88 Killer

by Oliver Stark

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the guard.

  Aaron touched his cheek. ‘I took it without your knowledge. And thank you, Bill.’

  Aaron Goldenberg stood, held the handgun by his side and walked across to the stairs.

  Two floors up, Carney circled his hostages and continued to speak in a slow drawl. ‘The problem with you guys is that you think you have a right to own the fucking world. Everyone’s got to feel sorry for you. Who feels sorry for guys like me? Guys who want the world back, guys getting destroyed by your conspiracies.’

  ‘I don’t understand what that has to do with me.’

  Carney looked up. ‘It’s because . . .’

  Carney stopped a moment, the little black phone in his hand. His mind seemed to miss a beat, as if the usual connection wasn’t available and he didn’t know what else to say.

  The hostage went on: ‘You know no one’s to blame here. We’re all just trying to make a living like you.’

  The words dragged Carney back to life.

  ‘Like me? You don’t fucking know what being like me is. You people . . . you’ve bled us fucking dry. This is America.’

  ‘I’m American.’

  ‘That right? You can be American when it suits but you only care about your own kind.’

  Aaron Goldenberg walked up the stairs through broken glass. His heart had been walking through broken glass for days.

  The 88 Killer. The man who had his daughter, Abby – who had her imprisoned somewhere – was in his building. He reached the first floor and then started up to the second. He wanted his daughter. He wanted revenge. The purpose focused him.

  ‘Abby,’ he said to himself. ‘Abby, Abby, Abby.’ In his heart, he felt she was dead. That was all he’d learned to expect, that there was only worse to come – a broken, beaten corpse, his daughter’s magnificent life reduced to nothing. Tears were streaming down his face, a burning agony in his chest. He had never known feelings like these. Suicides and murders hadn’t ever come within his world, but now his purpose was clear. He could not live without his daughter. He would not live without her. Not another day.

  He would not walk alone on earth without love. And the killer would not walk on the earth another day either. Let this be the end.

  He knew what he had to do.

  Inside the exhibition room, Carney stood up. ‘They’re here. Time to take you all for a walk.’

  He took the cell phone and brought up the number of the receiver hanging around Jeb’s neck.

  ‘Time to go, goat-boy. Crawl forward.’

  Carney moved to the door and pulled it wide open.

  The security guard and Denise Levene stared in horror at the hostages on their hands and knees.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Carney demanded.

  ‘Security.’

  Carney laughed. ‘Fuck you.’ He pulled out his gun and shot the security guard without a thought. The gunshot reverberated throughout the building. Denise felt a wave of shock and nausea. She stepped backwards.

  Carney stood at the entrance to the exhibition room. ‘Ah, Dr Levene – you made it.’

  ‘I understand you, Jack,’ she said, trying to hide the tremble in her voice. ‘You need help. We can get you help. This isn’t the end of the line. There’s a way out here.’

  ‘What do you mean? This is it. The media is all run by Jews. No one tells the truth, that’s why I’ve got to splash the truth all over the front page.’

  ‘Is that why you’re doing this, for attention?’

  ‘American soldiers die every day, we report that, but every day, Americans here in America are being destroyed by the Jews running the country.’

  ‘How?’

  Carney walked across to the stairwell and leaned over. There was a solitary man walking up the stairs, but Carney could see all the way down into the foyer.

  ‘I represent true American interests,’ he shouted. Down in the foyer, horrified people stared up at the killer, paralyzed with fear. ‘I am fighting to free America from the insidious influence of the Jew and his kind. These here are the Jewish scapegoats. These poor Jews are going to die for the sins of their brothers and sisters. They are going to be sacrificed.’

  He turned to Denise. ‘In my hand here, you can see the detonator. One move and I blow them, and the rest of us, sky-high. If my thumb presses dial, this little goat will erupt, splattering his offal all over you. So back right off, Dr Levene, and watch the show.’

  Carney pulled back. ‘Keep walking, goats,’ he commanded. Jeb and the other eleven hostages started crawling towards the stairs.

