City of Endless Night

32

At the entrance to the top floor, next to the elevator, the Crime Scene Unit had set up a gowning station, with racks of Tyvek suits, masks, gloves, and booties. Lieutenant D’Agosta donned the full array, as did Pendergast. D’Agosta couldn’t help but notice that the agent did not look good in the suit; not good at all. The baggy outfit looked more like a burial shroud when coupled with his pale skin and gaunt frame.

They signed in at the makeshift entrance, where Sergeant Curry, already gowned, was waiting for them. The entire floor had been segregated as a crime scene, and the forensic teams were in full collection mode, many on their hands and knees, going over everything with tweezers and test tubes and ziplock evidence bags. Once dressed, D’Agosta paused to watch. They looked good, damn good. Of course, with him and the FBI on-site now, everyone was putting on a show for their benefit, but these were the best the NYPD had to offer and their professionalism was on display for all to see. He wished to hell they would find something solid he could take to the mayor — and fast. This new double homicide probably meant the case would be taken away from him if his team didn’t show serious progress. With luck they’d learn something important from the two who’d discovered the body.

As D’Agosta looked around, he said, “This is a crazy place to commit a murder.”

Pendergast inclined his head. “Perhaps it isn’t, strictly speaking, a murder.”

D’Agosta let this one pass, as he did so many of Pendergast’s other cryptic remarks.

“You want to walk the whole floor or just see the murder scene?” Curry asked.

D’Agosta looked at Pendergast, who shrugged almost with indifference. “As you wish, Vincent.”

“Let’s just have a look at the scene,” D’Agosta told Curry.

“Yes, sir.” Curry led them across the reception area. The place had the hushed feeling of a sickroom, or a hospital ward for terminal patients, and it smelled strongly of forensic chemicals.

“There are cameras everywhere,” said D’Agosta. “Were they disabled?”

“No,” said Curry. “We’re downloading the video from the data drives now. But it looks like they captured everything.”

“They recorded the killer coming and going?”

“We’ll know as soon as we take a look. We’ll go down to the security office after this, if you want.”

“I want.” He added: “Wonder how the perp walked out of here with two heads under his arms.”

At the far end of the outer offices, D’Agosta spied a man, also in a CSU suit, taking pictures with a cell phone in a ziplock bag. He was clearly not a cop or crime scene investigator, and he looked a bit green around the gills. “Who’s that guy?” he asked.

“He’s with the SEC,” said Curry.

“SEC? What for? How’d he get clearance?”

Curry shrugged.

“Bring him over.”

Curry went and fetched him. The man was large and bald with horn-rimmed glasses, wearing a gray suit under his gown, and he was sweating something fierce.

“I’m Lieutenant D’Agosta,” he said, “Commander Detective Squad, and this is Special Agent Pendergast, FBI.”

“Supervising Agent Meldrum, SEC Division of Enforcement. Glad to make your acquaintance.” He stuck out his hand.

“Sorry, no handshaking at a crime scene,” said D’Agosta. “You know — might exchange DNA.”

“Right, they did mention that, sorry.” The man pulled his hand back sheepishly.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” D’Agosta said, “what’s the SEC’s interest and who authorized you on the crime scene?”

“Authorization from U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District. We’ve been after these two for a long time.”

“That right?” D’Agosta asked. “What’d they do?”

“Plenty.”

“When we finish the walk-through,” said D’Agosta, “and get rid of these damn suits, I’d like you to fill us in.”

“Glad to.”

They walked across the open space toward a pair of ornate wooden doors, which were wedged open. Light streamed out from the interior of the inner office, and the primary color D’Agosta could see beyond was a deep crimson. There was a team inside, moving with exquisite care on mats laid down over a blood-soaked rug.

“Oh, Jesus. Did the perp leave them arranged like that?”

“The bodies haven’t been moved, sir.”

The two bodies lay stretched out on the floor, side by side, arms folded over their chests, carefully arranged by the killer or killers. In the intense lights set up by the CSU team it looked fake, like a movie set. But the smell of blood was real, a mingling of damp iron and meat starting to go bad. While the sight was awful enough, D’Agosta could never get used to the smell. Never. He felt his gorge rise and struggled to calm the spastic reaction that had abruptly seized his stomach. The blood was everywhere. This was crazy. Where was the blood spatter guy? There he was.

“Hey, Martinelli? A word?”

Martinelli rose and came over.

“What’s the story with this blood? This some kind of deliberate paint job?”

“I’ve still got a lot of analysis to do.”

“Prelim?”

“Well, seems both the victims were beheaded standing up.”

“How do you know?”

“The blood on the ceiling. That’s sixteen feet. It shot straight up, arterial jetting. In order for it to reach that height, their heart rate and blood pressure must’ve been sky-high.”

“What would cause that? The high blood pressure, I mean.”

“I’d say these two knew what was coming, at least during the last few moments. They were made to stand up and knew they were about to be decapitated, and that produced an extremity of terror that would have resulted in spikes in both blood pressure and heart rate. Again, that’s my first impression only.”

D’Agosta tried to wrap his head around it. “Chopped off with what?”

Martinelli nodded. “Right over there.”

D’Agosta turned and there it was: a medieval weapon of some kind, lying on the floor, its blade completely covered in blood.

“It’s called a bearded ax. Viking. Replica, of course. Razor-sharp.”

