by Ty Patterson
‘Nope. Bennett and Johnson’s. Good detectives.’
‘Maybe we should take over,’ Pizaka suggested while polishing his shades. It was evening. They were indoors. None of that mattered to Pizaka. The shades went on his face and he glanced back at the twins and his partner.
‘What?’
Pizaka likes headlines and this one already has the makings of a good story. Unidentified dead man carrying photograph of a woman missing for three years. This case would further his career. Meghan looked at her sister and got a wink in return. She’s thinking the same thing.
Chang considered his partner for a few moments more and thought aloud. ‘Zak’s right. It’s not as if we have anything pressing on our plate. Bennet and Johnson have Cain as well. They’re stretched thin.’
Cain. Meghan couldn’t suppress a shiver.
Cain was a serial killer unlike any other the city had known. He had been active for five years and despite the massive manhunt, the cops still had no clues to his identity.
He preyed on women. He grabbed solitary women from the street and disappeared without a trace. Several days later a body would turn up in a garbage bin. Or in a parking lot. One had been found in a patrol car’s trunk.
The body would be horribly mutilated. Cuts and slashes and gouges. Sometimes parts would be missing. An ear. A nipple. A finger. The missing parts were never found. No rape was involved.
He had initially preyed on vulnerable women in the early years. Prostitutes. Bar girls. Those who worked late at night. His success seemed to have given him confidence and he had moved to killing professional women. Lawyers. Accountants. Doctors. No woman was safe. In each case, the victim had been grabbed on the street, when she was alone at night.
The killer never called the cops to take credit. He never made contact with the media. He was a ghost. His mental state was analyzed by talk show heads, by amateur psychiatrists. The NYPD released an e-profile for him.
He still remained undetected. A newspaper gave him a name. Cain. It stuck.
Only one woman had escaped from him. Thirty-two-year-old Caryl Bybee was a cleaner in a theater on Broadway. She had finished her shift after the last show, had shared a smoke with her co-workers, and was walking toward her car when Cain had attacked.
He had come from behind, a rough hand going over her mouth, another across her waist. A harsh whisper had sounded in her ear. ‘I’m Cain.’
She had twisted sharply, had elbowed him in the ribs, and had lashed out with her feet. His grip had loosened and then she was free, running faster than she ever had in her life, yelling loudly.
Despite her escape, she couldn’t describe Cain.
Average height, white, dark clothing, could fit a few million men in the city.
‘Let’s do it. Let’s take on this one.’ Chang’s words broke Meghan’s reverie and she turned to see him pull out his phone and speak into it softly.
She played idly with her cell phone while they waited for the cop to finish his call. Her finger clicked on a button and an image came up.
Cali Minter’s. The picture that the dead man had been carrying. Meghan had photographed it before handing the picture over to the cops.
Why was he carrying it?
‘Done,’ Chang called out from across the room in satisfaction. ‘The Commissioner says it’s ours. I mentioned the Petersens’ involvement. That helped.’
He came to the conference desk they were seated around and looked at Meghan. ‘You never saw him before?’ he asked, yet again.
Meghan didn’t reply. Not directly. She was remembering the dead man’s eyes. The way he clutched my hair. My hand. His lips moving.
‘I think he was coming to meet me.’
Chapter Three
Chang’s eyebrows lifted quizzically. ‘I thought you didn’t know him.’
‘I don’t–’
Beth clicked her fingers and spoke over her sister. ‘Of course. The announcements!’
Meghan suppressed a laugh when she saw the expressions on the cops’ faces. ‘What Beth is saying…when Percy approached us all those months back, we were caught up in other stuff. We couldn’t spend much time on finding her sister. If you recollect, I was interviewed a few times by some TV channels–’
‘Meghan mentioned Cali’s disappearance and displayed her picture in those interviews,’ Beth completed for her.
Pizaka paused a beat for the twins to continue their tango and when they didn’t, he spoke. ‘So you’re saying the dead man remembered you from way back and was heading to you.’
‘Only explanation I can think of,’ Meghan replied.
The skeptical look on Pizaka’s face didn’t disappear. He glanced at Chang who shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me. I’m at a loss. We got this case fifteen minutes ago. I’m good, but not that good.’
The twins spent another hour thrashing out possible explanations with the cops, but Meghan knew they were speculating and with a glance at her watch, she rose.
‘Same rules,’ she told Chang when they were leaving. ‘We share.’
He nodded. It was how they worked when the twins and the cops worked on the same case. Parallel investigations. Sharing of intel.
Beth flagged a cab when they reached street level and glanced at her sister. ‘Where to?’
‘Our office. Let’s get our own wheels.’
Their office was on Columbus Avenue, a tall, glass-fronted, forty-four-story building that the eight of them owned outright.
One floor in the building was devoted to their office, Beth and Meghan lived in apartments on adjacent floors above the office. There were more apartments for the rest of the agents to use, though they had their own homes in the city. The other floors were rented out.
The building’s purchase was funded by a royal in a Middle Eastern country to whom Zeb had done a favor. A grateful royal had written a check with eight zeros in it and had handed it to Clare.