  Harper was at the far door of the exhibition room when he heard Carney talking and shouting. He then heard a woman’s voice and realized that it was Denise. He could see the poor hostages, all stripped and tied with wire. Carney had lost his mind. He was going to go out in a blaze of hatred. There was no time to wait.

  Harper saw the detonator in Carney’s hand. Any trigger and Carney could blow them all to pieces. The security guard raised the thumb on his fist and raised his eyebrow. It was enough. Harper got it. The explosion was a single movement of his thumb.

  Down below, on the marble floor, Harper could hear the sound of boots. Lots of boots. The cops were coming up the stairs. At this point, that was bad news. Carney would blow them all up.

  Harper pushed off his shoes and started to move across the floor of the exhibition room, his Glock held out ready to take a headshot. Denise saw him move. She understood. ‘Hey, Carney, you know what Lucy said in the ambulance?’

  Carney turned. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said she thinks you’re right.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She doesn’t understand why you took her. She’s not a Jew.’

  ‘Because she knows I am,’ he said. ‘I made that mistake in school, I made that mistake with Lucy. You tell someone you’re a Jew and they shit all over you.’

  ‘Damn right, they do,’ said Denise.

  Harper was five feet from Carney. His gun was aimed at his head. Carney caught one of the hostages glancing behind him and Harper saw him tense. A boxer knows muscles – and Harper had boxed for years. He knew what muscles did when they sensed danger, when they were about to move. And Harper saw Carney’s right arm and shoulder flinch ever so slightly. The hand crease, the finger move.

  Carney had just about begun to turn his head. Harper had the start on him and lowered his gun. He had to get the cell phone, but couldn’t afford a struggle. In a struggle, everyone was dead. Even with a headshot, the thumb could press the button.

  Harper moved in tight and pulled the trigger. The nozzle of his Glock was thirty centimeters from Carney’s elbow and the bullet ripped the joint to pieces. Carney’s body froze. Enough time for Harper’s right hand to grab Carney and pull his thumb from the detonator.

  The two of them slumped to the floor. Harper’s left hand reached out towards Carney’s right hand. Carney’s arm was limp but his hand was still hard-gripped around the cell phone.

  Denise Levene watched in stunned awe. She didn’t move. Her mouth just opened wide.

  The room went silent. They were all waiting for the blast. Harper’s right hand was firmly around Carney’s thumb. Harper’s left hand slowly prized the cell phone, finger by finger, from Carney’s grip.

  Harper suddenly realized he needed to breathe. He’d been holding his breath the whole time he’d walked across the room. Maybe two whole minutes. He breathed in deeply, took Carney’s other hand and crushed it with his boot until the Luger dropped. Harper grabbed it and rolled away from Carney with the gun. He held up the cell phone.

  He looked at Jeb. ‘It’s okay. Keep calm. I got it. Denise, untie these people.’

  Harper checked Carney and cuffed him. They could deal with him later. Denise and Harper moved across to the hostages. Behind them, Aaron Goldenberg reached the top of the stairs. He could see Jack Carney lying on the ground. All he could feel was anger and pain. He wanted this man dead. He stopped and stood ove
r Carney. ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carney.

  ‘Where’s my daughter?’

  ‘She’s dead. You’re all dead.’

  Aaron pointed the gun at Jack Carney’s head. ‘Then I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘Then do it, Jew.’

  Denise turned and saw the gun rise and tremble. She called out, ‘Aaron, stop, don’t do it! Don’t ruin this now!’

  ‘After what he’s done,’ said Aaron, ‘why shouldn’t I kill him?’

  Aaron’s hand was shaking. His finger tightened around the trigger.

  Denise was next to him now. ‘Aaron – we got Abby. She’s alive. Abby’s alive. Don’t throw it away now. She’s okay. I mean it – I’ve seen her.’

  Aaron Goldenberg seemed not to hear. Then his head turned. He looked at Denise. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Brooklyn Memorial.’

  Aaron Goldenberg dropped the gun and ran towards the stairs.

  Epilogue

  Crown Heights, Brooklyn

  March 15, 2.29 p.m.

