by Oliver Stark
Rainer shouted across. ‘Lafayette, pipe the fuck down. I told you no already.’
‘Shut it, Rainer,’ spat Elwood. ‘If this is the guy who can do the job, then get him in.’
‘Harper can do it, sir.’
Rainer was up on his feet. ‘He’s on suspension for assaulting a superior officer, sir. He’s facing termination.’ He leaned into Lenny Elwood and whispered something.
Elwood nodded and looked up. ‘This is the same guy that knocked Lieutenant Jarvis off his fucking feet?’
‘Yes, that’s him,’ said Rainer. ‘A real throwback to the bad old days.’
‘He was provoked, sir,’ said Lafayette.
Rainer was shaking. ‘Detective Harper is not coming back on my team, sir. Lafayette, you’re overstepping the mark here. I’ve already told you that’s not gonna happen. Harper’s a volatile bastard and we’re just about ready to go with the termination.’
‘Is he our best detective or not?’ said Elwood, firing looks all round the room.
‘He’s the best, sir,’ said Lafayette. ‘Unconventional. Aggressive. But most important, he’s a specialist in these kinds of kills. He’s worked three previous pattern homicides, two in NYC as you just heard and one upstate. These aren’t the usual kinds of homicides we deal with, sir: we think this is a pattern killer.’
‘He assaulted a superior officer,’ Rainer snapped. ‘Are we losing our minds here?’
‘He lost his head one time and took a swipe at a lieutenant, but he had good cause.’
‘Took a swipe?’ said Rainer. ‘He busted his jaw so bad it’s been wired up for a month. He was on the boxing team. He’s dangerous. We can’t let this guy go around beating people up.’
‘And this is our best detective?’ said Elwood. ‘A pair of fists with a chip on his shoulder?’
‘If I could have one man on the team, it’d be Harper. No question. These girls have the right to expect us to do our best.’
The deputy commissioner’s eyes narrowed. ‘Will he do it?’
‘He doesn’t feel so charitable towards NYPD at the moment, but he might.’
‘Well, offer him a clean break. Tell him we’ll scrub the charge if he succeeds — that’s an offer he can’t refuse. Get some department shrink to sign him up for some anger management therapy to cover our backs. Bring him in, Captain.’
Rainer was shaking his head vehemently. ‘If it comes out that we’ve put a madman on the case, if the papers get hold of it, we’re going to be blown out of the water. I don’t think he’s our man.’
‘With all due respect, Chief Rainer, he’s exactly our man. Now go get him, Captain.’ Elwood stared hard at Rainer. Their eyes locked for a few seconds.
‘With all due respect to you, sir,’ said Rainer, ‘I’m the senior ranking operational officer here, and for the record, I’m not reinstating an officer who beats up other officers. I’ve got morale to think about. I’m not doing it. I categorically refuse.’
Larry Elwood rose from his leather seat and pointed a bony finger at Rainer. ‘Looks like I’ve just found my horse, Chief Rainer.’
Chapter Two
Central Park
November 15, 3.35 p.m.
The solitary walkers in Central Park were all wrapped up warm. The wide skies overhead were bright blue into the distance and the air was cold and dry. At the northeastern corner of the park, the suspended homicide detective Thomas Elias Harper crouched on his haunches on the edge of the sandbank overlooking the glittering water of Harlem Meer. He was dressed down in a pair of old combats, a well-worn overcoat and an orange cap. He was alone, with a pair of binoculars tight to his eyes, watching the movement in the trees on the far shore, keeping deadly still.
Then he spotted it again and his heart rose a beat. He focused slowly with his forefinger and caught the image crisp in his sights. There it was, almost flat against the oak bark, a white-breasted nuthatch edging down the tree trunk, its sleek head and white throat darting out for insects. Harper followed the bird across the leafy ground as it hopped on to a forsythia twig and pecked beneath the fallen maple leaves for grubs. He smiled with satisfaction.
The detective moved down through the park, a small knapsack on his back. He reached the brow of a hill in the North Woods and moved across the ravine. He climbed up a low bank to get a good position and stood looking into the dense vegetation, the stream babbling through the trees, the leaves crisp and whispering in the light wind. Reports had mentioned a glossy ibis in the area; he’d been back to the same site for three days, but hadn’t had any luck.
