Читать книгу Sacred Evil - Heather Graham, Heather Graham - Страница 6

One great thing about New York City—tourists.

And residents who behaved like tourists, every time he came to the scene of a murder.

Jude Crosby flashed his badge to the officers on duty and ducked beneath the yellow crime scene tape that was stretched across lower Broadway.

The murder site had acquired more onlookers than a movie premiere. Traffic downtown had grown to a snarl that was just about impassable even with the extra traffic cops manning the detour, and the sound of cursing drivers threatened to drown out the sound of their horns.

Fortunately, it was only just dawn; most finance workers weren’t even on their way in yet.

He made his way to the circle of men around the body. He was glad to see that the medical examiner who had been on call was Wally Fullbright, a man in his late fifties with ruffled white hair and big-rimmed glasses; he looked like an aged Beaker, from the Muppets. He was, in Jude’s mind, the finest in his profession. Yet, he never considered his own expertise as the zenith of knowledge, and was known to probe to the depths of any anatomical mystery.

“Crosby!” Fullbright said, acknowledging Jude without looking up. He knew he had a distinctive height, and in his off-hours he practiced at the ring. Pounding away at punching bags helped him release the tension that often bubbled up after dealing with some of the more bizarre crimes that plagued the city.

Even then, he had to make his way through more men; officers had formed a curtain of bodies, hiding the corpse from the view of the crowd that looked on.

He quickly saw why.

“Lord,” he said quietly, hunkering down across the body from Fullbright.

He’d seen a lot as a homicide detective in New York City. Dead drunks, prostitutes, drug addicts, mob hits and victims of domestic abuse. He’d seen the derelicts who had died in Dumpsters, in alleys, atop mountains of trash and he’d seen the floaters who had popped up in the East River and the Hudson.

He’d never seen anything like this.

“Do we know who she is?” he asked.

“Sir!” one of the uniformed men—Smith, according to his badge—said. “She had her ID on her, in her bag. Found next to the body. Her name is Virginia Rockford, twenty-six years old. We believe that she was an actress working on location last night, but that fact still has to be verified. We formed ranks around her as fast as we could when we reached the scene. We called it in to Major Crimes because of … because of the way you see the body.”

“You found her like this?” Jude asked.

The officer blushed and shook his head. “There were people coming around, staring. I threw the coat over her.”

“And I carefully threw it off, again, in favor of the screen of blue,” Fullbright said.

Jude nodded. He understood. The black trench coat now at the victim’s side had apparently belonged to Officer Smith.

He doubted Officer Smith would ever wear the coat again.

Smith shouldn’t have changed the crime scene in any way, but, under the circumstances, Jude knew why he had felt compelled to do so—even if the officer had known better.

He looked at Fullbright. “Tell me, please, that she wasn’t—gutted—alive?”

Fullbright shook his head, indicating the thick pool of blood at the victim’s throat, and the way it had poured down the front of her dress. “It’s my belief that she was seized, her mouth muffled, though God knows who might have heard her scream down here at night, and that her throat was slit ear to ear immediately. I think, and it’s my theory, but, logical, if you will forgive me, that she was nabbed on the corner, and quickly dragged into the street as she died. There are two slashes, but I believe the first would have caused her to bleed out. The mutilation of the body occurred after death.”

“I’ve seen some bad ones in my day, but this seems exceptionally sick, don’t you think, Detective Crosby?” one of the other uniformed men asked.

“They come in very, very, very sick sometimes,” Jude said quietly.

He looked at the victim again, feeling his own stomach curdling. There was bruising on her face, which might have come from a blow, or from the force the killer used to hold her while slashing her throat. Her legs were bent at the knees slightly, and falling outward in a sexually implicit line. Her stomach appeared to have been sliced deeply several times, but there was now such a mass of congealed blood and ragged flesh, there was little he could tell about any precise injury that had been done to her.

“How long has she been here?” he asked Fullbright.

