Anatomy of Fear

53

Jesus, is it Twenty-third Street or Twenty-third Avenue?”

“I don’t know. I just wrote what the receptionist told me, 202 Twenty-third. How was I to know the numbered streets crossed the same numbered avenues? Whoever devised this system was a fucking sadist!”

“Well, we’ve been up and down Twenty-third Street and there’s no number 202,” said Terri. “So it must be Avenue.”

I found my way onto Twenty-third Avenue and Terri called out the numbers until we reached number 202, a small one-family brick house on a tiny plot of land. It didn’t look like much. But what was I expecting, flames whipping through the roof like the drawing I’d made of my abuela’s vision?

“Keep going,” she said.

I cruised past, then doubled back and cruised by it again, trying to determine if anyone was home. There was no car in the driveway, but that didn’t really tell us anything. I parked across the street and rolled down my window.

“Can you see in?” she asked.

“What, you mean through the walls, like Superman?”

“I meant into any of the windows, but if you can see through the walls, go for it.”

The windows were obscured by blinds or drapes.

“This is so fucked,” said Terri. “You realize that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I do. But if Wright is the Sketch Artist, he’s gone to a lot of trouble to set me up.” The irony did not escape me: Would the real Sketch Artist please stand up? “He could disappear now and leave me to pay the price. I just need to get some proof…to clear my good name.” I added that last part to get a smile out of Terri, her face a map of worry. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

“Forget it,” she said. “I was the one who dragged you into the case.”

A good point and I appreciated her saying so.

I glanced down at my drawing, noticed what I’d scribbled in a corner, and pointed it out. “I totally forgot-Wright’s telephone number, the receptionist gave it to me.”

Terri punched it into her cell.

“Anything?”

“It hasn’t even rung yet. Relax.” She chewed her lip, cell pressed to her ear. “It’s ringing. One…two…three times.”

“What are you going to say?”

Terri clamped her hand over the mouthpiece. “I don’t know. Five…six…seven. No one is picking up. Eight…nine…ten rings. No machine picking up either.” She shut the cell.

“If he’s in there, would he answer?”

“Not if he’s spotted us sitting here staking out his house.”

We sat for another fifteen minutes, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, Terri said, “Come on.”

She reached for the door handle, but I stopped her.

“What? You drag me out here and now you’re going to wuss out on me?”

“No. Give me your hand.”

“We don’t have time for a Hallmark moment, Rodriguez.”

“Just give me your hand.”

I opened the jar of colored water and let some trickle onto her hands, then mine. It didn’t feel foolish. It felt right, like part of a ritual, as if I were preparing us for battle.

“Oh, Jesus. Is this like The Exorcist or what?”

“It can’t hurt,” I said.

She gave me a look as she dried her hands on my sleeve, then checked the service revolver she had holstered beneath her jacket. “You ready?”

“Yes,” I said. I’d been getting ready since I started the Sketch Artist’s portrait, from the minute I drew the first pencil stroke on paper, but hadn’t known it until that moment.

I got out of the car, heart beating fast, hand gripping the revolver in my pocket. I stared at the house as we got closer, trying to feel if there was a presence inside, but obviously my gift for feeling things did not include houses.

Terri pressed the bell and we heard it chime somewhere inside. “What are you going to say?”

Terri thought a moment. “That I’m from NYPD Personnel and need to discuss a few things about his dismissal, how’s that?”

“If Wright is the unsub he probably knows who you are.”

“Right. Okay. I’ll give him a version of the truth. That I’m investigating a case, that’s all. Maybe he’ll play along, try and act normal.”

“Or try to make a break for it, or-”

“Well, it’s too late to turn around and change our minds. You wanted to do this, Rodriguez, remember?” She tried the bell again. There was no answer.

“I’ll check the back,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “But wait for me.”

Terri watched Rodriguez round the corner of the house and disappear. She had to stop herself from calling out “Be careful.” Then she sidled over to a window and peered through a gap in the drapes. She could make out a couch and a big flat-screen TV. There were no lights on. Maybe he wasn’t home.

Or maybe he was waiting for them.

She knew he was patient, good at planning, taking his time. He could be watching her right now.

The backyard was small, a garage taking up half the space. It offered some privacy from the homes behind it. I took the concrete stairs that led up to the back door. I tried to see in, but couldn’t. I went back down the stairs and glanced up at the house. There was a window open about an inch, but it was eight feet off the ground. I dragged a metal trash can over. It just barely supported my weight, the top starting to cave in. I got a grip on the ledge, but the window wouldn’t budge. I didn’t stop to think, just pulled my shirt down over my hand and smashed the glass. It splintered, shards bouncing off my feet. I shoved the window open, hoisted myself up and in. The trash can fell over with a bang. If anyone was home I was making quite an entrance.

I landed heavy on my feet, rocked a few times to get my balance. I was in the kitchen. If Wright was home, he’d be coming for me. I felt an eerie presence, nothing I could explain, but I was chilled. I stood perfectly still; the only sound my breathing, then something else, a dripping sound.

I looked down and saw blood on the floor. My blood. I’d cut my hand pretty badly, though I hadn’t felt it. Great, I thought, leave more DNA. But it no longer mattered.

I peered through an archway into the living room. It seemed quiet. Then a shadow slid across my vision. I sucked in a breath and raised my gun.

It was a moment before I realized it was Terri, outside the window, looking in.

