Cuts Through Bone

by Alaric Hunt

  Guthrie failed to reach the family in Iowa despite three tries, but the coincidences were numerous. With deaths in the task force to compare, Rackers’s signature list placed twenty bodies nearby, each within a few days and a hundred miles. Guthrie tried Iowa again, then slapped the cell phone onto his desk after twenty rings.

  “One man could do all that?” Tompkins asked softly.

  “According to Greg Olsen, this little guy is a force of nature,” Guthrie said. “But I guess you got me again, college girl. Let’s put a time line together for the killings.”

  “All of them?” Vasquez asked.

  “All of them.”

  Outside, Thirty-fourth Street was rolling up, signaled by the sound of loading doors sliding down with slams. The Garment District had made another day’s money. Bright sunshine reflected from the window ledges and doorways on the gray marble across the street. Inside, more work waited. Late-night calls to the West Coast could continue into the small hours. Guthrie handed Tompkins a phone and a list. He didn’t mind if she walked while she talked, but he’d had enough of bright ideas without work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  By the end of a weekend spent making phone calls, the coincidences were impressive. Iowa produced a second body to pair with the victim Rackers provided. Even with a long list of murders, the killer never needed to be in two places at the same time. Comparably, New York City was Gagneau’s sparsest hunting ground. Across the country, he killed two or three people every week, but his hunting in the city was slower and more calculated. Michelle Tompkins didn’t need the matched lists to convince herself; she intended the proof for her uncle. Late Sunday night, they finished their calls, having found crossover bodies on most of the signature murders. George Livingston gave them an appointment with HP Whitridge for early Monday morning.

  The old man’s office was in a museum on Park Avenue in the sixties. An exclusive suite perched high atop the building like an eagle’s aerie, with access through the museum below. Guthrie and Vasquez looked like weekend sightseers who had wandered astray from viewing the collection. The little detective could pass a casual glance in his rumpled suit, if he held his off-colored fedora out of sight behind his back, but Vasquez still looked like a grade-school tomboy on a summer jaunt, maybe with a frog and a handful of mud in her pocket to match up with the black eye and tilted cap. Michelle Tompkins led them upstairs, like an escort uniformed in dark blue Armani, with her dark hair held tightly by combs. Whitridge’s office was cool, wrapped in dark woodwork and the smell of old leather. Broad, high windows looked down on Park Avenue.

  The little detective outlined their proof against Gagneau, and then Tompkins pitched for Greg Olsen’s bail. Whitridge studied her in a long pause after she finished, then slowly shook his head.

  “I don’t suppose I ever noticed before how much you resemble your aunt Nancy,” he said gently. “Your great-aunt. Sometimes a resemblance skips a generation. Aunt Nancy was a crusader, and you have that same determined look.”

  Tompkins flushed with anger. “You would leave him in jail?” she demanded. “He doesn’t deserve to be in jail! Don’t say you don’t believe what we’ve told you.”

  The silver-haired old man sighed. He settled into his wing-backed chair. “I believe I told you how long I’ve known Clayton Guthrie,” he said. “I also know he’s done what was asked: He found the killer. The police can do the rest, or perhaps the FBI is more likely.” He paused to study his niece again. She was standing angrily with her hands on her hips. He continued before she lost her patience. “I don’t know Greg Olsen, while you do. That doesn’t mean I dislike him if I don’t rush to take his side. I can see him for what he is, which isn’t far different from the man who killed Camille. Both of them are soldiers from the same elite unit of killers. Gagneau is a loose cannon; he’s out in the street exacting vengeance for the death of his fiancée. Greg Olsen isn’t a stray cat you’ll take home and feed from a dish. If I put Greg Olsen on the street, what do you think he’ll do?” Whitridge emphasized his point with a frown.

  Tompkins started to speak, but she was shocked. Her mouth closed and the hand she had lifted suddenly dropped, deprived of a gesture.

  “That’s right,” he continued. “He would run out into the street, bent on taking revenge for Camille. She was your friend, too. That’s what you want?”

