Anatomy of Fear (12 page)

P
erry Denton popped a five-milligram Valium into his mouth and washed it down with decaf. It wasn’t that he needed it—he could quit at any time—it relaxed him, that’s all, and these days he needed to relax. He picked up the phone after the sixth annoying ring.

“What time will you be home, Perry?”

“Why?”

“Because we have guests, remember?”

No, he did not remember. And hadn’t he specifically told his secretary to screen his calls, especially his wife’s?

This morning’s meeting with the feds was still on his mind. He was glad they were taking the case, and before the media got hold of the fact that it was a fucking serial killer and there was a media sideshow that
he
would have to deal with to calm the city’s residents.

“I’ll be home when I get home, baby. I’ve got a lot of shit to deal with.”

Damn.
His job was supposed to be administrative, to oversee the workings of the various NYPD departments; he was not responsible for every fucking psycho who decided to snuff a few blacks and Hispanics. And couldn’t the guy have killed them in the
neighborhoods where that sort of thing was acceptable? The college kid was the real problem, from a wealthy family who would be making a lot of noise if they didn’t get some answers, and soon. Denton couldn’t decide whom he disliked more, rich people or poor people.

“What time are you coming home, Perry?” His wife’s singsong voice cut into his thoughts. “It’s embarrassing, always having to make excuses for you.”

“So don’t make them.” He slammed the receiver into its cradle and shouted, “Denise!”

His office door opened and a heavyset woman stood in the frame.

“Where were you? Aren’t you supposed to answer my phone, screen my calls?”

“Yes, sir, but I was down the hall copying those documents you’d asked for.”

Denton sighed, extended his hand and took the papers. Damn it, did he have to do everything himself? He waited till the woman left his office, then found the number he’d written on a Post-it, and stared at it. It was risky, but less risky than his current situation. And he’d already set the wheels in motion, put half the money in an off-shore account. Now he had to buy another crap cell phone and make the final call.

M
onica Collins had spent the night going over everything—case reports, background checks, autopsy results, ballistics, crime scene pictures. She was feeling a mix of excitement and anxiety, the result of too many unanswered questions and three cups of coffee. She had forwarded everything to her associates back at Behavioral Science, but knew BSS moved slowly, particularly these days with the
“Oakland Sniper” getting all the attention from the media and priority from the bureau. Six killings in six months. Last she heard, the agent who’d been supervising that case had been transferred to somewhere in Washington State, and not one of the scenic parts.

Well, that was not going to happen to her. Not after six years of undergrad and postgrad work, then recruited by the bureau only to sit behind a desk for eight years while her college girlfriends got married and had babies. She had finally gotten out from behind that Quantico desk and she was going to stay out. She looked around her temporary quarters at Manhattan FBI and liked what she saw. She liked the city too. And she liked New York’s Chief of Department Perry Denton, the kind of man who rarely, if ever, paid any attention to her. Maybe it was just the case, but she thought she’d detected something a bit more from him.

She glanced up at the bulletin board and the crime scene photos of the three victims she had tacked to it along with copies of the drawings that had been pinned to their dead bodies.

Serial killers had always held a fascination for her, particularly the handsome ones like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, the idea that one could be seduced to their death both terrifying and thrilling. Bundy had been her favorite until she had read about the kid who called himself Tony the Tiger from the Color Blind case two years ago. She’d paid him a visit—strictly for observational and educational purposes—at a state hospital for the criminally insane. She’d never forget it, his almost girlish good looks, blue eyes cold and gorgeous, the seductive, unsettling smile. Thinking about him now brought a chill, and another emotion she did not want to consider.

Collins looked back at the crime scene pictures and wondered about this unsub. All they had surmised so far was that the guy lived somewhere in the geographic vicinity, had experience handling weapons, and could draw.

She had her two full-time field officers, Richardson and Archer, combing through the tax records of every former soldier living in the tri-state area, anyone who held a job in commercial art, design, or architecture, as well as students and professors at the local art schools. Maybe something would pop up, though that was not the way it usually happened, and she knew it.

Damn it, she needed a break.

She wished she could get someone from BSS to give her a psyche profile, but these days Homeland Security was sucking up the bureau’s dollars and she had been told to make do with her two full-time FOs. For now, Quantico was strictly for analysis and backup unless the unsub escalated, and she expected to capture him before that happened.

She didn’t know what she could expect from the NYPD, particularly Detective Russo, who had fucked up a case a few years back. She’d read the file. Of course if the detective gave her any trouble it would be easy enough to bring up the past and blame her all over again.

Collins sat back and crossed her legs. They were still, she thought, her best asset. She decided she’d wear a skirt to her next meeting with Chief Denton.

15

I
didn’t see nothing.” The old lady, Mrs. Adele Rubenstein, reminded me of my Grandma Rose. She pursed her lips together and cherry red lipstick snaked its way into whistle lines like sidewalks cracking in an earthquake. “The police, they already asked, and I told them. I didn’t see a thing.” She glanced up at Terri Russo. “You don’t even wear a uniform.”

“I already explained that, ma’am. I’m a detective. We don’t wear uniforms.”

The old lady shrugged and made another face. Russo was getting nowhere.

“This is important to the investigation, ma’am. Anything—”

“I told you, there’s nothing. I was a block away and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. I saw a man leaning over a man, and that’s it. I can’t tell you anything else. You want I should make it up?” She folded her arms across her chest.

I stepped between Russo and the old woman and offered up my best “nice Jewish boy” smile.

“Tell you what, Mrs. R, you mind if I call you that?”

