So, thirteen men would be listening to their radios. They could get to the Stone Tower within two to ten minutes, as well as watching the approaches to the monument. The best they could do. But up close, it would be just her and Raymond, with radios on Band 5.
Perelli’s eyes were lined with red veins. “This is it,” he’d said. “We have to get him.”
“I know,” she’d answered softly.
There were no cabins in the immediate vicinity of the Stone Tower—which she could see clearly now in the last of the evening sun—and she’d seen no tents as she’d walked in that morning. She’d borrowed camouflage gear and binoculars from Perelli, who was a deer hunter. The Remington 700 sniper rifle with the Leupold Tactical Scope that was laid carefully next to her right knee belonged to the SWAT team. Pinned to the ground around her was something else Perelli had suggested: a mirrored blind, made of metalized polyester, that reflected the leaves and undergrowth around her. She’d never known such things existed; her father and she had been city campers, roasting hot dogs and tramping the local trails looking for deer, her father a few belts into a pint bottle of Scotch. The only special equipment he’d bought was a metal contraption for making toasted sandwiches over a campfire.
For a moment, she missed her father so much that she thought she would cry out. She cupped a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes.
Too many hours out here alone, she thought. Too much time to think. Someday I’m going to put six months aside and grieve for him properly.
Abbie raised the camo-covered binoculars above the edge of the blind and found the Stone Tower. It was an octagon of rough granite blocks, maybe twenty feet high, with a small balustrade on top. There were three open rectangular doorways letting visitors inside the damp structure, which had smelled faintly of stale beer when she’d inspected it that morning. The inside of the tower had been empty, featureless except for spray-painted graffiti—DANE—on one wall. There was a series of steps leading up to the platform above, which was paved with stones, bordered by a low wooden fence, and was open to the air. It, too, had been empty, the floor slick from intermittent rain. The platform gave a view of the rolling hills that ran to the horizon in all directions.
She pulled up the microphone dangling on the earphone wire. She, Raymond, and thirteen other men all wore the same headsets. It allowed them to talk in low tones and still be heard in the earpiece.
“Raymond,” Abbie whispered. “Anything?”
The bud earphone in her ear hissed slightly. Then Raymond came on. “I got a damn coyote or something crawling around the bush. That’s it. How long till Riesen’s scheduled to show up?”
Abbie pulled back the sleeve on her camo jacket. “Fifteen minutes.”
Abbie guessed that Riesen would park in the Red House parking lot half a mile away. The path bringing him to the tower cut between two meadows, skirted several groves of birch, and over one rickety wooden bridge. The killer would easily be able to see that he was traveling alone.
Raymond’s voice came over the earpiece. “You ever hear this thing was haunted?”
Abbie scanned the scrub with her glasses. The sun sent beams of golden light shooting through the tree branches; it was setting, almost level with her across the tops of the hills to the west. The colors of the leaves were merging together, deep reds becoming browns and the browns now shaded with black.
“What?” she asked.
“The tower.”
“No, I never heard that.”
“Supposed to be. Indians sacrificed white people on the site.”
“And that bothers you, Raymond?”
Raymond laughed softly. “Oh, I didn’t say I had a problem with it. The white man is always poking his nose somewhere it’s not wanted. Speaking of which, if this coyote doesn’t stop messing around, I’m going to shoot it.”
Damn, thought Abbie. I have the choice of the Buffalo PD, which is filled with hunters and fishermen, and I end up with a black cop afraid of coyotes.
“Quiet,” Abbie hissed.
She’d seen something move thirty feet left of Raymond’s position. A pine tree shook and she’d heard the distant snap of a branch, a solitary hard crack. Abbie scanned the trees with her glasses. There was a slight wind and the tops of the pines were bending with it, but this thing had shaken the entirety of the tree.
“I got a, what the fuck do you call ’em, possum climbing down a tree,” said Raymond.