  “That’s not fair,” Tompkins said softly. “That’s not what I was thinking.”

  Vasquez cleared her throat and caught Whitridge’s eye. “I gotta admit I thought of that,” the young Puerto Rican said. “That first thing, he would kill Gagneau. I thought of that, and I didn’t think it was a bad thing. Gagneau needs to be dead now, not a year from now, or however long it takes to convince the NYPD to look for him. I spent the past few days looking at women he’s killed. Gagneau’s not gonna stop. He’s killed almost two hundred women over the past year or so. Maybe a man don’t find that much to worry about. Mister, he don’t need another year, or even another week.”

  Whitridge frowned, leaning forward. He glanced at Guthrie but then turned back to Vasquez. “You can’t find Gagneau?” he asked. “If Olsen comes out, he can help you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “I’m new at this. Maybe el viejo works some more magic and finds him—but he don’t sound hopeful. Maybe we find him faster with Olsen’s help. He knows Gagneau.”

  Whitridge glanced at Guthrie, noted the grim look on the little man’s face, and leaned back in his chair again. “Michelle, are you determined about this?” he asked. “Are you prepared to accept the consequences?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I think you have more in this than wanting Camille’s killer caught,” he said. “Is that worth risking? Because you will be, whether you understand that or not.”

  Tompkins seemed bewildered, but she nodded.

  “Then I’ll call James Rondell and tell him to arrange bail.”

  * * *

  On the ride back into the city from Rikers Island, Greg Olsen sat quietly in the backseat of Guthrie’s old Ford and watched the streets slide by through the glass. Thick clouds darkened the sky. Michelle Tompkins sat beside him, clutching a knapsack of his things gathered from the Grove Street apartment like a teddy bear. Crossing the Triborough, she held it out to him silently.

  Vasquez drove through Harlem as the big man sifted through the knapsack. At the bottom, he found a bag of butterscotch candies. A shadow of a smile crossed his face, and he doled out pieces of candy.

  “So this’s a peace offering, then?” he said.

  “I don’t remember declaring war,” Tompkins replied.

  “What you wrote on my paper for Professor Markham’s class wasn’t friendly, though.”

  Tompkins grinned. “Someone needed to kick that pile of leftist propaganda. The ghost of Neville Chamberlain might’ve whispered that into your ear.”

  “Whatever,” he said. He fussed with the bag for a moment, pocketed a few butterscotches, and then handed the bag to her. “I appreciate you helping. A lotta guys wouldn’t have reached out to a guy, with a friend being murdered and all.”

  “I knew you didn’t do it,” she said, turning to look from the window. Drizzle floated down from the clouds, slowly speckling the glass with tiny droplets.

  Philip Linney stayed close behind them like a ground-bound storm cloud, copiloting a black Escalade driven by a young black man he called “Little Prince.” The lunch-hour traffic gathered and disappeared repeatedly around them as Vasquez cut around blocks alongside the Harlem River. They passed three Macks and a Freightliner coming from the transfer park. The Escalade tailgated them along the hurricane fence, where the stacked cardboard and pallets looked like miniature apartment blocks, darkening under the slow rain. Vasquez parked away from the abutment, where the rusted sheet pilings looked like ragged teeth on the shore of the river.

  The Escalade pulled past the Ford, parking closer to the abutment beneath the bridge. Little Princ
e left the door of the Cadillac open, scowling at the grimy hardscape while he walked around his vehicle. A long black duster topped with a flat-brimmed black cowboy hat made him seem lanky, but he was a few inches shorter than Linney when they stopped side by side. Traffic buzzed on the bridge overhead, with pauses like long, slow breaths. Olsen, Guthrie, Vasquez, and Tompkins crunched through the gravel and glass as they walked along the underside of the bridge. The little detective looked as sober as a churchman in his dark suit; the two young women in blue jeans and sneakers made him seem misplaced.

  Olsen stopped suddenly. “The thought of coming here gave me a bad feeling,” he said. He pointed at the piers and then at the Dumpster. “You see it, Linney?”

  “I see it, Captain,” Linney said softly. “Still can’t read it.”

