Spectrum (The Karen Vail Series) (17 page)

After a couple of minutes, Cassandra said, “You really think we’ll be able to live here? On this island?”

“It’s going to work out great. It’s an adventure. I bet we’ll look back in a few years and realize what a blessing it was, coming here.” She examined her daughter’s face, wiped away a tear with her thumb. “All right?”

“I guess.” She turned and looked over her shoulder. “Is Dmitri going to be okay?”

Livana tried not to let her face betray her thoughts. Truth was, she had no idea if Dmitri was going to recover from that trauma. The doctor who treated him at the hospital said that it could have long-term consequences, and that to expect it to take “possibly years” for him recover.

“We have to give him time, honey. Be patient with him.” She rose from the bed. “Now go wash up and brush your teeth.”

“But the water’s dirty.”

“
Rusty
, not dirty. Fedor said it’s because the pipes are old and haven’t been used in a very long time. Let the water run a bit, it’ll clear up.”

Livana walked out, stood in front of Dmitri’s closed door, then turned and headed upstairs.

25

>263-37 147th AVENUE

Rosedale, Queens

Wednesday, December 24, 1997

Vail walked outside her house with six-month-old Jonathan on her hip, and stopped before she could pull the wood door closed. The snow that had fallen yesterday was augmented during the early morning hours, enough to require her to go back inside and grab a shovel so she could get her car out of the driveway.

She handed Jonathan to Deacon, who was making coffee to take to work in his thermos.

“No, no. I’ll do it.” He gave his son a peck on the forehead and then handed him back to Vail. After retrieving the shovel from the basement landing, he cleared a path for the cars and they were on their way: Vail to the day care facility and Deacon to his office in Sheepshead Bay.

Deacon had finished his schooling and taken the CPA licensing exam two years ago. He was now working his way up the corporate ladder, impressing executives along the way and earning a spot in the chief financial officer’s office.

He had worked from home two days a week while Vail was on bedrest recuperating from her motor vehicle accident—which, coupled with her blue mood from Tim Thorne’s death, made her difficult to be around.

She returned to work as soon as her ultrasound was clear of bleeding, two and a half weeks to the day from the accident, but the serial case had been handed off to another detective in the bureau. Vail returned to patrol with Leslie Johnson, but as soon as her standard two-year probationary period ended, she applied to become an undercover cop in narcotics.

Two days later, she got the call. But instead of reporting to narcotics, she was picked up by the Brooklyn South gang division because they needed a female for a case.

It was difficult, at times dangerous work, doing drug and gun buys and “ghosting” confidential informants and other undercovers during operations—activities Deacon repeatedly criticized. Vail maintained it was a short-term placement, something that should fast-track her for obtaining her detective’s shield—in department parlance, “the shield.”

Deacon’s concerns led to an argument two months ago when she was on an undercover stakeout, sitting on a gangbanger’s house, her sergeant in the passenger seat catching some shuteye. A call came in on her department BlackBerry, which she had been issued specifically for this case. She had never used a cell phone before, but a quick primer by her chief gave her a working knowledge of the device.

She fished the handset out of her jeans pocket and answered the call.

“Yeah, hi, who’s this?” the male voice asked.

“Who’s this?” Vail said. “You called me.” Jack, her partner, had told her that when someone called and didn’t seem to know who answered, her goal was to get them talking so she could ascertain who it was without giving away any information.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, “what’d you say?”

“No, what’d
you
say?”
Jesus, this is such a stupid dance. Just give me something.

“I’m not sure who I called, so I was wondering—”

“Wait, Joey Barnes? That you?” Barnes was in the intel division. “This is Karen Vail, Brooklyn South Gang.”

“I didn’t know you had a phone. I’m trying to reach Jack. Where are you right now? Where’s your sergeant?”

“Frank’s in the backseat, sleeping. We’re sitting on a house. Jack’s out making a buy. Why?”

“Wake him,” Barnes said. “We got a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

“You got a CI by the name of Rocky?”

