The Anniversary Man (57 page)

Roberts lowered his head. When he looked up he seemed distracted by something in the trees. ′Is there someone with you?′ he asked. ′You told me there′d be no-one with you . . . if there′s someone with you—′ He backed up, turned and glanced over his shoulder toward the path. He was checking that his route away was clear.

Irving half-rose from the bench. He raised his hands in a placatory manner. ′There′s no-one else,′ he said. ′I assure you we′re here alone, just the two of us. No police . . . nothing.′

Roberts paused, perhaps reassured by Irving′s insistence.

′Please,′ Irving said, sitting down again. ′Please tell us what you know. Tell us what you know and then we can take whatever action we need and remove this threat—′

Roberts took a step toward them. ′I know who it is,′ he said. It was a simple statement, and delivered with such certainty that Irving could not speak for a moment.

′You know who it is?′ Irving said. He felt his heart racing. His hands were literally running with sweat. He glanced at Karen Langley. Her eyes wide, her skin pale, she looked like a terrified child.

′Yes,′ Roberts said calmly. ′I know precisely and exactly who it is.′

He took another step forward, and in that moment Irving knew the source of his disquiet. The man in front of him was too tall. More than six feet. He′d seen the records of Karl Roberts′ police service, his PI application forms, documents that detailed his height and weight, the color of his eyes, his race, religion, gender . . . his prints . . .

Irving rose and took a step to the left. The backs of his knees were against Karen Langley′s legs, and he instinctively held out his arms wide, put them out beside him at waist height. Trying to shield her, to protect her . . . because even as he was questioning his own recollection of Roberts′ details, telling himself that something was wrong, the man drew an object from his overcoat pocket, something immediately identifiable, and the words that issued from the man′s mouth were as clear and uncomplicated as anything Irving had heard:

′I am the Hammer of God,′ he said, and his voice was level and insistent and certain, and betrayed nothing whatever of the depth of anger and hatred that might lie behind it.

′I am the relentless fucking Hammer of God . . .′

Irving, trying desperately to reach his gun, went down with the first blow. Even as he collapsed to the ground, even as he heard Karen Langley screaming, he realized they had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

The sound of the hammer connecting with Karen Langley′s head was indescribable, but immediately after - almost as if from a dream - there was the sound of gunshots, and in the madness of what was happening, looking back through the space beneath the bench, Irving saw someone standing no more than twenty feet away, someone in a baseball cap, his hand raised, the barrel of a gun erupting, and suddenly the assailant was staggering back, and before Irving could try and turn his head to see the gunman, he heard the familiar voice of Vernon Gifford.

Gifford was shouting, then screaming at the top of his voice for the man in the baseball cap to drop his weapon, and there seemed to be some confusion, because the man in the cap hesitated, turned back toward Gifford, then suddenly started running toward Irving and Langley.

And he did not drop the gun. He raised it as the attacker lifted the hammer once again, and it was in that moment that Gifford fired. Confused, disorientated, stunned with pain and trying to shield Karen Langley from the mayhem erupting around them, Irving was unable to reach his gun with his shattered forearm, and Gifford took the shot for him. He made a decision and went with it. It was a clean shot. A good shot. A single .38 caliber bullet found its mark in the upper right thigh of the man in the baseball cap. It was a through-and-through. The front of the man′s leg exploded outwards and he fell to his knees, his gun gone, his hands clawing at the wound in his leg. Perhaps he didn′t see the assailant towering over him, but Gifford saw him, saw him clearly, recognized the shape of the hammer as it came crashing down. Baseball Cap turned awkwardly and the hammer glanced off his shoulder. The scream of agony was indescribable

Baseball Cap collapsed sideways, his hand on the far edge of the bench, and for a moment he seemed to be caught in an indecision of self-preservation versus the apparent need to protect Karen Langley from further attack.

Unable to move his right arm, Irving tried to maneuver his handgun from its holster with his left hand. Consciousness was evading him. He felt the gun slip from his fingers and land on the grass.

