The Caller (24 page)

She could not stop crying. ‘Where are you taking me? Where?’

‘Please be quiet, please, please.’ He kept saying it over and over.

‘I can’t,’ she screamed. ‘I can’t.’

He stayed silent, just glancing back at her every now and then to make sure she hadn’t twisted her way out of the restraints. She was curled on her side, her legs tied together at the ankles, her hands bound tight at the wrist.

‘I am all alone in this world now,’ she roared. ‘I have no-one! I have no-one! Why are you doing this to me? Why? Why? Why?’ She started retching.

‘Try not to throw up. You’ll have to stay that way. I can’t stop.’ He hadn’t gagged her because she looked so fragile. He knew she was the type to be sick.

She pitched forward and retched again. Her mind couldn’t handle any more. Her body was taking up the fight. She had felt so close to being taken away from danger. And now she was in total blackness with rain hammering loudly on the roof and on the windows, drilling into her
head, making her struggle harder and harder to be heard. Words didn’t work. He didn’t want to hear them. She knew she could stop speaking. But she had no control over the rest. Her sobs cut right through him, agonizing wails that trailed off into whimpers, like a sick child without the voice to express her pain. But Mary did have a voice, she just lost the will to use it.

Hope was a white light to Mary. It was a guide. It was visitation and resurrection and redemption and ascendance. It was all good things. Here in the dark, she searched for it inside. There was no other way. Prayers ran quickly through her mind; to St Joseph, St Pio, St Anthony, St Jude. She moved on to the rosary, ten decades, fluent words her memory had never let go of. She finished with the Confitior; ‘I confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters / That I have sinned through my own fault / In my thoughts and in my words / In what I have done / And in what I have failed to do …’

She thought about what she had done and what she had failed to do.

It was 5 a.m. when Joe and Danny got back to the office. Rencher, Blazkow, Martinez and Pace were all still at their desks. Joe rubbed his eyes.

‘Anyone got anything?’ said Joe.

‘Nada,’ said Rencher.

‘A hangover,’ said Martinez. ‘Already.’

‘Yeah, and some grandma’s phone number,’ said Rencher.

‘Anyone get a hold of Stanley Frayte?’ said Joe.

‘No.’

‘All the other squads have been told what to look out for,’ said Danny.

‘So,’ said Joe, ‘we’ve got no Stanley Frayte. No Mary Burig. No Preston Blake. Fucking great. Blazkow – can you do a victimology on Stanley Frayte?’

‘Sure. But I can sleep now, right?’

‘We all need to get some sleep,’ said Joe.

His cell phone rang.

‘Joe? It’s Taye Harris, fire marshal.’

‘How you doing?’ said Joe. ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier. Things have been crazy.’

‘I heard. That’s why I’m calling so late, early, whatever. Joe, I don’t think your perp made it out of the building alive. I think we got your perp.’

‘What?’ said Joe. ‘Can’t be …’

‘Well, we got a body …’

‘But the scene was clear. I thought there was no-one—’

‘I know. I know. I’ve talked with the officers involved and because it was a crime scene and the search was expedited, the primary and secondary search reports were given as negative. They didn’t have a lot of time. The body was in the curve of the bay window at the front of the house. Behind a large sofa. When my men went in to ventilate
the place, they had to pull down some heavy curtains covering the window to get the air circulating. No-one saw him. He was concealed there for several hours.’

Joe paused. ‘The bay window. He was in—’

‘Yeah,’ said Harris. ‘The dead man’s room.’

Joe and Danny drove to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

‘We have been up twenty-four hours,’ said Danny as they walked in.

Joe yawned. ‘I know.’

Dr Hyland came down and led them into the room where a body was laid out under a white sheet.

‘Just to warn you, he’s in pretty bad shape,’ said Hyland. He lifted the sheet. The first thing Danny and Joe saw was a badly burned arm and hand. Something gold glinted on the finger. They both leaned closer. It was their high school ring. They locked eyes.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Danny.

‘It’s Bobby.’