  The big blond man stepped away from them and scooped an unbroken wine bottle from the ground. A wide, thick circle of shattered glass surrounded one of the piers; he threw the bottle like a tomahawk at the pier and shouted a curse. Fragments of glass showered around it. Linney found a bottle, threw it, and cursed.

  Olsen answered the little detective’s questioning look with a glare. “He did it,” Olsen barked. “Despite that I didn’t want to believe you when you said that, Gagneau did this.” He pointed at the Dumpster again. “Right about there I’m sure he killed her.” He stalked over to the Dumpster. Tompkins followed a few steps behind him.

  “Says it right there: one dead, one dying,” he said. Angular lines of white spray paint were stacked like slashes on the green Dumpster’s face. He scanned the ground, striding back and forth; Tompkins kept pace with him and tried to bring him to a stop. His feet couldn’t stop moving, but he began circling around her.

  Vasquez and Guthrie exchanged a glance. The marks on the Dumpster were as incomprehensible as the other graffiti scattered under the bridge. “That’s some sort of writing?” Guthrie asked.

  “That—” Olsen began, gesturing at the Dumpster.

  “Slip was crazy,” Linney said. Little Prince paused beside him and punched his hands down into the pockets of his long duster. “He had every rifle in Alpha calling everybody ‘brother.’ When I first shipped in, I thought them dudes was fucking with me.”

  Olsen pointed again, this time at a pier. “That—”

  Linney nodded. “Yeah, I see it. Looks like two-rum. That’s the one I know: ‘Are you one?’ That’s what Slip asked, then you say, ‘I am that.’ He wanted to know if you were a brother,” he said conversationally. His eyes darkened with sadness, watching Olsen. The big blond man looked like a towering bomb with a racing fuse. Tompkins’s hand closed on his forearm, and his feet fell still, but his chest was heaving.

  “Hardrock thought Slip was talking about that WW Two thing,” Linney continued softly, “the band of brothers, but it was something else. He said killing a brother was a waste of time; even cutting him in ten pieces only left you deviled by ten brothers. The rifles was crazy for that shit. Slip was spooky sometimes. The way his feet moved on the ground wasn’t natural.”

  Olsen cleared his throat and pointed again. “That was something Gagneau made up,” he said roughly. “He used those marks when he scouted, so when I trailed him I would know what he saw, or something that had happened, or his intentions. Dead-and-dying marked when he saw AQT casualties.”

  Vasquez shook her head. “Ain’t you said he was from Louisiana?” She looked around at the other graffiti. “Some of that paint’s old, chico.” She pointed at more slashes of paint in different colors, and scratches marring the concrete or patches of paint around them. “Do those say something?”

  The big man started looking. Tompkins studied his face. Concentration softened the fierce anger marked there. A gust of wind whipped drizzle under the bridge, then rain began to fall.

  “Some of those are different,” Olsen whispered. “But some are the same, like the curse pole. See there?” He pointed, then strode over to trace a flaking pattern done with red paint. “It means ‘Where’re you coming from?’”

  “That’s old,” Vasquez said, peering at the paint. A legion of other scrawls was massed beneath the old red mark in a riot of colors, scratches, and forms, often overlaid.

  “He can’t have done all of this,” Olsen said. His eyes darted from mark to mark, and he walked along to look at them. Tompkins followed him. The big man went from pier to pier, muttering. “Some of this must be names. Gagneau didn’t use names when he marked the patterns over there—whatever he was saying, he was saying to me. A pattern on the tailgate of a burned-out Toyota always meant something, but some of these are ‘Screw you.’” His fingertip flicked, stabbing at mark after mark. “Then these are the same thing over and over, but not like the greeting pole. Two trees.”

  Guthrie laughed. “That’s it,” he said.

  “What?” Olsen asked. Linney and the big man turned on the detective.

  “Twin Oaks in Essex County,” Guthrie said. “A pair of bodies already turned up there.”

  “So he’s going to be up there then?” Olsen asked.

