Silver Justice

Chapter 6

Silver exited the cab at the curb in front of Ben’s building and pressed her way through the swarm of lunchtime pedestrians. Once in the lobby, she waited for the ponderous elevator to arrive, nervously checking her watch. She only had an hour she could be away from the office, and with travel that would barely leave her half an hour with Ben. And they had a lot of ground to cover.

At the firm’s reception desk, a well-groomed young woman took her name and murmured into a headset. Silver busied herself with her phone, responding to e-mails that never seemed to stop coming in. As expected there had been considerable agitation over the photo spread, and everyone from the mayor on down was demanding action and answers.

Ten minutes later another woman approached from a door behind the receptionist and escorted her to a meeting room.

Another three minutes ticked by before a rotund and bearded Ben, wearing his trademark gray suit, entered carrying a file. He sat down heavily across the table from her and leaned over to shake her hand.

“You look good, Silver,” he boomed in his rich baritone voice. “Fighting crime must agree with you. What’s it been? Three — no, four years?”

“About that. Thanks, Ben. You’re too kind. Time marches on…”

“I know you’re probably in a hurry, so I’ll cut straight to the chase. I had a clerk pull the file at the courthouse, and basically your ex is filing for full custody of Kennedy, offering you weekend visitation rights.”

“But he can’t do that! He has no grounds. I’ve provided everything a mother could,” Silver protested.

“I understand. But he contends that with the amount you work you aren’t supplying a healthy living situation for Kennedy. He claims that ten or more hours a day you’re leaving her in the care of schools and babysitters, and that it’s having a negative effect on her mental health. He filed a placeholder for testimony from experts, including a counselor from her school, a teacher or principal, a Jane Doe and a shrink. Claims that Kennedy has a stress-related disorder stemming from this unhealthy living situation that involves self-mutilation, and that she’s developing increasingly anti-social tendencies.” Ben stopped consulting his notes. “What’s that all about?”

Silver had stiffened. “What a miserable asshole. Kennedy has had some developmental problems adjusting to being in a single parent home, mainly because her father decided to screw everything in a skirt while she was an infant, as you know.”

“I recall the case, Silver. But that’s ancient history. It will have a bearing, but what the court will really care about is the testimony from third parties on how she’s doing now. Do you have any idea what they’ll say? Who’s he going to get to throw dirt?” Ben asked, cutting to the chase. There was no point reconfirming what they both already knew about Eric’s trysts.

Silver paused and thought about it.

“Kennedy suffered from an anxiety disorder, which is documented, so there’s no point in denying it. But it isn’t because of my bad parenting, or my schedule, or because I’m somehow deficient. The likeliest explanation is that she wishes her mommy and daddy were still together under the same roof — which isn’t on the table because daddy likes to bang most of the halfwit strippers in Manhattan. So if anyone wants to point a finger and play the blame game that’s where the problem lies. And now the very same scumbag who caused the breakup of our family wants to take my daughter away so he can look more appealing on an election poster? Over my dead body.” Silver had reddened as she finished, and from the look on Ben’s face she realized she was losing her cool.

“So she has this disorder. Can’t argue that. What will her doctor say?”

“I don’t think she’s allowed to say anything, is she?”

“Kennedy is a minor and Eric is her father. I would say blocking the doctor’s testimony, even if successful, would raise more doubts than it would settle. Better to understand what damage could result from all facts being known.”

Silver considered Ben’s words. What would the doctor’s testimony be like? Was she willing to bet her kid on it?

“Okay, that’s something I’ll need to look into. I have a good relationship with the doc, but you never know. What else?”

“I think you should have meetings with the school so you understand their stance. I know you have your position, but it could be that they view the situation differently. We need to know before we go into battle who our assets are and who will be liabilities. I’m not saying that any of this has merit, but your ex is a wealthy man, and the firm he’s retained is one of the heavyweights in this realm of law. Reading between the lines of the complaint, they’ll try to paint you as a workaholic whose daughter is an annoying afterthought, and who’s demonstrably suffering due to your lack of attention. It’s also safe to assume they’ll have private detectives nosing around to dig up any dirt on your private life they can.”