  Harper rested on a bench next to a paramedic. There wasn’t anything wrong with him physically, but he was shaken. All those dead and dying bomb victims, and then the killer’s capacity for more. It was only beginning to sink in. He stared around him and tried to remember what he had felt as he watched the cops hustle Carney into a police truck and slam the door.

  He felt good. That was it.

  He looked at Denise. He was holding her hand as they sat in silence and stared at the scene.

  Denise was still pumping from the adrenalin rush. ‘We got him,’ she said. ‘We nailed him. This feels good.’

  ‘You are something else,’ Harper said. ‘I don’t know how you do it, but you do it. You nailed him, Denise. You.’

  ‘We nailed him, Tom. We’re a team, right?’

  ‘The best,’ said Harper. ‘How did Aaron sound?’

  ‘Like a man waking up from a nightmare into paradise. They’re both going to be okay.’

  ‘He saw her?’

  ‘Yeah, he saw her. He’s dancing on air. He said they just hugged for the first hour. Just hugged and cried.’ Denise paused. ‘She wasn’t . . . the doctor told him that Carney hadn’t touched her. It’s good to know. It’ll make the recovery easier. Abby’s mother is on the way over now.’

  ‘He was attracted to her, right? That’s why he took her, isn’t it?’

  ‘Partly. She was similar to Lucy, but yeah, he desired her and he wanted to control it. Actually, he wanted to destroy it, as if he could destroy his lust by destroying the object of his lust. It’s a crazy case.’

  ‘People try to destroy love, right, because love makes them feel weak. It’s similar, isn’t it?’

  Denise looked across the street, the carnage still in evidence everywhere. ‘I think you’re right. He loved Lucy in some way, but I guess whatever she did, he’d never felt loved, so the brutality and control started up.’

  ‘How did he keep it hidden for so long?’

  ‘Working Hate Crime, I suppose. Finding a job where he was meeting sickos like himself every day and seeing punishment every day. Maybe that’s what kept him straight for so long.’

  ‘You think he might’ve been doing this a lot longer if he wasn’t a cop?’

  ‘I think he might have cracked earlier, yeah,’ said Denise.

  ‘We got some details from his lock-up. I’ve just been on to Garcia. They found his boots. He didn’t ditch them. All cut up with wire. They also got some information on his case-files.’

  ‘What did they find?’ asked Denise.

  ‘He had been letting Section 88 off the hook for years, allowing them to terrorize the community while offering up half-baked investigations. He liked to meet the victims. To see the aftermath, the Jewish community in tears, in fear. Section 88 were like his own attack hounds. He let them run the streets of Brooklyn and walked after them, free of any suspicion, looking at the pain they caused.’

  ‘And the killings?’ asked Denise.

  ‘Section 88 weren’t killers. He did it all himself. He even set up that lowlife doing time for Esther Haeber’s murder. That’s going to have to be looked at again.’

  ‘What about Heming?’

  ‘Heming owed Carney, I guess, for letting his team roam the streets. Carney used him to get him barbed wire and trucks. He must’ve always figured that if we started to link the killings, then Section 88 would be the prime suspect.’

  ‘They were for a time. He read it all like a pro.’

  ‘He was trained to be a pro, that’s what kept him in the game.’

  Eddie Kasper came over to them. ‘My favorite pair,’ he said. ‘I got to congratulate you two. How you feeling?’

  ‘Good, Eddie,’ said Harper.

  ‘You going to wash some time soon?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘Some time soon.’

  ‘That’s good. I like my heroes clean, Detective Harper. Nice and clean.’

  ‘Why did he do it, that’s what I’d like to understand?’ said Harper. ‘We all grow up with problems and we learn to fight them, right?’

  ‘The absence of love, Tom, that’s the breeding ground. Hated and abandoned at an early age. It makes self-hatred turn into something deeply damaged and vicious. And yeah, he’s also an alpha male, isn’t he? So he’s got all that capacity to be something but inside, he feels like a loser, a man who’ll never fit in. Such men turn to Nazism because it’s such a strong image. They need that cloak to cover up all the pain and anger. For a while, the hate makes them feel normal, like all that anger has a purpose. Self-hatred needs a hell of a lot of power and glory and murder to convince it that it’s worthwhile.’

