her specifically and either knew she was heading out that night or was following her. For that reason, Denise thought that the killer was likely to be known to the suspect and to live close. It might have even been a neighbor who saw her pass and decided to follow.
If someone had planned to kidnap the girl, it was likely that they would scope the victim’s movements and choose a place and time that was part of the girl’s normal routine. But this wasn’t part of her normal routine and yet they somehow knew she was heading out and knew to be there. The perpetrator had to be very confident and very proficient to take someone and leave no evidence.
Denise pushed her short blond hair back and rubbed her forehead. She tried to clear her head. A moment later, Sarah Gauge ran back in the room. She walked past Denise and across to a couple of guys on the far-side desks. ‘Guys, switch on the TV,’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘Captain says they’ve identified the body in Harlem.’
‘What body?’ called Denise.
‘Unidentified bodies excite Missing Persons; they found one this morning in East Harlem.’
A couple of the guys from the squad started searching for the remote. Sarah walked across and reached up to the TV. ‘It works with a switch, too, fellas.’
‘Jesus, Johnny,’ said one of them. ‘Did you know they made them with switches? Is that like the latest thing, Gauge?’
‘No,’ said Gauge. ‘The latest thing is a wise-ass cop with a face full of pizza.’ The TV came on. It was an old model, pinned to the wall high on a metal arm. Sarah said to Denise, ‘Lot of our cases turn up at the morgue as unidentified bodies.’
Denise rose and stood next to Sarah. ‘It’s a cruel job you’ve got.’
‘It’s nothing new. I’ve been checking every day for the bodies, hoping it’s not Abby.’
The news channel was throwing out information about a crime scene up in Harlem. A dark-haired reporter with hair blowing about was live at the scene, speaking in an urgent voice with very little to say. The red tickertape across the top of the screen declared Breaking News and the voices of the two anchormen in the studio could be heard as they tried to piece together the story. Someone had died. It was someone connected to some case in the news, but they couldn’t say any more. It was big news, but they were unable to report the facts until the family had been informed.
Denise leaned in and her hands started to shake. A body found. As yet unidentified, read the tape. Her mind immediately started to imagine how they might find Abby. But what was the likelihood? She stared at the screen.
‘Over to Kirsty, down on 112th Street. Can you tell us what’s happening?’ There was a pause, a crackle, then a different tone as Kirsty’s voice came on. Behind her, the chaotic noise of a hundred media teams clamoring for news.
‘We’ve just seen another team of detectives head to the crime scene. As yet, the NYPD have not made a statement. We’re just waiting to hear. That’s all we can do. We’ll let you know the moment things change.’
‘But what do we know, Kirsty? Is anything confirmed?’
Kirsty pushed several strands of hair out of her face. ‘All I can say is what we were told this morning. We received an early-morning email which told us that there was a body. It gave a name, but we can’t confirm.’
Then out of the chaos, a familiar face appeared. Denise watched Tom Harper move towards the camera. He was surrounded at once by a group of baying reporters. He wasn’t saying much, but was showing signs of irritation. The camera went in close. Denise saw his face – the bruised, swollen eye, the cut lip. She shivered. What had happened to him? She couldn’t help feeling for him and it wasn’t anger. That was strange. The anger wasn’t there.
Denise remembered what her therapist had said. ‘You’ve got to work out what’s going on in yourself, in the past and in the present.’ Tom Harper was in the present. It was the first time in three months that she’d seen his face, although not the first time she had thought about him.
Up to that point, she’d kept herself physically away from him, connecting him so strongly with her experience at the hands of a serial killer that she couldn’t cope with the thought of seeing him. Somewhere in her mind, she blamed him for dragging her into the case and for what happened to her. But looking at the man on the television, she realized that he was just the fall guy. He was easy to hate, because Harper didn’t want to be hated and Denise needed a reaction. Tears formed in her eyes.
On the screen, Harper was framed by the building and two other cops. He pulled out a piece of paper, stood still and stared into the camera. ‘The NYPD were called to an incident early this morning. Two officers responded to the call and found a single victim. The body was tightly wound in barbed wire making identification difficult. We have now been able to confirm the identity of the victim and we have informed the family. I can now let you know that the victim’s name is David Capske, aged twenty-seven. As soon as we have further information we will let you know. No questions, please.’
Denise felt a sudden strong sense of relief. It wasn’t Abby’s body in the alley. She turned to Sarah who seemed to feel the same.
She continued to watch as he came on screen again and appeared close to the camera. Tom Harper. He was her problem in the present, the problem she had to resolve. She had to let herself forgive him, but more than that, she had to let herself try to be part of something that mattered to her.
She stared at Harper – his hair ruffled, his damaged face, his coat torn at the shoulder. Tom Harper. Always at the scene, always in her thoughts, always at the center of everything, always where the trouble was. But if there was one man she’d like at her shoulder now, looking at the mass of information about Abby Goldenberg, it’d be Harper every time.
Chapter Thirteen
Investigation Room, North Manhattan Homicide
March 7, 5.05 p.m.
Harper returned from interviewing Lucy Steller and Capske’s family. He called Blue Team together for a briefing and pulled up a chair.