“I’m estimating time of death to be around eleven,” the medical examiner told him. “Give or take an hour.”

Smith offered, “I was on duty down here, Detective Crosby. I had just come on duty. I came running when I heard a woman screaming.” He pulled out a pad and read from his notes, nodding toward a woman who was on the sidewalk, surrounded by officers. “She’s Miss Dorothy Hannigan, and she runs the bakery on the corner. She came walking from the subway exit—” he pointed down the street “—and started screaming when she saw the body. I called in dispatch for help and they called you.” He swallowed hard. “It was barely light … I thought she was a mannequin, a movie prop, at first.”

Jude Crosby studied the body a moment longer; he wasn’t sure it was necessary. The details seemed to be etched into his mind.

He was sure that Fullbright was right—she had been nabbed while walking on the sidewalk, and dragged out to the road to die. He wondered how long, even with the light traffic at night, it had taken the bakery worker to discover the body. Time of death wasn’t exact, and a number of cars had to have driven by at sometime.

He started to rise.

“The Ripper,” Fullbright said.

“Pardon?” Jude looked over at the man he sincerely respected.

Fullbright looked at him and spoke dryly. “Jack the Ripper. London murderer of the late eighteen hundreds. Come on, Jude, you were sent to study criminal history and crime-fighting methods across the pond. The Ripper. Jack the Ripper. His first victim—well, the first victim agreed upon by most criminal experts and Ripperologists—was Polly Nichols. Found on August 31, 1888. She was found … just as we’ve found this girl.”

Officer Smith made a sound at the back of his throat. “That was well over a hundred years ago, Doctor. I doubt the same man could have killed this girl. And, hell, that was London, not New York.”

“One theory regarding the cessation of the murders after the Mary Kelly grand finale was that the bastard came to the United States,” Fullbright said, looking at Jude.

Jude asked Fullbright, “You think we might have a whacked-out murderer who is also a Ripperologist—one dedicated to the point of re-creating the crimes himself?”

“I hope not,” Fullbright said. “They just got worse,” he added softly. “The murders just became more and more vicious. Until Mary Kelly, and then …”

And then …

Of course, no one knew what would happen next. Jude was far from a Ripperologist, but he’d attended a lecture at a British forum on “Historical Crimes, Modern-day Solutions: Crimes That Would Have Been Solved in the Twenty-first Century.” He knew that theories abounded. One was indeed the idea that the Ripper had come to the United States. But, of course, wherever he had gone—to America, Africa, South America—or hell itself—that had been over a hundred years ago. And Jude didn’t believe that he was a Freddy Krueger-type monster who had returned to roam the streets.

And still, he felt a deep unease sweeping over him. Last week, they’d found the remains of a girl in the Hudson; she was still a Jane Doe, but her throat had been slashed. A pleasure boater had reported the remains; police divers had brought her in. Two weeks before, there had been a victim who had died en route to the hospital without ever being able to speak or point a finger even vaguely in the direction of her attacker; she’d been cut—slashed and stabbed.

But not like this.

Not like this poor girl.

Probably a once pretty girl, who had been alive just last night. Filled with hopes and dreams. She might have been nice; she might have been a scrapper, one of the thousands of hopefuls who came to the big city each year to strike it rich in the Big Apple. The open chart of her life was closed, and it didn’t matter if she’d helped old ladies cross the street or snubbed the geeks who had stared at her when she had walked by, oblivious. No one deserved this kind of end.

He noted the position of her body, and that she had certainly been positioned and displayed; he was sure the killer had worn gloves, and been careful not to let his victim catch any skin cells in her fingernails. Still, there was always hope.

Jude stood up and started going through the initial motions. He ordered that his victim’s hands be bagged in hopes she’d gotten her nails into the bastard that had killed her somehow or somewhere, but he knew he didn’t even have to say the words. Fullbright was on the case.

Photographs were taken of the body. He watched that procedure, making certain that the techs took every angle he might need.

