Our Honored Dead (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 4)

by Lawrence Kelter

  Gus got in and cranked the engine. He pulled away lickety-split.

  “It’s nice to be recognized,” Ambler said. “I’ve been with the Bureau a long time, and I’ve been passed over before. After a while you start to think it’s just never going to happen. You know what I mean?”

  “I had no doubt that you were going to get it. I could feel it in my bones.”

  “You should have shared your feelings with me,” Ambler chuckled. “I was as nervous as a hen.”

  I reached back over the seat and patted him on the leg. “I’m so proud of you.” I tried not to show him that I was getting choked up. He was family to me. Ambler blushed, and I faced front before he could see that a tear had popped out.

  We made it back to Federal Plaza in no time flat. Ambler walked through FBI headquarters looking purposeful and self-assured. It was easy to see how proud he was to have earned the new rank. He showed us directly to his new office.

  “Wow! This is nice.” Ambler’s office was large and impressive. It was glass on the street and interior sides so that he had a view of the inner office as well as lower Manhattan. His furniture looked and smelled brand new—I recognized the unmistakable odor of petrochemicals. I ran my fingers along the back of the sofa. “Nothing like the bouquet of fresh Naugahyde.”

  “I love this office,” Ambler said. He closed the door and walked over to the window. “I spent the last ten years sitting in a cubicle.”

  “You deserve it,” Gus said as he joined Ambler at the window. “Did they give you a hot young secretary to go with the promotion?”

  Ambler laughed. “I have to hire my own secretary. The old one retired with her boss.”

  “I’m perfectly willing to help you out in that area,” Gus said as he gave Ambler a shit-eating grin. “You’re a busy man. I’ll prescreen all of the candidates.”

  I smacked Gus on the arm. “Hey! You’ll get him in trouble . . . yourself as well.”

  “I’m busy as hell; the last thing I need is a distraction,” Ambler said. “I just don’t have the time.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll fit it in.” Gus began to laugh hysterically.

  “You’re such a jerk,” I said. He was bent over laughing and clutching his gut. “He’ll fit it in. It’s not that funny.”

  Ambler laughed as well. Men. Beneath the muscles and macho, they were all just children. Honestly!

  “Look at this,” Ambler said as he tapped the window.” We were several stories up. The people on the sidewalk below looked like ants.

  “What are you pointing at?”

  “Over there,” Ambler said. He was pointing at a grassy area not far from the water.

  “Is that Kowsky Plaza?”

  “Correct, that’s where we just came from. Now if I had been a little more vigilant, I might have seen the crime taking place.”

  “And if I had a crystal ball, I would have bought Apple stock years ago when it was being given away on fire sale. Shall we get to it, gentlemen, before the trail gets as cold as victim number two? I smell coffee.”

  “You smell coffee?” Ambler said. “Where did that come from?” Someone knocked on the door. Ambler looked through the glass panel and then waved for someone to come in. A female agent entered, carrying case files and a tray of coffee. Ambler shot me a disbelieving glance. “Come on in, Marjorie. Say hello to two of New York’s finest, Detective Chalice and Detective Lido.”

  Marjorie set the tray down on Ambler’s desk and then extended her hand. “Hi, Stephanie, I’m Marjorie Banks,” she said. Banks had a sincere smile. “Herb talks about you all the time.”

  “Really, we hardly know each other.” I tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t. I chuckled. “Just kidding. Nice to meet you as well, Agent Banks.”

  She shook hands with Gus. “Nice to meet you,” Gus said. “How long have you worked with Herb?”

  “Just a few weeks. I was just reassigned from the Cleveland office.” She turned to Ambler. “I made a fresh pot. I thought you might like some.” She handed Ambler the case files. “These are the copy files you wanted for the detectives. Do you need anything else?”

  “That’s fine,” Ambler said as he reached for a cup of coffee.

  “Not that one,” Banks said. “The one on the right has milk and sugar for you, Herb. The one in the center is black for Detective Lido and the one on the end is decaf for the expectant mother. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Black is great,” Gus said. “Thanks.”

