A quiet voice from somewhere behind the police captain said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
McComb turned. "Why the hell not?" he demanded.
A white-haired man in a rumpled army uniform and a bedraggled mustache stepped forward and said, "You called this man Schaefer?"
McComb glanced at Schaefer, puzzled. "That's Schaefer, yes," he said.
"Well, then," the soldier said, "you don't want to try ejecting him. Because if Detective Schaefer's anything like his brother Dutch, he'll probably dike it, and you can't afford the damage. Especially not here."
Rasche threw a startled glance at Schaefer, then stared at this new arrival.
"You knew my brother?" Schaefer growled.
The white-haired man didn't answer; instead he addressed McComb.
"All that's left here is mop-up. Think your janitors can handle that, McComb?"
Rasche watched, amazed, as McComb nodded and said reluctantly, "Yessir."
McComb was a jerk, and could be relied on to kowtow to authority and side with civilians against his own men, but Rasche couldn't see why he'd be deferring so obviously to some old coot in fatigues, especially here on police turf. New York wasn't under martial law, and while McComb was always glad to cozy up to the feds whenever the FBI or DEA wanted something, he had never shown any great fondness for men in uniform.
He and Schaefer had known that the feds were involved in investigating the massacre-o-r rather, the massacres, plural, now-but they had assumed that "feds" meant the FBI, not the army.
What the hell did the army have to do with it?
And who the hell was this guy?
Rasche squinted, trying to see better in the dim light, and realized the army man had two stars on his cap.
Well, at least it took a general to impress McComb.
"C'mon, son, we've got to talk," the general said, pointing toward the passage that led back up to the street.
"Do we?" Schaefer asked.
The general nodded. He turned and started walking toward the stairs.
Schaefer followed.
So did Rasche. No one had invited him, but they hadn't told him to get lost, either, and he wanted to know what the hell was going on, who this general was and what he was doing in New York, and whatever else Schaefer might be told.
No one spoke in the corridor or on the stairs; on the street the general pointed east, and Schaefer nodded an acknowledgment. They walked on to Fifth Avenue, and uptown, still not saying a word.
Together, the three men got a booth in the back of a bar a few blocks away. Rasche and the general took one side, Schaefer the other-Schaefer was big enough to rate the whole bench for himself.
Rasche had seen the general's name on his shirt-Philips. It didn't tell him anything. The ribbons and other hardware didn't mean much, either. The guy had the weathered look of a field officer, not a desk man, and kept a cigarette clamped in his teeth.
What he was doing on the scene of a murder investigation-even one as bizarre as this-was something Rasche couldn't even guess.
For his part, General Philips was considering the two detectives.
Rasche didn't impress him. He looked good enough for a cop-a bit overweight and out of shape, but there was still some muscle in there, he hadn't gone soft, and if Dutch's brother had partnered with him for six years, the way the personnel files said, he had to be okay.
Still, it wasn't Rasche who interested Philips.
Schaefer, on the other hand, was about the same size as his brother-which meant big. And it was all muscle, same as on Dutch. The voice was deeper, but with the same trace of an accent.
And the look on his face . . . Maybe Dutch, tough as he was, was the gentler brother. Dutch had been able to relax and smile when he wasn't working; this Schaefer looked as if his expression had been carved out of granite.
Philips had been astonished, going through McComb's files, to find out that Dutch's brother was not just a cop, but a New York City homicide detective and the one who'd been first on the scene at the first massacre.
It had been Dutch who'd brought out the word on these things, these alien killers, in the first place. It was Dutch who had told Philips and his people everything they knew that was worth knowing about the hunters. If it hadn't been for Dutch, that squad would have just vanished into the jungles without a trace, and they'd never have known what happened to it.
Hell of a coincidence, running into Dutch's brother on this case-if it was a coincidence.
But what else could it be? Those things couldn't have known Dutch's brother was in New York-not unless they were mind readers, or something.
Of course, there was no way to be sure they weren't mind readers. Or they might have mindreading machines. They might have any technology he could imagine, and probably some he couldn't.
Or maybe they could just smell the Schaefers, somehow Who knew?
"Bourbon," he told the waitress who had arrived by the table. "Straight up."
He waited until the woman had left, then leaned across the table.
"Look, Schaefer," he said, "I know you think McComb's being an asshole about this, and maybe he is, but he's following orders. We told him to keep you out of this."
"And who are you?" Schaefer asked.
"I can't tell you that," Philips replied. "And you probably guessed that. I can tell you that your brother used to work for me, back in the eighties-and you probably guessed that, too. I don't know if you're as smart as your brother, but you aren't stupid, you're a detective; you can probably guess at least half of what I could tell you, and the rest you're better off not knowing."
The waitress returned with the drinks; again Philips waited for her to depart.
"I'll tell ya, Schaefer," the general said, sitting back, trying to relax the atmosphere a little, "Dutch saved my ass on more than one occasion. He was a good man-a hell of a good man." He swigged bourbon. "He used to talk about you sometimes, brag on his brother back in the States."