He spoke to the uniformed officers on the street. Buildings were to be canvassed in hopes that someone had been somewhere doing something. The crime scene unit was called in to search the area for any possible minuscule clues.

Fullbright stood, giving additional orders to the officers and his assistant. He looked at Jude while the gurney and body bag were brought over, everyone there moving quickly and efficiently.

“You’re working alone on this?” Fullbright asked him.

“I don’t have a new partner yet. I haven’t had anyone assigned to me since … since Monty took a bullet,” Jude told him.

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s having another surgery on Friday. They’re hoping he’ll walk again,” Jude said.

He tried to keep his voice even, and free from the resentment he couldn’t help but feel. Niles Monty had been doing the right thing—he had been the perfect officer, trying to talk down the drugged-out vet who had just shot and killed his wife. His partner had been doing all the right things, and the soldier, in tears, was ready to hand his weapon over to Monty. Instead, a frightened vigilante neighbor who’d snuck up the fire escape had taken a shot and missed; the frightened vet had fired at Monty, before turning the gun on himself.

Jude had been waiting quietly next to Monty who had been doing a damn good job talking the man down. He felt the bullet whistle by, but too late to stop the lethal action that had all taken place in less than ten seconds. He’d managed to stanch the flow of blood emitting from his partner while praying for the medics to hurry.

The vigilante was walking the streets, his case having been dismissed, portraying himself to the press as a hero. How he was managing that, since his actions had caused the crippling of a veteran cop with twenty years’ experience and a slew of medals, Jude didn’t know.

God, he hated the press.

And the press was going to have a field day with this.

He looked through the crowd of television vans and camera crews setting up near the scene. He noticed Melissa Banks, who tended to be a responsible newspaper journalist in a world where sensationalism had become everything.

He strode straight for her. “Ms. Banks,” he said, acknowledging her. “We have found the body of a woman on Broadway, and look, I suppose that’s evident, but it’s all I can give you at the moment. Headquarters will make a statement later. Pending notification of next of kin, I can’t release her name.”

“They’re saying that her throat was slashed and that she was—ripped to shreds. Do we have our own Jack the Ripper in the city now, Detective Crosby? A Jack the Slasher, as it were?” Melissa asked him. He winced. His killer had a name now.

“We don’t know if this was an isolated incident or not, Ms. Banks. As soon as we have information, we will certainly bring it to you in the best interest of the public. Now, if you’ll excuse me …?”

The officers who had been first on the scene had done their best to keep the details hidden, but it was New York. People had seen. They’d seen beyond the crime scene tape and the wall of bodies, and they had seen the amount of blood around the victim. People were going to talk; speculation would run high, and if his killer was a sensationalist trying to prove a point, he would be savoring the attention he was getting this very minute. He would be somewhere, watching, and gloating over his victory.

“Should women in this vicinity be worried to walk about at night?” Melissa Banks asked him.

He stared at her; she tended to be an intelligent woman. “Women should always be careful walking about at night. However, since the financial district is relatively quiet at night, yes, I would definitely take extra care.”

One of the other reporters had heard his words and moved in. “Did you just say that it’s not safe to walk the streets at night?”

Jude stepped toward her. “What I just said was that any single woman should take care at any time—anywhere. Sadly, there is evil in this world, and there are those who will hurt others. I’m suggesting women not be alone late at night on quiet streets. Period. I’m also suggesting that journalists be responsible and not create panic where panic will avail no one. I’m promoting common sense, and if you’ll really excuse me now, I have work to do.”

Jude walked back to the body, and looked at the corner. He paused, and motioned to a crime scene tech, who hurried over. “Blood, I’m pretty sure,” Jude told him, and the fellow nodded gravely and went to work. On the sidewalk, he found more drops of blood, and motioned as well.

A photographer followed the techs, taking pictures as they took samples of the substances on the ground.

