Blood On The Sun

13

"WE'RE ALMOST BECOMING FAMILY," said Bloom, opening the door to his shop with a look of resignation. "You have a warrant, I assume?"

Stella, Flack and a backup uniformed officer, who looked as if he could be a National Football League lineman, stood in the doorway.

"We're not here to search," said Flack.

Bloom said nothing and waited for them to make their move. Bloom was wearing a pair of neatly pressed navy trousers and a white shirt, also neatly pressed. The clothes did nothing to hide his paunch. He continued to look at them over the rimless lenses of his glasses. Stella thought he looked like anyone's second-favorite uncle.

There was a smell of fresh coffee mingling with the pleasant smell of wood.

"We'd like to talk," said Flack. "Will you please come with us?"

"Can we talk here?" asked Bloom. "I've got coffee brewing."

"We'd like you to come with us," Flack said.

The big uniformed cop shifted his weight, ready to move.

"My attorney has said I should cooperate with you no more," said Bloom. "You'll have to arrest me."

"Sure," said Stella. "You're under arrest for the murders of Asher Glick and Joel Besser."

Bloom shrugged and started forward toward the door.

"Stop," said Stella.

Bloom stopped. Flack's gun was out now. He motioned for the big cop to move forward and pat down Bloom as Flack began to issue the Miranda warning. The cop, whose name was Rossi, was taller than Bloom, easily six foot four. He had been a college wrestler at Rutgers and had tried out for the Steelers, who decided Rossi was just too slow.

"Clean," said Rossi, standing up and taking out his cuffs.

Slump-shouldered Bloom put his hands behind his back. He heard the metal jangle of the handcuffs and made his move. He turned and leveled a sudden sharp chop to Rossi's throat. The big cop went down on his knees, gasping for air, still grasping the handcuffs in his right hand.

Flack stood ready to shoot if the suspect attacked him. The problem was that Bloom had no weapon and Bloom, when he wanted to, could look like a harmless middle-aged man with a paunch and poor eyesight. Shooting unarmed suspects or perpetrators was forbidden except under unusual circumstances. This certainly appeared to be an unusual circumstance.

Flack's hesitation of less than a second would have meant nothing with most people he arrested. Bloom moved with surprising speed, throwing his full weight into Flack, who staggered backward and dropped his gun.

The only one between Bloom and escape was Stella, who stood in the doorway with no expression. She was unarmed.

Bloom had packed a single medium-sized duffle bag, which lay on his bed upstairs. He had taken little time to pack. The delay had been caused by the bureaucracy of the bank. He had called to tell them that he wished to withdraw all of his money, that he would be there within an hour. When he arrived at the bank, the clerk directed him to an assistant bank manager who looked more like a well-dressed young movie star. The assistant manager had assured Bloom that they were almost finished putting together the cash. Over an hour later, Bloom had left the bank with a thickly packed zippered tote bag. The bag was in the trunk of an Al-tima he had stolen no more than twenty minutes before Stella, Flack and Rossi had appeared at his door. The car was parked in a three-story lot within sight of Bloom's shop.

Now he had to improvise. He had been taught to improvise and over the years had added many improvements on what he had been taught decades ago.

Bloom moved quickly toward Stella. Behind him Rossi's gasps for air sounded like the wheezing of a person in the final throes of emphysema. Flack got to his knees, looked around for his gun and saw it in the left hand of Arvin Bloom.

Kills with his left, writes and eats with his right, thought Stella.

Flack started to stand on shaking legs. Bloom heard the detective over the gasps of the officer on the floor. Bloom turned the gun toward Flack, who started to reach for the backup gun taped to his ankle. Bloom knew just what Flack was doing.

Before the detective could reach his gun, Bloom would shoot him and the woman in the doorway. It would make noise. The shots would probably be called in to 911. He would have to move slowly when he got outside. He couldn't run.

Pain. A terrible pain that sent him into spasms and made him drop to the floor and drop Flack's gun. Bloom, eyes twitching rapidly, looked at Stella and the small black stun gun in her hand. How many volts had she used? He began to writhe on the floor. Flack picked up his gun from the floor where Bloom had dropped it, holstered the gun and cuffed Bloom.

Both Stella and Flack moved to Rossi, whose face was white and bloated. Rossi's mouth was open wide, trying to suck in air. His pleading eyes moved from Flack to Stella.

Flack got on his phone and called for an ambulance, saying, "Officer down."

When he clapped the phone shut, Stella, who was holding Rossi's hand, said, "He needs a tracheotomy, now. Lay him on his back."

