Click. The 402-grain bullet entered the base of the teen’s skull at 1050 feet per second. He dropped like a marionette—strings cut. Bonn worked the bolt mindlessly and tucked the spent cartridge into the fleece-lined bag on his belt. He trained the crosshairs back on Alpha, but adjusted the field of view to see the whole group. Their behavior hadn’t changed. No one noticed the dead guy. Alpha lit a new cigarette. Two guys shoved each other. Perhaps eager to prove himself, one threw a punch at the other. Things escalated. Soon they flailed their arms at each other. Neither had much technique, so the fight lasted last long enough to be a good distraction. A straggler loafed near the rear of the circle.
Click. Pink mist. The puppet master dropped another one. Bonn worked the bolt and adjusted the scope. Alpha joined the fight. He knocked one of the brawlers to his knees. The guy held his nose and spat on the ground. Alpha cocked his fist to punch the other fighter. Bonn’s bullet zipped through his eye socket just before Alpha threw his punch.
Click. Alpha grinned proudly and held his arms aloft. “That’s how to do it.” The celebration didn’t last. Alpha looked past the guy with the broken nose and pointed. The others looked too. “I didn’t hit him—why’s he on the ground?”
Click. A bullet severed Alpha’s spinal cord. Bonn shook his head, disgusted.
Dead’s dead, but that one was sloppy—too low.
The four remaining targets circled like dogs preparing to lie down. Voices rose in pitch. They chattered like birds. “He cut him—he cut Aldo!” In the chaos, one assumed the fighter bleeding from his nose stabbed Alpha. They kicked the offender brutally. One broke off. He shook and sat on the park bench.
He had a cellphone.
“Things got out of hand—yeah. Aldo got cut.” He stood and paced a few meters from the bench. “Looks like his neck. He looks dead. The—”
Click. Bonn shot the delinquent in the liver. He dropped the phone and slumped. The shot had the effect Bonn intended. The others turned toward him, confused. Two boys’ skulls lined up in the crosshairs.
Click. The last target standing tilted his head and cautiously approached the guy with the nosebleed. He was unconscious. He inspected his hands for a gun but found none. Then he did a peculiar thing: he turned to face Bonn. Through the scope, he appeared to see him.
Click. The bullet was perfectly placed, just below the guy’s eye. The one with the nosebleed moved an arm. His neck was at an unnatural angle. Bonn adjusted the scope and prepared to pull the trigger.
“Oh God!”
Bonn spun the knob to increase his field of view. A bicyclist stood by the park bench. He had a light mounted on his helmet and shined it at the bodies in the grass.
“Oh Lord.” The man dialed his cellphone while Bonn rappelled out of the tree. Once on the ground, Bonn pulled one side of the rope. It dropped at his feet. He bundled it and placed it in his bag. The cyclist leaned on the bench and yelled into his phone. Bonn broke the rifle down while he listened.
“Yeah—one guy’s breathing.”
“I don’t know, it’s dark! Maybe ten bodies? Twelve? Why does that matter?”
“Central Park. Sheep’s Meadow—I told you that already.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me—are you sending anyone or not? Oh for God sakes—Sheep’s Meadow, Sheep Meadow, who cares if I’ve mispronounced the name of the damned lawn—send out some cops!”
Bonn walked. His long strides landed softly, carrying him away from Sheep Meadow. Static filled the earpiece—he turned it down. He knelt for a moment and turned on his headlamp. He had fired seven shots and needed to account for seven casings. Bonn opened the fleece pouch and counted the spent casings twice.
Seven. They were all there.
Bonn put the pouch in the bag next to the suppressor. He could still hear the cyclist. He switched off the earpiece and put it in the bag.
Now he looked less like a sniper and more pedestrian.
Bonn walked west quickly and gritted his teeth.
The neck shot was low.