"Where is he?" Schaefer asked. He wasn't drinking. Rasche had ordered a beer to be sociable; Schaefer hadn't bothered. He sat stiff and straight, staring at Philips-though he had gone so far as to loosen his tie.
"Where is he?" he repeated. "What happened to him?"
Philips didn't answer. He looked down at his drink, took a puff on his cigarette, then looked back at Schaefer.
Schaefer had that same stubborn streak Dutch had always had, no doubt about it.
"This meeting is off the record," he said. "It never happened. You got that?"
Schaefer didn't answer; his expression made it plain that he was still waiting for an answer to his question and didn't give a shit about any record.
"I'm not here, I'm not telling you this, you never saw me, all that crap," Philips said, "but I owe you this much, for Dutch's sake. Drop this one, son. Just back away from it. Forget about it."
"I can't do that," Schaefer said. "You saw that shooting range. Those were cops. Those were my men."
"You've got to drop it," Philips replied. He reached for his hat. "You've got to, understand?"
He didn't dare stay any longer; he'd let something slip if he stayed.
He was tempted to tell Schaefer all of it, but he didn't dare.
So he had to leave, and leave quickly. He didn't trust himself if he stayed-and he didn't trust Schaefer. He'd read about some of Schaefer's stunts.
Schaefer studied Philips. "You already know who these killers are, don't you? You know who was behind both those slaughters. You came to New York to check them out, maybe to cover them up, didn't you? And you know Dutch, he worked for you, there's some connection there? These killers are somehow connected to Dutch?" He started to rise. "Who the hell are they?"
Philips was on his feet, straightening his hat. He didn't answer.
"Who are they?" Schaefer demanded. He stood, clenched fists at his sides, towering over Philips. "What the hell are they doing? What do they want in New York?"
Philips shook his he
ad. "I can't tell you anything, Schaefer. Drop it."
"Why now?" Schaefer asked. "Dutch has been missing for years-why are these murders happening now? Who is it killing both cops and punks? What is it killing them?" He started to reach for Philips.
The general stepped back, out of reach.
"I can't tell you," he said.
"What the hell can you tell me? Don't say you can't tell me anything, Philips-give me something."
Philips hesitated. "They like the heat, dammit," he said uneasily. "They want the sport. Look, leave 'em be, and in two, three weeks they'll be gone. Mess with them, and God only knows what might happen." He hesitated again, then added, "And that's all. I've already said too much."
He turned and walked toward the door.
Schaefer stood, his hands still clenched into fists, and watched.
In the doorway Philips turned.
"Believe me," he called, "it's got to be this way"
Then he was gone.
Rasche stood up; he hadn't said a word the entire time. Whatever was going on, it was obviously between Philips and Schaefer.
He almost missed Schaefer's muttered, "It's got to be this way? The hell it does."
* * *
7
They couldn't get back into the firing range, and Rasche figured there wouldn't have been anything to see there anyway. They couldn't get anything more from Philips, even if they'd followed him. Rasche figured that was the end of it, at least for the moment.
But when they were rolling again, Schaefer didn't take the turn for the bridge to take Rasche back home to Queens; instead he headed straight downtown.
Rasche looked at the expression on Schaefer's face and decided not to argue. He remembered how he had been thinking earlier that he'd never seen Schaefer really angry, and suspected that that was in the process of changing. .
"So," he said, in hopes of lightening the atmosphere, "just what kind of . . . of work did your brother used to do for this General Philips?"
"Rescue operations," Schaefer said. "Covert stuff. Their dirty jobs, the stuff they couldn't do themselves. When they fucked up and needed someone to pull their asses out of the fire, they called Dutch."
Rasche didn't need to ask who "they" were.
"He kept it as clean as he could, though," Schaefer said. "That was why he worked freelance, so he could turn down jobs he didn't like. He'd had enough of that `do as you're told' crap in 'Nam. Worked his way up to major and still had to put up with it until he went out on his own."
Rasche wondered where Schaefer had got his fill of that "do as you're told" crap-he pretty obviously wasn't any fonder of taking orders than his brother had been, even though he'd stayed in the army longer.
"There were still screwups sometimes," Schaefer said. "He told me about a bad one in Afghanistan once."
"Afghanistan? Did it have anything to do with these killers?"
No.
For a moment Schaefer drove on silently.
Then he said, "There was another thing, though."
Rasche waited.
"Last I heard from Dutch," Schaefer said at last, staring straight ahead as they left the avenue and turned into the narrow streets of lower Manhattan, "was when he was passing through, - on his way from nowhere in particular to somewhere else. He and I went out drinking. You have any brothers, Rasche?"
"No. Two sisters."
"That wouldn't be the same. Dutch and I, we didn't need to talk much."
Rasche nodded.
"So I wasn't expecting him to tell me all the latest shit about what he was doing or anything. It was enough to be sitting there with him drinking, watching the TV over the bar-you know. But that last time it was kind of weird. Something was different."
Rasche knew what Schaefer meant; he also knew he didn't need to say so.
"We sat there drinking for a long time," Schaefer said, "and he started in telling me stuff after all, not in any particular order, you know, we were both feeling the booze by then, and he just said whatever he was thinking about, whatever was bothering him, as he thought of it."