Bloom was still writhing, but the spasms had subsided.

Stella had not brought her kit. There had been no thought of crime scene work, only the arrest of a murderer. A mistake. It had been a week of mistakes. Aiden had made a mistake. So had Danny. Now she had made one, too.

The heat, she thought.

"We need a knife or a razor blade," she said. "Something really sharp."

Flack reached into his pocket quickly and glanced at Rossi, whose face was almost a watermelon red. Flack's hand came out with a multi-bladed Swiss Army knife. He opened one of the blades and handed the knife to Stella. She knew how to test the sharpness of a blade without cutting herself. She swiftly ran a finger up the blade toward the edge and past it. Then she looked at the edge of the blade and nodded her head toward Flack.

"We need a straw, a plastic tube, something…" she said, but she could see in Flack's eyes that he had seen this before. He could probably even do the tracheotomy, but it was her job.

She looked at Rossi. She was thinking that the young cop's life could now be measured in seconds. Bloom was sitting on the floor, dazed.

"Thin cardboard," she said. "Roll it in a tight tube."

Flack understood. He remembered a tissue box on the counter from the last time he was there. Flack moved behind the counter, found the box and took out the tissues. Then he tore off one side of the box and rolled the cardboard.

"Stella," he called, holding up the tube.

"It'll do," she said.

He gave the rolled-up tube to Stella, who knelt next to Rossi. Rossi's eyes were closing.

"Need me?" Flack asked.

"I'll call if I do," she said.

"Ever done this before?"

"No," she said, lowering the knife toward Rossi's throat.

"Good luck," said Flack, getting up and moving toward Bloom.

A little luck would be great, but Stella believed less in luck than skill. She knew how to do this. She had watched paramedics do it three times. When they were done, she had asked them questions and then later asked Sheldon Hawkes to tell her how it was done.

Stella found the indentation between Rossi's Adam's apple and the cricoid cartilage. Then she made a half-inch horizontal incision about half an inch deep. Rossi didn't react. He didn't seem to be breathing.

Next Stella stuck a finger into the incision. The whole procedure was not only unsterile, but probably profoundly dirty. Couldn't be helped. Blood circled her inserted finger and flowed out of the incision site. Then Stella felt her finger enter the windpipe. With her free hand, she picked up the makeshift cardboard tube and tightened it. It should fit. If not, she would have to make a larger hole if she had enough time.

She carefully removed her finger from the incision and slowly inserted the cardboard tube into the windpipe. She leaned over and blew into the tube to clear it of blood that might have rushed in. Then she waited five seconds and blew into the tube again. She was unaware of where she was and even who she was. She concentrated only on the big police officer. She blew into the tube every five seconds.

"How's it going?" asked Flack.

She didn't answer. She was counting seconds.

Then she heard the warning sound of the paramedic van in the distance. She turned her head toward the street for an instant and then back at the fallen police officer, whose chest was now rising. Less than thirty seconds later, Rossi's eyes opened. He was breathing on his own with pain in his chest and the invasive tube of cardboard in his throat. Rossi mouthed, "Thank you." Stella nodded.

Two paramedics rushed in, kits in hand.

"Where does it hurt?" one of them asked. "Were you shot?"

Stella looked down at her blouse, which was covered with blood, as were both of her hands and her face.

"Not me," she said. "Take care of him. This is his blood."

Both paramedics nodded and moved to Rossi, who, with pain, said, "I can walk."

"Not a good idea," one paramedic said.

"I'm walking," he whispered softly so Flack and Bloom couldn't hear him. "I'm not letting that son of a bitch see me carried out."

They helped him to his feet. He seemed to be breathing normally.

"Nice tracheotomy," said one of the two paramedics. He looked at Stella and added, "You do it?"

Stella nodded.

"You guys are CSI, right? We've seen you before?"

"We're CSI," Stella confirmed.

"All of you?"

"Not the one in cuffs," she said. "He's a murderer."

Rossi gently shook off the hands of the paramedics and managed to walk normally to the door, glancing once at Bloom, who didn't look back at him. The policeman he had hit was unimportant, not worth looking at. It didn't matter that he had lived instead of dying. There had been a few before him, in at least six countries. They were living dots that he could easily erase, witnesses, people who had gotten in the way. They hadn't mattered, since the killing that had been assigned to him had been carried out. Now, for the man who called himself Bloom, the primary thing was staying alive.

He would make a call and they would save him. There was no doubt in his mind. He was too valuable. He knew too much and had hidden documents where even they couldn't find them. They knew that if anything happened to him, he would make a call and someone would bring the documents to The New York Times. He would insist that a federal government agency be notified that he had been arrested for murder.