  “Is everyone from Cleveland as nice as you? I’m going to put in for a transfer.”

  “Aw, she’s all right,” Ambler said. “A few more weeks around the New York office, and she’ll be as tough as nails.”

  Banks blushed and then turned to Ambler. “Do you want me to stick around?”

  “No. I’ve got it, Marjorie, but thanks for the c and c.”

  Banks looked puzzled for a split second. “Oh, copies and coffee . . . sure, anytime.” She waved. “Nice meeting the two of you.” She left and closed the door behind her.

  “Nice girl,” Gus said.

  “Nice girl?” I scowled at Gus. “She’s a woman first of all—what’s with the girl thing?” I turned to Ambler. “She’s a keeper, Herb. Don’t let her get away.”

  “You bet,” Ambler said as he pushed the two folders toward us. “You can take these with you. Let’s start to talk through the case.” We sat down facing him.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Shoot.”

  “First off, I want to remind the two of you that this geographic area of Manhattan is still and will always be a hot zone. Your average Joe will never forget September 11, but it’s not uppermost in his conscious mind. To this day, anything that happens on or around Ground Zero gets looked at under a microscope, and Kowsky Plaza is smack dab in the center of the hot zone. Nothing is routine, nothing. So if a body is found in Kowsky Plaza, it doesn’t just get looked at as a routine homicide. We examine every incident as if it might have something to do with the next geopolitical event, and I am not about to allow that to happen on my watch. Are we on the same page?” Gus and I nodded. I reached for my decaf and took a sip. “The Bureau investigators are great, but they’re not homicide cops, and that’s why I asked Shearson to lend me my two favorite detectives.” I always knew Ambler to be sharp, but he had really stepped up his game—he was acting like a leader and no longer as a field agent.

  “So tell us about number one? I assume the forensic reports are in these folders. Where was the body found and did you find a similar ceramic medallion with the body?”

  Ambler shook his head. “You bet.” He raised his finger. “Just one minute.” He picked up his phone and punched in an internal code. “We’re ready for you. Come right in.” Ambler hung up the phone.

  I heard a hand on the doorknob. Someone entered the room. I turned and saw a face I knew very well but never expected to see. The last time I had seen this face was in the hospital. It was the face of a brilliant man who was succumbing to the ravages of brain cancer, a man that medical science expected to die. My eyes grew moist. I’m not usually this emotional, but with the pregnancy and all, my hormones were running amuck. I jumped out of my chair and threw my arms around Damien Zugg.

  Chapter Seven

  I gave Zugg a peck on the cheek and stepped back to take him in. He held an evidence box, which he put down on Ambler’s couch. I had only known him as a frail man, a man trying desperately to cling to life. He looked far better than the last time I saw him. He didn’t have the robust demeanor of a triathlete or anything even close to that, but he looked stronger and healthier. “Damien, I’m so—”

  “Yeah, me too,” he said. “Funny, isn’t it? Everyone had me figured for dead.”

  Gus was standing behind me, ready to pounce on Zugg. I stepped aside and allowed the two men to embrace.

  “So you’re okay?” I asked.

  “I got a stay of execution. I’m in a test trial for a new drug. And guess what? It’s a derivative
of scorpion venom.” Zugg smiled from ear to ear. He had self-medicated with scorpion venom in an attempt to cure his glioma tumors—it was his Hail Mary pass, as all of his doctors had lost hope. “I’m in remission.”

  “That’s great!” Gus bellowed.

  I turned to Ambler. “You’re such a shit. You couldn’t tell me Damien was back? You didn’t let on that you knew anything.”

  “I thought the surprise would be better,” Ambler said.

  “You’re back to work for the Bureau?” I asked Zugg.

  “I’m just consulting, Stephanie. I’m not ready to give it my heart and soul yet. Herb brought me in to help on this case. I’m taking it one day at a time.”

  “That’s just wonderful.” I turned to Ambler. “So Damien will be working with us?”

  Ambler nodded. “As I told you earlier this morning, I only associate myself with the right people.” Zugg was a brilliant forensics man, but I couldn’t believe Ambler would put him back into action. Then again, Ambler didn’t know what I knew.