He pulled on disposable gloves. When he reached West Drive, he pulled the surgical booties off his feet then zipped them into his coat pocket. He pulled out a small bottle of fox urine. This place would be swarming with police in twenty minutes. This time they’d bring dogs. Bonn sprayed the whole bottle of urine on the road, palmed the empty bottle, then pulled the glove off over it. He held that glove in his other palm and repeated the trick. Trappers used the stuff to hide human scent from animals; foxes mark their scent on everything. In theory, police dogs would also focus on the scent. They might stay away from his tree, at least until the ballistics experts showed up. He had hoped to retrieve the microphone, but no one could trace it. He hadn’t touched it without gloves. Nevertheless, the dogs would find it. Police dogs probably found weird stuff all over the city when they were set loose. It didn’t matter if they tied the microphone to the bodies. A sloppy private detective attempting to prove an infidelity could just as easily have left the device there.
Bonn mounted the old bicycle he’d left behind an earth-toned utility shed. He slung the bag across his back and rode north, exiting the park at West 72nd. He pedaled hard then paused and pulled the bike onto the sidewalk on Broadway. He leaned against a post and checked his watch. Twelve minutes had elapsed since he left the tree. Bonn watched for a gap in traffic and darted back into the street. He pedaled east and waited at a bus stop near the park until he heard sirens. An old Italian woman in her shirtsleeves, wearing a mustard-colored scarf on her head, looked at him for a moment too long. He pulled out his phone and pretended to dial it. He squinted as he talked as if he couldn’t hear well.
He disliked it when people stared.
The bus arrived. People got off. People got on, including the woman in the scarf. The first police vehicles entered the 72nd street entrance at the twenty-eight minute mark. Park police would already be on scene. Bonn noted the time, watched for a gap in traffic, and pedaled toward his apartment. Once inside, the apartment seemed very small. Bonn emptied the bag, spread the contents out on a table and began to clean everything. Bonn didn’t have much in the apartment, but it still seemed cluttered.
It was time to move. He’d call the Germans in the morning.
~Homicide
Terrance Grimaldi clung to his soda cooler nervously as the big car swerved. He’d been a cop for eighteen years and was promoted to homicide after only two. His marriage lasted only nine years. The late hours took a toll.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t run around. He was married to the job.
Terrence paid his child support. He paid the rent at the apartment his ex-wife lived in. He paid the electricity and refuse bills and was otherwise agreeable to all the terms of the divorce. His ex-wife took their ten-year-old son to Connecticut anyway.
That wasn’t the deal. He never saw him anymore.
The boy wouldn’t talk to him on the phone. He wrote his son letters but never got any in return. Terrence applied optimism to his bleak existence as a coping mechanism.
Now he was left without distractions. Now he could do more of what he did best. Drink Fresca. Catch murderers.
Terrence was a phenomenon: he didn’t have cold cases. He didn’t fret over a file with gruesome pictures that would haunt him in his retirement. He never missed a thing … operating as everyone should—in the black.
Until recently.
Once Terrence got ahold of a case, he found the perpetrator, male or female. Two of the nine serial killers he’d brought down were of the fairer sex.
Fair. Sure. Like taking my kid to Connecticut—
All in all, Terrence was not terribly angry about the loss of his family. He was more—disillusioned. He wanted to be a good father. He’d never had a good father.
Matter of fact, his father was an abusive drunk pederast—may he rot in peace.
Terrance’s mother remained in the old country when he and his sister boarded the boat for the United States with dear old dad, and
he never wondered why. His father bought a bar, chewed cigars, and brutalized the remaining members of his family until they were old enough to flee.
In the sixteen years he’d worked homicide, Terrence hadn’t been eluded. The insomnia helped. Since the divorce he’d only slept between cases. He didn’t smoke or drink—not because he was a health nut, he wasn’t religious either—he just worked better unaltered. Co-workers knew better than to ask Terrence out for a beer. No one who knew him even offered him a cup of coffee.
He wouldn’t drink it.
His cooler kept him company when he was on the clock, which was always. He kept it stocked with Fresca and string cheese. He could get both at the Corner-Mart when he filled up the car. Once a week he bought a small bottle of conditioning shampoo and a tiny tube of toothpaste from the section where two-packs of condoms and three-dollar emery boards were sold. If he died on the job, it would be easy for someone to clean out his apartment.
