Rhymes with Prey 2 page

In the space of a few seconds, as he spoke to her, still smiling coolly, her expression morphed from confused to shocked to devastated; Amelia knew he was commenting on her complexion. He kept leaning forward, taunting, taunting, until she picked up her purse and fled into the bathroom, sobbing.

Amelia said to Lily, “His expression. What’s it look like to you?”

“Like he just fucked somebody and wants a cigarette.”

Verlaine eased through the crowd back to the bar.

“Hey, there, ladies. Miss me?”

* * *

The thing about burglary was, the careful burglar was rarely disturbed by the homeowner. It was always some snoopy neighbor who did him in.

Lucas sat on a darkened stoop across the street from Verlaine’s building, just watching and listening. The neighborhood was a tough one, not far from the East River, and not yet gentrifying; the buildings might be a little too rotten, a little too undistinguished, a little too far upriver. Verlaine’s building was a bit of a puzzle – only two stories tall, but wide and deep. Too large for a single inhabitant, Lucas thought. It had a shallow entrance above a wide one‑step stoop, with bricked‑up spaces on the bottom floor that were once windows. The place could have been a hardware store at one time, with walk‑up apartments above it; in another neighborhood, farther downtown, it would have become a nightclub, or a restaurant. Here, it was just a derelict building, without a single light showing, either through the barred windows on the main door, or from the windows on the second floor. Was there somebody else in there? Verlaine himself, Lucas knew, was at a Midtown bar.

Nothing moving. And still Lucas waited.

He’d had a little heart‑to‑heart with Lincoln. When the women were gone, Lincoln said, “If you go to the black cabinet by the window, in the bottom section, the left side, there’s a drawer.”

Lucas went to the cabinet, opened a lower‑level door, pulled out the drawer, and found an electric lock rake.

He took it out and pulled the trigger. Dead.

“An artifact from my former life. It’ll still work, but you’ll have to put some double‑A batteries in it.”

“You want me to crack Verlaine’s apartment?”

“Lily said you occasionally used unconventional tactics.”

Lucas said, “I’ll take a look at it. Even if this thing works, there could be other problems. Might be other people around, locks have gotten better.”

“So then you don’t go in,” Lincoln said. “I just feel it would be useful if somebody could take a preliminary look. Can’t use it as evidence, of course.”

Lucas nodded. “Yeah. Once you know, everything else gets easier.”

Then he said, “Look, I know I pissed you off because I was having trouble dealing with your disability.”

“You did. Piss me off,” Lincoln said.

“Yeah, well,” Lucas scratched his neck. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s purely out of fear. This scar”–he touched his neck again–“a little girl shot me in the throat with a.22. Went through a coat collar, through my windpipe, got to my spine, but not into it. The kid should have killed me – she would have, but there was a doc right there, and she did a tracheotomy, and kept me breathing until we got to the hospital. But if the kid had had any other kind of gun, or if the slug hadn’t gone through the collar first, she would have either blown my spine out, and I would have been dead on the spot, or I would have been like you. It was a matter of a quarter inch or so, or any other caliber. I look at you and I see me.”

“Interesting,” Lincoln said.

“After the accident, did you think about suicide?”

“Yes. Quite considerably,” Lincoln said. “Sometimes, I’m not sure I made the right choice, staying alive. But my curiosity keeps me going; I always seem to have work.” He smiled. “God bless all the little criminals.”

“And then there’s Amelia,” Lucas said.

“Yes. Then there’s Amelia.”

“You’re a lucky man, Lincoln,” Lucas said.

Lincoln laughed and said, “It’s been a while since anyone told me that.”

* * *

After an hour on the stoop, Lucas decided that he’d either have to make a move on the building, or go away. He stood up, dusted off the seat of his jeans, and saw a man walking along the sidewalk toward him, alone. The man spit in the gutter and came on. When he got to Lucas, he stopped and said, “You got an extra twenty?”

“No.”

“I’m not really asking,” the man said.

“Take a close look at me,” Lucas said.

The man took a closer look, then said, “Fuck you,” and went on down the street. He looked back once, then turned the corner and was gone. Lucas waited another few minutes, to see if the man came back, then crossed the street and, using his cell phone as a flashlight, looked at the lock. An old one – a good one, when it was made, but now old. With a last look around, Lucas took the rake out of his pocket, slipped the pick‑arm into the lock. The rake chattered for a moment, as Lucas kept the turning pressure on, and then the lock went.