Silence now. Abbie watched. “The pine thirty feet to your west?”
“Yeah. Got a baby with her. Go on, Mama, get out of here.”
Abbie looked out over the greenery.
“Hey, Kearney.”
“Yes, Raymond?”
“You ever come to my side of town?”
Abbie was turned away from the tower, scanning the pines fifteen feet behind her. Nothing, but the light was starting to get tricky. She put down the glasses. “You asking me out on a date?”
“I’m just asking if you come to my side of town, ever.”
“Yeah, he’s asking you out on a date,” said a chesty voice. It sounded like Thompkins, who was leading the SWAT team.
“Only Raymond and me talking on this channel, please,” Abbie said. “Everyone else listening unless it’s urgent.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Abbie’s eyes raked the tower again. Nothing.
“Sure I get to the East Side, Raymond,” Abbie continued. “Usually for drug shootings, but once in a while there’s a gang war, or a—”
“Ha. That’s the Genesee Street Boys. Don’t mess with them, now.”
She thought of Mills. She’d called his cell phone twice, though she knew it was shut off. She’d wanted to hear his calm, steady, Canadian voice.
“If you do come over,” said Raymond, “I’ll take you to this new jazz spot on Bryant. They have a guitarist will make you find Jesus.”
“I have a boyfriend, th—”
Raymond cut in. “What’s that, on your eight.”
Abbie turned quickly, bringing up the glasses and peering through the undergrowth. “How far?” she whispered.
“Ten feet.”
Abbie’s heart froze. She hadn’t heard a thing.
She rose up on her knees. There was a shifting black shape drifting across the binoculars’ viewfinder. “Forget it,” she said, exhaling loudly. “Some old garbage bag blowing from tree to tree.” She settled back in.
“You two thinking of moving in together, I hear,” Raymond said.
Abbie rolled her eyes. The BPD gossip machine was ridiculous. “Is that your business, Raymond?”
“All those Canadian boys are good for is waxing you down with otter grease or some such.”
Abbie holstered her Glock and laid the Remington rifle lengthwise. The valleys between the smooth hilltops were settling into gloom. The only sound was the breeze in the trees and birds chattering before darkness came.
Is Hangman here? Has he swept up this hill toward the tower, ghost that he is?
“Mind your manners,” she said, and picked up the glasses again.
The temperature must be hovering around 20 degrees. She checked her watch: 7:54. Riesen would be on his way in from the parking lot.
She heard Raymond breathing in her earpiece. He was scanning the landscape, too, head on a swivel. After a while you could sense what the other person was doing from listening to them breathe, the rustle of the mike, the background scrim of noise.
Abbie heard something, a sound that had been there for a while but had grown just loud enough to emerge from the background shirr of wind. It was a chunking sound, the sound of feet on gravel. But it was distant. She swung her glasses over to the path, which now glowed a light tan in the deepening dusk.
It was Riesen, wearing the same trench coat and dark slacks he’d been wearing the day before. He carried a plastic bag in his left hand, and she heard the sound of his feet clearly on the stony trail.
“Riesen,” she whispered to Raymond.
“Where?”
“Twenty, thirty yards to my left.”
Abbie needed Raymond’s eyes on the tower.
“Stay where you are. Thompkins, come up with one additional to Raymond’s left.”
“Roger that. Moving.”
Riesen was approaching the tower, his head raised in the air like a pointer sniffing. He was eager. Abbie turned the glasses quickly, but she couldn’t see anything to Raymond’s left.
“How long, Thompkins?” Abbie asked.
Sound of movement in her earpiece, scraping branches.
“Two minutes,” Thompkins said quietly.
“Red,” Raymond said, his voice higher. “Red through the bushes.”
“Leave it,” Abbie ordered. “Thompkins is backstopping you. I need—”
“Too long, I got this.”
“Raymond, stay where—”
She heard Raymond breathing hard in her earpiece and she saw a flash of camo from his position.