Flack, trying to tame a limp, pushed the big man toward the door. He stopped to pick up Bloom's glasses and was about to put them on the prisoner when he noticed something. He held the glasses up to the light and then handed them to Stella.

She too held them to the light and said, "Plain glass."

Bloom looked over his shoulder at them and smiled.

"Where's your wife?" asked Stella.

Bloom continued to smile.

"Bring him in," she said. "I'll look around here and meet you in about an hour."

She was wrong. It took her two hours in the shop, and that was after she called Aiden, told her what she had found and asked her to bring her kit.

They were in an office in the Manhattan building of family court at Lafayette and Franklin.

Jacob and Tabler sat across from a judge who didn't look much like a judge. She was black, very pretty, with soft-looking ebony hair brushed down to her neck. She couldn't have been more than thirty.

Judge Sandra Whitherspoon had read the reports. Because Jacob was between the ages of seven and twelve, there would be no record of this preliminary hearing or of the case if it went beyond her jurisdiction. In addition, Jacob could not be tried for murder.

She looked up at Tabler and then at Jacob.

"How old were your parents when they were married?" she asked.

The question confused Jacob. Tabler considered saying something but didn't.

"My father was forty-one," he said. "My mother was eighteen."

Judge Whitherspoon nodded as if this were important information.

"Where were they married?" she asked.

"Houston, I think," said Jacob.

"We found your mother's parents in San Antonio," she said. "They want you to live with them. They're coming to get you. I'll be sure they're good people before I release you to them. You understand all this?"

Jacob nodded.

"When you get to San Antonio where they live, they're going to arrange for you to see a psychologist who specializes in children who need help."

Jacob turned to Tabler and said, "What about Kyle?"

"We'll do what we can for him," the old lawyer said gently.

"It's not fair," Jacob said, voice raised, tears in his eyes.

"Why isn't it fair?" asked the judge.

"Because the whole thing was my idea," Jacob said. "He wasn't coming to the house because he was seeing Becky. He came because I called him and asked him to come. When he was on the way I came up with the plan, leaving the evidence in the woods, his running and leaving clues to where I was hiding."

"You talked Mr. Shelton into taking responsibility for a murder he didn't commit?" she said. "And this is the truth?"

Tabler gave up and put his head in his hands.

"The truth," said Jacob.

She didn't believe him. Sandra Whitherspoon and her husband had a twelve-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl. Sandra Whitherspoon spent her days with children who lied and told the truth and mixed the two, sometimes skillfully. She could detect a child's lie, but she couldn't always prove it.

Truth or lie, she couldn't let the sudden confession pass.

Even if the boy testified in a trial, it wouldn't change the fact that Shelton had broken the law. The information did, however, cause her to rethink the idea of a quick placement of Jacob with his grandparents or anyone else.

She decided to order an immediate psychiatric evaluation.

He sat, hands still cuffed behind him, looking across the table at Aiden and Stella. The look was calm. He could have been a man waiting for the next Amtrak train to anywhere.

Stella nodded at Aiden, who read from a list.

"Bloodwood from your cabinet found on Asher Glick matched. You would have had to touch him."

"We hugged," the man said. "We were old friends."

"The same bloodwood dust was found in the tote bag in the church," Aiden continued.

"There are hundreds of shops in Manhattan that have bloodwood pieces and work in bloodwood flooring and paneling," he said.

This was all a game. He'd play with them until someone appeared to take him out of here. He wouldn't have to call. They would know by now.

"A newsstand owner has drawn a sketch of a man who went through his shop next to the Jewish Light of Christ, threatened the shop owner with death for him and his family if he told about your going through and out the back."

She handed him a copy of the sketch. He looked at it for a few seconds and handed it back without expression. Stella's phone vibrated. She reached into her pocket and flipped it open. It was Mac, who said he was on the way.

"I'd fill you in and let you handle it, but it would take time, and there is some information I can't give you, some information you don't want," he said.

"No problem," she said, looking at the man, whose eyes were on the sketch.

"I'm on the way," Mac said.

Stella and Mac understood each other, coworkers, friends. She flipped the phone closed.

"Looks a little like me," he said. "If, and I only say 'if,' I was in that shop, I didn't threaten the shop owner and I didn't go out of his back door and into the synagogue to kill that man."

"You ever been to Korea?" asked Stella.

He had been expecting this one too. He was well ahead of them.

"No," he said.

"And you don't speak Korean?" asked Stella.

"No," he said.

