Oliver Stark: 88 Killer

‘And when the doctor’s finished with you, you should go see the psychiatrist and get your head mended. And when the shrink’s finished with you, you should take your gloves and throw them in the Hudson. You stank, man.’

‘That bad?’

‘It was like someone had switched you off. You didn’t land a single punch, Harps. Not a single punch. You let him boss you round the ring. He was taking pot shots at you. Using that pretty face of yours for target practice. It was a massacre.’

Harper stared across, unable to smile. ‘First time I slept that well in a long while, though.’

‘Being unconscious doesn’t count as sleep.’

‘It gets you from night to day just the same. Look, these injuries may look bad, but he wasn’t packing much in those punches. No lasting damage.’

‘It upset me, man, and I don’t like that. Come here, big guy.’ Eddie pulled Harper to his feet, wrapped his arms around him and squeezed him tight.

‘Go easy, Eddie,’ said Harper, pulling away and reaching out for his phone. ‘And where’s that ice pack?’ Harper looked down his messages. Lots of messages, probably heckling his performance, but nothing from Denise Levene.

He felt something like the beginning of grief again. Then it passed as the pain started up. He couldn’t move his neck too well, so he presumed he’d been caught on the point of his jaw from a right hook, snapping his neck fast and twisting the spinal column. Rotational force. Sudden drop in blood pressure, brain slamming to the right as the skull went left — concussion maybe. He must’ve been out for the whole ten count.

Eddie returned and handed Harper an ice pack. He took it and held it to his worst eye.

‘Seriously, Eddie, it’s good of you to drop by. Appreciate it.’ Harper walked to the bathroom.

‘I care, Harps, you know that. But there was one other thing.’

Harper took a mouthful of water from the faucet and swilled it around his mouth, then spat it out. The white porcelain turned a translucent red.

‘What’s that, Eddie?’

‘Captain’s called Blue Team together again.’

Harper appeared at the bathroom door. ‘What is it?’

‘They found a body this morning in East Harlem.’

‘They called the whole team?’ asked Harper. ‘Something I should know?’

Eddie nodded. Harper let the thought swirl around in his head and compete with the pain. Blue Team was the elite unit of homicide detectives from North Manhattan Homicide. The last time the whole of Blue Team was on a case, they were chasing a serial killer. Harper looked at Eddie Kasper, ‘Well, you might as well tell me, I’m going to have to see it soon enough. What’s the MO?’

‘A body all wrapped up in barbed wire,’ said Eddie. ‘And Lafayette wants you to lead this one. It’s nasty. Welcome back to our world.’

East 112th Street, Manhattan

March 7, 9.22 a.m.

East 112th Street ran all the way to Second Avenue and stopped adjacent to Jefferson Park. On Saturday morning, the pace was slow. The big blocks of public housing stood quietly in the morning sun. On one side of the street a gang of youths sat on a stoop; five big guys all stretching out, baseball caps backward, watching. The few stores were open, but there wasn’t much going on. A couple of eateries, a grocery store with everything on sale, a mini-mart and a store selling nothing but wheel rims. But business was slow for the moment.

At the entrance to Jenson House XI across the street, a small dark alley ran behind the huge municipal trash loaders and led through to House VI. There was nothing remarkable about the alley, except for the single patrol car parked neatly in a 90-minute wait slot and a single uniformed NYPD officer standing beside a piece of yellow police tape.

Within seconds, the quiet street erupted with the sound of traffic. Left and right, trucks and cars started to stream towards the alley, except they weren’t police vehicles. They were all marked with the bright logos of television networks.

About a half-mile away a red Pontiac belonging to Eddie Kasper swerved through the corners towards the crime scene. Harper kept his head low and his eyes covered with shades. His head hadn’t let up the dance beat of pain. ‘Promise me you won’t ever drive an ambulance,’ he said.

‘I’d get to the hospital quick enough, wouldn’t I?’

‘Sure, but the question is — would you get there with anyone alive?’

Eddie turned to look at Harper and grinned. ‘You made a joke, Harps! That’s real progress. You keep up like this and you’ll be human one day.’

He reached out and slapped Harper on the arm. Harper winced. The painkillers were only keeping out half of the pain coming from various parts of his body. Eddie swung into 112th Street. They came upon Jenson House XI almost immediately and Eddie slammed on his brakes.

Harper pushed up his shades and stared out. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ The street was log-jammed with cars and trucks. There were rows of TV trucks, seven or eight TV crews with reporters, cameramen, sound crews and even a few executives, all milling between the street and Jenson House. The presence of the networks had attracted a crowd of thirty to forty people standing round the fringes and trying to see what all the fuss was about. There were only a few patrol cars at the scene and the uniformed cops were having trouble keeping order.

Eddie pulled up to the curb and switched off the engine. The two Homicide cops glanced at each other.

Harper pushed his shades down again. ‘What’s going down, Eddie? I thought this was a fresh kill. Why are they all here?’

‘I don’t know, Harps. And how did they hear about it so quick?’

‘Question is, why the hell are they so interested? There’s been no ID, right?’

‘Right.’

Harper pushed his body out of Eddie’s old Pontiac and on to the sidewalk, a grimace crossing his face. A cold breeze ran across the street even though the sunlight was bright. The effect, through his bruised eyes, was surreal. It was like a circus had come to see a homicide in action.

Eddie moved around and said to Harper, ‘Keep close, champ, or someone’s going to mistake you for the victim.’

There was a battle going on up ahead, with the two police officers trying to push back the TV cameras and reporters. Harper lowered his head, held up his shield and muscled his way through, ignoring the pain.

A smiling brunette from CNN spotted the shield and turned her TV crew through 180 degrees. ‘We’ve got another detective coming through, let’s try for a comment.’ As she said it, a minor stampede headed Harper’s way.

She moved across, ahead of the pack. ‘Detective, can we get a statement? Can you confirm the identity of the body?’

Harper looked up. ‘I just got here. I haven’t even seen the body.’

The reporter saw Harper’s beat-up face and shrank away. ‘We all got an email, Detective, about a body found early this morning in a Housing Project in East Harlem. They are saying that it’s Judge Capske’s son, David. Email said it was a political statement for America. What have you got to say about that?’

Harper shook his head. ‘I don’t know nothing about this as yet. No comment.’ He pushed forward, more confused, wondering why the networks had been sent this information. The press rounded on him, coming from all sides at once, throwing lights and microphones in his way. ‘I’ll give you a statement, ladies and gentlemen, if you let me take a goddamn look at my crime scene.’

Harper and Kasper made their way through to the rising volume of eager and excited questions.

Inside the makeshift compound, there were four police cruisers and a white truck belonging to the Crime Scene Unit. All the red and blue lights twirled without sound, hardly visible in the lights of the TV crews. Over to the right, a dark rectangle of shadow marked the entrance to the alleyway. Canary-yellow police tape crossed the crime scene and flapped in the breeze. They’d managed to get a rudimentary screen up, but Harper guessed that the cameras would’ve caught the image of the corpse already.