She had refused, he had been insistent. She had given the check to Zeb who then had formed an investment vehicle for the eight of them; the building was their first purchase.
The basement of the building had an extensive garage in which several SUVS were maintained in a ready-to-go condition. All the SUVs were outfitted with gear Broker had insisted on, gear not available at any dealer. Shatter and assault-rifle proof glass, run-flat tires, Kevlar and titanium reinforced bodies, WiFi, secure comms links…Meghan had stopped listening when Broker had enthusiastically read out his list.
Meghan headed to the nearest black SUV that looked silently ominous, keyed it open, and brought it to life with a satisfying growl.
‘Now, where?’ Beth asked when she had belted herself in.
‘The Minters.’
The twins hadn’t looked into Cali’s disappearance in any detail. An Agency mission had come up soon after Percy’s meeting with them.
Karachi had reared its head when the first mission was wrapped up. Karachi had been hot, brutal, and had required the twins to be on-site, to support Zeb and the others.
Beth had called the Minters before the first mission and had given them a spiel about corporate work taking precedence. The Minters had accepted the explanation. Cali had been gone for two years by then. They could wait for a few more months. Besides, the cops were still on the case.
Meghan punched in the coordinates to the Minter’s townhome, in Midtown East, not far from the UN headquarters on East 42nd Street, and joined the stream of horns and fumes that was New York traffic.
She looked right when they were waiting at a light and spotted the pensive expression on her sister’s face.
They were identical twins, Meghan, the older one by a few seconds. They both had brown hair that fell to their shoulders, bright green eyes, and attractive features they had inherited from their mom. Both were tall, five feet seven in their socks, and had an innate confidence that Zeb’s training had polished.
She’s feeling guilty. That we didn’t put more effort in finding Cali.
‘How’s Mark?’ she asked, to distract Beth.
Beth’s face tinged with a rosy hue, proof that Meghan’s ploy worked. Mark Feinberg, a cop, a detective with the NYPD, was Beth’s boyfriend. The two had been together for years and ribbed Meghan continually on her lack of relationships.
‘He’s back from L.A. Returned two nights ago.’
Mark was with a special unit that went after international criminal gangs and had to often travel and liaise with other police forces.
‘I’ll be seeing less of you, then,’ Meghan teased.
‘You’d see less of me if you got off your butt and found someone,’ Beth retorted.
They fell into an easy silence; words weren’t necessary to fill the empty space. They were twins. They were also friends.
Meghan slowed when she reached East 51st Street and searched for a parking space. Beth pointed to one, next to the pavement, and she eased behind a bright yellow Traverse.
Beth hopped out, stretched, and stared at the yellow colored vehicle and grimaced. Yellow. There was no accounting for taste, but hey, this was New York.
Meghan grinned silently, reading her thoughts, and crossed the street when Beth joined her, their smiles disappearing as they approached the entrance and rode the elevator to the Minters’ apartment.
Percy Minter greeted them and led them to the lounge where her dad and mom, Jack and Grace Minter were awaiting.
Jack Minter was a war crimes investigator in the United Nations, Grace was a homemaker. The Minters had lived for two decades in Europe; it was in Greece that their elder daughter was born.
Their fascination for the country had made them name her after the goddess of poetry and eloquence. Percy arrived fifteen years later, squalling and kicking and on seeing her antics, Grace promptly named her after the Greek queen of the underworld.
The Minters with their two daughters moved from country to country on the European continent, wherever Jack’s job took them. It was an education in culture and people for their daughters.
They were based in Austria when Cali moved back to the States for her grad studies at Columbia University.
Four thousand miles of separation from her eldest daughter weighed on Grace; when Percy turned ten, the Minters relocated to the U.S. Jack got an administration job in the UN and life was moving smoothly for the Minters.
Till Cali disappeared.
She worked for a couple of years in a particle physics research firm in New York after her graduation, but that job didn’t last long. Wanting to pursue another degree, she went back to her alma mater and got her dream research project.
It was a DoD funded research project in physics, she was in a group of six students who worked under the tutelage of a Nobel laureate.
The first year went as she expected. Research. Presentations. Late nights. Hard work. Frustration. Occasional moments of blinding discovery.
The second year was similar to the first.
It was a late night in August in the second year, when Cali set out from her lab, alone, and walked to her off-campus apartment on West 133rd Street.
She never reached it.
Her roommate, a fellow research student on the same program, didn’t pay much attention to her non-arrival. Cali often spent nights with her boyfriend, another fellow student, at his apartment on West 96th Street.
The roommate and the boyfriend raised the alarm the next day. The police were called in and an investigation commenced.
Three years later the investigation was still open, but lack of clues and no forward movement meant that the NYPD kept it open. Just about.
Meghan took a deep breath when she saw the air of expectation on Jack and Grace. The slow draining of hope had taken its toll on the couple. Jack, tall, silver haired and bespectacled, now moved with the slightest bow in his shoulders.
Grace’s blonde hair had turned grey. Her green eyes had lost their sparkle.