He was certain that Fullbright had been right; his victim had been walking uptown, as if she was trying to find a busier spot on Broadway, perhaps to hail a cab. The assailant had waited for her on the corner behind the building. Jude didn’t like his audience, though the uniforms were doing the best they could to control the scene. He was still downtown on a busy Monday morning, and blocking off an entire street in the vicinity of the stock market, city hall, Trinity, St. Paul’s and the Woolworth Building was not easy. Still, he called one of the young officers over, took a position behind the first building and had the officer walk toward him.

He couldn’t be seen until the last minute. When he stepped out, it was easy to accost the man, spin him around and ascertain that a strong man could have certainly caught a woman so; he would have had to have dragged her as she bled, and thus the trail to the street.

Why leave her in the street?

So she would be found, and found as she was.

He scanned the crowd, wondering if any of the men hovering about in their business suits, construction vests, chef’s outfits, messenger tees or other attire might be a killer. He wouldn’t be bloody anymore; he’d be fitting in with the crowd.

Jude walked down the sidewalk to where the bakery manager still stood, trembling with two officers. She was shaking badly.

Dorothy Hannigan was a woman with a thin face and thinner body; she obviously did not indulge frequently in her bakery’s items. She looked at him with wide brown eyes and an expression that still denoted the horror of her discovery.

“Ms. Hannigan, I’m Detective Jude Crosby. I know you’ve already given the officers your statement, so I really just want to thank you for so quickly summoning help, and for all that you’ve done to assist us in the investigation.” She hadn’t really done anything—she’d screamed instinctively. But he had discovered that the right tone of questioning always produced more than dismissal or rudeness.

She nodded, seeming to get a bit of a grip. “Shall we have some coffee?” he asked her.

She looked nervously at the corner bakery. “I open. I gave the keys to one of the boys … but I guess no one is really going to be hungry around here for a while.”

He smiled. “They’ll be hungry,” he said. Don’t kid yourself, he thought. People will be converging to talk. When the crime scene tape is gone, they’ll be fighting each other to get in the street and photograph the position where the body lay.

“But come in … the police will clear this with your boss.” He nodded to Smith, who hurried on in ahead of him. He ushered Dorothy Hannigan to a booth at the rear of the bakery. Apparently, the boy she had given the keys to had gotten things going; customers were already in the shop, but other than Dorothy Hannigan’s white face, little gave away the fact that Jude was anything other than an ordinary customer. His suit was a good one, not that a homicide detective in New York made the big bucks, but he had a great apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, thanks to his father’s savvy with real estate, and it seemed, lately, that he lived to work. That meant decent suits—and suits that blended in well with the business attire in the moneyed district where he worked.

“So, Dorothy, please, tell me exactly how you came upon the body this morning,” he said quietly. He lifted a hand so that she would wait. Officer Smith had apparently seen to it that the owner, now in, was aware that his manager was helping the police; a waiter brought them two cups of coffee and quickly disappeared. She shook her head. “I saw … the body. It was barely light, you know. And there was no traffic—no, wait, there was one car, but it was in the other lane, and it just drove on by. You can only go the one way, you know.”

He nodded, taking a sip of his coffee.

She shivered suddenly. “I come off that subway every morning. I’m the only person who gets off half the time. That could have been me.”

He set a hand on hers. “She was killed late last night, Miss Hannigan. I don’t think this killer was looking to stalk victims in the morning—someone would have come. You saw how quickly the streets got busy.”

She swallowed audibly.

“Is there someone you can ride in with for the next week or so?” he asked her.

She stared at him. “You’re going to catch this freak in a week or so?” she asked. “Half the cases go unsolved, from what I’ve heard.”

“That’s a gross exaggeration, really. Half the murder cases we go out on are—well, sadly—domestic. And they’re solved,” he said.

“But—how? There are twenty million people on the island of Manhattan on a workday—that’s the statistic I’ve heard.”

“Give or take a million,” he agreed. “Please, that’s why I’m asking you—describe exactly what you saw.”

