Eye Wit (2 page)

2

Getting the balloon in the air was the trickiest part. Since 9/11, low-flying aircraft were persona non grata in Manhattan, including hot-air balloons launched from city parks like Union Square, bounded by Union Square East and West, and East 14
^th
and 17
^th
Streets. Hardly an inconspicuous spot.

But Union Square Park was the only launch location that would work, considering the light southwesterly wind currents at 6:30 a.m. on this particular warm June Sunday.

Hans Reiniger knew his counterfeit permit from the Parks Department wouldn’t bear much scrutiny. He had to keep the officer’s attention on the balloon, not on the piece of paper the cop was reading while tipping his head to his lapel-mounted two-way, about to ask for guidance.

“It is for the children, officer,” Hans explained to the dubious cop. “It’s called a ‘static display.’ The balloon is filled with hot air from the burner to demonstrate how hot-air balloons work. Then we will provide short rides for the children, only taking the balloon up to the end of the tether. About one hundred feet above the park.”

“But ya won’t clear them trees. They’ll get in the way. There’s no room.”

Hans gestured towards his crew. One man was stationed at each of the four ropes that would tether the balloon to earth. Henrik was squatting by the basket, controlling the nozzle.

The balloon’s red, white and blue nylon bag was almost fully inflated, just beginning to rise off the ground, the Swiss and U.S. flags sewn into its flanks now clearly visible to the gathering, cheering crowd.

Hans had to raise his voice. “Believe me, officer. We understand the necessary clearances and have measured carefully. We’ve done this many times, in many cities in the United States and in Europe. We have never had a problem. Just watch.”

They watched as Henrik pulled on the nozzle trigger for a full twenty seconds. Blue-tinged yellow flames roared into the opening of the balloon and the bag began its graceful, stately ascent to an upright and ready position. The cop was mesmerized at this most awesome part of any balloon launch. His left hand dropped from his lapel radio as he gaped.

“Jesus,” he said. “You oughta paint the balloon purple and advertise Viagra.”

Hans laughed. This was going better than he had expected. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, officer, I need to make sure everything is as it should be.”

He trotted to the basket, climbed in, and pulled hard on the trigger nozzle. The balloon ascended, quickly rising to the end of the tethers, until the basket was well above the tree tops, the balloon leaning slightly to the northeast.

The cop ran over to Henrik. “What the hell’s he doin’? Says here….” He jabbed at the permit. “The program’s not supposed to start until eight!”

“Hans is making sure the balloon is operating properly,” Henrik said. “Now that he is at the end of the tethers, he will open panels to discharge some air until the balloon begins to descend. We will use these four winches to reel him in slowly. As if he were a very large fish.”

“Yeah, like Mopey Dick,” the cop said, chuckling at his wit. He craned his neck to squint up but could barely see Hans in the basket, now almost directly overhead. “When’s he coming down?” he asked.

“When he is ready,” Henrik replied.

High above, Hans leaned over the side of the balloon and waved at the crowd that ringed the park. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Thank you, officer!”

He patted the Luger tucked in its holster inside the waist-band at the back of his pants and removed the CRKT knife clipped to the inside of his right front pants pocket. The knife made fast work of the tethers and the balloon drifted away, towards Gramercy Park, just a few blocks away.

The cop yelled into his lapel mike as the five crewmen ambled out of the park.

Luckily for Hans, back at the precinct a weary desk sergeant didn’t give much credence to the incoming message from the incoherent cop at Union Square Park. Always something going down at the park––or up in this case––and the summer schedule had the force stretched thin, mandatory extra shifts to keep up with the flood of tourists, not forgetting the resident trouble-makers. The sergeant jotted a brief note and no one paid attention to the odd call from Union Square Park.

3

Yoko knew both of the detectives who were first on the scene. Zoran Zeissing, tall and thin, was brilliant but reserved—reclusive, even. His colleagues at the precinct called him “Monk,” because Zeissing had many of the obsessive-compulsive traits portrayed so engagingly by Tony Shalhoub in the TV series,
Monk
. Detective Zeissing was in one of his ubiquitous gray suits. Rumor had it his closet was filled with them, all of them identical. His shirts were always dazzlingly white, but his choice of ties varied: black, very dark gray, medium dark gray, medium gray, medium light gray. A few, only a few, had patterns. Not any pattern but designs that were almost architectural in style, designs as precise as his thinking.

