Hangman

by Daniel Cole

  “OK.” Rouche nodded patiently. “Anything a little more tangible? Yes?”

  “The murders in New York and London definitely mirror each other.”

  “Absolutely,” said Rouche, “which means that we can look forward to an ‘unpleasant hyphen question mark’ murder in London at any moment, raising the question why? For what reason would someone want to declare war on both of these cities and these cities alone?”

  “The stock markets?” someone shouted out.

  “Concentration of wealth?”

  “Media focus?”

  “And we need to explore all of those avenues,” Rouche told them. “OK. What else does the list tell us?”

  “The MO,” a voice called from behind the wall. The officer pushed her way through to the front. “Every MO has been different, which suggests a degree of independence. Clearly these people are provided with a target, perhaps a time frame, but it would appear that the rest is up to them.”

  “Excellent!” said Rouche. “Which brings me to my next point—we need to focus on these people as individuals. Glenn Arnolds didn’t want to hurt anybody . . . not really. He was being used. We want to split you into five teams. Each team takes one of our killers. Your job will be to identify anything about them that could have been exploited. Off the top of my head: Townsend—money, Medina—immigration status, Burrell—prison perks like drugs or placement, Fergus—ill mother, Arnolds—his dead brother and general mental health.”

  His audience was attentively scribbling notes.

  “Also, Baxter here has requested a copy of each of their medical records forwarded to her at your earliest convenience,” he added.

  Rouche noticed the inquiring look that Lennox shot Curtis.

  “I’ll free up anyone else I can,” Lennox told him.

  Rouche nodded in gratitude.

  “Anything you turn up,” said Rouche, addressing the room once more, “please do contact myself, Curtis, or Baxter immediately. Between us, we’ll have an overview of the entire case and should be able to spot any similarities or patterns. Thank you kindly.”

  Rouche’s conclusive farewell also served to dismiss the room.

  Lennox went over to speak to him, Baxter, and Curtis privately:

  “I’ve got a string of press conferences and meetings,” she told them. “I may require you throughout the day, Chief Inspector.”

  Baxter had figured as much.

  “Your plans?” Lennox asked none of them in particular.

  “Forensic Services first. They’ve got both the bodies from yesterday and hopefully an ID on . . . our victim,” said Rouche, choosing his wording carefully with Curtis present. “We’ve got the Arnolds team trying to get hold of his psychiatrist and interviewing his friends and neighbors, so will probably be chasing up one of those later on.”

  “Very well.” Lennox stopped Curtis on the way out while Baxter and Rouche went on. “What does she want the medical records for?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Find out. Remember our talk. After what’s happened, it’s more important than ever that we break this case. If she’s keeping anything from you, I’ll have no reservations about sticking her on the next plane home.”

  “I understand.”

  Lennox nodded and then stepped aside to let Curtis catch up with her colleagues.

  “So Glenn Arnolds was still taking his meds?” asked Curtis in confusion.

  “No, but he was taking meds,” answered the petite woman cryptically, peering over the top of her reading glasses to address her.

  Curtis recalled meeting the forensic pathologist on several occasions in the past. After all, Stormy Day was not a name easily forgotten. If recollection served, the feeling of being utterly confused while in the woman’s company was completely normal. Stormy passed Curtis and Rouche a file containing a copy of a printout: results from the blood test performed as part of the autopsy. It meant absolutely nothing to either of them.

  They were sat in the reception area of the OCME Hirsch Center for Forensic Services. Situated on East 26th Street, it occupied one of the numerous ancillary buildings to the main medical center, meaning that the two cadavers had traveled only three blocks south from the NYU Langone emergency room. They were meeting in this unconventional spot because, unbeknown to Curtis, Rouche had phoned ahead to request that they have no further involvement with the bodies.

  She would have been offended had she known, but he had seen the relief on her face when asked to take a seat in the light, airy reception area instead of being led into the darkened labs at the heart of the building, where she would have been confronted with the wax-skinned corpse of the man she had shot.