“I was walking down the street. I saw the car go by—oh, yes, of course. I saw the body in the middle of the street because of the headlights. The car just kept going. I was afraid it might have been an old derelict, passed out in the street. I have a little laser light I carry, and a whistle—I’m not stupid, you know—and so I shone the light and hurried out, hoping that nothing was coming barreling up Broadway. And then I saw her—and then I started screaming.”

“Did you see anyone else—anyone at all? A bum, a shadow … anyone?” he asked.

She shook her head. Then she sat straighter. “Wait—there’s old Captain Tyler.”

“Old Captain Tyler?”

She nodded. “A sad case. Everyone keeps urging him to go to a shelter, but he shows up back on the streets, begging. I mean, of course, God help us, we get a lot of homeless guys down here. But Captain Tyler is kind of sweet. He’s an older fellow, Vietnam vet.”

“Did you see him this morning?” Jude asked.

“I might have.”

“You might have?”

“There was a pile of rags and a sleeping bag at the entrance to the subway. I remember thinking that it might have been poor old Captain Tyler. But I didn’t disturb the pile.”

He nodded. “But nothing else? No one watching you?”

She shook her head. “No, not that I noticed.” She fell silent again. “I’m going to get killed on my way in to work one of these days despite my whistle, aren’t I?”

“Come in with coworkers, Ms. Hannigan, if there’s any way. I’ll talk to your boss. It’s prudent to be extremely careful until we know what we’re up against,” he said. “I’ve got to get my men looking for Captain Tyler. Can you give me a description?”

Tyler, according to Ms. Hannigan, was tall and thin, wore a shabby army-surplus jacket and dirty denim jeans, and had long white hair and a scraggly white-and-gray beard.

“He told me once he suffered from shell shock,” Dorothy Hannigan told him. “Sad, huh? Can’t hold a job, and his benefits don’t really keep a roof over his head.” She gasped. “He couldn’t have done this, could he have?”

“If you see him, call me. I don’t think, however, that shell shock, even after years, would suddenly turn a man into a vicious murderer. But when we find him, we’ll find out what we can. We have some truly wonderful psychiatrists with the department. They’ll be able to deal with him,” Jude assured her. As he spoke, his phone rang.

It was Norton, from headquarters.

“Assistant chief wants to see you, pronto,” Norton told him.

“I’m at the scene,” Jude told him.

“I know. I told him that you’d been dispatched by orders of the lieutenant. But he says that you’ve had time to do what you can do there, and that he wants to see you about a task force.”

“No other murders today, huh?” Jude asked dryly.

“Not like this. Film is already rolling. The news is shooting through all five boroughs, the country and the world like the spew from a geyser. Jack’s back. That’s what they’re saying. Anyway, he wants you in here, now.”

The twenty-first-century media was amazing, Jude thought. He barely knew anything about the crime, but rumor was running rampant, and he understood that One Police Plaza wanted this solved as quickly as humanly possible.

Two other murder investigations were open on his slate; this seemed to be the one that mattered. Naturally. The other two had also been stabbed, but one had died on the way to the hospital and one had been dragged out of the river. This had been public and sensationalist. The victim was a spectacle on Broadway. They were both his cases because he worked specifically for the chief of police; he and Monty had been “detective specialists” for years, which meant they could cover all of New York City as needed.

He wished that they hadn’t been his cases; he’d gotten nowhere with them. The other two women had died quietly, apparently without friends to miss them. They hadn’t been discovered in such a bold and gruesome state, with all the world watching.

Except that he wondered if the deputy chief was thinking along the same lines that were now plaguing him. He wasn’t a Ripperologist, as Fullbright considered himself, but he did know about the case a fair amount since he’d spent the month of August in Britain last year for an experimental exchange police procedural program. The program had included a study of the Ripper files, with one of Britain’s top historians discussing police work now and then. Jude had looked at the archives available. Five victims were accepted as the Ripper’s, but the London case files had started with the deaths of two women who had been killed before what was now deemed by experts to be Ripper murders.