Out of the trees behind him, Harper caught a scuffling sound. He listened intently as the sound grew. It sure as hell wasn’t a glossy ibis. It wasn’t some walker strolling through, either: the movements were quick and determined. Every now and then, the noise stopped. A moment later, Harper could make out the heavy breathing of a man out of condition a few yards behind him. It could be only one thing — a homicide cop.
‘Harper!’ called a deep voice.
Captain Frank Lafayette had waited an hour outside Harper’s apartment in East Harlem before he got a lead from the guys in the fish market and went hunting in the park. The captain, his face a delicate lacework of tiny red veins, put his hands flat on his knees and looked at Harper’s back. ‘You couldn’t take up bowling or some fucking thing?’
There was no reply, not even a flicker. Tom Harper was standing still beneath a small group of bare trees. He was six two, athletic, his close-cropped hair brown, flecked with grey. He had been the NYPD cruiserweight boxing champion for three seasons and the muscle in his back and shoulders still showed.
‘Detective Harper, it’s Captain Lafayette. I need to speak to you. It’s urgent.’
‘Keep quiet, Captain.’
‘What?’
‘I said — keep your voice down.’
Tom had caught sight of a warbler edging forward from behind a rock, a flash of yellow and black, and then it appeared, its quick head turning from side to side.
‘Tom, I just need a few minutes of your time.’
‘Quiet!’
‘For fuck’s sake, Harper, stop shitting me here!’ shouted Lafayette. The voice rattled through the woods and the nervous little warbler darted a look towards them, lifted off and flew away downstream.
Harper let his binoculars drop to his side and turned to Lafayette. He glared across. ‘Leave me the hell alone.’ He strode off through the undergrowth, following the flight of the bird.
‘Harper, wait up. I just want a word. We need your help.’
‘Well, I’m suspended right now. You not noticed that, Captain?’
‘Detective, I know you better than that. I want to make you an offer.’
‘I don’t need anything from you.’
‘You heard about the case?’
‘I’ve seen the girl’s picture just like everyone else. You’ve got a serious killer on the loose and Williamson hasn’t got a clue. You’re getting pistol-whipped at One PP, so you came to see me.’
‘Give me one minute of your time, Harper. Come on.’
‘I can’t help you, Captain. It’s time for me to move on.’
Lafayette paused. He had to get the timing just right. He caught Harper’s eyes. ‘They found a second body this morning. Same killer, we think.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said Harper.
‘She was walking home last night and disappeared. Probably abducted.’
‘I don’t need to know the details, Captain. It’s not my case.’
‘Look, Harper, these girls were raped and strangled. Same ligature.’
Harper looked into the trees, the details playing on his mind. ‘As you know, I’m not available for duty.’
Lafayette moved in close. He took a photograph from his inside pocket and tossed it on to a white rock. ‘Take a look. The unknown subject is a mean bastard. After he killed Mary-Jane, he scattered flower petals all over her body like in some ritual.’
Harper
looked down at the crime scene shot of a bloody corpse. ‘He cut her?’
‘Tortured her with shallow cuts, yeah. Likes to watch them bleed.’
‘The papers didn’t say.’
‘We keep the real grim stuff to ourselves, you know that.’
‘I’m sorry for these girls, Captain, but I can’t go back now. I broke Jarvis’s jaw. You know what that means as well as I do. There’s a big door and it’s shut in my face. My own stupid fault, I know that. I’m not looking for sympathy. I deserve whatever I get.’
‘You were provoked, Tom. Everyone knows how you feel about Lisa. Jarvis was a fool, but he’s just one stupid cop who tried to get himself a name by getting a rise out of the big guy.’
‘Well, you tell him it worked. I’m riled. Lisa wanted out, that’s one nightmare, but I don’t need some failed detective telling me she’s screwing around.’