At the twentieth precinct, Pace checked Bobby’s desk where his notes were still laid out. He had
come to the same conclusion as Cullen about Blake’s address.

‘He must have just decided to call into Blake on his way home from work,’ said Joe. ‘Blake freaked, knew we were on to him.’

‘I should have been with him,’ said Pace.

‘If he didn’t say anything to you …’ said Joe, shrugging. ‘Jesus Christ. He’s got two little boys.’

Danny shook his head.

‘I better take care of notifying Old Nic,’ said Joe.

Most people knew that Bobby Nicotero and his father weren’t close. But everyone knew that didn’t matter today and it would never matter again.

Victor Nicotero knew when he saw Joe at the door at 8 a.m. His hand was shaking as he let him in.

‘Nothing about this is right. It’s all wrong,’ he said, struggling. ‘I’m at the wrong end of a notification here. Jesus Christ. What happened?’

Joe tried to clean up the details. Old Nic didn’t buy it, but pretended he did. He sat in silence, staring.

‘Patti’s up there, sleeping away her last night before her whole world is turned upside down. I don’t ever want to wake her up, Joe.’ His voice cracked. ‘When he was a kid, Bobby worried about me all the time,’ said Nic. ‘Used to drive me nuts. He’d cling on to me, wouldn’t let me go.’ Tears welled in his eyes. ‘I know how he feels.’ He let out a desperate, mourning
sob. ‘I don’t want to let him go.’ He searched his pocket for the handkerchief. ‘We were getting somewhere,’ he said. ‘I think we were getting somewhere.’ He looked up, his eyes red and watery. ‘What was his problem with me, Joe? Where did I go wrong? I don’t mean with him, he’s a good kid, but …’

‘Families,’ said Joe, handing him a Kleenex. ‘We don’t ever know, do we? But I know when a son loves his father, Nic. I do. And Bobby did. He looked out for you. In his … his own way.’

Nic smiled. ‘Angry way.’

‘I’m not saying that,’ said Joe. ‘But yeah, he wasn’t straightforward about it. But he gave a shit. You know, he went crazy with me last week.’

‘He did?’

Joe nodded. ‘Yup. Made me take it outside.’

Nic smiled. ‘That’s my boy.’

‘He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t give a damn,’ said Joe.

The office was quiet. No-one knew what to say.

Pace had gone home. Cullen had arrived in.

‘I can’t believe they just didn’t find him,’ he said.

‘It was chaos,’ said Joe. ‘We didn’t want them tramping all over any evidence. We didn’t know what could be in there.’

‘Yeah, Blake’s whole life was run from that home. The dental work for Valtry, the—’

‘Whoa,’ said Joe. ‘Did you see any dental stuff down there?’

‘Yeah,’ said Danny. ‘Remember? The pliers, the burrs—’

‘Yeah, but there were no teeth, no models, no porcelain – none of the shit we saw in the lab.’ He looked at Danny. ‘We need to get back to the house … I think he’s got Mary in there.’

Danny and Joe parked the car on Remsen Street and walked to Willow Street. They stopped a short distance from Preston Blake’s house.

‘Our only way in is through the basement door under the stoop,’ said Joe, pointing. ‘The collapse has blocked everything off from the back entrance.’ They walked up to the door – it was padlocked and had a Gravoply tag slapped on it from the fire department and a number to call if you wanted to gain access.

‘I’ll call ESU,’ said Danny.

Fifteen minutes later, two Emergency Services guys showed up and broke through the door into the damp basement, the smell of smoke still strong in the air.

‘There it is,’ said Joe, ‘the trapdoor down to the basement he doesn’t fucking have.’

An overpowering stench hit them as soon as they lifted it. They jerked their heads away. Danny clamped a hand over his mouth.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Joe. ‘That is fucking—’

Danny took his hand down, wiping the tears that streamed from his eyes. ‘Unbelievable. That
is …’ He breathed out. ‘Christ.’ He stared down at the vertical ladder.

‘I’ll go first,’ said Joe. ‘Shine that flashlight down there.’