They had the girl from the river, and the girl who had survived her attack long enough to make it to the hospital. Neither had carried ID; neither had been reported missing. All efforts to identify the two had been to no avail. Both had come from New York or to New York … and met sad ends.

And now …

Virginia Rockford.

“I’m still at the scene, working it,” Jude said.

“Crime scene folks are there. And they’re good at what they do. That’s what the assistant chief said. Get in here.”

Jude clicked his phone closed. Great. He’d find himself besieged by the reporters stationed at “the shack” on the second floor of headquarters before he could reach the deputy chief’s office.

He wished he hadn’t been called. He wished any other cop in the city had come on for this case.

But they hadn’t; he had been on duty, and he had been specifically ordered down here.

He thanked Dorothy Hannigan and left her his card, and started out, wishing that he could look for Captain Tyler himself. But he told Smith to get more men on finding the homeless man; and he gave the officer the task of connecting with the producer for the movie being shot down the street and getting him a list of anyone involved in the production. He wanted the beat cops to keep a presence on the street and their eyes open.

There had probably been a number of young women involved in the shoot the day before; the cops could start with them. He stressed the importance of their notes, and Smith looked at him, hesitant. “Crosby, you know I’m a beat cop, right? Not the boss down here.”

“Smith, I think you’ll be fine,” he said.

He headed down Broadway. It was far easier to walk around Lower Manhattan right now than to get his car.

He managed to reach the deputy chief’s office without being waylaid. The offices were huge, and he was just lucky that the elevator he was in didn’t stop on the second floor where he might have been detained by an avid reporter.

He stood in front of the desk, but Nathaniel Green, “D-Chiefy,” as the men called him affectionately behind his back, wasn’t a browbeater. He wasn’t a political appointee, either. He’d earned his place, moving up the ranks.

Green indicated the chair in front of his desk and Jude sat.

“Are you taking me off this new case?” Jude asked him.

Green smiled grimly. “Sorry, no. But I’m giving you a team, a task force. Who do you want?”

Jude was quiet for a minute. He wanted to work with Monty, his partner of the last five years. But Monty was still in the hospital, and the last thing he needed, still clinging to life and praying to walk again, was a sensationalist murder case on his mind.

“Ellis Sayer and his group.”

“You’ve got them. You have priority access to whoever you want in the Technical Assistance Response Unit. And I’m bringing in the feds.”

“The feds? As far as I know, the killer didn’t kidnap the women and cross state lines.” Jude was truly puzzled; he wanted to believe that when it was important, law enforcement agencies did know how to cooperate. But they could also be possessive and territorial. The NYPD usually wanted to solve their own cases. They didn’t mind help from other agencies, but they wanted control.

Green grimaced dryly. “You just said women. I believe we’re thinking along the same lines.”

“That we have a killer trying to emulate one from the late 1880s? That’s a stretch.”

“We have a killer who left a woman slashed to shreds on Broadway. The other women in those two earlier cases—both seemed to have come from nowhere. They were murdered, and they’re still trying to hold on down at the morgue to see if the bodies will be claimed.” He hesitated. “Look, Jude, this is my call. The second that body was found, the media went crazy, and, before the public puts the puzzle pieces together, I want to be on it—a step ahead. Think about the way our Jane Does were ripped up.”

“Obviously, sir, since I arrived at the scene of last night’s crime, I’ve given it some thought. But I’ve also been trying to give the first two victims my full attention. No one seems to miss them—as you said. They appear to be lost creatures. Maybe prostitutes,” Jude said. “And maybe the three murders are all connected—at this point, we just don’t know. If you say we should bring in the feds, fine. I’m not sure I see where federal jurisdiction is warranted yet.”

“What we’re bringing in is a special federal unit. We’re not handing over jurisdiction. They’ll work with you—you work with them,” Green said.

“Sure. Though again, I’m still not seeing a federal connection. And we have FBI offices in the city. Why is a special unit coming in?”