  The last time I had seen Zugg was in the back of an ambulance. He had a criminal cornered and was reciting verses from the bible as he put an end to the felon’s life. Zugg was a genius but had been struggling mentally due to the damage caused by the brain cancer. As with the cancer, had his mental instability been eradicated? Was that in remission too? During that moment when he’d cornered the felon in the back of the ambulance, I had the opportunity to stop Zugg, but I did not. His victim was a heinous individual, who was literally begging for Zugg to end his life. Zugg was terminally ill, and I thought that he was going to die—funny how things work out. My conscience reared and kicked me like a mule.

  “I can’t believe we’re going to be working together again,” Zugg said.

  Me neither. “So, what’s in the box? I have to solve this case before my mother throws me a baby shower.”

  “Same old Chalice,” Zugg said. “All work.” Zugg sat down on the couch and opened the evidence box. Inside the box was another tablet like the one that had been found with the victim at Kowsky Plaza. It was blue as well. The numeral one had been inlaid with human incisors. A small piece had been chipped from the corner of the tablet. Zugg took it out of the evidence box and held it up as Charlton Heston had in The Ten Commandments. “Let my people go.”

  I understood Zugg’s reference. “A religious tablet? Are we dealing with a hate crime?”

  “Maybe. Possibly,” Ambler said.

  Gus walked up to Zugg to examine the tablet more closely. “Blue and white are the colors of the Israeli flag, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  Gus touched the tablet at the lower corner where it had been chipped. “Was it damaged when you found it?”

  “Is it damaged or is that the area where the lab took a sample for analysis?” I asked.

  “That’s right, Chalice. That’s where we removed a sample for testing,” Zugg said.

  “So what do we know about the stone the tablet is made from?

  “Oh, it’s not made of stone,” Ambler said.

  “Then what’s it made from?”

  “Cement,” Zugg replied.

  “Anything special about that?” Gus asked.

  “Indeed,” Zugg said. “Cement is a mixture of limestone, clay, and sand.

  “And?”

  “Limestone is calcium carbonate. It’s found in abundance just about everywhere on earth. It’s also what bones are made of, and that’s what is in this tablet. The cement is made from crushed human bones.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Bones? Really? Human bones?”

  “That’s right,” Ambler said. “Damien was able to retrieve DNA evidence from the concrete in the medallion. Good thing too, because that’s all we have. A kid walked the evidence into the building. Someone paid him twenty bucks to be a messenger.”

  “No body?”

  “No body, Chalice. The medallion is all we have.”

  “Can we identify a victim from the crushed bones?” Gus asked.

  “Unfortunately no,” Zugg said. “Human bones contain low concentrations of degraded DNA. It makes them unsuitable for nuclear DNA examination. Besides, even if nuclear examination was possible, we would have to find a match in the National Missing Person DNA Database or at the Sorenson Genealogy Foundation. That means someone would have needed to report the missing person to one of these two entities and an adequate DNA sample submitted as a reference identification standard—not the best odds.”

  “Then what do we have?” Gus asked.

  “We were able to perform mitochondrial analysis,” Zugg continued. “That kind of testing doesn’t give us individual-specific information, but we were able to determine a genetic profile. You should find the information helpful to your investigation.”

  “Dear God, would someone please spit it out already? What did we find?”

  “Well, for one thing, the DNA we found is homogeneous throughout the cement, which means that all the bones used to make it came from the same person,” Zugg said. “Secondly, the Y-chromosome is present.”

  “That means it’s male DNA,” Gus volunteered.

  “Correct,” Ambler replied.

  “Surely the DNA tells us more than that.”

  Zugg walked to Ambler’s desk, picked up my coffee cup, and began to drink. “It does, but don’t get your hopes up.” He finished my coffee and turned to Ambler. “The coffee is delicious.”

  “Banks made a fresh pot,” Ambler said.