“Ha! Best of luck with that. I know convents that see more action than I do.” Silver immediately regretted the glib response.

Ben studied her. “I’ll throw up as many obstacles as I can and buy as much time as possible. Nothing is going to happen quickly. But you need to treat this as a very real threat and start circling the wagons.”

“What about visitations? I want to cut him off at the knees.”

“Not advisable. Would make you look like you’re using your daughter as a pawn. That’s how they’ll spin it. We need to be the good guys here. You’ll just have to suck it up and try to be as civil as you can manage while I develop a strategy.”

“All right. What else do you need?”

He closed the file and sighed. “A retainer. This won’t be inexpensive to fight. While I hate to bother you with money, we’ll have some very real expenses. Our own experts, private investigators, filings, motions, time crafting a response…this could run six figures, Silver.” Ben’s voice had lost some of its usual deep timbre.

“Six figures! That’s insane. Are you serious? How am I supposed to come up with that kind of money?” Silver felt like she was drowning, the air heavy and stifling. Her limbs had gone numb, and she could feel her pulse hammering in her ears.

“Honestly, I don’t know. But I’m not going to lie to you. Maybe we can get away with less, but there’s no way of knowing. Eric has money. He’s going to use that as a weapon against you. Recognize that and learn to deal with it.” Ben paused. “I’ll need twenty-five thousand to start. I’ll try to make that last as long as possible, but it’s going to take a lot more to see this through, Silver. It stinks, I know, but the monster will need to be fed.”

They finished up the meeting quickly from that point. She was in a daze as she made her way to the elevators.

As she drifted her way along the busy street, Silver thought she was going to faint. Everything felt surrealistic as the enormity of the problem settled into place. Of course Eric would try to drown her in debt — that’s how he played. To win. She only had forty thousand dollars in savings, and everything was spoken for, between school, daycare, clothes, braces, food, utilities and property taxes — never mind that a decent cup of coffee cost six bucks. She had naively imagined that making six figures a year would solve most of her financial problems, but the truth was that after taxes took their bite and everything else was factored in, she was living month to month.

At least she didn’t have to make a massive house payment. Her third-floor, two-bedroom flat on the once newly gentrified East Side near Gramercy Park had been part of her divorce settlement. The building was an ancient five-story walkup over a collection of bohemian shops. The water pipes were antiquated, the electrical wiring was marginally better, but the building had been a find — she still wasn’t sure exactly how Eric had finagled the place, but he’d wound up owning the flat, and as part of Silver’s price for going quietly, she had gotten it. It had served her well; there was no chance of her being able to afford anything in the city these days.

A mortgage on the flat seemed the only option, although that was just delaying the inevitable problem — a mortgage would require the ability to make the payments, which would be close to impossible with her monthly burn. New York was one of the most expensive cities in the world, and just Kennedy’s school and daycare ate well over half her take-home pay.

A horn sounded as she stepped off the curb. She was jerked back to reality. A cab had almost taken her leg off. The driver made an obscene gesture and rolled his window down to begin his inevitable tirade — but thought better of it when he saw her expression.

She waved him off and stepped back onto the sidewalk, noting the time on her phone. Dammit. Late.

Her jaw clenched as she mulled over her few options. She was thin on cash and up to her neck with work related to the task force, but there was no way she was going to let him get away with this. If it was a fight he was after, he’d come to the right place. He’d underestimated her throughout their marriage and was now biting off way more than he could chew. She supposed his money made him feel all-powerful, but even the most foolhardy hunter knew it was a bad bet to come between a mama bear and her cub.

Eric had just made the worst mistake of his life. She would make it her mission to not only battle him on this and win, but would do everything in her power to ruin his aspirations for a political career. She would arrange for his true nature to be broadcast from the highest buildings, and before she was done with him he, would wish he’d never been born.