D’Agosta glanced at Pendergast, but he was even more opaque than usual inside the Tyvek suit.

“Why didn’t they scream? Nobody heard anything.”

“We’re pretty sure a secondary weapon was involved. Probably a firearm. Used in a threatening way to keep them quiet. On top of that, those doors are extremely thick, and the entire suite is heavily soundproofed.”

D’Agosta shook his head. It was the craziest thing, killing the twin CEOs of a major company right in their own offices at the busiest time of day, with cameras running and a thousand people around. He looked again at Pendergast. In contrast to his usual poking and prying about with tweezers and test tubes, this time he was silent, and as calm as if he were out for a stroll in the park. “So, Pendergast, you got any questions? Anything you want to look at? Evidence?”

“Not at present, thank you.”

“I’m just the blood spatter guy,” Martinelli said, “but it would seem to me the killer’s sending some kind of message. The Post is saying that—”

D’Agosta cut him off with a gesture. “I know what the Post is saying.”

“Right, sorry.”

Pendergast now spoke at last. “Mr. Martinelli, wouldn’t the perpetrator be covered in blood after decapitating two standing people?”

“You’d think so. But the handle is unusually long on that ax, and if he stood at some distance, decapitated each of them with one clean swipe, and if he were agile enough to jump aside to avoid the jetting arterial blood as the bodies fell, he might just get away without being splattered.”

“Would you say he was proficient in the use of that ax?”

“If you look at it that way, yes. It’s not easy to decapitate someone with a single blow, especially if they’re standing up. And to do it without getting covered in blood — yeah, I would say that takes serious practice.”

D’Agosta shuddered.

“Thank you, that is all,” said Pendergast.

They met up with the SEC guy in the security office in the basement. On their way down, passing through the lobby, they had seen a crowd in front of the building. At first D’Agosta thought it was the usual unruly press, and it was that, of course, but more. The waving signs and muffled chanting indicated it was some sort of demonstration against the one percent. Damn New Yorkers, any excuse to protest.

“Chat over there?” he said, indicating a seating area in the waiting room. The NYPD techies were downloading and preparing the last of the security footage.

“As good as any.”

The three of them took their seats, the SEC guy, Pendergast, and D’Agosta.

“So, Agent Meldrum,” D’Agosta said. “Brief us on the SEC investigation.”

“Of course.” Meldrum handed over a card. “I’ll have copies of our files sent over to you.”

“Thank you.”

“The Burches are, or rather were, a married couple — twenty-two years. Back during the financial crisis they set up an investment scheme that took advantage of people with distressed mortgages. It collapsed in 2012 and they were arrested.”

“And they didn’t go to jail?”

Meldrum engaged in a mirthless stretching of the lips. “Jail? I’m sorry, Lieutenant, where have you been these past ten years? I can’t tell you how many cases I’ve worked on where, instead of prosecuting, we negotiated a settlement and levied a fine. These two swindlers got slapped on the wrist and quickly opened a new rip-off shop — LFX Financial.”

“Which does what?”

“Targets the spouses of soldiers and retired vets. Two basic swindling schemes. You got a soldier overseas. The spouse — usually a wife — is stateside, having a tough time economically. So you get the wife to take out a balloon mortgage on the house. Small initial payments, then the rate resets to what they can’t afford. LFX takes the house, flips it, rakes in the bucks.”

“Legal?”

“Mostly. Except there are special rules about foreclosing on a soldier on active duty that they didn’t follow. That’s where I come in.”

“And the second scheme?”

“LFX would identify the widow of a vet who’s living in a nice house, fully paid off. They’d persuade her to take out a small reverse mortgage. No big deal, done all the time. But then LFX would force a default on the reverse mortgage for some bogus reason: nonpayment of homeowner’s insurance or some other trumped-up or trivial violation of terms. Just enough of an excuse to take the house, sell it, and keep an obscene amount of the proceeds as late fees, fines, interest, penalties, and other jacked-up charges.”

“In other words, these two were the scum of the earth,” said D’Agosta.

“You bet.”

“Must have had a lot of enemies.”

“Yes. In fact, some time back there was a mass shooting in this very building — a soldier who lost his home came in and aired out the place before committing suicide.”

“Oh yeah,” said D’Agosta. “I remember that. So you think the two were killed by a victim seeking revenge?”

“It’s a reasonable hypothesis, and that’s what I thought when I first got the call.”

“But you don’t think so now.”

“No. It seems pretty clear to me it’s the same psycho who did those other three headless people: a vigilante type punishing rich dirtbags. You know, like what the articles in the Post are saying.”

D’Agosta shook his head. As much as he couldn’t stand that bastard Harriman, his theory was looking more and more likely. He glanced at Pendergast and couldn’t help but ask: “What do you think?”

“A great deal.”

D’Agosta waited, but it was soon clear that would be the extent of his comment. “It’s insane. You got two people decapitated in the middle of the day in a busy office building. How’d the killer get past security, how’d he get into the office, how’d he kill them, cut their heads off, and get out — with nobody seeing anything? Seems impossible, like one of those locked-room mysteries by — what’s his name? — Dickson Carr.”

Pendergast nodded. “In my opinion, the important questions are not so much who the victims were, why they were selected, or how the murder was done.”

“What else is there to a murder than the who, why, and how?”

“My dear Vincent, there’s the where.”