Green looked at him with a certain degree of exasperation. “Jude, this is coming straight from the top brass. The mayor’s office. We can’t have tourists terrified of coming to New York City. We’ve done a good job in the past few years. Giuliani cleaned up a lot of the theater district and visitors can actually catch cabs that take them where they want to go. We don’t need a return to the seventies—or back to the days of Five Points, when a walk near where our own building stands meant tripping over the bodies of the starved, diseased—or murdered. We have to work hard and fast. The media is already having a field day with this one. If a special unit can help, I’m all for it.”

Jude winced inwardly. Special unit? He wasn’t sure what that meant. But it was fine. He was pretty damn sure that they weren’t going to find anything to point them straight to the killer. New York City cops were good; they had learned to deal with just about everything the world could throw them. But they were also faced with a population that was staggering. Finding leads was going to be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

“Well, hell, yes, I’m glad for anything that can help,” Jude said.

“You want not just this murder solved, but the other two as well. I know you, Crosby. You’ve been beating the pavement and harassing Tech Support every day for help on the two victims you pulled in the last couple of weeks.”

“We don’t know that these killings are connected in any way.”

“Stabbings with sharp knives or utensils, same place on the bodies, each attack growing more violent.” Jude looked down, not wanting Green to see that he was irritated about being called off the street at the prime moment to make discoveries.

“We do have good cops. Our forensics people are cops, too, Jude. They won’t let you down. You know you aren’t going to find clues on the street … you know this is a serious situation being created by an extremely organized killer. This is going to take time, manpower and all the behavioral profiling help we can get.”

“I can be a team player, and you know it.”

“That’s why you’re in charge, Jude. Have you seen the news already?” Green asked.

“Oh, yeah.” He looked at Green across the desk. “Yes, the media is giving the bastard just what he wants. Notoriety.”

“That’s true. Now, as to the team … This unit was established by a man we worked with down here years ago. Adam Harrison. Similar crimes. Attacks on historical properties, and a perp who was in love with Edgar Allan Poe and started killing people like the victims in Poe stories. Anyway, it’s a different thing to go after a man like this, and the head of this team is an agent who worked the behavioral sciences aspect of crimes for years. One of the team is already in transit—the others will be here tomorrow. I’m setting them up with an apartment in Blair House. You’ll actually meet …” He paused for a minute, looking at a memo on his desk. “You’ll meet Miss Whitney Tremont at Blair House at two, get her settled in and then head for the autopsy.”

“I’m taking her to autopsy?”

“Yes.”

“I thought Blair House was closed for renovations.” Green nodded. “It is—the preservationists won’t let the place be torn down, and it’s not due for construction crews to begin work for another few weeks. I want the team in the area. I’ll set up a meeting for you tomorrow with the team and the team head, Special Agent Jackson Crow.”

Jude stood. It was decided, and he knew it. So much for his social life. Wait—he didn’t really have a social life. Since he and Jill had parted last spring, he’d enjoyed three one-night stands and a two-week dating whirl. Actually, he’d had three one-night stands—enjoyed two.

“All right. I want Hannah Mills in Tech.”

“She’s yours.”

Jude nodded again. “And I have priority at autopsy—now, and if this does go further?”

“I just called Fullbright. He’ll be your man, and he will be ready to meet with you at three this afternoon—the autopsy is already scheduled.”

Jude nodded again. “I’m going back to the scene until then. I’ll meet your Miss Tremont at two, and we’ll be at autopsy together at three. And don’t give me that resigned look. I’ll call Ellis and get his team moving, too.”

“You’re the best I’ve got, Jude. And I’m giving you priority all the way,” Green told him.

Jude wasn’t sure he was the best that the deputy chief had. Hell, he’d just watched his partner get shot in a situation that should have never ended as it had.

But this was what he did; he’d known all his life that, like his father and grandfather—and great-grandfather before that—he’d wanted to be a cop. He’d been lucky; he’d gone to college and gotten degrees in criminology and psychology, something his father and grandfather hadn’t been able to acquire. But they’d both been good cops. The kind who put the bad guys away.