Oh shit.
“Don’t tell me he’s dead.”

“Worse, he’s been compromised. His cover’s blown. He’s up in the South Bronx in an apartment at a Latin King meeting, they’re beating him and he just gave up your partner—”

“Wait—Jack’s cover’s blown?”

“Big-time. I tried paging him, but he didn’t answer—”

Vail disconnected the call, pulled her Glock, and yelled, “Frank, wake up, I’m going in!” Then she pushed open her door and ran down the block toward the house they were staking out.

Jack was inside and hopefully still alive. The plan was for him to wear a wire but he had decided against it because the gang leader, Dimas Montanez, had grown suspicious in the past few weeks. If his paranoia peaked and he decided to have everyone in the house remove their shirts, Jack did not want to be caught with a device taped to his skin. He would’ve been interrogated and shot—or injected with a lethal overdose of heroin and dumped somewhere in the South Bronx.

Vail got to the front door, vapor pouring from her mouth. Hyperventilating.

She was prepared to burst in and start shooting. Not the way she had been taught to handle this kind of situation, and not a smart way of going about it. But sometimes you have to throw the book out the window if your partner’s life is on the line and seconds and clear-headed thought are the difference between living and dying.

She took a deep breath, cleared her mind.

Do the unexpected. Catch them off guard.

Vail pulled off her sweater and wrapped it around her hand, covering her handgun. She yanked on her blouse and ripped it by the neckline, pulled it half out of her jeans, then spit on her hand and grabbed a handful of dirt from the planter by her feet. She smeared the mud mixture across her face, then swung her head left to right, messing her hair, and gave it an extra few tosses with her free hand. Then she banged on the door.

She wanted to glance out into the darkness in the direction of their car—
where the hell’s Frank?
—but seconds were ticking by, and—

“Yeah. Who is it and what the fuck you want?”

Through the door, Vail yelled back, “I need to talk to Jack. Now!”

“Go away, bitch.”

“No!” Vail stepped forward and started pounding on the door with her left hand. “Get Jack. Tell him it’s Karen and she’s goddamn pissed at him!”

More banging.
C’mon, asshole, it’s easier to have him answer the door than to deal with me.

“I want Jack,” she whined. She fisted her hand and thumped the thick wood again.

The front door swung open, Jack standing in front of a tall Hispanic dude, a gold tooth glistening in the hallway light.

Holy crap, there he is. Dimas Montanez, in the flesh.

“Karen,” Jack said, “what the fuck?”

“I know you said not to bother you, but I need you to come out. It’s important. Some guy grabbed me up and beat me. Said he knows you—”

A phone rang and Montanez answered it. He listened a second as Vail tried to signal Jack with her eyes without Montanez noticing—

“What?” the banger said into the handset.

“C’mon out, Jack, I gotta talk with you. Now!”

She was about to grab his collar when she noticed Montanez’s eyes widen. He looked at Jack, then leaned away and started to reach behind his back—”

“Jack, get down,” Vail shouted as she brought up her handgun and blew a hole in Montanez’s chest. She nailed him in the forehead with her second shot, and the large man fell back into the wall.

Jack ran out the front door with Vail, where they nearly collided with Frank, who was headed toward them.

“Go, go, go!” Vail said, pulling the car keys from her pocket. They made it into their vehicle and Vail screeched the tires as she hung a U-turn, gunshots exploding behind them along with the rear windshield.

“Holy shit,” Jack said, falling sideways in the rear seat among the shattered glass fragments. “You crazy?”

Frank grabbed the dashboard, trying to steady himself in the fishtailing car. “What the hell is going on?”

“Jack’s cover’s blown. My CI just ratted him out in Brooklyn. I needed to get you out of there, Jack. That phone call Montanez got when we were standing at the door? That was your death warrant.”

Frank turned around and looked at Jack, who had pushed himself up in the seat.

The look on his face was all the thanks Vail needed. A week later, in recognition of her outstanding performance, Russo and her chief presented her with a specialist shield.