  “Marjorie made this?” Zugg asked. Ambler reaffirmed with a nod. “Oh, I like her. This is the first good cup of coffee I’ve had since I came back to work.” He put the empty cup back on Ambler’s desk.

  Yeah, I thought it was good too. “I may get a cup.”

  My comment prompted Gus to check the cups on Ambler’s desk. I could see him counting to himself, “One, two . . .” He looked at me and shrugged. I guess Zugg still has a couple of loose screws.

  “Focus, people, what else does the DNA tell us?

  Zugg picked up another coffee cup and returned to the couch. Just for the record, he now had Gus’ coffee in his hand. He sat down and crossed his legs. “The victim’s name was Cohen.”

  “What?”

  “The victim’s name was Cohen,” Zugg repeated. “The YAP marker was found on the Y-Chromosome. Six specific Y-STR markers were present along with genetic material belonging to the Y-haplogroup J1c3.”

  “Sometimes I really wish I had completed a degree in advanced genealogy . . . but I became a cop instead. Damien, what does all this mean?”

  “Long story short?”

  “Yes please.” Dear God, please.

  “It means that the victim shares the same genetic signature as Aaron, the brother of Moses.”

  “The victim is related to Moses?” Gus asked in a disbelieving tone.

  “Yes, but the same is true of almost anyone named Cohen; it’s not an exclusive circle.”

  “So you can analyze a spec of the victim’s DNA and determine his genealogy back to—”

  “Approximately 1600 BC,” Zugg replied. “That’s when it’s believed that Aaron lived. Actually, we can go back thirty or forty thousand years, but I don’t think it will help your chances of capturing your unsub.”

  “That’s incredible. This information is one-hundred-percent accurate?”

  “Well no, nothing is that precise. We’re going back to the Middle East almost four thousand years ago. Who knows who slept with whom? Bloodlines cross and cross and cross. I’m just telling you that the chances are pretty good that the victim’s name was Cohen, but it could have been Johnson or Atkins or Limbaugh.”

  I laughed. Personally, a corpse named Limbaugh wouldn’t bother me one bit. “Any missing person’s reports on a male named Cohen, Herb? I’m sure you checked.”

  “You know we did,” Ambler replied. “There are several of them, and we’re checking into every one. The problem is that we don’t know when the victim died or
the victim’s age. The victim could have disappeared five days ago or fifty years ago. He could have come from New Jersey or Istanbul. We would be able to determine age if we had a reasonably large portion of a formed bone, but we don’t. Possible missing persons who match the victim’s profile are listed in the files we gave you.”

  “I guess we don’t know a hell of a lot.”

  Ambler smiled. “That’s why you’re here, kiddo.”

  Chapter Nine

  “There’s my baby!” Ma reached out and smothered me with a hug. She planted a wet one on my cheek. “You smell like a mommy-to-be.”

  “I smell like a mommy-to-be?” I was standing outside the door and had yet to enter her apartment—I doubt a bear’s sense of smell is as acute as my mother’s. “How does a pregnant woman smell?”

  “Oh I don’t know, you just do. Now get out of my way and let me hug Gus.” Ma gave Gus the same octopus hug and kiss. “I made everything you could ever possibly want for dinner. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Did you ever know me not to be?”

  Ma didn’t answer right away—I couldn’t believe that she had to think about it. “God bless you, you’ve always had a good appetite, but now that you’re eating for two . . .” It was good to see Ma so happy. She had gone through a real rough patch after my father died—she dressed in black for a full two years after he was gone. At this moment, she looked more alive than I had seen her in years. She was alive with the expectation of becoming a grandmother. “I made lasagna and a roast. I baked a cheesecake: pineapple with a graham-cracker crust.”

  “Ma, even pregnant women are supposed to watch their calories.”

  “Bah! That’s nonsense. You can eat anything you want,” she said with her patented dismissive hand gesture. “Besides, knowing you, it will all go to your boobs.” She smiled at Gus. “Any problems with that, handsome?” Gus appeared to be tongue-tied. “No, I didn’t think so.” She finally yielded her sentry post, and we walked into the apartment. “I almost forgot. I made you a little tripe.”