I took a step closer to the archway. Was he hiding behind it? I held my breath and made my move, spun left, then right, gun straight out in front of me. There was no one there. But I still felt that eerie presence. My heart and lungs were meeting somewhere in my throat.

I made it across the living room and opened the two locks as quietly as possible.

Terri stepped into the room glaring, leaned into me, and whispered, “I swear to God, Rodriguez, if we get out of here alive I’m going to kill you.”

She sounded like she meant it, but it was too late now, we were in and there was no turning back.

We inched our way around the living room, guns drawn, until we were certain it was clear, then headed up the staircase in slow motion, down a hallway, taking turns pivoting into rooms-master bedroom, a child’s room, bath, all empty. The kid’s room was way too neat, no toys on the floor, shelves that should have held books and games, bare.

“Looks deserted,” Terri whispered, just barely audible.

“Maybe.” I was trying to analyze why I was so sure we’d come to the right place. There was nothing to confirm it, but I could feel him in the air.

Where would I do my work in a house like this?

I pointed to the floor and Terri got it. We retraced our steps down the stairs, through the living and dining areas, looking for a basement door.

We found it just off the kitchen.

I nodded silently at Terri and she nodded back. I tried the door. It opened into a staircase that disappeared into darkness.

There was a light switch on the wall, but I didn’t dare turn it on.

The presence was stronger here. Could he be down there, waiting for us?

I locked eyes with Terri, steadied my gun, took the first step. Then another. It felt like a long descent.

At the bottom there was the slight smell of mold and the chill of dampness, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

The basement was unfinished, concrete-slab floor, half the room taken up by an oil burner and hot water heater. And another door.

I leaned my ear against it and listened, looked back at Terri, her eyes wide in the dark, and wondered if she was thinking what I was: that if Tim Wright was anything like Carl Karff, he could have an arsenal behind this door and be ready to take us out.

I moved in front of her and tried the doorknob. It wouldn’t budge. I ran my hand down the wood. It felt crude and cheap, the kind of prefab door you buy in a lumberyard and put up yourself. I dropped back and leveled a solid kick. The door cracked and splintered off its hinges, and I kept moving, propelled by the force of my own kick, stumbling forward into darkness, blind. And I felt it, that algo malo my abuela had spoken of.

There is a man in that room with you, Nato.

I managed to stay on my feet and when nothing happened I knew that I was okay, that he wasn’t here, though somehow I knew I had found him.

Terri reached out to me, her shadowy form taking on detail. I fumbled along a wall and found the light switch.

I saw the presence I’d been feeling: this shrine to hate.

I recognized the swastikas, Nazi lightning bolts, insignia of the World Church of the Creator; the ones I didn’t know were just more proof that a whole lot of people didn’t like me. It was ugly stuff, chilling, but there was no time to process it.

The work table was neat: pencils lined up, drawings and folders in stacks. Pinned above it, newspaper articles about the Sketch Artist. It was true, he was proud of his work.

I’d found my proof and didn’t have to say it.

“Is there a clue here to what he’s planning next?” asked Terri.

I looked down at the stacks of drawings. I didn’t know. There were too many.

Terri plucked gloves out of her pocket and we put them on.

“We have to take them back to the station.”

“Wait. Give me a minute.” I needed to think like him. “What was it I said about him based on his drawings-that he was neat and compulsive, right? And his work table confirms it.

Everything’s in its place.

So I’m guessing the top drawings would be the most recent ones, whatever he’s planning next.”

“But what is it exactly?”

Terri tapped one of the drawings that topped a stack.

“A building? I’m not sure.” That’s when it hit me. It looked like my grandmother’s last vision.

The other stacks had similar drawings on top, all variations of this same image, fairly abstract, but it was coming together for me. But where? I wondered. And when?

I swiped the top drawings off each stack and Terri gasped when we saw what was under them.

“My God, what is he planning, World War III?”

“It looks it,” I said. “The question is, where?”

I was trying to stay calm, to think like him, to be organized and obsessive.

Everything we needed to know was here, somewhere. I went through the stacks; more images of explosions and mayhem. I opened a folder and found a sketch similar to the one of the black man, Harrison Stone, who’d been shot in Brooklyn.

“This looks like a practice sketch, like he must have drawn this vic over and over till he got it right.”

There was a page of notes in the file too, dates and times, a stalker’s journal.

I started riffling through other folders, opening one after another. More sketches with times and dates.

“They’re all here,” said Terri. “All his vics.”

“It’s like he’s some sort of perverse perfectionist, drawing and redrawing his prey till he gets whatever it is he’s after.”

We kept looking, hoping to find something that related to those abstracted explosion drawings, but there was nothing.

We scanned the room-the walls covered with posters, the table, the floor-and that’s when we found it: one more drawing, crumpled in a small trash can tucked under the table.

I smoothed it out on the table. It took only a few seconds for the image to register and set my body trembling.

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

I explained it, stuttering, my fear kicking in, then we raced up the stairs and out the front door. It no longer mattered who saw us.

The Mercedes engine kicked over and I burned rubber down Twenty-third Avenue. I had one hand on the steering wheel, the other gripping my cell, hitting redial over and over. There was no answer. I pressed my foot to the accelerator and prayed I was not too late. I prayed to Jesus and Chango and every saint and orisha I could think of.

I prayed and prayed.