Captain Lafayette looked at Harper. He was thinner than before, leaner, with a thin line of red around his eyes. Three months earlier, Harper’s wife, Lisa Vincenti, had decided that enough was enough. There’d been one lonely night too many and she’d moved out while Tom was working all hours closing the Romario case. Jarvis was a smart-ass lieutenant and a local precinct bully who thought it was worth making a joke out of, and he’d gone in hard. It was a mistake. Harper had been in no mood for jokes.
‘Will you listen to my offer?’ said Lafayette.
‘I need to start over,’ said Harper. ‘I need new ground under my feet. I need to get a job somewhere else. That’s my feeling.’
‘What as? A birdwatcher? You know no police department in the country will touch you. You’ve got a charge over your head. You assaulted a senior officer. Listen, Ged Rainer will have you out by the end of the week. What you going to do then?’
‘I’ll find work.’
‘But I can make the Charges and Specs go away, Tom.’
‘How?’
‘We’ve got a killer out there and the department needs you. Hell, I need you. They’ll wipe the slate if you come on board.’
Harper paused and stared at Lafayette. ‘I can’t go back. End of story. Sorry.’ He started to walk down the valley, fast.
Lafayette struggled behind him and pulled to a standstill. He couldn’t keep up any more. He stared at Harper’s back and shook his head. ‘What you going to do? Pity yourself the rest of your life? Everyone loses someone, Tom. Get off the fucking canvas.’
Fifty yards ahead, Tom Harper stopped in his tracks. The words got him cold. He counted to ten real slow, keeping his anger from getting out of control, and then he walked on without turning his head.
‘He’s taking trophies, Tom,’ shouted Lafayette. ‘He took the kid’s eyes out of her head. Try to imagine that while you’re out here watching the birds.’
Chapter Three
East Harlem
November 15, 6.14 p.m.
Harper felt the air cool around his neck. Dusk had fallen quickly and any hope of continuing his hunt for the last of the winter migrants had seeped away in the sudden thump of Captain Lafayette’s parting words. Tom walked back through the park feeling like someone had hit him hard in the gut. Lisa Vincenti wasn’t a weak spot so much as a great big hole in his life. Walk too close and he’d fall right back in and start the whole process of slow-motion drowning all over again.
Lafayette’s words continued to rattle around in Tom’s head as he walked back to the rented one-bedroom apartment he still called home. The apartment was on the second floor of a decaying four-storey block, in what the realtors liked to call a transitional area. That meant that the poverty was still real enough, but the condos and multi-million-dollar developments were only a stride or two away. Transitional — just another fancy word for unfair.
He’d lived along East Harlem’s southern edge ever since he and Lisa decided they were a long-term proposition. They’d honeymooned in the two small rooms above the fish market on 110th and Third, eating romantic hot dogs looking out across the Harlem River with their legs dangling through the steel walkway crossing FDR Drive.
Tom Harper and Lisa Vincenti went back twelve years. They’d met as optimistic twenty-two year olds. They connected in the deeps and in the shallows. But after Tom was made a homicide detective, things got difficult. The pattern killer cases absorbed him and Lisa must’ve got sick of waiting for her husband to come home. She wanted the man she married, not this obsessive guy with monsters in his head.
She had packed up and left. Harper now wanted to leave, just like she had. The apartment and the whole of Manhattan felt like the setting for a story that was no longer his. She’d taken the heart out of it all.
Tom wandered across to the window. His hand rose to his face and felt the stubble. If Lisa walked into the room right now and saw his hangdog look and the shit all over the apartment, she’d blow a fuse. He loved her still and missed her even more, it was that simple. He missed the smell of her skin, the look in her eye, the way she could talk until everything seemed right again. She believed in things, too. She had faith. Not many people did any more; he missed that. He missed the rhythm of being two. Beating a drum with one stick had no rhythm at all.
Tom walked back to the armchair that sat staring at a blank TV screen. Another long night lay ahead of him. Another night of slowly letting the whisky close off the different switches in his brain until he was numb to the whole wide world.
He closed his eyes, but for the first time in months it wasn’t Lisa’s image that formed in his mind as he lay back in his decrepit old armchair. It was the photograph of a pale and bloody body lying dead in some rich folks’ apartment.