He stepped inside, closed the door, and called, “Anybody home?”

He listened, got no response, except a scrabbling sound in the ceiling – a rat.

“Hey, anybody? Anybody here?”

Nobody answered. He took a flashlight from his pocket, turned it on. He was in a wide hallway, with steps going up to his right, and with a double door to the left. The hallway smelled of burned metal, as though somebody had been working with a welding torch. He was in the right place.

He tried the double door and found it open, with a bank of light switches on the wall to the left. He closed the door behind him and turned on the lights. He was in a wide‑open studio with several two‑foot‑tall bronze sculptures sitting on heavy wooden tables, with a variety of metalworking tools – files, electric grinders, polishers, hand scribes. The air inside smelled of burned metal and polishing compound.

The sculptures were all on sadomasochistic themes: nude women being whipped, bound, beaten. Just what you need to add that extra spark to your living room, Lucas thought.

At the far edge of the studio was a low, wooden wall, perhaps ten feet high, which was two or three feet short of the ceiling. Behind it, Lucas found a queen‑sized bed, a chest of drawers, a large closet stuffed with clothing, a bathroom, a second closet with an apartment‑sized washer and dryer stacked one on top of the other, a kitchenette, and a small breakfast table with two chairs. A television was mounted on a swing arm at the foot of the bed. He poked through the living area for a moment, found nothing of particular interest, and continued his tour of the studio. And found, at the back, an internal door, sheathed in metal, that was set in a frame a step below the rest of the floor – a door that most likely led to a basement, Lucas thought. He looked at the lock, and realized that the rake wouldn’t work: the thing was probably a year old, a Medeco.

After the quick tour of the lower floor, he turned out the lights, stepped back in the hallway, and used the flashlight to climb the stairs to the second floor. The second floor was a trash heap: a line of single rooms that had apparently last been used as a flophouse, each with a wrecked cot or a stained mattress, various pieces of mostly broken furniture. More rats: he never saw one, but he could hear them.

Nothing for him there.

He went back down to the studio, closed the door, turned the lights on, went to look at the cellar door again. No way to open it: it was impossible. He pounded on it a few times and listened, heard nothing. What they really needed, he thought, was behind that door, and he had no way to get there.

He’d been inside for five or six minutes, and time was wearing on him.

He took a plastic bag out of his pocket, and from the bag, several more Ziploc‑style bags, each with a white spongelike pad in it. Lincoln’s instructions had been simple enough: press the pad into anything you’d like to pick up, then put the pad back in the plastic bag, and seal it. Lucas worked his way through the studio, doing just that: sampling bronze filings from the floor, off a workbench, and out of the teeth of a metal file. Moving to the welding area, he found a selection of welding rods, and stuck one of each kind in his pocket, and, from a trash bin, several used rods.

He sampled several stains that might possibly have been blood, but there were enough stains around the place, oil and lubricants, that he had his doubts. He was taking a sample when he saw, in a small niche off the main working space, a half dozen crucifixes on neck chains, along with a necklace of cheap aqua‑colored stones, a thin string of seed pearls, a ring on a chain, and three sets of earrings, all pinned to the wall with tacks. And he thought, Trophies? If they were, there were twelve of them. There was nothing else like them in the room: he took a half dozen photos with his cell phone.

Time to leave. On his way out, he looked at each of the bronze sculptures, and a clay maquette for another, and noticed that each of the women portrayed in the sculptures was wearing a single piece of jewelry of some kind, apparently to emphasize her nakedness. Was it possible that the jewelry collection did not represent trophies, but was for use with models?

He was thinking about that when Lily called. “He’s moving.”

“And I’m gone,” Lucas said. And he thought, Not for models. They were trophies, and there were twelve of them.

* * *

“You believe it?” Lucas Davenport said, walking into the town house. He held up the plastic bags. “This shit fell out the window when I was walking by Verlaine’s apartment.”

Lincoln spun the motorized wheelchair around, noting eagerly – almost hungrily – the evidence in the Minnesotan’s hand.