Everyone congratulated her with a straight face, but afterward Russo gave her a wink and a smile. Just like a proud father.

26

>MANHATTAN SOUTH HOMICIDE SQUAD

Wednesday, December 24, 1997

When Vail walked into the homicide squad at five minutes to six after her team had arrested a gangbanger who murdered a rival member, Russo was already there, waiting for her.

“Don’t take your coat off,” he said, his voice tight. “Let’s go.”

Vail followed him out the door and toward the police vehicles parked at the curb. “Gee, Karen,” she said mockingly. “How are you? I haven’t talked to you in weeks. Oh, and how’s Jonathan doing?”

“Yeah,” Russo said. “I don’t have time for small talk.” He moved around to the driver’s door and unlocked it.

She got in and buckled. “What’s going on? Where are we going? It’s Christmas Eve. I was getting ready to go home as soon as we booked—”

“Here.” He handed her a thick envelope. “Merry Christmas.”

“It’s not wrapped.”

Russo gave her a look. “Are you kidding me?”

Vail opened it—and her heart skipped a beat. Her throat caught. And then she smiled. It was a detective’s shield.
Her
shield. She whipped her head left, caught Russo’s gaze.

He glanced up as he maneuvered the car hard on the curve and headed down the street.

“I don’t understand. I’ve still got like nine or ten months before I’m eligible.”

“No shit. It’s never happened in the history of the department. So you should feel privileged. Honored.”

“I do.” She looked over at him. “So you’re my rabbi?”

“I am, but it took more than that to get this done. The department had a need. You had the skills and a shitload of promise. So congratulations.”

She looked down at the shield. It was shiny and gold, with blue lettering. Best of all, it had
DETECTIVE
stamped into the metal.
It’s beautiful.
“Thank-you.”

“You earned it. That specialist shield you got for saving Jack Bautista’s ass a couple months ago didn’t hurt. But believe me, you wouldn’t have that gem in your hands if I didn’t think you’d do the badge proud.”

Vail continued to turn it and view it at various angles, trying to catch the stray glow of a passing streetlight.

“There’s a ceremony at One Police Plaza you’ll need to attend. We all get together two, three times a year to hand out promotions. Big shindig. Commish is there, all the chiefs, the mayor, the press. You’re called up to the stage and the commissioner shakes your hand and gives you a certificate.”

“Like a college graduation.”

Russo frowned. “Yeah, just like that. Not really.” He glanced over at her. “Okay, maybe a little bit.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Bet your ass you will,” he said. “Normally you wouldn’t get your shield till the ceremony but I thought this was a reasonable exception.”

“No argument from me.”

“Didn’t think so. Now with that out of the way, the real work starts. You notice we’re in the car.”

Vail, still admiring the shield, looked up. “What? Yeah, we’re in the car.”

“Our killer’s left us another vic.”

“Shit.”

Well there went the euphoria. Popped like a balloon.

“Yeah, shit. Because the detective I handed the case to when you landed in bed, he just retired.”

And that’s why my promotion was pushed up. No complaints from me.

“You’re smart enough to figure it out yourself, so I’ll just come out and say it: because of the circumstances, I made the case to promote you now, rather than later, to let you take over this case. This is the third vic. This is officially a huge goddamn problem, and I wanted you working it. I don’t want the news to catch on that we got a serial, or we may get panic. Let’s work it quietly. You think you can handle that?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Good. I don’t want the killer to know we’ve keyed in on that. Let him think we’re a bunch of idiots. He may get sloppy, make mistakes, because he won’t think we’re capable of catching him.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

“I say so.”

“What about the gang unit?”

“Transfer’s in the works. I took care of it.”

Russo pulled the car down 4th Street and stopped in front of the walk-up apartment building. He double-parked and they met the first-on-scene officer, who was standing guard at the entrance. Crime scene tape was stretched across the pavement in a rectangle, securing as much of the area as practical, given that no one knew what was significant to the case.

