The Rainy Day Killer

by Michael J. McCann

  “Sure,” Hank said, “no problem.” Something crashed against the other side of the wall near his right elbow, causing him to jump.

  “This other thing,” Griffin went on, “talking about Stainer and Montgomery specifically by name and suggesting he’s interested in them. I wouldn’t put too much stock in it at this point, if I were you. He loves to work the emotional angle. Chances are pretty good he’s pulling your chain just to raise the tension level and get you all hot and bothered. Still, I agree with your decision to tell them about it and, yes, I suppose they’re going to be looking over their shoulders for a while but, hey, they’re professionals. It goes with the turf.”

  “You think he’s bluffing? We’ve seen him elevating his own personal risk level from one case to the next. Do you think this might be the next level up for him? Stalking a cop?”

  “It’s possible,” Griffin admitted. “With these guys, anything’s possible within the range of possibilities that go along with their type. As an organized offender who’s shown a somewhat higher than average intelligence, he’s definitely capable of upping the ante after he’s had continued success at a lower level of risk, but having said that, even if this is a new fantasy of his, I’m not sure he’s got the moxie to actually go through with it. Yet.”

  The line was silent for a moment as Hank thought about it.

  “Increased vigilance is never a bad idea,” Griffin said, “but I wouldn’t invest too much emotional energy in it. He’s pulling your chain.”

  “Okay.”

  Griffin ended the call by promising to send a written report for the Olsen case file by the end of the day.

  Hank hung up the phone and went for another look into Martinez’s office. It was now completely devoid of furnishings. The movers were gone. He walked to the elevators, rode down in a crowded car to the ground floor, and went for a walk to get a cup of coffee at the chip stand he usually frequented.

  He leaned against a telephone pole and watched the traffic, sipping.

  Time passed.

  He found himself scanning the pedestrians for a white male in a business suit, mid-thirties, well-groomed dark hair, short, slight build, not all that physically fit or strong but with good coordination.

  He glanced up at the sky, which was beginning to fill with a flat sheet of cirrostratus clouds. A sign of approaching bad weather. Usually he paid very little attention to it, but now signs of rain on the horizon disturbed him. On the heels of that anxiety was annoyance that this guy had him watching the sky and scrutinizing passersby.

  When his coffee was half-finished, he saw Detective Maureen Truly round the corner and walk down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. She wore a navy jacket-and-skirt combination Hank hadn’t seen before. Her shapeless, straight brown hair was cut a little shorter than usual. When she reached a point directly across from the chip stand, she stepped between two parked cars and briskly jaywalked across the street. She bought a cup of coffee, stirred cream and sugar into it, and snapped on a plastic lid. Sipping, she strolled over to Hank’s telephone pole and looked up and down the street.

  “How’s it going, Maureen?” he asked.

  “Well, Lieutenant. You?”

  “Peachy.” He glanced up, hearing thunder. No, it was a jet taking off from the airport in Bering Heights. “How do you like it on the fifth floor?”

  “Fine. Not much team work, but that’s the nature of the beast, I guess.” After having assisted Hank on the Jarrett case last year while on loan from the Cold Case Unit, Maureen had received a transfer to Intelligence, where she’d been assigned the organized crime desk. It was work that better suited her information-gathering skills than did active homicide investigation, in Hank’s opinion.

  “Something new this morning,” Truly said. “Peter Mah’s back in the country. He’s in New York right now. He actually flew in on Monday. It takes a few days for me to get these reports, so I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner.”

  “That’s all right, Maureen.” He knew that all intelligence related to the Triad was being funneled through Lieutenant Jarvis and his Chinatown task force before reaching her desk, thanks to the current direction in which the political winds were blowing. Truly was very low on the totem pole, and was in the difficult position of having to establish her own information network without much help from her peers.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “I ran some checks this morning and it seems he’s still there. He’s staying at the Westin in Times Square.”

  Hank thought about it as he drained his coffee cup. When he’d saved the man’s life two years ago, Peter Mah was the 426, the Hung Kwan or Red Pole of the local Triad brotherhood, responsible for enforcement and, when necessary, execution. He’d fled the country when William Chow was elected Dragon Head, knowing that Chow would conduct a bloody purge of all his rivals, including Peter, to consolidate his power as head of the local lodge. If Mah had chosen to return to the United States now, it must be for a very good reason. This particular lodge held its elections every three years. Was Mah coming back to begin a campaign to replace Chow next year?

  “Thanks, Maureen. I appreciate the heads-up.”

  “Always, Lieutenant.” She hesitated. “I hear you’re getting a new captain.”

  “Apparently.”

  “It should be you. It’s a mistake. I know her; she’s a problem.”

  “We’ll see.” He shifted his shoulder against the telephone pole. “It’s never a good idea to pre-judge a person.”

  “Karen won’t like her. Not at all.”

  They watched the traffic for a moment. Truly stepped forward and glanced at him. “Take care.”