“Sometimes you catch a break. Anything obvious?”

“No piles of bones or bloody shackles. There’s a steel door leads somewhere – the cellar, I think. Love to see what’s behind that.” He explained that the lock rake wasn’t up to the task, though. They’d need a warrant and a sledgehammer.

Lincoln turned his attention to the evidence.

Lucas dropped down into one of the wicker chairs near one of the large high‑definition monitors that glowed like a billboard in Times Square.

“Lucas?” Thom Reston, Lincoln’s aide, stood in the doorway. He was a slim, young man, dressed in a lavender shirt, dark tie, and beige slacks. “Tempt you? Beer? Anything else?”

“Later, thanks.”

Lincoln said, “Whiskey for me.”

“You’ve had two already,” Thom countered.

“I’m so pleased at your sterling memory. Could I have a whiskey? Please and thank you?”

“No.”

“Get me–” But he was speaking to an empty doorway. He grimaced. “All right. Let’s get to work. Mel, what’s in the haul?”

Mel Cooper looked like a geek, which he probably was since he was the Mr. Wizard of forensic science on the East Coast, if not the country. The man was pale and trim and had thin hair and Harry Potter glasses that invariably slid down his nose.

Pulling on gloves, a surgeon’s cap, and a disposable jacket, Cooper took the bag and set the contents out on an examination pad – large sheets of sterile newsprint.

“Good job,” he mused, looking at the carefully sealed bags. “You worked crime scene before?”

“Naw,” Lucas said. “But I lost a rape‑murder conviction once ’cause some rookie tripped and dropped the perp’s shoe into Medicine Lake. It was the only evidence we had that would’ve nailed the prick and I had a very uncircumstantial‑minded jury. The prick walked.”

“That hurts,” Lincoln said.

“Course, he went after another vic a month later. He didn’t pick well. She kept a five‑five Redhawk under her mattress. Just a three fifty‑seven, not a forty‑four. But it did the trick.”

“Was there anything left of the guy?”

“Not much above the neck. Justice got done, but it would’ve been a whole lot cleaner if the CS kid had held on to the evidence. Taught me to treat it like gold.”

First, Cooper and Lincoln did a visual of the splinters and curlicues of bronze and other metals.

Using an optical microscope on low power, Lincoln compared them with the scraps found in the backs of the women victims. He was looking at the shape of the scraps, along with the indentations from the tools that had trimmed them off a large piece of metal – presumably one of the sculptures. “Tool marks look real close to me,” Lincoln said.

Lucas walked over to the high‑def monitor plugged into the microscope via an HDMI cable. “Yeah, I agree.”

They next had to compare the chemical composition of the metal from the crime scenes with that of the scraps Lucas had found at the studio. Cooper went to work analyzing each one, using the glow discharge spectrometer, the gas chromatograph, and the scanning electron microscope.

“While we’re waiting,” Lucas said, pointing to a bag. “Possible blood stains. From the floor near his bedroom.”

Cooper tested with luminol and alternative light sources.

“Yep, we’ve got blood.”

A reagent test confirmed it was human, and the tech typed it. The sample, however, didn’t match the types of the women victims from the earlier scenes.

They tested concrete samples that Lucas had collected, too, and compared them with the concrete particles found in the women’s backs. “Close,” Cooper assessed. “No cigar.”

“Hell.” Lincoln then glanced at the doorway; he’d heard the nearly undetectable sound of the key in the lock. A moment later the female detectives walked into the parlor.

“How’d it go?” Lily asked Lucas.

He shrugged. “Some evidence fell off the truck.” He nodded to the equipment, merrily analyzing away. He glanced at Amelia’s outfit. “Damn, you need to go undercover more often.”

Lily hit him on the arm. “Behave.”

Lucas then asked the women, “What was Verlaine like?”

“Dangerous,” Amelia said.

Lily filled in, “He looks at you like you’re naked and he can’t decide what to lick first.”

“And then what to whip.”

“So the S&M hunch paid off?”

“Big‑time. He’s the S all the way. Wants to be the hurter, not the hurtee.”

Lily explained about his personal Pinterest album. “Jesus, took all my willpower not to kick him in the balls. You should’ve seen what he did to some of those women.”

