Mason shielded his eyes with one hand and flipped open his badge jacket with the other. The light lingered as a bright red stain in his vision even after the techs returned to their work. He stepped between them and stared up at the cross. The base had been wedged into a deep crevice in a massive rock formation. Scraggly evergreen shrubs grew from cracks in the stone and obscured the bare feet of the victim. He could tell by the texture of the skin near the heels and the thickness and color of the toenails that the victim had been elderly, like the others.
“Tell us what you see,” Layne said.
The taller of the two evidence response specialists glanced back at them. Mason caught a glimpse of brown eyes and a caramel complexion through her face shield. Dark bangs spilling out from underneath her hard hat. She spoke with a heavy Puerto Rican accent.
“We believe he’d been dead for between six and eight hours when we arrived, placing his time of death somewhere between fourteen and sixteen hundred hours.”
“The middle of the afternoon in Central Park? You’re sure?”
“His skin was still slightly warmer than the ambient air and he was in fixed rigor,” the other said. He was shorter and stockier, with a broad jaw and thick-rimmed glasses. “At the same time, however, there was significant hypostasis in his ankles and feet. That generally doesn’t develop until livor mortis.”
He shone his beam onto the victim’s feet below the rope that bound them to the post. They were purple and swollen and shot through with black veins.
“Which means he was bound up there long enough for the blood to settle into his feet before he was killed,” Mason said.
“Our best guess is somewhere between sixteen and twenty-four hours.”
“Between ten P.M. and dawn, yesterday.”
“And no one saw him?” Layne asked. “No one heard him calling for help?”
“There’s a good reason for that.”
The female investigator shone her light up toward the victim. Mason caught a blur of blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and a down vest before the beam settled on the dead man’s face. His purplish tongue was engorged and protruded from his mouth. There was a black, necrotic laceration right down the middle. The corners of his lips pulled downward. His entire face was swollen and his eyes bulged beneath his heavy lids. The muscles in his cheeks sagged, as though a massive stroke had affected both sides.
“What the hell happened to him?”
“We haven’t even had a chance to document the site yet,” the female officer said. “When someone calls the terrorism hotline with a report of a suspicious-looking man wearing a vest, this isn’t what you expect to find.”
“We had to clear the area first,” the stocky officer said. “Make sure there was no immediate chemical, explosive, or radiological threat before we could even get close.”
“And you’re certain there isn’t?” Layne said.
“Nothing registered on the calorimetric array or the dosimeter.”
“You would have been able to detect it if a chemical weapon had been employed on the victim, right?” Mason said.
“I can tell you right now, just by looking at him, that some sort of chemical was used on the poor bastard. The way both sides of his face droop like that? And the protrusion of his eyes? Those are acute physiological responses associated with toxins like BTX.”
“Botulism?”
“That would be a safe guess based on the bilateral flaccid paralysis and certainly explain why no one could hear him, what with not being able to speak and all.”
Mason turned on his own mini Maglite and used it to inspect the victim. His best guess was that the man was somewhere between sixty-five and eighty, although the facial deformities made it impossible to narrow that range. The overalls were ill fitting, dirty, and worn through at the knees. The bib, buckles, and flannel shirt were concealed beneath a down vest with feathers blooming from countless tears. He caught a glimpse of what almost looked like a fat quill, and then it was gone. It took several seconds for him to find it again.
“What’s that right there?” he asked.
The female investigator stepped forward, climbed up onto the rock, and sifted through the feathers until she isolated a thin tube about half the width of a drinking straw. She carefully pulled on it until it slithered all the way out, revealing that it connected to … nothing. She patted down the vest. Stuck her fingers inside. Pulled on the fabric and shone her light into the stuffing.
“There has to be something…” Her words trailed off when she brought the tube close to the plastic shield over her face. She held it higher and studied the bottom, as though trying to look at the stars through it. “There’s a bulb on the end. And some sort of fluid inside.”
“What is it?” Layne asked.
“There’s only one way to know for sure.” She carried the tube to her evidence-collection kit and removed a small jar. “We have a GC-MS in the mobile lab. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour to figure out what we’re dealing with.”
“But you’re sure it’s not a chemical warfare agent,” Layne said.
“Trust me. If it were, you’d be dead by now.”
“There’s a cheery thought.”
The evidence response specialist tipped the open end of the straw over the jar. A small amount of clear fluid drained out, barely enough to cover the bottom of the container. She upended it and gave it a gentle shake. A phlegmlike gob swelled from the opening and dropped into the water. It unraveled on the bottom into what looked like a pale worm with horizontal striations.
“Is that a tapeworm?” Layne asked.
“I could be wrong, but it looks an awful lot like the tentacle of a jellyfish,” the female investigator said.
Mason shone his light up at the dead man’s face—at his swollen tongue protruding from between his lips and the black erosion that resembled a split in a burned hot dog.
An ulcerous wound that had been inflicted by a venomous tentacle.