Still, the arrival of the twins meant some development. Meghan could sense their desperate keenness, could feel the spark of hope light again.
She didn’t want to kill it. She didn’t want to disappoint them. She had no choice.
‘We have something. We don’t know what it means.’
Chapter Four
She briefed them rapidly on her coming across the dead man. Grace nodded once, she had heard of the incident in a news bulletin.
‘The man was carrying a photo. Cali’s.’
The living room went quiet. No one spoke. No one moved. An ambulance wailed in the far distance and faded.
‘How–’ Jack began.
‘What?’ Grace interrupted him.
‘Who…?’ Percy exclaimed.
Jack silenced his family with a look and gestured at Meghan. Proceed.
Beth took over. ‘We don’t know who he is, sir. Nor do we know why he was carrying Cali’s picture. He was trying to say something when Meghan reached him, but he couldn’t speak. It was too late.’
‘Fingerprints?’ Percy rushed in. ‘Surely they can find who he is.’
Beth nodded. ‘The cops are working on that. They’ll look into all angles.’
Jack lurched to his feet. ‘I’ll call them. I’ll light a fire–’
‘Sir,’ Beth stopped him.
‘We know the detectives who have taken over the case. Chang and Pizaka. They lead a Major Case squad. They are good. They’re on top of it.’
Jack stood uncertainly for a moment, the need for action, for doing something, warring with Beth’s urging.
‘They’re good?’
‘Yes, sir. We know them personally.’
He exhaled and sat down heavily. ‘What will happen now?’
‘The cops will do their thing and so will we. We hadn’t looked into Cali’s disappearance before,’ Beth said apologetically, ‘we’ll pull out all stops now.’
‘You’ve experience with this?’ Dark eyes peered keenly at them through glasses.
‘Dad, I told you about–’ Percy cut in impatiently.
Jack waved her to silence and motioned Beth to reply.
‘Yes, sir. We are experienced investigators. Our firm works with corporations, advising them on security, investigating fraud.’
Silence fell in the room as Jack leaned back, apparently satisfied. In all the time, Grace didn’t speak. Her gaze was fixed on a family portrait hanging from the wall. Proud parents flanked by their daughters. Cali and Percy were laughing. A moment of happiness caught in time.
Beth saw the haunted look in the mother’s eyes and did something she rarely did.
‘Ma’am,’ she called out softly.
Grace turned her head slowly as if seeing her for the first time.
‘We will find her. You have our promise.’
Grace stared at her for a long time, ignoring the single tear that rolled down her face.
‘Thank you,’ she finally whispered.
Percy rose to hug her when a phone rang in the depths of the house. She went to answer it and then went to the door.
They heard voices, footsteps, and she returned, ushering in Pizaka and Chang.
‘Why am I not surprised?’ Chang smiled briefly at the twins, before turning to the dad and mom. He introduced himself and his partner and went through all that had happened.
They broke up after another hour, the twins leading the way out, the cops following.
‘You shouldn’t make promises you may not be able to keep,’ Pizaka said, stony faced, referring to the promise Beth had made.
Beth ignored Meghan’s warning hand on her shoulder and smiled. ‘Let’s have a wager, Pizaka. We’ll find Cali or what happened to her, before you do.’
The cop didn’t reply. He straightened his jacket, turned his back, and went to his ride.
Chang regarded the twins for a moment and then smiled wryly. ‘I keep waiting for the day when you’ll punch him.’
‘Won’t happen, Chang,’ Beth chuckled. ‘We wouldn’t want to ruin his profile.’
Meghan pull
ed out of their parking space and drove silently through the thinning traffic. She followed Chang’s car for a moment and parted ways with it when it swung left on Madison Avenue and she turned right.
‘That’s the long way to our office,’ Beth asked her, surprised.
‘Let’s have a look at Cali’s apartment block. We’ll come back in the daylight and make inquiries.’
She drove down Madison Avenue, hung a left on West 133rd Street and pulled in front of the apartment building.
It was a fifteen-story building with a gated entrance and despite the late hour, had a steady stream of foot traffic, in and out of it.
‘Students,’ Beth snorted.
‘Says you,’ Meghan quipped. ‘I remember a certain someone used to have wild, riotous, parties till dawn.’
She pulled into one of several empty parking spaces and walked to the entrance of the apartment block. She noted the security cameras mounted high up on a pole and looked back at Beth.
‘Nope, no footage of Cali entering the building that evening,’ Beth answered her look. ‘The security guys didn’t see her, either.’
Meghan circled back and walked down the length of the street, her eyes scanning lamp poles, neighboring apartment buildings and offices for security devices. She didn’t spot any.
If it had been that easy, the cops would’ve cracked this case a while ago.
She returned to Beth who was waiting by their SUV and was digging into her pocket for the keys, when she heard it.
A car roared down the street, speeding recklessly, its angry beams cutting the night.
She watched it for a moment, found her key fob, and unlocked the vehicle.
She was walking around the passenger side when she heard the shift in the vehicle’s angry whine.
‘WATCH OUT!’
She looked over her shoulder.
The car was heading right at her.
Chapter Five