“He pressure you two lovely ladies to go home with him?” Lucas asked.

“Sure, but we had to postpone our threesome. Somehow his glass kept getting refilled. He was in no shape to tie anybody up after that much bourbon. I was tempted to let the asshole stagger home and hope some mugger beat the crap out of him. But Amelia was the mature one and we got him into a cab.”

Sachs glanced at the plastic bags. “What does the evidence say?”

“Just getting it now,” Lincoln told her, and grumbled, “Right, Mel? It seems to be taking forever.”

Mel Cooper, hunched over a computer monitor, didn’t respond. He shoved his glasses higher on his nose and said, “Interesting.”

“That’s not a useful term, Mel,” Lincoln snapped.

“I’m getting there. Lucas collected five different kinds of bronze from Verlaine’s. One is typical modern formula: eighty‑eight percent copper and twelve percent tin. Then alpha bronze, with about four to five percent tin.

“Some other samples have a higher concentration of copper and zinc and some lead – that’s architectural bronze. Others are bismuth bronze – an alloy that’s got a lot of nickel, and traces of bismuth. One sample surprised me – it had a Vickers hardness value of two hundred.”

“That’s the bronze used in swords,” Lucas said.

They all looked at him. “For the role‑playing games I write. Helps to know about old‑time weapons. Roman officers had bronze swords; foot soldiers had iron.”

Amelia asked, “You think he uses bronze as a weapon?”

Lucas shook his head. “No, I think what it means is that he gets his materials wherever he can find them. Probably from dozens of junkyards and construction sites.”

“I agree,” Lincoln said.

Cooper added, “And there’s triethanolamine, fluoroboric acid, and cadmium fluoroborate.”

“That’s flux – used in brazing and soldering,” Lincoln said absently.

“Okay, the big question: any associations, Mel?” Lucas asked.

In crime scene work, very few samples of evidence actually “matched,” meaning they were literally the same. DNA and fingerprints established true identity but little else did. However, samples of evidence from two scenes could be “associated,” meaning they were similar. If close enough, the jury could deduce that they came from the same source. Here, the team had to show that the shavings found in the first victims’ bodies could be closely associated with those Lucas had collected from Verlaine’s studio.

Cooper finally pushed back from the screen. He didn’t seem happy. “Like the concrete, the flux and welding rods are close to the trace from the earlier crime scenes.”

Lincoln’s face tightened into a frown. “But those are used by anyone brazing, welding, or working with bronze. I want to establish identity with the bronze scraps themselves.”

“Understood. But that’s more of a problem.” He explained that four of the bronze samples at the first crime scene were completely different from any of the metal collected by Lucas. One sample Lucas had collected that night had the same composition as several fragments in the first scenes. The others were similar but had “some compositional differences.”

“ How similar?” Lincoln snapped.

“I’d feel comfortable testifying that it was possible the scraps embedded in the victims came from Verlaine’s loft. But I couldn’t do better than that.”

The evidence suggested but didn’t prove that Verlaine was the killer.

“Same with his behavioral profile and his history of sex offenses,” Lily added. “The S&M. It’s likely he’s antisocial enough to kill. But that ain’t enough to swing the jury.”

That irritating little “beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement.

Lucas told the women about the mysterious door to the basement. “I’m betting there’s something incriminating down there, but without a warrant, we’re not getting in.”

Cooper now put the pictures of the necklaces up on the high‑def TV. “Trophies, I’m betting,” Lucas said.

“Crosses mostly,” Lincoln observed. “Hell, that means there are seven or eight more victims out there. Nobody’s found the bodies yet.”

“Or,” Lucas said, “that those are for vics he’s got coming up?”

Lily said angrily, “We’ve gotta stop this fucker. I mean now!”

“Trophies, some evidence, a behavioral profile that’s in the ballpark,” Amelia summarized. “He’s gotta be the one, even if we can’t make a case just yet. But the good news is if he’s the one, nobody from the department is involved. Verlaine’s just some lone psycho.”

“Wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Lucas said. “There’s another possibility.”

Lincoln understood. “Could be that Narcotics Four has been using Verlaine to torture and kill the women to get leads they could use.”

“Exactly.”