32
Mason watched the men from the medical examiner’s office carry the body bag downhill through the trees, toward the path. Flashlight beams slashed through the underbrush as the forensics team fanned out into the woods, scouring the damp leaves and trampled weeds for evidence.
“This guy didn’t just walk into the park dragging an unconscious man behind him,” he said. “Someone would have seen him, regardless of how late at night.”
“How many entrances to the park are there?” Layne asked.
“You can get in just about anywhere along the six-mile perimeter,” Barbieri said.
“Security cameras?”
“Thirty-some inside the park itself and traffic cams at all of the surrounding intersections.”
“Are there any blind spots?” Mason asked. “If you knew where the cameras were, could you transport an unconscious body into the park without being recorded?”
“Probably. There’s a ton of forested areas. Especially along Central Park West. But this park even has its own police precinct. We’re talking mounted and foot patrols, day and night.”
“The victim could have lived nearby. Or maybe he took a walk along the same path every night. Our guy could have stalked him. Learned his routine. Picked this spot for the abduction and dragged him away from the path.”
“There are no signs of a struggle anywhere around here,” Barbieri said
“A guy with a background in chemistry wouldn’t have much difficulty getting his hands on some chloroform. Or even making his own with some acetone and bleach.”
“Regardless,” Layne said, “he had to have entered the park at some point in time, either with the victim or by himself. If it was captured on film, we need to find it.”
Mason climbed up onto the rock formation and knelt at the base of the cross. It was made from four-by-four fence posts. The first was wedged into a crevice, the bottom of which was filled with concrete. It had been formed with a square metal bracket large enough to insert the post, and so long ago that it
had already collected a season’s worth of dead leaves and pine needles. The second post had been bolted horizontally to the top of the first and stabilized with L-shaped brackets. The wood was scarred where the cords binding the victim had worried into the grain. At the wrists and shoulders. Around the chest, waist, and ankles.
“Accessing those cameras won’t be a problem,” Barbieri said. “Picking him out of the forty-some thousand people who enter this park on any given day without a physical description will be, though.”
“What about the victim?” Layne said. “If we can isolate him and establish a pattern—”
“There’s a reason he was subjected to an agent that would distort his features,” Mason said. “Unless he walked in here looking like that, facial-recognition software is useless. If we knew his name, we could get a picture from his driver’s license or social media accounts.”
“It’s just a matter of time,” Barbieri said.
“Not the way things have been going for us lately,” Layne replied.
Mason stood and pressed his back to the cross. Shone his light into the surrounding treetops.
“He had to have gotten these posts up here somehow,” he said. “Carrying them into the park would have attracted attention. Check and see if there are any active construction sites within the boundaries of the park. If there are materials of any value out here, they’re within range of a security camera.”
“On it,” Barbieri said. He turned and started barking orders into his two-way before he was even out of the clearing.
There was a tiny gap between the interwoven branches of the canopy where Mason could see a sliver of the concrete path downhill. It wasn’t a clear view by any stretch of the imagination. He wouldn’t have been able to describe anyone walking past, but he’d know someone was there. Within shouting range, if only he could raise his voice.
“The Scarecrow wanted his victim to cling to hope for as long possible,” Mason said. “He wanted him to see the people walking past on the path. If any one of them had turned and looked into the forested area at just the right moment, they would have seen this guy looking back at them. He couldn’t move and he couldn’t talk, but he was conscious of everything going on around him. And inside him. Like the others, he knew he was dying.”
“He recognized the point of no return.”
“Exactly. He understood how the toxin worked and mentally checked off the symptoms. Botulism makes total sense. His vision would have become blurry and his speech slurred. His muscles would have grown weaker and weaker, until he couldn’t control them at all. He wouldn’t have been able to swallow. The mere act of breathing would have grown increasingly difficult, until he realized that if he didn’t use the last of his strength to inhale from the straw, the suffering would be more than he could bear.”
“So he took a big slurp of jellyfish stingers?”
“A means to end his suffering.”
“What was he, allergic?” Layne asked. “I got stung as a kid. It hurts like you wouldn’t believe, but it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to kill you.”
“Catch,” Mason said, and tossed her his phone.
While the ERT had been removing the body from the cross, he had, in addition to learning about the physiology of botulism, initiated a quick Internet search using the key words jellyfish, venom, and Japan. The results had been exactly what he expected. Chironex yamaguchii. Commonly known as habu-kurage. A species of box jellyfish found in the coastal waters surrounding Japan, and one of the most venomous life-forms on the planet, capable of causing respiratory failure and cardiac arrest within a matter of minutes.
Layne nearly dropped his phone when it vibrated in her hand. She held up the screen and read the caller ID.
“Southern Region Medical Examiner’s Office.”
“It’s about time,” Mason said. He was about to take the call, when he realized there was a commonality among the other crime scenes, a detail he had yet to find, but one that had to be around here somewhere. “Go ahead and answer it. Have Dr. Quarrels send the DNA profile to Locker. And give him a heads-up to let him know it’s coming. Make sure he knows to drop everything and call us the moment he has a positive ID. I need to follow this line of thought and see where it leads me.”
