Apex Predator (17 page)

Mullins looked at Grady. The two men knew what had happened and were trying to figure out how to reconcile all of it with what had been found.

Grady was the first to speak, “You know it was him, Loomis. I talked to one of the SWAT guys, a former sergeant in Special Forces, about the dart and it is definitely something used in tactical operations, but he explained it was the type of thing used more in private security or mercenary operations than in law enforcement.

“Everyone is so focused on the scene that the guard’s story is getting drowned out. After he saw what he saw in the warehouse, he was taken to the hospital. I don’t think he remembers or cares about the dart right now, but that’s going to change when things slow down and people look at this more carefully.”

Mullins was smoking a rare cigarette, something he did almost exclusively when he was drinking, and thinking about what Grady had just shared with him, he said, “He knew we had nothing on Riche or any of the others and had to find a way to give us a cause to go into the warehouse. He knew we would have to wait a while to get a warrant, if we could get one at all, and knew Riche might be gone by the time we did. Is that what you’re thinking?”

Grady answered, “Yup. To be honest, I’m more worried about how he’s going to react to this than about anyone finding out how those chemicals spilled.”

Just as he was finishing the sentence, Grady got a call on his cell phone. It was one of the uniformed officers stationed outside the perimeter who had a guy asking for Detective Grady. Grady didn’t have to ask who it was, he just told the cop he would be up there in a couple of minutes. Mullins heard his side of the conversation and also knew who it was. He thought it would be best for Grady to meet Steven Loomis by himself, not to try to escape from it but because from this point forward the less people that knew about this and how deep it went, the better it would be for everyone. Besides, there was plenty for him to do and heading back to the station to see how Riche’s interview had gone was first on the list.

Grady made his way to the cordoned-off area where the uniformed officers were stationed. He could see news vans already parking and correspondents setting up for their reports. Every single officer or investigator at the scene had already been warned to not say a word to any of the media. Grady, coordinating with the public information office, would make a preliminary statement and the commissioner would hold a formal press conference the next day.

Steven Loomis was waiting for him. He looked tired, but under control. He had probably been briefed by whoever had pulled off this operation. Grady knew that the conversation would be difficult. Both men knew what could or could not be said. Grady knew why Loomis was here and he didn’t know if he would be able to give him what he wanted.

Grady started the conversation, “So I take it you heard.”

Loomis understood that Grady knew he had been behind the chemical spill in the warehouse and that he knew none of this would have happened this quick without it. In other words, Grady knew he owed Loomis. Still, he couldn’t go past a certain line, no matter what the scoreboard was.

Loomis waited a few seconds to answer, “You know I have and you know why I’m here.”

Grady hung his head and looked back up to Loomis, “Yeah, I think I do. Thing is, I don’t know if I can help you get what it is you came looking for.”

Loomis looked at Grady intensely and said, “I’m not asking for much and I know you could find a way to do the right thing. I put my job and the jobs of other people on the line to make this happen and you know it.”

Grady responded, “So you’re saying that if you don’t get what you’re looking for you’re going to leak this?”

Loomis smiled a thin, sad smile, “No, Robert, I think you know that’s not how I work. But if you can’t grant me this one favor then you obviously don’t work the way I thought you did.”

Now it was Grady’s turn to be sardonic. He looked out over the river for a minute before turning back to address Loomis. “Supposing I was able to get you in. Are you sure you want to see what’s there? I know your background and you know mine, so I think we both know we can dispense with the bullshit. This is bad and I mean really bad.

“I would think the memory you would want of your little girl is one with her beautiful face doing something fun with you and your family. What is it that you are looking for? Closure? Because I can tell you, brother, that there is no closure there, just pain and things that will change you forever.”

Loomis appreciated what Robert Grady was trying to do but knew he was doing it because he felt he had to, to get off his chest what he had to get off his chest. In the end he also knew Grady would let him through.