  Baxter was yet to join them. She had not even managed to escape the field office before Lennox had “borrowed” her for some press conference or other.

  Stormy gestured to the incomprehensible page in Curtis’s hand:

  “I don’t know exactly what he was taking, but he really, really shouldn’t have been taking them. There was virtually no sign of the antipsychotic medications he’d been prescribed, but there were trace amounts of ETH-LAD and benzodiazepines.”

  Curtis looked blank.

  “One of the side effects of benzodiazepine is suicidal tendencies.”

  “Oh.”

  “And ETH-LAD is like LSD’s little brother. Possibly two of the worst things that someone with Arnolds’s history could be taking: hallucinations, a diminished grip on reality. And this was on top of the withdrawal symptoms from the antipsychotics. The guy would have been a state, though I bet that ceiling at Grand Central would have come to life!” Realizing that her hippie roots were probably best saved for a less conservative audience, she cleared her throat and continued: “I’ve sent a sample of his blood down to Quantico for extensive testing and asked to see any other medication they find at his home.”

  “I’ll chase that up for you,” said Curtis, making a note.

  “That’s all I’ve really got for you on Arnolds besides the obvious. To be honest, it’s a bit of a bizarre situation. Normally his body would have remained at the crime scene, but because of the nature of the incident, he’s covered in another man’s blood and tissue, went for a journey in an ambulance, and had to be cut free in the emergency room. Basically, half of New York City has probably poked his corpse by now. The level of contamination and postmortem interference is problematic, to say the least.”

  “What about our victim?” asked Rouche.

  “Noah French. Reported missing two days ago. He worked in one of the ticket kiosks at Grand Central.”

  Rouche looked impressed.

  “Didn’t even need to run any tests to work it out,” Stormy continued. “He had a tattoo on his forearm: ‘K.E.F. 3-6-2012.’ Had to be a son or daughter. We checked the initials against birth records in the New York area for that date and got one result back.”

  “Genius.” Rouche smiled.

  “I thought so. He’d been drugged: some form of opiate. Details are all in the file.” Stormy was distracted by something at the front desk. “Is she with you?”

  They turned around to see Baxter gearing up for an argument with the man behind reception, who clearly had no idea what she was talking about. Stormy got up to intervene before the situation escalated.

  Rouche turned to Curtis:

  “We’ve got a proper lead,” he said. “We need to speak to this psychiatrist.”

  “Yeah. We will,” said Curtis.

  She flicked back to the blood results, opened up the metal rings, and removed the printout.

  Rouche looked confused.

  “Er, what are you doing?” he asked.

  “Following orders.”

  “By removing evidence?”

  “By keeping our first real break in the case between the FBI and CIA.”

  “I don’t really . . . I don’t feel very comfortable with that,” said Rouche.

  “And you think I do? But that’s why they’re called orders and not
treats.”

  Stormy was heading back over with Baxter in tow. Curtis still had the printout in her hand:

  “Hide this.”

  She tossed it at Rouche, who threw it back at her:

  “I don’t want it! I’m gonna tell her.”

  “Don’t!”

  Rouche’s coat was draped over the back of the sofa. Curtis stuffed the wrinkled sheet of paper into one of the pockets just as Baxter sat down beside them. She ignored Rouche’s disapproving look as Stormy continued.

  Baxter had accompanied Lennox to the press conference, which had been scheduled in order to formally release details of the incident at Grand Central Terminal. She had been both surprised and impressed by Lennox’s refusal to bow to the pressure of naming the agent responsible for an innocent man’s death. She had emphasized that the only person to blame had been a mentally unstable man, who had engineered a man’s death by forcing the hand of an agent, who had acted both heroically and as dictated by protocol.

  Lennox had been savvy enough to make her agent appear the victim, and the journalists’ questions had quickly softened in their accusatory tone. Baxter had done her bit by churning out the same rehearsed answers as usual when asked how the investigation was progressing.