"The hospital footprints of Arvin Bloom just after he was born don't match yours."

"I don't think a bare footprint match has ever been presented to an American court," he said. "Feet change. Fingerprints don't."

"Don't you want to deny the suggestion that you're not Arvin Bloom?"

"I deny it," he said.

"The fingerprints on Arvin Bloom's identification do match yours," Aiden said. "What did you do for more than forty years?"

"Beachcomber," he said.

Stella and Aiden said nothing.

"In Tahiti," he went on.

"We found her," said Stella.

Bloom understood, but he showed nothing.

"Your wife," said Stella. "Shot in the head twice and stuffed in a zipped-up black body bag under the floor of your bedroom. You're a good woodworker."

"I'd like to make a phone call now," he said calmly.

Stella put her cell phone on the table in front of him, got up and took off the handcuffs. He rubbed his wrists and reached for the phone. Yes, they would later check the phone log and find the number he had called, but it would make no difference. He could have insisted on using a public phone, but that too would be traced. He could have insisted on privacy, but he didn't need it.

Stella remained behind him as he punched in the number. The phone rang and a recorded voice message said, "I'm sorry but the number you have dialed is no longer in service. If you think you have dialed incorrectly, please hang up and try again."

He closed the phone and placed it on the table.

This was wrong. Why had they cut him off? They knew he could make another call and copies of the documents would resound on the front page of the Times, lead off the evening news, cost a lot of people their government jobs.

"Hands," said Stella behind him.

This wasn't a perfect time, but he might not get another. And what did he have to lose? Neither woman was armed. Outside the door, to the left, down a short corridor, was an emergency exit door.

He struck out at the woman behind him, the woman who had shot him with a Taser. At the same time he pushed the table over on the other one.

He made the short dash to the door. Once on the street, he would know how to hide. He might have to do more killing, but he knew how to hide and how to survive.

He opened the door and Mac Taylor punched him hard. The blow broke his nose. The man who had been calling himself Arvin Bloom stepped back, didn't raise a hand to his nose. He charged Mac, who faked a punch to the head.

The man instinctively reached up to protect his broken nose. Mac's punch was to the man's solar plexus. The man went down hard, dazed, to a sitting position on the floor.

"You both okay?" Mac asked.

Stella was standing a few feet away, her Taser in hand.

"Sore shoulder," she said.

Aiden was picking up the table.

"I'm fine," she said.

Stella snapped the cuffs on behind the back of the man, whose nose was now gushing blood. He stood up.

"He doesn't give up," she said, leading the man back to the chair behind the table.

Aiden turned, reached into her kit and came up with large gauze pads. When the man was seated, she pressed the pads against his bloody nose.

"He can't afford to. His name is Peter Moser," said Mac, who leaned over, his face inches away from the man, and said, "I have another name you might be interested in: Harry Eberhardt."

They knew who he was and he knew who had told them. They had found Eberhardt, which meant that his ace in the hole, the documents, had been found and probably destroyed. No more leverage.

"How did you find him?" Moser said.

"You said that you'd sold the bloodwood cabinet yesterday," said Mac. "You didn't know who you sold it to. It was a heavy piece."

"It took at least two people to move it," said Aiden.

Moser looked up. He would find a way to get out of this. He had been in worse situations.

"We checked for fingerprints on the pieces near where the bloodwood cabinet had been. Lots of prints. One set in particular, fingers and palm, as if someone had put his hand against the wall to get some leverage to move the cabinet away from the wall. The print wasn't good enough to run through the system. The fingers and palm that made it were worn by acid and chemicals."

Moser was breathing heavily through his mouth.

"The print had traces of chemicals we don't usually find on fingerprints," Mac went on. "Monomethyl-p-aminophenol sulfate, acid, sodium hydroxide, potassium bromide. Know who uses those chemicals?"

Moser knew but said nothing.

"Photographers," Mac said. "They use it for developing and printing. Photographs are almost all digital now. Drugstores, photo supply stores do develop film, but the processing is all done by computerized machines. The only ones who still process their own film are professional photographers, the ones who do portraits, landscapes, homes, some weddings, fashion, upscale catalogues."

Moser didn't answer. Aiden, now wearing latex gloves, took the blood-soaked pad from Moser's nose, dropping it into a bag. The bleeding had slowed. She pressed a fresh pad on his nose. When it began to slip, she taped it to his face.

"We could have checked them all out," Mac went on, "but we didn't have to. We looked for those close enough to your shop so two men could carry that cabinet."

"Block and a half down from his shop," said Stella, remembering.