There was nothing in it.
His sister sent him packets of gourmet nuts in royal blue Mylar wrappers from California. He kept them in the glove box of the unmarked sedan. The unlikely diet proved superior brain food for the middle-aged Italian. He was indefatigable. Until recently, Grimaldi had a lazy Irish partner. The heavy drinking Mick teased him for his clean living until he saw Terrence in action. He’d boxed Golden Gloves and still had the moves.
Thirty-eight and two.
He helped out at the gym a few times a week. He liked to spar with the hopefuls. It was the closest he could get to feeling like a real dad. At the precinct they called him “Bubbles” for all the Fresca he drank, but at the gym? At the gym he was known as “Hammer.” Hammer Grimaldi: the Sober Wop. The portly Irishman retired to a desk job in Pennsylvania a few weeks back. “I wanna be closer to my new grandson,” he’d said.
As though he’d go help around the house. Change a diaper? Please—the man couldn’t be bothered to zip his fly.
This left Terrence at odds. He didn’t want a new partner. He’d become used to doing it all himself.
They’d only get in his way.
He was assigned one anyway. A Puerto Rican woman named Estelle. Estelle was young and Estelle was late. Not late for work. She was in trouble. Knocked up. A couple weeks in, they’d started to click, but their first case together remained open. It’d been open for five weeks now. That made Terrence nervous. It was not a good sign. Estelle seemed unaffected by the work—she had other things going on in her life. To Estelle, it was just a job. She made frequent declarations. Some were more sentimental than others. Terrence worried about the declarations also. The longer they worked together, the more liberties she took.
Oh, Bubbles—you are quirky, but trustworthy. I’m glad I have you.
After she warmed to him, things got worse.
Good Lord, could the woman talk.
They were on their way to a murder scene. Another one in the park. Terrence needed silence. To breathe, to prepare—to focus.
Drink a Fresca maybe.
Estelle, however, seemed obligated to catch him up on every boy she ever liked, every sandwich she ever ate—and what the sandwich looked like when she passed it later. The Latina suddenly slammed on the brakes and swerved around a group of pedestrians. Terrence clung tighter to the cooler.
“And Terry? I’ll tell you—the chipotle chicken? That bird changed in my guts—it may’ve even changed my guts. Maybe forever. The baby? I think he took a few bites of the chicken as it passed him by. Couldn’t help himself. It tasted good, Terry—good, spicy chicken, Terry. First thing in the morning? That bird woke me up with a burning, desperate sensation—I almost didn’t make it. And, Terry? I’m not kidding even a little bit—in the toilet that bird rearranged itself to look like Australia. The shape of Australia. I’m not kidding you. And the bite the baby took? Tasmania. A tiny little Tasmania shaped chipotle chicken baby poop. Floating right next to mine. Oh, Terry—it was so cute.” Estelle paused to take a drink of her banana-oat smoothie. She steered and honked with the other hand. “Is Australia a continent or an island, Terry? Because I almost couldn’t hold it.” Terrence hoped Estelle would stop talking, but he knew better. Talking was how she relaxed.
She needed to talk like he needed Fresca.
“Terry. I was almost incontinent of an entire continent.” He tried not to react, but suspected that Estelle had seen the corner of his mouth jump a little. One day he had introduced Estelle to an old boxing colleague who’d happened by. The guy bragged about him in the old days. Estelle was all over his nickname.
Hammer? Oh! I like the sound of that. Well—not Hammer exactly, but we can shorten it up a little—Ham? Yeah. Ham sounds good.
Estelle called him “Terry” approximately a hundred times at the beginning of each day, but the rest of the day she called him “Ham.” Grimaldi found that he didn’t actually hate the nickname. In fact, he shortened Estelle to “Stella.”
“C’mon, Ham. That’s some funny sh—hey—watch out!” Stella steered around a jaywalker and honked the horn. When the sedan came out of the fishtail, Terrence pulled a piece of cheese from the cooler. Stella dropped the empty smoothie cup between them on the seat. “See, Ham? I drive better when I’m distracted with other tasks.” She banged at the steering wheel with her elbows and adjusted the clasp on her necklace. A seasick St. Michael bobbed from the chain. Terrence forced himself to look away.