Amelia scowled. “Sure. Verlaine’s been a bad boy. Maybe somebody from the drug detail’s been extorting him to get information from the women. That way the cops’ll keep their hands clean.”

Lily sighed. “I’ll take the hit on this one.”

They looked at her.

“We’ve got to tell Markowitz the news: A, we don’t have enough evidence to collar our favorite suspect. And B, his world‑famous drug detail isn’t in the clear, either.” She looked over her teammates. “Unless, of course, somebody else’d rather have that little chat.”

They all smiled her way.

* * *

“We’ve caught another one, sir. Woman, twenties.”

It was eight thirty the next morning and COD Stan Markowitz was sipping his first coffee of the day, in one of the old‑time containers, blue with Greek athletes on it. But hearing this news he lost all taste for java. And for the bagel sitting in front of him, too.

It took a fuck of a lot for him to sour on walnut cream cheese.

The chief of detectives snapped, “In her twenties? Or in the twenties?”

The young detective, a skinny Italian American, said, “She was twenty‑nine. Latina. Found the body in a vacant lot in NoHo.” He was standing in the doorway, not in or out, as if Markowitz might decide to fling a stapler at him. It’d happened before.

“I don’t like the name NoHo. It’s not a real place. I can live with SoHo but even TriBeCa’s pushing it.”

The kid didn’t respond but there was really nothing to respond to.

“Crime Scene’s on it now,” he said.

Markowitz stroked his round belly through the striped white shirt the wife had laid out for him that morning. He wadded up the oozing bagel and pitched it emphatically into the wastebasket. It landed with a surprisingly loud thud; this was the first entry of the morning.

“TOD?”

“Examiner’s saying about midnight,” the detective said. “No specific leads yet. No wits. Same as the others: she was a user, crack and smack. Found in a lot known for drug activity.”

“He’s a psycho, that’s what he is. It has nothing to do with the drugs. Don’t get that rumor started.”

“Sure. Only–”

“Only what?”

A hesitation at this. “All right.”

Markowitz glanced down at a file on his desk.

RED HOOK OPERATION. CLASSIFIED.

The NYPD had top‑secret files, too. Langley has nothing on us, he thought.

“That’s all,” Markowitz said. “I want the crime scene report before the ink’s dry. Got it?”

“Sure.” The young detective remained standing.

With a glare, the COD sent him scurrying.

His landline had started ringing. Six buttons, lighting up like Christmas trees.

One reporter, two reporters, three reporters, four.

He glanced at the empty doorway and sent a text, then hit the intercom switch.

“Yes, sir?”

“Hold all calls.”

“Yes, sir, except the–”

“I said hold–”

“The commissioner’s on two.”

Naturally.

“Stan. There’s another one?” The man didn’t have a brogue, but Markowitz often imagined that Commissioner of Police Patrick O’Brien sounded like he just came off the boat from the old country.

“Afraid so, Pat.”

“This is a nightmare. I’m getting calls from Gracie Mansion. I’m getting calls from Albany.” His voice lowered and delivered the most devastating news. “I’m getting calls from the Daily News and the Times. The Huffington Post, for heaven’s sake.”

One reporter, two reporters.

The commissioner continued, “The vics are minorities, Stan. The killings are bad for everyone.”

Especially them, Markowitz thought.

Then finally the commish wasn’t wailing anymore, but asking a question. “What do you have, Stan?” A grave tone in his voice, then: “It’s pretty important that you have something. You hear me, Stan? I mean, really important.”

You have something.

Not we. Not the department. Not the city.

Markowitz said quickly, “We’ve got a suspect.”

“Why didn’t anybody tell me?” But his voice was balmed with relief.

“It happened fast.”

“You’ve got him in custody?”

“No, but he’s more than a person of interest.”

The pause said that wasn’t what the commissioner wanted to hear. “Is he the perp or not?”

“Has to be. Just a few loose ends on the case before we can collar him.”

“Who is he?”

“Sculptor. Lives downtown. And the evidence is solid.”

“Listen, Stan,” the commissioner said, back to whining, “there is way too much flak hitting the fan.” Patrick O’Brien would rather butcher a figure of speech than utter an expletive. “Make it work.”

“Uhm, what, Pat?”

“Wouldn’t the citizens of New York love to read that we have a suspect?”