‘We’ve spoken to Lucy Steller. She’s twenty-nine, works in a 7–Eleven store and writes novels. She’s badly shaken up, but her story seems simple enough. She left the club with David, walked home but when they got to her building, David Capske received a phone call. He told Lucy that he had to go to help a friend. He wouldn’t tell her why. He said he’d be an hour. The only other thing she said is that they saw a car outside the club. A red car. Someone inside was smoking. We’re checking CCTV on that. Eddie’s pieced together a tape of Capske’s last walk.’
Eddie Kasper dimmed the lights and clicked on the laptop in front of him. ‘We got every piece of CCTV tape between Lucy Steller’s apartment and the crime scene. I’ve got Capske in seven different shots.’ The team watched the grainy images of Capske walking up various streets.
‘Here,’ said Eddie, pointing. ‘He took out a thousand dollars from this ATM. It was found in his wallet. Later, he received a second phone call. We’ve got to guess that the first phone call told him how much money was needed, the second was for directions. So this might suggest that he was lured up there due to drugs or some kind of deal or blackmail. We got nothing else, but we’re going over this tape frame by frame.’
‘We got a trace on these calls?’ asked Garcia.
‘Damn right,’
said Harper. ‘Greco, what did you find?’
‘We’ve got one cell-phone number used in the two calls to Capske and the 911 call this morning. Untraceable account and the phone is not transmitting. The killer bought a cell, used it, dumped it.’
‘So the person who called Capske also called the cops,’ said Harper. ‘Why did he do that? We need answers. What else? Ricky? We got any new witnesses with anything to say yet? I can’t believe no one heard anything.’
‘We’ve done four hours of door-to-door. We leafleted the whole area. We got a woman in Jensen House who heard a single gunshot at around 3.30 a.m. Two more witnesses give the same time.’
‘That’s good, we’ve got a TOD right there. Eddie, what’s your best estimate on when he arrived at the alleyway?’
‘Last frame is clocked at 1.38 a.m. It’s five minutes from Jensen House. Let’s say he arrived at 1.43 a.m.’
Harper stood up. ‘We’ve got a guy leaves his fiancée after an unexpected phone call. It’s something he doesn’t want his fiancée to know about, so we presume it’s trouble. He takes out a thousand dollars, walks to East 112th and arrives at 1.43 a.m. Between that time and 3.30 a.m. he is wrapped in barbed wire. That’s an hour and forty-seven minutes the killer spent with his victim. Does that sound like a hit to anyone?’ No one spoke up. ‘Another detail we got is the weather report. Rain started at 2.41 a.m. The ground under the victim was dry. He was lying in barbed wire in that spot for fifty minutes before he was shot. Why?’
‘Maybe the killer was talking to the vic,’ said Mary Greco.
‘Well, that’s one possibility. One thing we can assume is that this killer is confident. More than that, he’s fearless. Two hours with the vic in a public alley – that’s no gangbanger or deranged killer. That’s an organized and planned mind. Garcia, you getting anything on these right-wing groups who have been targeting the Judge?’
‘Ratten found these right-wing assholes getting heated on the forums,’ said Garcia. ‘A lot of celebratory shit about the murder. They read it as a direct political attack.’
‘Well, that’s going to be front-page news by tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, they’re calling the killer a hero.’
‘Fucking hard to believe these bastards,’ said Ratten.
‘Isn’t freedom of speech just great?’ mocked Harper. ‘Can we trace them?’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Ratten. ‘It’s a matter of priority. Could take two men four days to track this thread down and then you’re going to find that most of them are just a bunch of inadequate losers, sitting in their bedrooms, kicking back Oreos, living with their parents and collecting welfare. Also,’ Ratten continued, ‘I did take a quick look and the key information is encrypted.’
Ratten moved across to a PC and tapped the keyboard. ‘The forum is called the White Wall, but there’s no overarching organization that claims to run it. Not that I can find yet. But a few of them claim to be part of something called the White Wolves.’
‘Find out what it means,’ said Harper. ‘Give the lead to the Feds and get them to trace it. It might lead somewhere.’
‘Sure,’ said Ratten.
Harper pulled out a set of photographs from the alley. ‘I got Forensics to give me something on the single or multiple killer angle. At the moment, they can only find traces of one set of boot prints in the wet. They aren’t clean prints, but because kicking the wire has cut up the soles, they can ID each print and they’re pretty sure that there was only one guy in that alley. Our killer’s not just organized and fearless, he’s strong and determined.’
Harper took a marker pen, wrote the name David Capske at the top of a clean white board and pinned up a big glossy photograph of the twenty-seven year old who seemed to have got caught up in a world where he didn’t belong.
‘Capske was also a user,’ said Greco. ‘Apparently, he gave it up after meeting Lucy Steller, but he might have been looking to score again. His friends still use the same dealer. We met him, but he tells us Capske’s not using him.’