“Were you wearing that St. Michael when you got yourself in the family way?”
Stella smiled at him as though he were an older, ugly, sweaty brother. Terrence’s attempts to keep her jabber to a minimum didn’t work. Today he was trying dry humor—cutting remarks—just a little too true to be kind.
If he found a technique to hush her, he would stick with it, but so far he had struck out.
“And for God sakes, slow down. They’ll still be dead when we get there.”
Stella’s smile spread. “Dead? Yeah, Ham. You’re right, as always. That reminds me—two days ago? When we stopped at that stand for pulled pork? An hour later? Bam. I think the baby didn’t like the way it looked to him. The shredded chunks floating by in globs of fat. I think he held on to a bend in my guts and flutter kicked it out of me fast, because it didn’t slow down on the way out at all. I felt like a hippo-mommy marking her territory—Ham? Have you seen a hippo poop its guts out? What a sight—hippos, Ham. They wag that tail like they forgot to pay their union dues and got caught. Like a salad shooter, flinging little bits every which way. Ham. I did that. Imagine if a pregnant hippo ate pulled pork from that place. No one could touch her.”
Terrence shook his head. He tried to look at the horizon—a trick that he heard kept people from feeling seasick—but they were in the thick of the city and the horizon was just the inconsistent line where tall buildings met concrete.
Homicide is a weird job.
Lately Stella had been sharing bits of her work philosophy. Sophomoric observations.
It wasn’t really much of a challenge.
Real life was very much unlike TV. He didn’t have to play either good cop or bad cop. Most people were predictable—most of them wanted to talk. Once he had a suspect in custody, there were stages people went through. The guilty folks? They had a set of stages. Innocents had stages too. If he were asked to write a book describing his inner sense about the phenomenon, he couldn’t. It was just in him. It might be different in other cities, but in New York, people seemed obligated to fill silence with information. Eventually, if they were guilty, that information led to a conviction. Sure there were quiet ones, but they still gave him information—whether they knew it or not.
Sometimes silence WAS information.
Years ago the FBI sent a team of profilers to shadow him, one of them a blond woman—not a bad looking woman. He worked a serial killer case and caught the guy while the FBI got mired in the minutiae of graphs and the like. On wrap-up, the blonde asked him to write down the steps he’d taken in a decision tree. He sat and looked
at a pad of paper, but he couldn’t write anything—it just came to him.
Who knows—they might send him a psychic next.
This guy they were after now? He talked to him, even though they didn’t have him in custody, he communicated.
But in a language he didn’t understand yet.
Their open case involved three victims in Central Park. Two died from devastating blunt trauma. Something was swung with unbelievable force, caving in one guy’s skull, another’s trachea. The last guy was picked apart with the same type of instrument, but not with brute force.
It was surgical.
Both clavicles demolished and also the victim’s insertion sites for a muscle called a “sternocleidomastoid.” The medical examiner had nearly scratched a hole in his scalp.
Indicates the attacker has knowledge of human anatomy, as structures supporting respiratory accessory muscles were of focus.
Terrence thought best out loud. It drove Stella nuts when he did it, but he did it anyway. “That lands you on the angry end of the spectrum.” Stella shot him a sideways glance—concern-laced disdain. She picked at her teeth with a fingernail and studied what she found.
“It makes me nervous when you do that.”
“What?”
“Talk to yourself. Unless you were talking to me, in which case, I’ll advise you to back off. You haven’t seen me angry, Ham.” Terrence shook his head dismissively.
So you’ve got a smart guy—he knows anatomy. Powerful too. Wastes the first guy with one blow. Second guy? One blow. Last guy …
Terrence asked himself questions under his breath, but found that he had to vocalize out loud to think.
“Do you know the last guy? Did he insult you? What makes you tick? Did he fight back so you took him down slow, or was he the only one without a gun, so you had the luxury of time to do him in?”
INHUMANUM: A THRILLER (Law of Retaliation Book 1) Page 21