Baseball Cap tried to pull himself forward, put his hand on the front edge of the bench to lever himself up, but the man in the overcoat was there. Standing right over him. The hammer came down and glanced off his ear, down the side of his neck, and Irving heard something break and the man in the baseball cap dropped to the ground like a deadweight.

Irving fought against waves of pain and blackness. He found his gun, felt the sweat on his hands, struggled to gain purchase, somehow turning over while still shielding Karen Langley. He tried to lift the weapon, but the gun slipped again and fell to the grass. And then his assailant was there again, looking down at him, and it seemed for a moment that the man possessed no face at all, just the impression of features somewhere within the shadows, as if he had simply grown out of darkness . . .

Irving screamed. And then there were voices, so many voices in his ear, and he wondered for a split second where those voices were coming from until he heard Clean shot! Clean shot!

The sound of a single gunshot, and the man staggered back, the hammer falling from his hand and landing on the grass. Irving could not see where he had been hit, only saw him take another handful of awkward steps backwards and then fall to the grass.

And then Gifford was there, and within moments there was someone else, and someone else, and the voices were too loud, and there was a bright light in his eyes . . .

 

Ray Irving turned his head sideways to look back between the feet of the bench, and he saw the man in the baseball cap lying there, and he knew who it was. And he knew the date, and he understood how this could have concluded no other way.

And then he remembered Karen, and Vernon Gifford was kicking the hammer away, and someone was kneeling beside Roberts, and then Irving felt himself being lifted from the ground, and the pain was indescribable . . . and people were struggling to get him onto the bench, all the while shouting into radios.

He could hear people running along the path, the sound of people screaming, and somewhere there was a siren . . .

Gifford was beside him then, and Irving tried to say whatever he needed to say without words, for the darkness that swallowed him was deep and endless and full of the blackest shadows, and there was neither a sound nor any element of familiarity within it. He went silently, because there was nothing left with which to fight.

N
ovember 23rd, 1984 - the Hammer of God killing of Nadia McGowan.

November 23rd, 2006 - twenty-two years after the fact, the final Hammer of God killing had been replicated, this time with Karen Langley and Ray Irving the intended victims. They had survived, but this time - the casualty of some terrible, bitter irony - John Costello was the one who did not walk away. He was murdered by a killer posing as Karl Roberts; murdered by the Anniversary Man. And that man - a man whose real name was as yet unknown - had undergone surgery to arrest the potentially fatal consequence of a clean shot to the chest. Word had come down that he would survive, that he would make it, and even now the DA′s office, the relevant precincts, everyone who had been touched by this thing was preparing themselves to confront this horror of a human being.

Vernon Gifford, an experienced homicide detective who had seen nothing but an unidentified man in a baseball cap aiming a gun in the direction of Ray Irving and Karen Langley, had taken the only rational action in such a situation. Had he not fired at Costello, had he not put a bullet through Costello′s thigh, the outcome might have been different.

Irving, sitting beside Karen Langley′s hospital bed while he waited for her to regain consciousness, considered every angle of the event. Somehow he convinced himself that the manner of Costello′s death would have been the same regardless of what Vernon Gifford had done. It seemed to Ray Irving that John Costello had been waiting for this to happen since November of 1984.

At nine-eighteen, morning of Saturday, November 25th, 2006, Karen Langley surfaced into consciousness in the post-op recovery room of St Clare′s Hospital on East 51st and Ninth. The surgical team had operated on a skull fracture that extended from the upper edge of her right ear and around the back of her head for four and a half inches. She had also suffered a fractured right clavicle and two broken ribs.

Ray Irving was there when she woke, his right arm and shoulder bandaged tightly, beneath the bandages a wound that had taken thirty-eight stitches to close.

And it was Ray Irving who told her that John Costello was dead, killed by a single hammer-blow to the head. It was Costello who had followed them, his baseball cap pulled down over his face, his collar turned up; Costello who had understood the message from the Anniversary Man that the next killing would be personal . . . and it was Costello who had been prepared to do whatever was necessary to protect Karen Langley.