The old lady shrugged and I could see that my smile hadn’t quite done it. I’d have to drag out the big guns. “My mother,” I said, “Judith Epstein, always says—”

“Epstein?”

“Yes,” I said. “From Forest Hills. My father was Spanish, but my mother’s a hundred percent Jewish.”

Adele Rubenstein looked at me for the first time. “You understand that makes
you
Jewish. Your father—” She waved an arthritic hand. “He doesn’t matter. The line is through the mother. You’re Jewish, and that’s that.”

“Of course. I know that.”

“So, you had a bar mitzvah?”

“Huge affair, relatives, friends, friends of friends, the whole
mishpucheh.”
I figured if I was lying I might as well give myself a big party, the whole nine yards. “We had a chopped-liver mold like you wouldn’t believe. Like a piece of art. It was a sin to eat it.”

“And your father, he didn’t mind?”

“Oh, my father…” I went for the home run. “He converted.”

“Call me Adele,” she said, her face one big smile.

Russo gave me a look.

“Adele,” I said. “Let’s make this fun. You tell me everything you can remember and I’ll draw it. I do this with my grandmother all the time.” I didn’t bother to tell her it was with my Spanish grandmother because I knew she’d assume I meant my Jewish one. My
abeula
would be the same way. She considered me a hundred-percent Spanish. “And call me Nathan.”

“A beautiful name.”

“Yeah,” I said. “My grandmother loves it. So, here’s what I want you to do, Adele. First, get comfortable, sit back and take a deep breath.”

Adele Rubenstein inhaled deeply and sagged into her plastic-covered couch.

We were in the living room of the brownstone she and her husband, Sam, the blind man, had been living in since 1950, and it
looked it. Danish-modern coffee table, chipped; faded, overstuffed ultra-suede armchairs; a Formica dinette set with red vinyl-covered chairs.

“Okay, Nathan,” she said. “I’m ready.”

I opened my pad. “So you were on the street—”

“With Sam. It was our evening
shpatzir,
a walk. It’s good for Sam, the fresh air. The man is a hermit. He’d sit home and watch TV all day if I didn’t make him go out. I say to him, ‘Sam, you’re blind, what can you be watching?’ It doesn’t matter to him, he says, he likes to listen. He watches the old shows, which he remembers from before he went blind,
kaynahorah.
He says he can picture them, but I’m not so sure. His favorite is that one about the men in the war camp,
Hogan’s
something or other. To think they made a show about such a thing.” She shook her head and I took it as my chance to break in.

“So you said you saw a man leaning over the victim, the man who was shot.”

“Oh, such a terrible thing. Right there, on the street, in our neighborhood.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “The man who was shot, he was colored, but a nice man. I’d seen him before and he always smiled and said hello. And good-looking, you shouldn’t know from it, like Sidney Poitier. You know Sidney Poitier? He’s before your time. A wonderful actor. He won the Oscar.
Lilies of the…Valley,
the movie was called, or something like that. The first colored man to win. I know they don’t like that term,
colored.
But I don’t understand it. When I was growing up I had plenty of friends who were colored, and they didn’t mind being called colored. They ate in my house, everything. To my mother a person was a person. You know what I’m saying, Nathan?”

“Yes. I know exactly what you mean.” I took a deep breath. This was not going to be so easy.

Russo was smiling, enjoying herself a little at my expense.

“Close your eyes and try to picture exactly what you saw. I’ll ask you questions and you try to answer with two or three words. You think you can do that, Adele?”

“Why not?”

“Good. First question. Did you hear anything? A shot, maybe?”

“I don’t think so, but this is Brooklyn, and the traffic, I don’t have to tell you, it keeps me up half the night. I said to Sam just the other day, Sam—”

“Just a few words, Adele, remember?”

“Oh, of course. No shot. I didn’t hear a shot. Is that short enough, Nathan?”

“Perfect. So the first thing you saw was one man leaning over another, is that right?”

“Not exactly. He wasn’t leaning. He was just standing there. And I said to Sam, ‘Sam, I think someone is hurt.’”

“Why did you say that?”

“Nathan, forgive me. This will be more than two words, but it was obvious. There was a man lying on the ground and he wasn’t moving. What would you say?”

“You’re right, Adele. So, the man who was standing, was he a big man?”

“It’s hard to say.” Adele pursed her lips. “He had on a coat, a long coat.”

I glanced over at Terri and we exchanged a look. “That’s great.” I went back to the sketch I’d made after talking with the last victim’s wife and asked her to picture what she’d seen.

“We were walking, like I said, and I looked down the street and I saw them. I couldn’t understand it,” she said. “One man standing while the other one is lying on the ground, not moving. But then, when we got closer and I saw…” She clasped a hand to her cheek and rocked her head.
“Oy vey iz mir.
Terrible. That poor man. I could see he was dead. He was just lying there. Awful. A
shondah.
And his poor wife. I saw her later, when the police came. Awful.”

She stopped and I tried to see it too, images starting to come together in my mind. “You mentioned the man’s wife; how did you know it was his wife?

“Because the police were questioning me and she was there being questioned too, poor thing.” Adele Rubenstein leaned toward me and whispered, “They were one of those mixed marriages. Very common these days. Me, personally, I have nothing against it, but what about the children? It can’t be easy for them.”

I didn’t bother to remind her that she was talking to a half-breed because she’d already accepted me as one of the flock. But it struck me that no one had mentioned that pertinent piece of information—that the black victim had a white wife. I glanced over at Terri, then at Adele. “So let’s go back to what you saw?”

“What else could there be?”

“You never know, Adele.” I patted her arm and asked her to close her eyes, which she did. “As you got closer, did the standing man see you?”