  “One of the old great lodges up there in the Adirondacks goes by that name. If a man wanted a place to stash away from the city, but close enough, that would be a spot. I think I’m gonna start there.”

  “I don’t see going up there empty-handed, though,” Olsen said, tracing out the shape of a rifle with his hands. Anger drifted across his face like the gusts of wind carrying splashes of rain beneath the bridge.

  “We’re gonna need to talk about that,” Guthrie said.

  Tompkins glanced down at her feet. The tips of sneakers showed beneath the hems of her blue jeans. “I guess I should get my boots,” she said.

  “You won’t need any boots in class,” Olsen said.

  “I am not staying here while you—”

  “What are you going to do if we find him?” Olsen challenged.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she hissed. “Or don’t you remember that I always went with Cammie when she practiced shooting? I’m a better shot than she was, and—”

  “I know she was your friend.” The big man wrapped his long hands around her shoulders and shook gently. Her blue eyes widened in surprise. “Gagneau won’t spin at seven meters, Michelle. He was my scout in Afghanistan for years. He’s a killer.”

  “I didn’t—” she began, but then she stopped. She glared at Vasquez. “She’s going.”

  “I’m getting paid,” Vasquez said. “That means don’t try it at home.” She squared her feet and thrust out her chin, but she knew what Tompkins was thinking. She was stuck being a girl.

  “Michelle, this isn’t going to be a dialogue,” Olsen said. “At times, talking with you, I’ve thought you could reason anything out, given time. You made me realize we could do something in Afghanistan, if we went about it a better way. But Gagneau won’t do much talking. He was never much of a talker, for being too much like a stone. That was the one way he didn’t fit with the Pashtuns—he didn’t laaf, if you don’t mind another silly pun.”

  “He didn’t boast. I get it,” she said softly. “But everything is a dialogue.”

  “You bet,” he said, “but this one will be a material dialogue.” His hands slipped from her shoulders, but she didn’t move away. She nodded. She knew Olsen had reasons. They were different from the ones that had sent him to war for eight years.

  Rain hissed quietly on the old broken asphalt beyond the bridge and made the Bronx a gloomy shadow beyond the Harlem. The sky above Manhattan was dark and gray.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Clayton Guthrie was willing to accept being lucky. Tough cases needed luck. The graffiti at the crime scene was luck, and saved the hard work of watching V.I. Maskalenko to see if Gagneau liked to visit. After Tompkins took a cab back downtown, Vasquez drove them back to the office. Slow rain fell on Fifth Avenue, and the little detective watched the park slide by past his window.

  “If this lead don’t pan out, we’re gonna watch Brooklyn,” he said. “That was
the plan until she came along with bail.”

  Vasquez laughed. “Brooklyn? All of it, or just Flatbush?”

  “Sure, that’s a good joke, right?” he said. “That’s our other lead, but I’m not in a hurry to mix with the Russians.” He looked over his shoulder at the Escalade still trailing them. “Greg, I gotta ask you to clear that up for me.”

  The blond veteran looked, then nodded. Linney’s interest in Gagneau didn’t need an explanation—his mother was involved. The younger man wasn’t so different. Before Linney joined the army, Althea Linney plucked Little Prince from the street. He became younger brother and younger son. Linney left the gang behind when he joined the service, but Little Prince stepped right into his shoes. Linney hadn’t made much progress changing Little Prince’s mind about the gang since he’d returned from Afghanistan. Day labor wouldn’t put rims on an Escort, and forget about a Cadillac. Olsen shrugged. Linney was struggling his way forward with Little Prince, and outside help was actually interference.

  The Garment District was in full swing. In the rain, the runners had to hold plastic over the clothes. They doubled up—more trips, more jammed traffic, and more chaos. Vasquez parked a block away, but the rain wasn’t heavy enough to drench them before they reached the office. Guthrie ordered pizzas. The little detective flipped through the phone book while Olsen and Linney argued about whether Linney should go back to work, and where Olsen should stay the night.

  “Quiet,” Guthrie said when he picked up the phone to dial. “The calls go on speaker, so you gotta be quiet.”