“Well, Pat, we do have a suspect. Just not enough for a warrant. Or an announcement in the press.”

“You said the evidence was solid. I heard you say that. The citizens of the city’d feel so much better knowing that we’re on top of it. It’d be great if they could read that by the time the Times online got updated in the next cycle.”

Which was about every half hour.

“And I’d feel better too, Stan.”

Despite the COD’s dozen‑year track record, the commissioner could drop him to a low‑level spot in public affairs in the time it took to microwave a Stouffer’s lasagna. “All right, Pat.”

After organizing his thoughts, Markowitz picked up his cell phone. Hit a number.

“Rothenburg.”

“I just heard, Detective. Another one.”

“That’s right, Stan. We’re at the scene. Amelia’s running it now. The vic was tortured first, just like the other ones.”

“I wanted to let you know you’re going to hear in the press that we have a suspect.”

After a dense pause, Lily said, “Who?”

“Well, the sculptor, Verlaine.”

“He’s our suspect, Stan. He’s not the press’s suspect. There’s a big difference. Verlaine’s not for public consumption at this point.”

“What does your gut tell you, Lily?”

“He’s an asshole, he’s a sadist. And he’s the doer.”

“What’s the percentage?”

“Percentage? Christ, I don’t know. How does ninety‑six and three‑tenths percent sound?”

The COD let the irrelevance pass.

“It’s going to put people at ease, Lily.”

Silence, presumably as she tried to process why they needed to put people at ease. “That’s not in my job description, Stan. My job is catching assholes and putting them in jail.”

He looked up. He noted a woman in a suit, standing in his outer office, waiting. She was the one he’d texted fifteen minutes ago.

Markowitz said, “And I’ve looked into your other theory.”

“What’s that?” she asked, an edge to her voice.

“What you told me last night. That somebody, maybe from Narcotics Four or someplace else in the department, was using Verlaine to kill the women. Don’t waste time pursuing that.”

“Why not?”

Now his voice was hard as a metal file. “Because, Detective, I was profiling perps when you were getting your knuckles rapped for mouthing off in class. Verlaine’s a single operator. His psych profile is as obvious as the front page of the Post. Now make the case against him. STAT.”

“What part are you missing, Stan? If you announce, he burns his fucking apartment down, there’s no evidence left, and the case goes to shit. He gets off… and goes on to kill somebody else.”

The thing about nut cutters is they sometimes cut any nuts in their path, not just the ones you want them to.

“Detective,” he snapped. “You’re going to hear on the news in a half hour that we have a suspect in the serial killing of those women. If that means you’ve gotta get your ass in gear and work faster and harder – then do it!”

Click.

He looked into the outer office and nodded. The stocky woman was in her forties, blond, and with a dry complexion and eyes that suggested she’d never laughed in her life. Her clothes were dowdy.

She looked around to make sure they were alone. Markowitz nodded at the door. Detective Candy Preston swung it shut.

He whispered, “We’ve got some problems.”

“I heard.” The woman was a nut cutter, too. But she had the most melodious voice. He could hear her reading stories to children.

“I need you to move forward with what we talked about.”

“Now? I thought we were taking things slow.”

“We don’t have the luxury of taking things slow.” The chief of detectives unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and handed her an envelope. It was thick but not as thick as you’d think. Fifty thousand dollars, in hundreds, really doesn’t take up a lot of space.

“I’ll do it now,” said Preston. She was one of the senior members of the Narcotics Unit Four detail. She slipped the money into her purse and rose, walked to the door. Her feet, he noticed, were as delicate as her voice.

Just before she touched the knob, Markowitz said, “Oh, some advice, Detective?”

She frowned at the implication that she was green. Stiffly she said, “I’ve handled things like this in the past, Stan. I know–”

“That’s not my advice. My advice is don’t fuck up.”

* * *

Amelia was switching back and forth between WABC and WNBC and said, before anyone else did, “We’re screwed.”

“Maybe,” Lucas said. He turned to Lincoln: “I understand from my BCA people that fires mess up DNA?”

“That’s right,” Lincoln said. “Theoretically, if he dumped a few gallons of gas down that basement – if the basement is the kill room – he could wipe out the most critical evidence. We wouldn’t get DNA unless we found an actual body.”