  A hand appeared on Harper’s left shoulder.

  ‘Sorry, Detective, sorry, ma’am, we need to talk to you both.’ Harper and Levene looked up.

  ‘You need to talk to us now?’ said Denise.

  Harper blinked into the sunlight. Two guys stared down on him, both over six foot, both wearing shades and dark blue suits.

  ‘Come on,’ said Harper. ‘They want the paperwork.’

  Harper checked his annoyance. It was no good getting riled. He’d done his fighting. He had, Denise had, and they’d both come up good. Not Jack Carney, though. He’d been fighting something else. Some deep, dark inheritance. His own personality, the abuse he had suffered – his own failures, of course, but it was something bigger than that: the state-sanctioned evil that he’d inherited from reading about it in the past.

  The attraction of evil had caught Jack Carney; it had caught and tangled up all the hatred he felt for himself and forced all that hatred on to another target. His life was over, but the forces that animated him were not dead. Harper looked at the blackened walls of the buildings along the street. The battles were still out there to be fought and won.

  Harper stood, feeling the downside of the adrenalin kick, and let himself be led away from the chaos, still holding Denise’s hand.

  He saw Captain Frank Lafayette running across, his face red and heaving. Harper smiled. ‘I got to debrief,’ he said. ‘Can the disciplinary hearing wait?’

  ‘Fuck that, Tom. I just wanted to . . . I just wanted to see my best cop. You did us proud.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Harper. ‘Can you believe it?’

  ‘Which part?’ said Lafayette.

  ‘A cop – that part, the part that destroys the faith in the system.’

  ‘Cop or anything else, this isn’t about his day job. This is about a sick man who sought out the job to allow him to hunt as he worked. You don’t get much more cynical than that.’

  ‘You think he thought about it from the start?’

  ‘Yeah, I do. He abused the system, sure. He got through, sure. He’ll provoke a whole barrage of “it must never happen again” thoughts and articles. There will be outrage, disgust and pain. From the Jewish community especially. A cop who’s meant to protect, who does the opposite. The powerful using their position to abuse and mu
rder.’

  Harper glanced at Denise. ‘It’ll take decades to undo this kind of betrayal of trust. You’d think this would be a stark message to all those racists and extremists, but a few years down the line, it will happen again. We always say we’ll never forget and we always fucking do.’

  ‘Not everyone forgets,’ said Denise. ‘Not you. Not me. Not the vast majority.’

  ‘The vast majority aren’t going to bring up Becky Glass’s two kids,’ said Harper.

  ‘No, but they pay to keep cops like you on the streets so that degenerates like Carney get taken down.’

  ‘I hope they’re okay, that’s all,’ said Harper. ‘Ruth, Jerry and Abby. I just hope they can get through this. You got to have hope, right?’

  ‘You’ve given them more than hope, Tom. You’ve given them an ending.’

  ‘I’m hoping I’ve given them something else as well,’ he said as he turned to her.

  ‘And what’s that?’ asked Denise.

  ‘A new beginning,’ said Harper as he smiled.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to everyone out there who has read my books. I’m grateful for all your reviews and comments which always make me want to write more and try out new ideas. I hope you enjoy them.

  Thank you to my wife. For everything – from just putting up with me to continuing to inspire the best in me, and of course for reading draft after draft and for all the great suggestions and necessary corrections. Thanks to my children. You’re just the best. I feel very lucky to be able to write surrounded by such support. Thanks also to Laura, my American adviser, for all her help. A huge thanks to my whole family who continue to forgive me for neglecting them!

  Thank you to my agent, Andrew Gordon, for his continued enthusiasm, good sense and clear guidance. His knowledge of what’s right and what works has helped to make this book as good as it possibly can be. Thank you to the whole team at David Higham Associates who have helped get this book to print.

  Thanks to the brilliant team at Headline, who manage to make everything about book publication feel personal and important. Thank you to all those in Marketing, Publicity and Sales who have done such a brilliant job in getting this book out there. I am most indebted, of course, to my editor, Vicki Mellor. Vicki has incredibly good judgement and her intuition and guidance have helped shape and form this book and me, as a writer. Thanks, Vicki.