This was one bad guy they were going after and they all knew it.

“I’ll do my absolute best, sir,” Jude said.

“I know you will.”

He had been dismissed. He headed straight to Tech Support, where he discovered that Green had put through a call to Hannah Mills. Hannah was excited; she’d never actually spoken directly to Green before.

She was a whiz with computers, and if a piece of information was available anywhere, Hannah could find it. At one time in history, she would have been called a spinster. She was a slender woman with bottle-thick wire glasses, brown hair worn in a bun each day and a mind that could work as quickly as a computer.

“I’m making printouts for you, they’ll be popping out as we speak,” she told Jude.

“She was with the movie crew?” Jude asked.

“She was portraying prostitute Mary Green. She was an extra, I believe, but she had a fair amount of screen time. Maybe even a line or two. Anyway, I have a list for you. The producer, the director, the name of the off-duty officer patrolling … a liaison with the movie and television unit. I think it’s all here. And when you want more, you call me, day or night!” She stood up in her little cubicle and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Jude! Thank you for asking for me.”

“Thank you for being a good tech. I do have something for you. I want you to find out all you can about a Captain Tyler, a Vietnam vet.”

“Oh, that Tyler. I thought you meant one of the thousand others on the island of Manhattan.”

“Very funny. This one would have been in and out of local veterans’ hospitals.”

“On it,” she assured him.

“And one more—I want everything you can find about a government group put together by a man named Adam Harrison. Team head is Jackson Crow.”

“The name is familiar. I’ll get right on it.”

Jude returned to lower Broadway, opting to walk back to the scene. On a television screen, through an appliance-shop window, he could see that Deputy Chief Green himself was speaking to the media. He urged citizens to calm down and be vigilant.

He put a in call to Ellis and let him know that he and his group were to join Jude and the feds. Before he had reached the scene of the crime again, he had everyone in motion; they would start with initial interviews of everyone on the movie set. He looked at the list Hannah had given him; he could get one of the feds to make sure that this list and the list that Smith was able to garner matched. Like it or not, he was working with the feds. Might as well make use of them.

With careful steps, he walked from the set to where the body had been found, reimagining the victim’s probable search for a cab, and how the killer had come upon her. All the while he searched for Captain Tyler as well. But though he made new acquaintances with several of the homeless people on the streets, he didn’t find Tyler.

He felt a growing sense of anger.

Someone out there was either amusing himself at the expense of the police, or sincerely thought himself the reincarnation of a legendary killer.

The victim probably hadn’t had time to scream. New York had been teeming with life just blocks away—the population was huge.

Just as it had been in the crowded tenements of Whitechapel and the East End of London.

The killer had probably surprised her; choked her to unconsciousness before slitting her throat.

His phone rang. It was Hannah.

“What’s up? What have you got?”

“Info, but not on the victim—on your team,” Hannah told him.

There was a strange excitement in her voice.

“They’re a special team, all right. They’ve barely been around a year, but they’ve already solved a number of really bizarre cases. Jude—they’re a paranormal team. They don’t just investigate, they appear to talk to ghosts. They’re highly respected for what they’ve done, but they’re also a bit on the outside, even of the FBI itself. Only the head guy, that Jackson Crow, has been a special agent for a long time. But he’s supposed to be one of the best behavioral guys out there. They sound good, really good. But weird, too. You must have heard something about this group. They solved a creepy murder in New Orleans that had to do with all kinds of political corruption.”

“I might have heard something,” he said. He winced. Leave it him to wind up with the “special” team. Which reminded him …

“Thanks, Hannah. I have to meet one of the agents now, and it’s good to be forewarned.”

He hung up. On to meet his spiritualist or medium or whatever. He’d been told he had to work with the team; he would. He’d be polite. He’d spend the days and nights reminding himself that all help was needed at the moment.

The days and nights ahead suddenly seemed extremely long.

Be polite. Collect the “special” agent. And then on to autopsy.