  When she eventually got out, she checked her phone to find several updates. As requested, the teams had sent over the killers’ medical records as soon as they had received them. So far, she had the notes on Eduardo Medina, Dominic Burrell, and Marcus Townsend. She forwarded them straight to Edmunds before heading off to Forensic Services.

  Edmunds glanced down at the screen of his phone, which buzzed as he received three consecutive emails. On seeing Baxter’s name, he got up and went into the toilets, locking himself in a cubicle before downloading the attachments. He flicked through the first report and found what he was looking for in seconds. He opened up the second and found the same word a few pages in. He clicked on the third report and started to read. Suddenly, his eyes lit up. He burst out of the cubicle, exited the toilets, and rushed toward the lifts.

  Baxter, Rouche, and Curtis had just finished up with the forensic pathologist. As they stepped back out onto First Avenue, Baxter’s phone went off. She would have ignored the call had it been anybody else:

  “Edmunds?” she answered, moving away from her colleagues.

  “They were all having counseling of some sort!” he greeted her excitedly.

  “Who?”

  “The killers. That’s what links them! I was on that Streets to Success website and it said that they offer counseling to help people get back on their feet. It got me thinking. My notes on Patrick Peter Fergus say he suffered a breakdown due to the financial burden of his ill mother. Makes sense he’d go see someone. And guess what?”

  “Go on.”

  “Marcus Townsend did take Streets to Success up on their kind offer of complimentary life-coaching sessions. Eduardo Medina spiraled into depression after his daughter’s immigration application fell through—he was at an AA group the night before the murder—and Dominic Burrell had compulsory weekly meetings as part of his rehabilitation plan.”

  Baxter was smiling. Edmunds was yet to let her down:

  “Glenn Arnolds, unsurprisingly, had serious mental health issues since childhood,” she said excitedly. “We’ve been looking for his psychiatrist anyway.”

  “Better look harder: that’s five out of five!” Edmunds almost shouted. “OK. You can say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That you’d be lost without me.”

  Baxter hung up.

  Curtis had spent the brief phone call devising a way to leave Baxter behind with Lennox while she and Rouche disappeared up to Westchester County to interview the elusive Dr. Bantham. She fell silent when Baxter approached them wearing a rare grin on her face:

  “We need to find the psychiatrist,” she told them decisively.

  Rouche looked to Curtis and smirked.

  Chapter 15

  Sunday, 13 December 2015

  12:22 P.M.

  “. . . So if Azaz is Hebrew for ‘strength’ and El means ‘God,’ there’s an argument that, in that particular order, ‘Azazel’ means ‘strength over God’ . . . And here it says that animals deemed ‘dark,’ such as bats, snakes, and feral canines, are ‘particularly susceptible vessels to sustain unclean spirits between hosts.’”

  “Could we please talk about something else?” complained Curtis from the driver’s seat as she indicated to turn off the interstate. “You’re really starting to creep me out.”

  Rouche had caught one of the channel-hopping Pastor Jerry Pilsner Jr.’s numerous television appearances that morning and had spent the entire journey googling their supernatural suspect.

  Baxter had tried her damnedest to sleep through most of it.

  They started down a rural road, the branches of the bare trees like knotted fingers grasping out at lonely vehicles.

  “OK, but get this . . .” said Rouche excitedly, scrolling down the screen of his phone.

  Curtis huffed.

  Awake again, Baxter wiped a bit of drool from the corner of her mouth.

  “‘Hunted by the archangel Raphael, Azazel the fallen is unburdened of his blackened wings and bound in the darkness of the deepest pit on God’s creation. For buried beneath the sharpest of rocks in the harshest, most remote desert of the earth, Azazel remained—in a grave lined with the shredded feathers of his own decimated mantle, never again to see the light till he burn within the fires of Judgment Day.’”