Damn his overeager—Her eyes flitted from the movement in the dry bush to Riesen.
“Stand down,” she said urgently on the mike.
No answer. Maybe a branch had ripped Raymond’s mike away. She felt the situation begin to tilt out of control.
Without Raymond, one of the three entrances to the tower was hidden to them. She saw Riesen, thirty feet away, hurrying toward the south entrance, the bag swinging in his hand.
“Thompkins, where are you?” Abbie whispered, realizing Riesen might have been lured here in order for Hangman to kill him.
Breath, panting.
“Coming up … just left of Raymond’s position.”
Right where he should be to catch anyone running downhill from the tower. But where was Raymond?
She brought the mike to her lips and whispered his name urgently. All she heard was scraping and the sound of breathing. Raymond cleared his throat. He began to breathe hard and then she heard a commotion in the earpiece.
Abbie looked toward Raymond’s blind. Forty yards to its left, something moved in the bushes. Raymond or Hangman?
“You have a visual, Thompkins?”
“Negative.”
She shot a glance at the path, and caught Riesen disappearing into the gloomy interior of the tower.
Ten seconds later, a shape emerged at the top and was framed against the last rays of the sun.
A scream burst through the earpiece. Abbie barked into the microphone. “Raymond? Is that you?”
She dashed out of her blind, her feet clearing the vines that surrounded it and hitting the hard pate of a path. Abbie sped down it, heading up toward Raymond’s position, her Glock pointing left where she’d seen the trees shaking.
She stopped. She heard breathing in her earpiece now, slow breathing. It was different.
“Raymond?”
The voice was low, deep.
“Hangman, Hangman,” it said, and the back of Abbie’s neck went cold, “what do you see?”
It was Marcus Flynn, the voice from the trial clip she’d watched in the crowded bar the day before. Slow, deep, and perfectly calm.
Abbie’s heart seized up. She hurried toward the trees. There was no movement now.
“Four little girls.”
“Flynn, listen to me,” she said.
“Cute as can be.”
Abbie cat-footed toward the black hillside that faced her. She brought her gun up with her right hand and pulled the earpiece away, listening for the man in the open air.
The earpiece dropped to her chest. She could still hear the voice.
“Hangman, Hangman, where do they go?”
Her eyes scanned the dark branches.
“Down on the ground, where the daffodils grow.”
The earpiece went dead.
Abbie ran into the brush just below the spot where Raymond had disappeared, thrashing at strong thin branches with her gun. Vines grabbed at her legs and branches whipped her throat. She smelled the deep musty tang of decaying leaves and she shouted Raymond’s name again.
Something large and fast burst from the scrub on her right. Abbie whipped her gun up but saw orange and immediately pulled it down.
Thompkins’s face was red as he hustled to her, another burly man just behind him. The SWAT leader was breathing hard.
“You see anything?” Abbie asked.
He shook his head. “Must have gone west. Nothing came by us.”
Abbie nodded, pointed right and the two men shot by, headed for a small trail barely visible between two raggedy pines.
Ahead and to her left, she thought she saw something red moving along the trail, hidden by thick leaves. She brought the gun up, but held fire. It could be Raymond. She pushed her way into the vines and broke through, her feet finding a small animal path on the other side.
“Raymond!” she called.
Ten steps later, she found him. He was sprawled out on the trail, his service gun in his right hand. The back of his scalp was crisscrossed with blood.
Abbie felt her heart thumping hard. Dark trees lined the little path, left and right, leaves silvery in the moonlight. She couldn’t see between them. If Hangman was lurking there, he could be on her before she could point her gun.
Abbie bent down, the tip of her Glock shaking ever so slightly.
“Raymond, stay still.”
Her hand slid along the back of his neck, over the turtleneck. She felt for the jugular and found it, beating.
And then she heard a noise from behind her, like a dog baying in pain.
She turned, her eyes wide with fear.