  Hank nodded and watched her cross the street. She retraced her steps up the sidewalk and around the corner. He finished his coffee, threw the empty cup into the trash can, and bought two more cups. He put them in a cardboard carrying tray, slipped a few packets of sugar, two creamers, and a stir stick into his pocket, and took them back to the ninth floor.

  As expected, Helen Cassion was supervising the movement of her furniture into the vacant captain’s office. As he entered the busy Homicide bullpen, he watched her, arms folded, frowning at the movers who were jockeying a large cherry wood desk through the narrow door. He’d never met her before, but Martinez had shown him her personnel jacket on Monday when Cassion’s secondment had been announced. It wasn’t exactly standard operating procedure for a subordinate to see the file of his new supervisor, but Martinez had repeated Bennett’s desire that Hank assist Cassion as best he could while she was occupying the captain’s chair.

  “Do your thing, Hank,” she’d said as he flipped through the pages of the file. “Work with her. It won’t be easy, but then neither was Stainer, and look at the wonders you’ve accomplished with her.”

  Cassion unfolded her arms, flicked a lock of hair out of her eyes, and stepped into the doorway, watching the movers like a hawk. She was tall and slender, and looked younger than thirty-one. She wore a black blazer, a white blouse, a black skirt, and black high-heeled shoes. The skirt was too short for business wear, reaching only to mid-thigh, but she obviously believed her legs were worth looking at and wanted to show them off. Her medium-length hair was naturally dark and treated with blonde streaks, and it was cut in a careless-looking flyaway style that betrayed her love of the DC night life she reportedly enjoyed every weekend.

  When she turned to look at him over her shoulder, Hank could see her Egyptian mother’s DNA reflected in her dark complexion, black arching eyebrows, dark eyes, oval face, and long, straight nose. Unpleasant lines ran from the corners of her nose to the corners of her mouth, giving her an expression of impatience and disapproval.

  “You must be Donaghue,” she said, running her eyes up and down him before settling on the tray of coffee. “One of those better be for me. I need it right now.”

  He held out the tray, and she grabbed one of the cups. “Cream or sugar?” he asked politely.

  She shook her head, opened t
he drinking hole on the plastic lid, and sucked at it greedily. When she came up for air, she nodded. “Bring me one of these every morning and we’ll get along.” She stepped into the office. “Hey! Not on that side, over there! Didn’t you listen? Desk here, credenza there! Got it?”

  Hank watched the movers wrestle the big desk back across the floor. He recognized it as having once belonged to Gerald White, the former chief for whom Hank had worked as a special assistant when he was younger than Cassion was now. It would have gone into storage when the new chief took over, but obviously had been plucked out again by someone in a senior position looking to furnish their office with the best available pieces without having to spend money that didn’t exist in their budget. It was a part of the bureaucratic game that some people played, scouring for furniture above what was normally allocated to their rank and rating, in order to suggest power and influence greater than the next person’s. That a former chief’s desk had ended up in the office of a lieutenant supervising the Missing Persons Unit suggested that Cassion indeed had some political juice within the department, or at least was working hard on it.

  “We need to talk,” she said, walking up close to Hank. “Let’s go into your office.” She brushed by him, her breast making contact with his arm. “Now,” she said over her shoulder.

  He followed her into his office and watched her sit down in his chair behind his desk. He dropped into one of his visitor’s chairs and leaned back comfortably, crossing his legs so that his left ankle rested on his right knee. He balanced his coffee cup on his calf and watched her look around the office.

  “I love what you’ve done with the place,” she said. “No photos, no nothing. Typical guy. You’re not married?”

  “No,” Hank said, “but attached.”

  She shrugged, her eyes settling on him at last. “Older guys never know what to call it. They’re so embarrassed and awkward. Whatever. Let’s get a few ground rules settled right away before anything else. As supervising lieutenant, it’s your job to do all the paperwork for this unit and have it ready for my signature on time, and make sure it’s correct the first time. I’m not doing it for you, and I’m not signing anything that needs correction. Are we clear on that?”

  “Crystal,” Hank said, sipping.

  “I’ve heard the talk about you and the commander,” she went on, “and I won’t put up with you going over my head to her on everything because you two are cozy or whatever. If you have something she needs to know, you tell me and I’ll brief her on it as appropriate. Got it?”

  Hank said nothing, but she plowed ahead without waiting for a reply. “I told her I disagree with you being the media contact on this serial killer case, because it should be the captain’s prerogative to talk to the press on something that important, but the chief’s signed off on it and there’s nothing I can do, so I expect a full briefing on everything you and the PIO come up with for public statements. Nothing goes out without my prior approval. Got it?”

  “Sure,” Hank said.

  “And another fiasco like what went down at the factory yesterday isn’t going to happen on my watch. You’re going to brief me ahead of time on every step you take from now on, and if I tell you to stand down, you stand down.”

  Hank smiled, in a friendly sort of way.

  She opened his top drawer and rummaged around in it. “Got any Aspirin? My head’s killing me.”

  “Second drawer,” he said.