He held the beam steady as Joe climbed down. He handed him the flashlight and followed him into the small cramped space.

‘What the fuck is this?’ said Danny. Joe swept the flashlight left to right, its beam broken up by the bars of a prison cell. A TV was mounted on the wall in front of it. Joe reached out for the light switch beside it.

‘No!’ shouted Danny. ‘No switches.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Joe, snapping his hand back. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’

Danny walked over to the cell, his throat constricting as he closed in on the source of the smell. In the corner beside the bed lay a bucket of human waste, the liquid almost evaporated, the solids breaking down, covered with breeding maggots. Adult flies swarmed around it, landing along the rim, travelling back and forth to a plate of spoiled food on a tray by the door. Joe shone the light on the pale china and could see the tiny olive-green specks of excrement they left behind. Danny rushed out towards the ladder, but managed to ride out the nausea without throwing up.

‘Why would anyone live like this?’ said Danny, holding his handkerchief loosely over his face.

‘He’s a broken man,’ said Joe. ‘Probably came
down here only after the first victim. The guy hates himself, probably thinks this is all he deserves.’

‘What he deserves is his head shoved into that bucket,’ said Danny. He choked back another wave of nausea.

‘You’re making yourself sick.’

‘I have got to get out of here.’

‘Look,’ said Joe. He pointed to the dull plaster models of teeth scattered from a box on the bed. He shone the flashlight across two shelves mounted above it with neat rows of tiny animal skulls, jewels glistening in the cavities.

Pinned to the wall above a small desk was a single cracked and yellowed handwritten note, the top of it ripped from a lined spiral notebook. Joe leaned in to read it:

The rest of the industrial grey walls had been covered with photocopies of the same script,
side by side, edges overlapping, layer upon layer.

‘I bet that’s the note,’ said Joe. ‘From Sonja Ruehling. That was his kiss-off.’

Danny shook his head. ‘It is so fucked up … Jesus Christ.’

Joe crouched down and looked under the bed. ‘Wallets,’ he said. He pulled some of them out, looking through them at the faces of the unchosen victims. ‘If they only fucking knew.’

‘And upstairs, you had this beautiful shiny home? Jesus Christ,’ said Danny.

‘You never know, do you?’ said Joe. ‘What shit people hide beneath the surface.’

‘Where are you, you fucking freak?’ shouted Danny.

Rufo sat at his office with his head in his hands. Joe and Danny knocked and went in.

‘I’m in shock here,’ said Rufo. ‘I can’t believe Bobby.’

‘I know,’ said Joe. He looked down. ‘He probably went there because I was giving him a hard time, wanted to check it out before he came to me with the information …’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Rufo gently. ‘Where we at now?’

‘We’ve found Blake’s fucking dungeon, but no-one in it,’ said Joe. ‘Stanley Frayte’s home has been searched and nothing’s come up so far. No sightings of Mary.’

‘All we can hope is that Blake does something to draw attention to himself,’ said Rufo. ‘Our first contact with him was because he reached out to us.’

‘Yeah,’ said Joe. ‘But I think that was his way of putting himself forward as the exact opposite of what he was, this pathological lying thing. He knew he was good at it. He could get close to us, get off on the whole victim role and maybe find some shit out at the same time.’

Rufo let out a breath.

‘You know Blake was the one who got in touch with Artie Blackwell about that article,’ said Joe.

‘Artie told you that?’ said Danny.

Joe nodded. ‘Yeah. Maybe our near-death experience brought something out in him …’

Cullen rushed into the room. ‘Guys. I’ve found something. I don’t really know what to make of it. But you might want to take a look.’

‘What’s this about?’ said Julia Embry, struggling to pull out the seat opposite Joe in a canteen reeking of disinfectant and vegetables.

Joe helped her with the seat. ‘It’s about your son, Robin.’

She held a hand to her chest. ‘Robin?’