  “Thanks for that,” yawned Baxter.

  “I hate you, Rouche,” Curtis told him, shivering off the unpleasant story.

  “Last little bit,” Rouche promised, clearing his throat. “‘In that endless darkness, Azazel fell into madness, and unable to break free of his chains, he tore his spirit free of his shackled body to wander the earth forever as a thousand different souls.’”

  Rouche put his phone down in his lap:

  “I’ve creeped myself out now.”

  The first delicate snowflakes were landing gently against the windscreen as they pulled into the Banthams’ icy driveway. The forecasters had predicted heavy snowfall later in the day, warning of possible blizzard conditions overnight and into the morning.

  As Curtis followed Rouche’s tire tracks from the previous day up to the garages, Baxter gazed out at the house, which looked just as uninhabited as it had the previous afternoon, except that a set of deep footprints had been trodden into the otherwise untouched lawn.

  “Someone’s been here,” she said hopefully from the backseat.

  Curtis parked up, and they stepped out into the cold. Rouche noticed a neighbor watching them curiously from the property opposite and hoped that she would leave them in peace. She started to approach, almost slipping over twice as she negotiated the driveway.

  “You two go ahead,” he told them.

  Curtis and Baxter approached the front door while he went to intercept the nosy woman before she could delay them further by breaking a hip.

  “Can I help you?” he whispered to himself, anticipating the typical greeting of an interfering neighbor.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Just looking for Dr. James Bantham,” he said, dismissing her with a smile.

  Curtis rang the doorbell while the woman looked on suspiciously. She showed no sign of leaving.

  “Cold out,” said Rouche, subtly suggesting to the woman that she might be more comfortable retreating to the warmth of her own goddamn business.

  Baxter knocked loudly when there was no answer.

  “They’ve got good security,” said the neighbor, making no attempt to disguise the implication.

  “No kidding,” replied Rouche, taking out his identification. “They’ve got three police officers on their doorstep.”

  The woman thawed instantly, despite her blue hands looking as though they might drop off at any second.

  “Have you tried their cell phones?” she sug
gested as she retrieved her own.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you got Terri’s number, though?” she asked, holding the phone up to her ear. “Lovely woman. And the kids. We all look out for each other arou—”

  “Shut up!” Baxter yelled from beside the front door. The woman looked outraged. After a moment, Baxter turned to Curtis: “Can you hear that?”

  She crouched down and opened the letterbox, but the sound had stopped.

  “Call it again!” she shouted back at the nosy neighbor.

  A few seconds later, the quiet hum of a phone vibrating against a hard surface returned.

  “Phone’s in the house,” she called back to Rouche.

  “Oh,” said the neighbor. “Well, that’s weird. She always has her phone with her in case the boys need her. She must be home. Perhaps she’s in the bath.”

  Rouche registered the genuine concern on the woman’s face:

  “Baxter! Listen again,” he shouted.

  He took out his own phone and redialed the number he had attempted to contact the doctor on the previous day, his heart fluttering a little in the pause as he waited for the call to connect.

  Baxter pressed her ear into the narrow gap in the door as she strained to listen.

  “Oh, the weather outside is frightful . . .”

  Startled, she fell back onto the wet floor as the Christmas tune blared from directly behind the door.

  “But the fire is so delightful . . .”

  Rouche turned to the bewildered woman: “You, go!”

  He was already reaching for his weapon as he sprinted toward the house.

  Baxter watched from the damp ground as Curtis kicked at the lock.

  “And since we’ve no place to go . . .”

  Curtis kicked again. This time, the door swung open, sending the phone and its festive ringtone skidding beneath an impressive Christmas tree.

  “FBI! Anyone home?” she shouted over the last line of the chorus.

  Rouche and Baxter followed her inside. As he rushed upstairs, Baxter headed through the hallway and into the kitchen.

  “Dr. Bantham?” she could hear him calling somewhere above.