  She continued to paw around in the top drawer until she’d seen everything there was to see in it, then she slammed it shut and opened the second drawer. She rifled it expertly, taking a quick inventory, and finally came out with his bottle of Aspirin. She popped the lid, swallowed four tablets with her coffee, and tossed the bottle back into the drawer. As she closed it, she looked at him sideways.

  “You don’t say a lot, do you?”

  “I don’t get paid by the word,” Hank replied.

  She laughed lightly. “I asked around about you. You’re a nice guy with a black cloud over your head that capped your career. You’ve reached your ceiling but it hasn’t made you bitter like it does a lot of the older guys who see women like me passing them by on the way up. I like that part.” She sat back. “You’re popular with the ladies, I’m told. You’ve got that big, worn-out teddy bear thing going. I like charm, it makes it easier to put up with the other crap, but at the end of the day, charm doesn’t get the job done, so keep a cork in it and concentrate on making me look good, and I’ll make sure you get all the credit you’ve got coming to you.”

  He realized he felt sorry for her. She was in over her head and she knew it, and in her fear and insecurity she was drawing on the bullshit posturing and sharp-edged fencing that probably made her a hot commodity in the DC night clubs and high-end parties she was known to frequent. Her father was a senior official in the State Department, and she was a pampered youngest child. In Martinez’s opinion, her upbringing had thrown her into social circles that were, ultimately, a little more than she could handle. She was fluent in Arabic and had worked for two years with the FBI in Washington as an analyst before following Bennett and Barkley into the GPD, but at their insistence she’d taken the ground-floor route, becoming a sworn officer through the academy and putting in the minimum field duty before earning steady promotions into headquarters. She’d chosen law enforcement as a career, according to Martinez, because of discrimination she’d encountered as a teenager after 9/11 and a desire to prove her detractors wrong by waving a badge in their faces, but the chip on her shoulder was a little too obvious and merely served to highlight her shortcomings. Hank wasn’t sure what he was going to do with her, but he’d promised Martinez he’d help her out, so that’s what he intended to do.

  “There’s rain coming in the next day or two,” he said.

  She made a face. “So? Did I ask for a weather report?”

  Hank got up, unlocked his filing cabinet, and removed a binder from the top drawer. “I’ve made you a copy of the Olsen case file.” He handed it to her. “They’re not sure of his periodicity, because it’s believed he commits other rapes and murders between his signature Rainy Day Killer offenses, but when he called me this morning he made it clear he was getting ready for another one. When it rains—and it’s going to, soon—we’ll have the districts increase their vigilance in terms of pedestrian traffic. Officers will get a copy of the composite sketch and the profile at the beginning of their shift. He wears a suit and carries an umbrella when he snatches them, so when it rains,” he leaned on the words, to make sure she understood his point, “we’re going to be extra busy because they’ll likely be stopping and questioning possibles all over the place. It’s a big city with a lot of businessmen who carry umbrellas. Stainer and Horvath will interview them and I’ll observe, whenever possible. It’ll cause a commotion, it’ll likely generate complaints, and at the very least I’ll be making an impromptu statement to the press before and after, explaining what we’re doing, and why. It’ll happen fast, but I’ll keep you up to speed as best I can. How’s that sound?”

  She shrugged. She had put the binder down on his desk without looking at it. “Like I said, Donaghue, the media strategy’s been explained to me, and while I don’t like it, I have to live with it. Just show me your statements before you make them.”

  “I’d like your cell phone number,” he said.

  She gave him a look.

  “If we arrest someone,” he explained patiently, “you’ll need to know we’ve got a suspect in custody. I need to be able to reach you whenever. You’ll want to come in to consult with the assistant state’s attorney on next steps.”

  She rolled her eyes, grabbed a pen on his desk, opened the binder, and wrote her number on the top page. “Don’t call asking me out for a drink. I don’t do the after-hours thing with subordinates.” She closed the binder with a flip of her hand, stood up, and tossed the pen down on his desk. “Let’s make sure there are no more screw-ups.”

  She walked a
round his desk to where he stood, next to the filing cabinet. “This could go really well, Donaghue. If we catch this guy, it’ll be a real feather in my cap. Yours, too. So let’s be smart and do things the right way. Okay?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Hank said.

  She patted him on the arm and walked out.

  He quietly closed his door, sat down in the visitor’s chair, picked up his coffee, and closed his eyes.

  I promised, he told himself.

  18

  Saturday, May 4: late morning

  Karen had finally bitten the bullet. She’d called Faye’s Flowers and made an appointment to drive over and pick something out of their damned books to keep Sandy’s mother from blowing a gasket. She was greeted by Faye herself, a plump, middle-aged woman with a white Margaret Thatcher hairstyle and a British accent. Karen allowed herself to be led into a viewing room where several oversized books were waiting for her on a long table covered with a clean, white cloth. The room was filled with flowers. Reluctantly, Karen sat down as Faye ran through her introductory patter.

  “Do you have anything particular in mind, Ms. Stainer?” she finally asked.

  “Nope. I don’t go to a lot of weddings.”

  “Do you have a favorite flower, for instance? We can feature it in the various arrangements and, of course, in your bouquet.”