′Who is he?′ she whispered to Irving through dry and swollen lips.

′He isn′t Karl Roberts,′ Irving replied. ′We haven′t found Roberts yet. We can only presume he′s dead somewhere. Anthony Grant identified the man in the park as the Karl Roberts he had spoken to.′ Irving shook his head. ′Hard to believe, but Grant hired his own daughter′s killer to investigate her murder.′

′You know his name?′

′Not yet. His fingerprints aren′t on record and he′s certainly not on our files in New York, but that doesn′t mean he′s not on file someplace else. We have the FBI working on it with us . . . they′re going to help us identify him.′

There were tears in Karen′s eyes then, as if she knew she could no longer escape the reality of John Costello′s fate.

′John is dead,′ she whispered.

′Yes,′ Irving said. He leaned forward, reached out his hand and closed it over hers.

′He was a good man, Ray . . . he really was a good man.′

′I know,′ Irving replied.

′He was killed on the same day . . . all these years later . . .′

′Ssshhh,′ Irving whispered.

′He saved our lives . . . and . . .′

′Enough now,′ Irving said. He took a tissue from the box on the shelf beside the bed and gently wiped the tears from Karen Langley′s cheeks. ′Rest,′ he whispered. ′Get some sleep, okay? Close your eyes and get some sleep.′

The painkillers, the aftermath of anesthetic, the overwhelm and emotional devastation of all that had happened closed in on her and she succumbed, let herself go, for it was greater than her, and in that moment she too - just like Ray Irving - possessed nothing with which to fight.

N
ew York did mornings like no other place on earth. Different mornings for different seasons, but each unique. Perhaps those who lived there took no notice, became inured to their surroundings through familiarity and habit, but it was there, right before them, if only they′d stop to look.

Every once in a while, but less frequently with the years, Ray Irving saw something in the city that was at once surprising and familiar, as if he were being reminded of an old friend, a forgotten lover, a house he′d lived in when life was a different thing. And it was in such brief moments that he saw beyond his work - past the faces of the dead, past those unfortunates left to bleed out alone as if life meant nothing much of anything at all - and recognized that, despite everything, he was still a human being, and his responsibility was to make it through the other side. The other side of what, he was sometimes unsure. But he had to make it through.

Morning of Tuesday, December 19th, the clean light reached Irving as he stood on the little balcony of his apartment, looking at the silhouette of St Raphael′s against the bright sky, and considered all that had taken place since November 23rd. Perhaps there is a God, he thought, but he saw the way things were going and went into hiding.

 

On Monday, November 27th, they identified the Anniversary Man. His name was Richard Franklin Segretti. Forty-one years old, hailed out of Malone, upstate New York. Head south along the I-30 out of Lake Placid, just a handful of miles before the St Lawrence separates you from Canada, and there you′d find a small town with small-town views and small-town people - good, hardworking people, and straight-minded, and it was from this unlikely setting that Segretti had come. People there knew the Segrettis - Richard and his younger sister, Pamela - and though the parents were now dead, though Pamela had moved south to Saratoga Springs where work was better paid and people weren′t so set in their views, the townsfolk of Malone still responded the way that all people respond when they learn of a killer in their midst: with disbelief and dismay; a feeling that if they had been so long unaware of something so important and profoundly disturbing, then what else might there be that they did not know.

Suspicion became a shadow that would haunt them for weeks, even months, and then it would pass, and they would do their utmost to forget.

And Segretti had visited with the Winterbourne group so many years before. Visited, but hadn′t stayed. Extensive research on Irving′s part couldn′t determine whether Segretti had ever survived an attack from some unknown serial killer. But then, as Karen Langley had reminded him, weren′t those the real unfortunates? The intended victims, those who survived but would never know the truth? The ones who stayed frightened for the rest of their lives for something they hadn′t done. She spoke of the articles that she and John Costello had planned to write. The forgotten victims. Perhaps Segretti was one of them, perhaps not. In the cold, hard light of day it hardly seemed to matter.