"What'd he say?" Rasche asked.
"He told me about this job he'd had," Schaefer replied, "leading his squad into Central America on another rescue mission where some half-assed CIA stunt had gone wrong somehow He didn't tell me any details of what it was about or what he did there-he never did. Wasn't supposed to, it was all top-secret bullshit, and besides, who cared? Anyway, he told me that this time it had gone bad, he'd lost his whole team. That was rough, and I figured that was why he'd been weird-they were good men, all of 'em."
"Yeah," Rasche said, to show he was still listening. He'd never met Dutch or any of his men.
"Then he stopped talking about that and started talking about hunting," Schaefer said. "Just a bunch of crazy stuff. Talked about when we hunted deer as kids. Asked if I'd ever thought about what it would feel like to be hunted. Talked about how if you and your equipment were good enough, it'd take the sport out of it, and you'd want to make things harder for yourself sometimes, to give the prey a chance-but not much of one, you'd still want to kill it in the end, that the whole point is to show you're better than it is by killing it. But you might take on a whole pack at once. Or you'd only tackle the ones that could fight. You'd find the toughest game you could. You'd want a challenge. I mean, you don't go after squirrels with an elephant gun.
"And then he started talking about stuff a hunter might have someday-some sort of camouflage that would make you damn near invisible, say. Guns and knives, faster reflexes, be able to mimic sounds.
"I didn't know what he was talking about, I thought he was just drunk."
"You think you know now?" Rasche asked.
Schaefer shook his head. "No. But maybe there's some connection. That was the last time I saw Dutch, seven years ago. I haven't heard from him since. No one has. He disappeared. Never heard another word, from Dutch or anyone else."
"Shit," Rasche said. He tried to imagine what that would be like, losing the guy who was practically your whole family like that just one day he's gone, and nobody ever mentions him again ....
No wonder Schaefer had an attitude.
And maybe there was some connection. Maybe the berserk killers loose in New York were the same ones that had taken out Dutch's squad in Central America. Maybe Philips knew that, maybe he'd tracked them here.
And maybe these people killed for sport, like big-game hunters. The skinned bodies seemed horribly appropriate for that theory.
But who would do that? Why? And if they had this super hunting equipment Schaefer said Dutch had talked about, where'd they get it?
Had some secret operation of one of the government organizations that weren't supposed to exist gone wrong somehow? Were the killers Philips's own men, maybe, gone rogue?
But what did that have to do with the heat? Why couldn't Philips send out better men and better equipment to stop them, instead of just covering up after them?
It didn't make sense.
But there almost had to be some connection. Schaefer had seen it right away.
Were the killers after Schaefer? Had they gotten Dutch, and come after Schaefer in case Dutch had told him too much?
But so far they hadn't tried for him-those two amateurs the other night couldn't be related to whoever had taken out Lamb and his crew.
Were they taunting him, somehow?
It didn't fit together right. There was some piece of the puzzle still missing.
"So where are we going?" Rasche asked a moment later.
"Here," Schaefer said, pulling over to the curb.
Rasche looked up at the abandoned tenement, at the hole in the wall on the fifth floor.
"Oh, great," he muttered to himself. "This place. Here we go again."
He'd had nightmares about the place.
Of course, he would probably have nightmares about the police firing range, too. At least this little side trip wouldn't be adding any new scenery to his bad dreams.
But there wasn't going to be anything left to find here; there couldn't be.
Schaefer was already out of the car, adjusting his shoulder holster; Rasche scrambled out of the passenger side as quickly as his incipient paunch would allow, and said, "Schaef, McComb must've had his forensics people go over this place with tweezers by now . . . ."
"McComb's people," Schaefer interrupted, "couldn't find their asses with both hands in their back pockets."
"But the feds . . ."
"Screw the feds." He marched up to the building.
The door was chained and padlocked, and crisscrossed with yellow police-line tape. For a moment Schaefer stood, fists at his sides, and stared at it.
"Whoever's doing these killings," he said, "they've messed with my city, they've messed with my people, they've messed with the cops, and maybe, just maybe, they've messed with my brother." He raised one foot. "I want them."
He kicked, hard; the chain snapped, and the rotted wood of the door shattered.
Schaefer stepped through the ruins.
"You wait outside," he told Rasche without looking back. "Anybody tries to come after me-shoot'em. Rasche watched Schaefer vanish into the gloom. Yeah, he thought, I've finally seen him angry. He wished he hadn't.
* * *
8
Schaefer didn't waste any time poking around on the lower floors; he went straight up to the room where the corpses had been strung up like so many slabs of beef.
The bodies were gone, of course, carted away by either the feds or the cops; so were the guns. Some of the debris had been cleared away as well, or shoved aside.
The bloodstains were still there-some of them, anyway. They weren't red anymore, of course; they were dried to rusty brown or powdery black.
And no one had bothered to clear away all the spent cartridges; Schaefer suspected there were just too damn many of them.
The holes in the walls and ceiling were still there, too, and that was what Schaefer wanted a good look at, at least to start.
Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Predator 01 Page 5