“No, Robert, I got closure a long time ago. I am here because if I don’t know I will always wonder, and I don’t want to just leave it to my imagination or to however the DA and the media choose to spin the case.”

Grady looked at him for a long time. He could understand what the man was saying, for some avoiding the unknown was a better coping mechanism, for men like Loomis it was better to make things tangible, process them and move on. Grady imagined Steven Loomis had quite a bit of experience doing just that, you couldn’t be in the types of operations the guy had been in and not have the ability to compartmentalize and move on. Grady told the uniformed officer, a kid barely out of the academy, to let Loomis by.

After walking a few yards he said, “Wait here.”

He knew there were people from a lot of precincts and a lot of agencies. He walked up to someone he knew from the coroner’s office, someone who knew not to ask questions, spoke to him for a few seconds and took the man’s windbreaker. He made his way back to Steven Loomis and handed him the windbreaker. Steven took off his pea coat and put on the windbreaker.

Grady simply turned around and said, “Follow me.”

The two of them walked past the various technicians, police officers and firemen without getting a second look.

They got to the edge of the warehouse’s bay door and before actually walking in Grady walked over to the CSI van and grabbed a gas mask for each of them. “There’s some nasty shit here, put this on.”

As he handed him the mask, he looked at Loomis and hung on to it for just a half a second. The look was Grady’s last attempt to convince Loomis to not do this. The look he got back, which was completely emotionless, did more to make him nervous than anything else Loomis had done or said until now. He turned around and went into the warehouse and began to let Loomis know what they’d found so far in a monotone and professional way, as detached as he could be. He figured that the more professional he was, the more he could assess Loomis’s reaction and keep the overall situation low-key.

It wasn’t just Loomis he was worried about, he was also thinking about some of the other technicians and officers wondering who this guy was. There were enough people from different precincts that he doubted anyone would pay attention to anything other than what they were dealing with.

Still he had to play the part, “The call came in as a hazardous material spill coming from this warehouse; it came from the night watchman. Two black and whites and the fire department responded first and got into the warehouse to find all this. By now we have DA investigators taking their pictures and talking to the cops and firemen first on the scene. Homeland Security also sent someone from the FBI to look into the terrorist angle, especially because of the chemicals.”

As they were walking, and even with the gas mask, Steven could smell the chemicals and the underlying smell of human decay. It was faint, but it was there. He was a trained tactical operator and he had been trained to not miss anything, so he took everything in and stored it in his mind. He saw the tools, the warehouse turned into a workshop with its various areas; he took note of the neatness of the place. Other than the spilled chemicals, every tool, every object was neatly placed and cleaned to perfection. He saw the sterilizing machine and understood how the tools could remain in such pristine condition. One thing Loomis was sure of was that this took a lot of planning, expense and careful consideration in how things were placed. There was an order to how the warehouse was divided. He didn’t know what that was, but everything was here for a reason.

As they kept walking, Grady kept debriefing Loomis, “We hadn’t been able to find the van because he had it parked here. We’ve gone through it and it was exactly what we thought it was, a trap and a mobile workshop for him. We found dozens of dolls and other toys little girls might like divided off from the rest of the van where he had portable coolers, vials of drugs and a set of tools similar to what you see on the bench over there.

“There are basically four sections that seemed to be organized in some sort of fashion, we’re still doing a workup as you can see.”

Loomis took in every detail. The tools were cutting tools and surgical instruments, scalpels, forceps, a variety of surgical scissors and what Steven recognized as orthopedic surgical drills. There was a tray with other hardware he couldn’t make out. To his left he could see two side-by-side top-loading industrial freezers, and as they came through the plastic curtains that separated each area, he saw the first thing that hit him and hit him hard, it was a staged little girl’s room with a white four-poster bed dominating the space. His eyes were immediately drawn to each of the four posts. There was a set of handcuffs attached to each of the posts. As he looked around, he saw a small vanity and shelves and shelves of dolls, Barbie-type dolls, some complete but most of them in various stages of being disassembled or being put together. There were doll limbs scattered all over the shelves. Based on everything else in the warehouse, it was the strangest and most surreal scene Loomis had ever seen, and it didn’t take him long to put together what had gone on in this pit from hell.