They ascended the steps to the front door, which was unlocked.

“ME?” Russo asked.

“Delayed,” the officer said. “Be here soon as possible. CSU’s fifteen out.”

Russo stepped inside and flipped the nearby wall switch, but nothing happened. “Yo, what’s the deal here? No light.”

“Electricity’s out,” the officer said. “Don’t know if it’s related. I called Con Ed.”

Power company’s not gonna be much help at a crime scene.

Vail pulled a small penlight from her pocket. Russo did likewise. “Well, this kind of sucks.”

“CSU’s got Kliegs and extension cords they can snake out to an adjacent building. We’ll get a generator if need be. Won’t be an issue. Till then, we do our best.” He reached into his pocket and handed her a pair of booties.

“Do we know who lives here?” Vail asked as she stretched the elastic over her shoes.

“Place was leased by a Juli Herod,” the officer said, consulting his note-pad. “Single, thirty-five. All I know.”

They moved into the apartment, Vail struggling to see with her under-powered penlight.

“You go left,” Russo said, “I’ll go right.”

The darkness forced Vail to proceed slowly, spraying the beam across sections of each room as she went, using a grid-like pattern so she did not miss anything.

This is ridiculous. We should just wait for CSU. We’re gonna have to redo this anyway once we can see.

They converged on the bedroom, where Juli Herod was seated in bed, looking quite dead.

A glass fragment was protruding from her neck. Her eyes were slashed. On first look, the only difference from the prior crime scenes was that there was more blood. A lot more.

“Okay, that’s very interesting.”

“Yeah?” Russo asked. “What do you see?”

“Not a whole lot in this shitty light.”

“I’m not in the mood, Karen.”

Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Then again, staring at a violently murdered body can do that to you.
“I see the same type of kill we’ve seen before. But a lot more blood, a lot more mess.”

“And that means?”

“No idea. Just an observation.”

“Question is, is it meaningful?”

Yes, that’d be a good question. As soon as I find someone who knows the answer, I’ll ask.

She thought another moment, then said, “My sense is that it’s important. Maybe he stabbed her first, before choking her. Heart’s still beating.”

“But why?”

Yeah, why?
“Maybe he’s getting bored doing the same thing all the time.”

“Bored.”

“Hey, it’s just a stab in the dark.”

Russo gave her a look.

“Sorry.” She thought another moment. “I wonder if there’s any significance to the fact that he killed the vic on Christmas Eve.”

“I guess there’s a 1 in 365 chance of that happening by accident. In the grand scheme of things, those aren’t very long odds.”

“I think we’re going to find that it’s meaningful. What it is and when we figure it out, I don’t know.”

Russo grunted. “I’m going to go look at the windows and doors, see if entry was forced. If the perp approached the kill differently, maybe the whole MO’s different. Can’t assume anything.”

As Russo walked off, Vail moved behind Juli and shined the light on her neck. Her long hair was mussed and should’ve been covering the area of her skin where the drawing was located. But the strands were parted, providing full access to the design. Like before, there was an X, with an E on the left, an I on the right, a D at the top and, this time, a lowercase f at the bottom.

“No forced entry,” Russo said, re-entering the bedroom. “As far as I can tell in the dark.”

“So … what, you think he cut the power and then posed as a Con Ed worker who’s there to fix it?”

“That’s a possibility, among others.”

“She’s got the same drawing on the neck. Come look.”

Russo joined her behind the body and leaned in close.

“This has gotta mean something,” she said.

He stood up. “You’re expecting logic, meaning, and intelligence from this nutcase?”

Vail thought about that a moment. “Yeah, I think the guy’s intelligent. And I think there’s meaning behind everything he’s doing. I can’t tell you he doesn’t have some distorted view of the world, but I do think he’s doing this for a reason.”

“Why?”

“Let’s put it this way. There’s purpose in what he does. He doesn’t have to draw the X, but he does. The letters mean something to him. They’re almost identical from victim to victim. If we figure out what these letters mean, we may understand why he’s doing this. Or we may find a clue as to who he is.”