Harper opened his eyes quickly and saw the glaring reflections on his window from the street below. The city was a mosaic of shadow and light. Once upon a time, city lights excited him, but he didn’t like the promises any more. He reached for his backpack and pulled out his notebook. Each dog-eared page was beautifully illustrated with quick sketches of various birds. Dates, times, locations and notes surrounded each sketch.
He picked up his pen and sucked the end until he tasted ink on his tongue. He drew the faint outline of the warbler from memory. He wrote the date, stared at it and then looked again to the window. His mind wouldn’t settle.
Across the room, his cell phone chimed a cheap tune. Harper jumped up and grabbed it. He’d not once given up on Lisa. He was endlessly optimistic that one day she’d want to come back. And he would forgive her — no question. He put the cell close to his ear. ‘Yes?’
‘Didn’t disturb you, did I?’ Harper’s heart sank. Not her voice. A man’s voice. Captain Lafayette.
‘You don’t give up, do you?’
‘Blue Team have just left the crime scene. Don’t know much about the victim yet. But she looks the same type and the injuries are similar. Like we feared, we think it’s the same unsub.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘They found her on Ward’s Island. She was left out on the rocks in the water. Probably died late last night. The body’ll be there another hour or so.’
Harper sat down. ‘What’s the MO?’
‘She’s been strangled. Same ritual — torture cuts, left naked. She was also posed.’
‘Posed how?’ said Harper, pen in hand, tracing the outline of a rock on his notebook.
‘Like she’s praying.’
‘Hands tied together?’
‘Yeah, with copper wire.’ Lafayette paused. ‘I want you to take a look before they take the body. No commitment. Just give us something, Tom. Anything. For God’s sake.’
‘I’m not ready to go back, Captain.’
‘How about you just take a look at this girl, tell me what you can? Maybe what you see will help us nail this bastard. Call it a leaving gift.’
Harper was silent. The figure of a girl with her hands in prayer appeared in black ink on the page in front of him.
‘I’m in a black Impala outside your apartment. I’ll wait ten minutes. If it’s a no, then wha
tever you go on to do, Harper, good luck and all that. You were a first-rate cop, the best. Don’t ever forget that while you’re down there in Vegas hunting slot-machine fixers.’
Chapter Four
Ward’s Island
November 15, 7.18 p.m.
Darkness was holding fast over Ward’s Island. Only the distant lights of Kirby Psychiatric Hospital and the near glow of the crime scene were visible from across Hell Gate Bridge. The whole area was still being scoured by Crime Scene Unit detectives.
The east wind had blustered all day and now raced across the island, whipping up the surface of the water and making it dance against the black rocks. Across the river, Manhattan’s teeming grid of coloured lights reflected in the dark water like a street-level rainbow promising wealth and fulfilment. But there on Ward’s Island, on the rough grass against the rocks, lay a naked body lapped by the shallow surf. Her guts were torn open and a couple of seagulls had stayed around after dark to take what they could.
The icy wind was also freezing the four officers standing in a half-circle above the corpse, their bomber jackets zipped chin high, their eyes streaming and their faces pale as pig skin. In silence, they stared down at the mutilated body. Officer James Cob was stamping his feet and playing around with his flashlight.
‘Hey, Hernandez, did you eat already?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Hernandez. ‘How the fuck could I eat out here?’
‘Here, you like fresh meat?’ Cob shone his torch on to the corpse.
‘Serious, Cob, knock it off, buddy. You’re making me sick here.’
‘It’s your fucking diet that’s churning your guts,’ Officer Lees put in. ‘He had three hot dogs and a doughnut in the wagon.’
‘Why the fuck is she marrying you, Hernandez?’ said Cob. ‘Can anyone explain how this big fuck is getting hitched to a ninety-five-pound looker? These fat guys are taking all our women.’
‘Fuck you and your mother, Cob, I’ve got the magic touch. They’ll be crying out for more when they feel these.’ Hernandez held up his chubby fingers and wiggled them in the air. ‘They call me the feather, my touch is so light. I’m like a butterfly wing. They just keep howling for more.’