He grabbed one of the portable lights, which were about a hundred times brighter than his flashlight, shone it into the trees, and turned slowly in a circle as he visually scoured the branches from the lower canopy to the upper, searching the shadows for what he knew had to be there.
“It has to be around here somewhere.”
“What does?” Layne asked. She returned his phone and craned her neck to follow the progress of the spotlight through the limbs of the densely needled cedars and skeletal sycamore and oak trees.
“The camera. The Scarecrow took a huge risk setting up right in the middle of Central Park. There’s no way he could have walked away without seeing the payoff. He rigged the video surveillance behind the false wall at the end of the tunnel and sat either on that tree trunk behind the farmhouse or on top of the silo, watching those men suffer for days on end. He wouldn’t have missed a single second of this guy’s agony for anything in the world.”
“This could just be a distraction to keep us occupied while he enacts whatever plan he has for the Novichok.”
“True, but he also could have stood in this very spot, dispersed it with a remote-controlled drone he bought at any store, and wiped out the entire city.”
“But by doing so, he’d risk dying with everyone else.”
“I’m not convinced that’s not his ultimate goal. The profile suggests he’s selected a finite number of victims. Maybe he’s no longer able to complete his design, but he can still make sure everyone on his list dies before he checks out.”
“A mass murderer’s bucket list?”
“That would be the logical culmination of both his personal and professional lives.” Mason thought he saw something. He stopped turning and focused the light at the highest point among the trees. “Wait.”
“What?”
“Grab Barbieri.”
Mason gathered his bearings. The victim had been positioned facing to the west. He was currently shining the beam about ten degrees south of that bearing. It wouldn’t have provided a perfect view of the man as he died, but it would have been more than good enough.
“What’d you find?” Barbieri asked.
“Climb up here. Next to me.”
Mason scooted a few inches to his left, just far enough to make room for the other agent. Layne climbed higher on the formation, behind the cross.
“What’s that over there?” Mason asked.
Barbieri leaned right up against him and aligned his line of sight with the beam.
“All I see are trees.”
“Past them.”
“I can’t—”
“Keep looking at that same spot,” Mason said. “Right between where those branches fork.”
He switched off the light. The night sky limned the boughs with an almost ethereal glow. Beyond the canopy, at the very edge of sight, was the top corner of a skyscraper.
“Which building is that?” he asked.
Barbieri stood on his toes. Leaned from one side to the other to get a better look.
“Mayfair Towers,” he said. “It’s an apartment complex on Seventy-second. Half a block from Central Park West.”
“We need to get inside that apartment,” Mason said. “Assemble a tactical team. And do so quickly. If he’s watching us, he knows we’re coming.”
33
“It’s the penthouse apartment.” Barbieri spoke into the microphone inside his tactical gas mask as they jogged up the stairwell of the thirty-six-story tower. His voice was loud in Mason’s earpiece. “The owner’s listed as Aegis Asset Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Nautilus Petroleum.”
“The oil company?” Layne said. She was still trying to Velcro the straps of her Kevlar vest over her chest, a feat mad
e even more difficult by the full-body CBRN outfit underneath it. The black GORE CHEMPAK tactical suits made them look like Imperial TIE fighter pilots from Star Wars, but they were Class 3–rated for protection from chemical, biological, and radiological threats. “Why would an oil company need an apartment?”
“Diversification? Executive compensation package? Half of these luxury apartments are owned by corporations or foreign nationals. One like this goes for upward of four million dollars.”
Mason’s heavy breathing echoed inside his mask. The visor narrowed his peripheral vision to an uncomfortable extent, making him feel like he was playing a first-person-shooter video game.
“Who’s the registered occupant?” he asked.
“Charles Raymond. Managing director of Research and Development.”
They rounded one bend after another, hot on the heels of the other tactical officers. The team was divided into four units, each consisting of four highly trained FBI SWAT officers. One ascended the south stairwell, the other the north. The third had already secured the main level, and the fourth was currently on a helicopter, preparing to rappel onto the roof of the building. From there, they could reach the private terrace surrounding the penthouse apartment, cover the back door, and prevent the Scarecrow from jumping down to one of the balconies of the units underneath it.
“What do we know about this guy Raymond?”
“Next to nothing at this point. Seventy-three years old. Divorced. Two adult children. Doctorate in mechanical engineering from Stanford. No criminal record.”
“Military experience?”
“None that I’m aware of.”
Layne glanced back at Mason as she hit the landing and launched herself up the next flight. The door to the thirty-fifth floor flashed past behind her. They’d been counting on the victim in the park being the owner of the suite and having a military background. Maybe the apartment had simply been the only one that offered the Scarecrow the view he needed and the body of Charles Raymond was waiting inside, although it couldn’t be coincidence that this was now the second time they’d heard the name Royal Nautilus in conjunction with this case.
The Annihilation Protocol Page 19