‘I know you never got any answers from that night and the driver was never caught …’

‘Oh my God,’ she said, raising her hand to her mouth. ‘Did you find out who—’

Joe nodded. ‘Yes, I did. And if you want, I can let you know.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course I want to know. Why wouldn’t I—’

‘You could trust me that I know who it is, that this person is not an evil person, that they’re not a danger or—’

‘I’m sorry, detective, I do trust you, you seem like a good person. But you know I’ve never got closure and I need closure and if it’s right here staring me in the face, I’m going to take it. Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Because it’s going to come as a shock—’

‘Who?’ she said. ‘Who did this to Robin? Just tell me.’

‘Stanley Frayte.’

Her eyes registered shock, but her whole face seemed to collapse with sadness and disappointment. Joe could barely look at her. He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket. He was going to hand it to her, but her head was slumped onto her folded arms on the table and she was sobbing so hard, he could barely move. He tapped her arm lightly and put the handkerchief in front of her.

‘I’m so sorry to have had to tell you,’ he said. ‘But I know you never got closure. I know how hard that is. He may have taken the opportunity to leave because of the police attention. He probably felt we’d figure it out sooner or later.’

Julia shook her head and managed to draw breath long enough to tell Joe it wasn’t his fault.
She reached out and dragged the handkerchief towards her, covering her entire face with it, then wiping her eyes and blowing her nose before she looked up at him. She broke down again and it was several minutes before she could speak. Joe sat quietly, looking out the window, listening to the sounds in the parking lot outside.

‘The Christmas lights in the house,’ she said. ‘Were …’ she sobbed, ‘… Robin and I always put them up. Then when Robin died – my husband. But when he left me … it was Stan who helped. He could do that with me and not … how could he do that? Why am I even thinking of Christmas lights right now? That’s the first thing I thought of …’

‘Stanley must have made the decision never to come forward for whatever reason. And then he realized he couldn’t live with that guilt. It takes a split second to decide to keep on driving. And there’s no going back. The next best thing for him was to reach out to you in some other way. I guess that eased his mind. I’m just guessing.’

‘You see all kinds of things in your job. Do you think what he – did not coming forward – was wrong?’

Joe shrugged. ‘Stan made a huge mistake. He had worked hard to get where he was at that time. He was thinking of his own family. He wasn’t thinking—’

‘Of mine. Of me. But he is such a …’ she choked on the words, ‘… kind man.’

‘I don’t doubt that.’

‘How did you know it was him?’

‘When we picked him up for mailing the letters for Mary, I thought we’d got our guy. He looked guilty. And when he was in the interview room, it was like he was relieved. But when we told him why we’d taken him in, he seemed surprised. We knew he wasn’t the killer, but after, I thought maybe there was something else going on with him. I thought it might have been some scam he was working … We checked him out … We reached out to the detectives on the case and they had the last few letters of the truck company’s name that a witness had seen leaving the crime. She’d got one of them wrong …’ He shrugged. ‘We put it together.’

‘Stan was here from the start of the building project – the Clinic,’ said Julia. ‘He offered us rates that I know were below his usual. He was never late. He was polite. He was loyal. He didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs. He had such a good heart.’ She shook her head. ‘How am I supposed to feel about this? What am I supposed to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Joe.

‘How did I not see it from him? Nothing. I never got any sense …’

‘I’m no shrink,’ said Joe. ‘I’ve never been to one in my life, but I’d say if you go back and start to think about every incident and every word that passed between you and Stanley Frayte, you might never make it through.’

Julia stared ahead. She nodded. ‘And maybe that would diminish all his
good
work,’ she said. ‘I’ve already gone over and over my last conversation with Robin and it’s enough to drive anyone crazy. It’s the old cliché – it was a fight. Our last exchange of words was angry. And I can never go back and change that. You’re so used to getting the chance to make up after an argument, that you expect the chance will always be there. The person storms off and you say “fine – go”, knowing you can apologize a little while later.’ She shrugged.

‘I’m sure he felt the same way,’ said Joe. ‘I’m sure he thought he’d be coming back in that door to sort it all out.’

Julia gave a small smile and turned her head to stare out the window.