“If you look closely, you can tell what day of the week it is by the tie Zoran’s wearing,” Dan told Yoko.

The other detective, Brian Watson, a burly man with clothing as rumpled as Zoran’s was wrinkle-free, was one of the older detectives at the 13
^th
Precinct—the “one-three” as they called it. Watson was obsessed with plans for his approaching retirement and because of that single-minded focus, hardly seemed to notice Zoran’s reluctance to shake hands or the OCD detective’s compulsion to count random objects at random moments. Fortunately, Brian Watson and Zoran Zeissing rarely worked together, usually only when her Dan Riley, Zoran’s regular partner, was off duty.

Zoran could sometimes be a pain to work with, but Yoko admired his uncanny ability to resolve cases that baffled others. She had a special fondness for Zoran, for good reason: some eleven months earlier, Zoran had answered the phone when Yoko telephoned the precinct after escaping from the killer who’d had her abducted. Thanks to Zoran’s unorthodox management of the police response, the killer had been caught in minutes and the nightmare that had begun with the woman murdered in front of Yoko was finally over.

Then, true to finicky form, once she was safe, Zoran lectured Yoko about the risk she’d taken escaping from an armed and dangerous man. Later, knowing that Yoko’s expertise in optometry had helped solve the case, he’d recommended to Chief Sanders that Yoko be hired as a civilian consultant. She wouldn’t be the first optometrist to work with the police––Gus Forkiotis had led the way at the Connecticut State Police Academy decades earlier––but Yoko was NYPD’s first female civilian consultant and their first optometrist.

Reluctant at first to be involved in more mayhem, Yoko finally accepted the post of civilian consultant. It turned out that much of her optometric training meshed with the police requirements, often going further. Her studies of anatomy, psychology, pathology and pharmacology were terrific preparation for police work. Not only that, her accreditation as an optometrist licensed by the state to prescribe pharmaceuticals for the eyes impressed the chief, particularly her knowledge of the effects of drugs—including narcotics. By now, everyone at the station from the chief on down knew that Yoko was a specialist in behavioral optometry.

“It’s a valuable health care that expands on traditional optometry,” Yoko explained to the group the chief had gathered to hear more about what their attractive civilian consultant did. “The results are remarkable for youngsters and adults who have learning or behavior problems.”

“You mean the criminals would quit, go straight if they had vision therapy?” someone called out from the back of the room.

“Say it isn’t so––we’d be out of work.” The wry comment got a laugh from everyone, even Yoko.

“No need to worry, I doubt that’ll happen,” she said. “What I didn’t get the chance to say yet is that if there’s an imbalance in someone’s vision system that often triggers a learning or behavior problem.”

“Is this a new fad?” Sergeant Greer asked. “Motivational tapes, soft music and all that.”

“Hardly,” Yoko said. “Behavioral optometry has been around for decades and has the scientific evidence to support it. It’s taught in twenty colleges of optometry here in the U.S. and colleges around the word and is available in forty countries.”

That silenced the doubters.

After Yoko graduated from the series of police courses she dubbed, “Detecting 101,” Chief Sanders told her, "You're more than ready to join us for certain cases, Yoko, and I want you to know you'll always be with the best on the force. I promise you’ll never have to face a maniac alone, the way you did last year.

“I’m pleased Zoran suggested you for special duty, those times when he needs another pair of eyes. You know Zoran has the best record in the country for solving cases, he’s an important and valuable member of the team. But…how can I put this? He needs partners who are…let’s say, supportive of his sometimes…distinctive methods. Good investigators themselves, willing to think outside the box, not worried when someone pushes the envelope.” The chief looked at her seriously, clearly sending an important message.

“Dan fits the bill admirably, and I think you will too, but with a different sensibility. Maybe because you're Japanese American. Zoran was born here, soon after his parents arrived.”