He had seen similar places in other parts of the world, but they had been used for other reasons on other people, not on little girls. He didn’t betray any emotion, however.

Grady walked over to the industrial freezers, “This is where he kept the remains of his victims.” Grady hurried along, went on to walk toward the upright refrigerators and continued debriefing Steven.

For his part, Steven had stopped at the top-loading freezers and stood there staring at them. Before Grady noticed Loomis was not right behind him, Steven had started to open the lid of the first industrial freezer. As Grady turned around and noticed where Loomis was standing, he hurried back toward him and could only get “Steven…” out before Loomis had opened the lid to the freezer and looked inside.

So far, all the scene processing had involved cataloging where things were, taking pictures, collecting any and all objects that could hold any DNA, and processing the van, along with taking a preliminary inventory of all the power tools that could not be moved right now.

All of the forensic evidence related to the actual victims had not been moved yet, however, so when Steven Loomis opened the first freezer the first thing he saw was his daughter’s severed head, eyelids and eyes missing. He held the lid open for just a half a second and then let it slam shut. He had seen what he needed to see. It was as if the air had been let out of the room and he felt faint for just a beat. The image was far beyond what he had ever imagined or thought about. He thought he had prepared for anything, but now faced with the reality of his loss and with the horror that his daughter must have endured, something went off inside Steven Loomis.

He never betrayed any emotion and was once again composed by the time Grady made it over to warn him. His eyes were cold and distant, but still processing everything around him. He didn’t need for the investigation to be completed to understand what had happened to his daughter in this hell. Grady looked at him and became immediately concerned by what he saw from Steven Loomis, which was absolutely nothing. No screaming, no crying, nothing. All Grady could manage was, “Loomis, are you okay?”

Steven looked at the freezer for a few seconds more and then at Grady, “Yes, I’m fine. I just felt a little faint for a moment.”

There was an uncomfortable silence between the two men. Grady didn’t know what to say. What could he say to someone who had just witnessed what Loomis had? He finally said, “I’m sorry, Steven, I am really sorry for your loss.”

Loomis looked back at him, “Thank you. And thank all your guys for all the work. I know how hard this must be on them. So a chemical spill is what tipped you off?”

Grady looked at him, a bit puzzled, as if to say ‘you know damn well it was.’ Instead he just nodded and said, “Yeah, night watchman called it in. He also talked about some sort of dart sticking out of his chest.”

This was Grady’s way of letting Steven know about the only thing they had that no one could really account for or even relate to everything else, that and the steak with tranquilizer for the dog.

Loomis didn’t flinch, “Oh, what’s that all about?”

Grady responded, “Probably nothing, the watchman forgot about it once the warehouse was opened. He figured whoever did this had probably done that to him and his dog. He thinks he was lucky.”

He was sure Loomis was catching his drift, but as Grady was relating the story his tone let Steven know that he knew that Steven and his people were responsible.

He continued, “With everything else we have to process, it’s something that’s likely to fall through the cracks.”

Once again Grady let Steven know without saying anything that this would remain between the two of them. He didn’t think it was necessary to bring Mark Mullins into the mix. Steven looked at Robert Grady for a few seconds, nodded slightly and nothing else was said about the chemical spill again. Grady was still concerned. Steven Loomis’s demeanor had not changed one iota since he lifted the lid to that freezer. Grady had seen reactions like these before from some of his officers, reactions that spoke to a quiet rage, an internal mechanism that triggered something in the individual. Usually, however, the reactions Grady saw were almost catatonic. This was different. It was complete control. It was a look and a demeanor that spoke of purpose.