"Harry Eberhardt, photographer," said Mac. "We found the bloodwood cabinet in the room behind Eberhardt's studio. There's also a darkroom. Detective Flack told him you were facing three charges of murder and that one of the victims was the woman you had shot a few hours ago. Eberhardt gave me the sealed envelope. A representative of the federal government has it now."

Moser looked straight ahead.

Mac turned to Stella to take over.

"We were wrong," she said. "You didn't kill Asher Glick because you owed him money. You killed him because he had come into your shop. You gave him your name, told him you were Bloom, told him where you were supposedly from. He probably asked more questions about your youth. You would have done your homework, given all the right answers, but Glick knew you weren't Bloom. Your bad luck was running into someone who knew the real Arvin Bloom when he was a boy, knew you weren't him, knew he was dead."

"You probably made up a story," said Mac. "A good one, but not good enough. He had told you about the morning minyan. You promised to be there and bring evidence that you were telling the truth about your story."

"You got him alone," said Stella. "Improvised, killed him and tried to make it look like a ritual killing. And then when we came to you as a suspect you were afraid we'd dig and find out you were a fraud. So you decided to kill again, another Jew, in the same ritual way, a victim with whom you had no connection. The Hebrew words in chalk had no meaning. You probably got them off the Internet. Then you found…"

"… a good person to take the fall," said Mac. "Joshua."

None of the three investigators said a word for a full minute. Stella sat unblinking, looking at Moser. Aiden's arms were crossed as she eyed Moser with disgust. Mac laid his palms flat on the table.

There was a knock at the door and Jane Parsons entered. She was wearing her white lab coat and carrying a single sheet of paper, which she handed to Mac, who read it and then handed it to Stella, who, in turn, handed it to Aiden. Jane looked at the bleeding man, but seemed to have no reaction.

Moser showed no interest in what was going on. If he went to trial he would be convicted. The evidence was overwhelming. He would go to prison. That was a certainty. He might even get the death penalty. If he made a deal and confessed to avoid the death penalty, he doubted if they would let him survive more than a few weeks or months in prison, but he had a good deal to make. Even without the evidence Eberhardt had turned over to the police, Moser knew enough- names, dates, events- to cause havoc. They couldn't let that happen, couldn't let him go public. He would either have to escape within the next few days or be killed.

Mac looked at Jane. She looked tired. They were all tired and hot and sweaty.

"Thanks," he said.

Jane smiled. She had been doing that more often recently. Then she left the room.

"Good news," Stella said, looking at Moser, who couldn't keep from looking up.

They've decided to come through for me, Moser thought. He would be back on the street before the day was over and then he would have to hide before someone put two bullets in his head.

"We're removing the charge of murdering your wife from the list of charges," Stella said.

Moser's mouth tightened slightly under the bloody pad.

"Want to know why?" asked Mac.

Silence.

"Because," said Aiden, "the woman you killed in your bedroom wasn't your wife. She was your sister."

Moser probably wouldn't even be safe in an isolated, guarded, secured location, the kind where they put mob hit men who talk to save their lives, have someone ghostwrite their largely invented memoirs, watch television and stay alive. It was worth a try.

"I want to make a deal," Moser said.

"We don't have the authority to make deals," said Mac.

"Find me someone who does," said Moser.

"What do you have to deal with?" asked Aiden.

Moser looked at them individually with a tilt of his head and a ghastly smile and said, "Thirty-seven assassinations for a government agency, assassinations in nine countries, most of them in Korea, North and South."

"One question," said Aiden. "Why cabinetmaking?"

"It's a perfect meditation," said Moser. "Creating objects of utility and beauty with your hands touches the soul and confirms the wonder of the universe."

"We ran your sister's fingerprints and came up with a match for a Lily Drew from Cleveland," said Stella. "The Cleveland police found your aunt and uncle. We're going to have them identify you. You used your sister as a front and when you decided to run, you killed her. Anything you want to say, Evan Drew?"

Mac and Danny had peeled away the identities of the man, enough to find the core.

Evan Drew, a.k.a. Peter Moser, a.k.a. Arvin Bloom sat silently staring at the pale wall, where he made out a face in the plaster, the face of an almost skeletal man, mouth open, crying out. He had seen such things all over the world, mostly in bathroom floors. He did not ask but he was sure others did not see the haunting images.

"I need a doctor," said Drew.

The interrogation was over. Less than an hour later word came that the district attorney's office was not interested in making a deal with Evan Drew.

Sitting in a holding cell, Drew began to rethink his options. There were few. There may not have been any.