Russo scratched his forehead. “Okay, I’ll buy that. For now.”

“I’ll tell you something else. I think this diagram is important to him.”

“Because …”

“See that, how the hair’s parted?” Vail pointed. “I didn’t do that. I’d never disturb the scene before CSU photographs it. Killer used a hair clip.”

“So he purposely parted the hair to make sure we couldn’t miss it.”

“Right.”

Russo pursed his lips. “If we only knew what it meant. Why can’t he just spell it out?”

“What’s the fun in that?”

Russo looked at her. “You think this is a game to him?”

“Maybe. It could also be a way for him to frustrate us. He leaves us these letters, we think it means something significant, and maybe it’s just bullshit. Or it means something and we can’t figure it out. Either way, he’s having fun making us bang our heads against the wall.”

“Interesting theory. You making this shit up as you go along?”

“Pretty much.” Vail grinned. “What can I say? I’m just reasoning it out in a way that makes sense to me. You know, when I was stuck on bed rest after the accident, I went over to the Rosedale library and did some research and—”

“I thought bed rest means you rest. In bed.”

“I got so bored it was driving me crazy. And I couldn’t get Tim’s death out of my mind. I kept seeing the accident in my head, over and over. I needed a distraction.”

“So you went to the library.”

“I started poking around, trying to figure out why the killer draws this X on the vic’s neck.”

“You sure it’s an X?”

Vail looked at the design, tilting her head left, then right. “Yeah, I think so. I guess it could just be a design, and he writes these letters in different quadrants of the cross. But I think there’s more to it. If it is an X, that has significance in the Greek religion. What if the X comes from the Greek letter Chi?”

“I don’t speak Greek, Karen. I’ve got no idea what you’re rambling on about.”

“Chi is the first letter of the Greek word Χριστού, which translates as ‘Christ’ in English.”

“I still don’t understand what Greek letters, or words, have to do with this killer. Or this case.”

“The victims were Greek.”

“What?” Russo stepped back a couple of feet as he thought this through. “No. That’s not right. Crinelli—”

“Yeah, he doesn’t fit. For a lot of reasons. But the two women, they were Greek.”

“You sure?”

“No, I’m just guessing, based on their names. Of course I’m sure. I looked into Carole Manos’s background. She was Greek. I’m willing to bet Juli Herod is too. She’s got a photo of her and a bunch of people who look like family standing near the Acropolis. But even if we just go by their names—which are obviously Greek—maybe that’s what the killer’s using to identify his vics.”

“Can it be that simple?”

“Who knows? But it’s a working theory worth pursuing. If he’s Greek, or has something against Greeks—”

“He was wronged by one once.”

“Sure,” Vail said. “Could be that. Or could be other reasons too.”

Russo crouched and took a closer look at the symbol. “If you’re right—and I’m intrigued but not sold—why this reference to Christ? Does religion play a role in these murders?”

“I don’t see any other indications it does. But maybe it means religion plays a role in his
life
.”

“So, he’s Greek Orthodox?”

Vail didn’t know what to make of that, so she merely shrugged.

“Then what do these other letters mean?” Russo stood up. “Is there a Greek or religious meaning? And why does only one letter change from murder to murder?”

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us on this,” Vail said with a sigh of resignation.

“I’m going to add one more thing to your plate. The department offers training courses and seminars to help you develop your investigative skills. There’s a three-week deal coming up in mid-January on criminal investigations.”

“Three weeks?”

“It’s hard to get into, and you need someone to make a call on your behalf. I made that call and got you in.”

Jesus. If I now own this case, I need to work it. How can I take three weeks off when I’ve got a fresh victim?
But she understood that this was not the time to decline or even hesitate, not after Russo put his reputation on the line in helping secure her shield—and pulled strings to get her into this class. “I’m there.”

“Good,” Russo said, clearly pleased with her answer. “So let’s roll up our sleeves and see what else we can find here.”