Harper turned to the team. ‘Keep at it. Something will break. This whole picture doesn’t add up. Someone lured him to that alleyway. Maybe the drugs were a lure, maybe it was blackmail. He took out the thousand dollars for something. Keep looking.’ The team started to move. ‘Oh, one more thing,’ he added. ‘Victim Support working with Lucy Steller told us that a reporter had already offered her money for the story.’
‘A reporter? Seriously? You get a name?’
‘No. But if it’s not Erin Nash, I’d be surprised. Be aware, that’s all.’
‘She doesn’t give up, does she?’ said Eddie.
‘No, she doesn’t, so get moving. I need to know more about this killer. We’ve got the FBI profiler already working on a profile. All we know so far is that he’s powerful, he’s angry and he doesn’t lose control for a moment. That’s a pretty scary combination.’
Chapter Fourteen
Lock-Up, Bedford-Stuyvesant
March 7, 5.27 p.m.
The barking of the dogs announced his return. Abby’s hands were handcuffed behind her back and her mouth was gagged with a leather restraint. The floor of the small room was covered in a thin mattress. The room, as far as she could tell, was no more than a closet. There was not enough space to lie flat. Abby could either lie on her side with her knees bent or sit up against the walls and stretch out her legs. She was wearing the same tartan skirt and T-shirt she’d put on eight days earlier. To one side of the mattress on the thin strip of bare concrete floor was a green plastic bedpan.
There was no direct light in the room, but the wall didn’t quite reach the corrugated roof and light from outside filtered in. Not much, but it helped. Complete darkness would’ve been harder to cope with. Strange as it was, you were grateful for the smallest things. A thin mattress, a chink of light, a bedpan.
Sometimes Abby imagined the things that he might do to her. She let the horror snake around her and leave her cold with sweat. But he hadn’t killed her or raped her. Yet. She attempted to convince herself that this was because he was trying to get money out of her folks. For days she tried to work out why the smell of his cologne was familiar. It was a strong musky scent, but she couldn’t put a place or face on the smell. It was driving her crazy.
She tried to keep her mind from getting lost in the stupefying boredom by having imaginary conversations with friends, with her mom and dad, her grandparents. She visualized how they’d all react when she got out. How they’d be, what they’d say. She imagined the warm hugs, the wide eyes and big smiles, tainted with tears. She’d try to remember details from every part of her home, then she’d count the threads in the mattress and then recount them in different multiples. She had to keep her head straight. She was lucky she had her music, and in her head, she played note by note, practicing with imagined hands on an imagined saxophone.
Getting some kind of exercise was difficult, but there was enough space to stand and she spent some time each day standing and sitting, pressing her legs against the wall, turning, squatting, rising. It all helped to give some structure to the time.
On the wall she marked the days by dragging her cuffs in a single line across the brick. It was important to keep watch of time. The worst thing was the food. So little. Each day her abductor pushed a piece of bread, a piece of cheese and a cup of water through the flap. She would push out the bedpan. One little ritual.
She had tried to speak in the beginning, during the feeding times, when the restraint was removed. ‘I’m missing my dad, you know. He’ll be trying to solve this. Schoolwork will be piling up. My name is Abby Goldenberg.’
But he stopped it. Insisted on silence. The flap would shut and she would hear him move about, typing, changing clothes.
On the fourth day, she turned the mattress over and spent hours with her hands and teeth, pulling at a small tear. She had the idea that if she could get a rag of the mattress, by pressing her back to one wall and her feet to the other, she might be
able to lift herself up to the roof and somehow push out a flag. It was not going to save her, but it might cause some attention and then she could hammer at the door with her feet. She’d tried that for hours already, but stopped out of frustration, and now tried it only every few hours. The thing was – her abductor was regular. He came at the same time each day. An hour or so before the sun went down. So she knew when it was safe to try to attract attention.
She was very cold. At night, all the time. Never anything but cold. She could hear cars and trucks and in the quiet hours, she could hear birds. They sometimes landed on the top of the roof and she listened to their footsteps.
The dogs barked outside. She felt terrible panic and the instant retching of her guts. The outer door opened and he was inside. The dogs sniffed and ran about the room as they did every time. Their claws scratched on the hard floor, they wagged their tails and bumped into things. There were lots of them and they sniffed at her door. She tried to count them, but there were too many.
The dogs were shooed out. The flap opened.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Can I come out . . . just for a second? Just for one second? Please let me. You’ve got to let me stretch my legs. You’ll never guess, it’s my sax exam tomorrow. If I don’t practice, I’ll fail. I want to talk to you. I understand why people do things. It might be good to talk about it.’
There was no reply. The bread and cheese were pushed through the flap. She used her feet to push the bedpan out. ‘For God’s sake, stop doing this,’ she said in a whisper. The bedpan scraped across the ground.
Then his hand grabbed her foot. She froze. His skin was cold. His fingers closed around her ankle. She could hear him breathing. Don’t react, she was telling herself. Don’t get angry. ‘I’ve been thinking about my mom,’ she said. ‘Missing her. She’s not a great mom. She’s a bit . . . selfish. You have to forgive people when they disappoint you, don’t you? Everyone’s got a reason to do what they do, it’s just we don’t always understand what those reasons are. Everyone’s a mystery, right?’