“I’ve been witness to Zoran’s work over the years. He’s quirky and unpredictable but for sure he’s brilliant,” Dan said when he learned that Zoran had suggested Yoko to Chief Sanders as a civilian consultant.

“Zoran, that’s an unusual name, I don’t think I've ever known someone called Zoran,” Yoko said.

“His family’s from Croatia, part of what used to be Yugoslavia,” Dan explained. “His people were well-educated, his parents spoke several languages, including English. They were architects in Dubrovnik but had to retake all the exams here and they passed with flying colors. You have to admire that kind of resiliency and determination. They both died a few years ago.”

Now, as Yoko looked over the current scene, she wondered what Zoran was seeing, and how it might differ from her impressions.

She watched him step ultra-cautiously around the debris, careful that nothing touch him. Periodically his index finger twitched, ticking off significant items he observed. Zoran never took notes, apparently the simple tick of a finger was sufficient to imprint an item on his encyclopedic mind. Occasionally, he would pause and stare off into space. Sorting the encyclopedia, Yoko assumed. What, she wondered, was in it?

A few minutes ago, Brian had finished interviewing the roller-blader, then allowed her to glide off down the street, cell phone reinstated against her ear. Another uniformed officer arrived and cordoned off the area and stood guard, ready to warn people away from the site. Amazingly, no one had materialized, not even media types. That was odd. Brian stood near the police photographer, who snapped picture after picture of the balloonist, moving hurriedly out of the way as the ambulance crew prepared to move the balloonist to the stretcher.

Zoran continued his careful route amongst the ruins of the balloon, zeroing in on bits of wreckage, then staring off into space again. Was he seeing something written against the sky, some message from the ether only he could decode? She had much to learn from the master.

Brian sidled over to Yoko. “Zeissing wants to talk to you when he’s finished browsing. Did you see the balloon crash?”

“I didn’t see it but I heard the noise, it was terrible, almost burst my eardrums. Did you find out how the roller-blader knew about the crash?”

“Her name’s Cooper, Andrea Cooper. She said her uncle’s the security guard in the building across the street and was just leaving work when the balloon hit the college. He knew she’d be heading to her job at that pricey eatery around the corner and he called her cell phone to warn her of the accident. He had to get to his day job but told her to give us his name and number and tell us he was locking up when he heard all the noise and saw the basket of the balloon hit the ground. He thought it was empty, didn’t see anyone in it, which figures, the guy landed behind the debris, outta sight.”

“Did the security guard from the college call in?”

“Jeez, with two jobs like that uncle, I could retire early.” Brian considered that beguiling scenario for a moment then brought his attention back to Yoko. “Yep, the security guard on duty at the college called to report the noise. Said he couldn’t see anything because the whole front of the place was covered by the balloon. I think he was afraid to leave the building. Coupla cabbies called it in too. So…you got here right after the balloon crashed?”

“Almost immediately,” Yoko said.

“The Cooper girl said he told you his name—Archer, right? No ID on him, no wallet, nothing in his pockets, nothing at all. Nothing in the wreckage either, not even a map. He just said ‘Archer,’ huh? Not a first name?”

“Archer could be a first name,” Yoko said.

“Yeah, guess so. You got a point there.”

Zoran had finished his slow walk around the debris and was standing still. Now and then he stared up at the material from the hot-air balloon, great swaths of fabric hanging off the face of the building, limp in the still air.

“Guys, you better look at this,” one of the ambulance men called.

They’d lifted up the balloonist and revealed a puddle of darkening blood. About to slide the stretcher under the man, they halted obediently when Zoran called out, “Wait. Stop. Don’t put him on the stretcher, hold him right there for a moment.”

He hurried over to where the two EMTs balanced the stretcher impatiently and bent down, peering at something under it. Yoko moved closer and bent to look, trying to see what Zoran had spotted. The police photographer came nearer, angling his camera for the best view.

“It is the shaft of an arrow,” Zoran said. “He has been shot with an arrow that is still in him This is now a crime scene.”

“So that’s what he meant when he said ‘Archer,’” Yoko said. “It’s not a name, he was trying to tell us he’d been shot by an archer.”