It wasn’t a dog. It was Frank Riesen, screaming.
52
She didn’t want to leave Raymond. He was out cold, in the open. Hangman could watch her leave and then come back and cut his throat.
“Thompkins,” she called into the mike. “Come back to where we met and proceed northeast from there thirty yards. Under a big oak. It’s Raymond.”
A curse. “Roger that.”
Riesen screamed again, some words Abbie couldn’t make out, but the sound communicated a prehuman anguish.
Abbie began to move. She brought out her radio from the camo’s hip pocket and called in her position.
“Go ahead,” called the dispatcher.
“Need a Medevac for Raymond. Unconscious, lacerations to the head. Bring other personnel to the Stone Tower now. Thompkins will be with him.”
“Where is Hangman?” said the dispatcher.
“Last seen moving northeast toward the Red House lot. Bring the copter in and spotlight the trails between here and there.”
“Roger that,” the dispatcher said.
She had to get to Riesen. Abbie jumped onto the narrow path out of the stand of trees, then hooked left. The tower was forty yards away and as she dashed toward it, gun pointed down, Riesen went silent. The light from the moon edged the parapet in gray, but she couldn’t see a human form anywhere.
“Riesen,” she yelled. “Stay where you are.”
Abbie came down the hills and sprinted toward one of the doorways. She reached the structure and threw her back against it, then swung through, bringing the Glock through the entire arc. She raced for the stairs, her feet splashing in unseen puddles.
The stairs were bathed in a weird glow. She pointed the Glock up and dashed to the platform on top.
The moon lit up the stone. Riesen was hunched against the parapet across from her. He was as still as a gargoyle.
“Mr. Riesen, are you all right?”
Abbie approached slowly. Riesen began to rock back and forth and now she heard him mumbling. But his voice was baby talk, interrupted by groans.
She pointed the Glock at the stone floor and crept over to him.
“Mr. Riesen?”
As she came closer she saw over his shoulder and there was something placed on the stone floor. It was laid out on a dirty gray cloth.
At Riesen’s side, she placed
her hand on his shoulder. His shoulder muscle seemed to ripple underneath his coat, in revulsion or fear.
Abbie saw what was lying on the cloth in the moonlight. A severed hand. On the third finger was Sandy’s emerald ring.
53
Abbie drove home alone in the Saab, her face drained of color in the light of a half-moon. The radio was off. Riesen was in an ambulance somewhere up ahead of her, suffering from shock. Raymond was at Erie County Medical Center after being airlifted out of the park. As for Hangman, there was no sign. He’d gotten to Riesen, grabbed the money, and left his daughter’s hand in exchange.
This is why cops never talk to their wives, Abbie thought. Holding it all inside, they grow distant and sleepwalk into divorce. I thought I understood why, in Miami, but maybe that was just me. It’s not PTSD or that other crap. It’s—how to put this—solidarity.
Cops think to themselves, Why should I have comfort when the parent or the loved one I just left behind gets none? Is it fair that I get in my car and on the way home I’m somehow forgiven for not finding the killer and by the time I walk through my front door I can tell my boyfriend or husband, “You’ll never guess what just happened”?
“Bad day?” he says, setting the wineglass next to the plate of pasta.
“Honey, you wouldn’t believe …”
No. There must be some kind of alliance with the victim or you’re a piece of stone.
She looked at her phone. But she shouldn’t call Mills, not yet. She hadn’t earned it, that relief.
Hangman is a sadist. Every time you feel pain, he wins. Special bonus for pain caused to families and random cops. She’d been ready for that.
Frank Riesen hadn’t.
And so if you’re not a complete monster, you can’t let the parents suffer alone. You have to take a little of their pain and tuck it away inside yourself. It’s not stress, or whatever the hell the psychiatrists say it is. It’s not the same as a soldier who’s seen his buddies blown up. It’s just the minimum purchase price for the job.
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