The mental image of him ruined, shivering next to a dumpster, homeless, mocked and ostracized by everyone, cheered her somewhat.

Silver began to feel better.

Positive thinking was working for her. Just like the doctor had counseled Kennedy.

Maybe the doc knew what she was talking about.

She visualized a dog chasing Eric as he fumbled with his few belongings, muttering incoherently, and smiled for the first time since meeting with Ben.

Eric would rue the day he had cooked up this scheme.

She’d make sure of it.

The killer watched as the low-slung Maybach exited the garage and swung into traffic. He had confirmed the identity of the man behind the wheel as his next target. One of the prospective victim’s quirks would make the killer’s job much easier — unlike so many of his peers, the victim seemed to enjoy the solitude of driving and didn’t have a driver waiting to take him to his home in Connecticut. That would prove fortuitous — he hated the idea of having to take out an innocent to accomplish his task. Collateral damage was messy and increased the risk.

He put his nine-year-old VW Jetta into gear and pulled out after the luxury car, tailing the Maybach from a hundred or more yards.

They moved in sync as the big German sedan cruised its way off the island and north towards Greenwich, where the victim had his main residence. The killer had spent several days following the man and knew that during the week he spent his nights at a high rise on the East Side, returning to Connecticut on weekends to stay with his lovely wife and two sons. New York would be easier logistically, but he hadn’t completely discounted the idea of taking him out en route.

The killer glanced at his Bulova wristwatch, calculating how long it would take to arrive at the man’s home. So far he didn’t see anything obvious by way of opportunities, but that was the nature of the surveillance — establishing his victim’s patterns, looking for chinks in armor.

He could have easily accomplished his task a dozen times over the two days he’d been watching him, but the point wasn’t to simply erase the target from the face of the earth. He had a specific method he intended to employ, and to pull it off would require exactly the right circumstances.

The killer coughed harshly a few times and then rolled down his window to spit. The short-burst fits had grown more frequent, creating a sense of urgency for him. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for a plastic pill container and palmed two into his hand before dry-swallowing them with a wince.

Up ahead the Maybach signaled a lane change. The killer smiled to himself. So far this was going well. By his calculations, they would be at his house within another forty minutes, tops, and then he would settle in for a long weekend of watching and waiting.

And planning.

You could never do too much planning.

The following morning, Silver pulled up a chair at the conference table and sat down, eyes wandering over the room’s occupants — Richard, Seth, Sam, and another half-dozen agents. She was excited — she’d had a breakthrough the prior night as she’d drifted off to sleep, and it had stayed with her upon waking. It was only a hunch, but right now, considering the dearth of leads they had, it was worth pursuing.

She cleared her throat and opened the file in front of her, withdrawing a sheaf of photographs from the various crime scenes.

“We’ve been focusing on finding clues in the forensics or the backgrounds of the victims, and have so far come up blank, with the exception of the terrorist funding anomaly, which is still too undeveloped to rate. So I got to thinking that maybe we’ve been going about this the wrong way. Perhaps the clues are the actual killings. The way the victims have been murdered or the locations.”

Sam exhaled audibly and shook his head. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, the way or the locations? Each was killed differently in a different place. Number one, stabbed in his car. Number two and three burned to death at home. Number four, decapitated at home. You aren’t the only one missing a connection…”

Silver nodded. “What I mean is…perhaps there’s a symbolism to the killings known only to the killer. Perhaps there’s a ritual to it — the way the victims are being killed means something or has significance to him that we’re not aware of. Or perhaps the locations are important to him in some way. I don’t know why they would be important, but that’s the point of throwing this out there.”

Richard leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, and considered the idea. “If there is some symbolism, I’m with Sam that it’s obscure. I don’t see any pattern other than the obvious one — the victims are all male and are all associated with the financial industry in some way.”

“Yes, that’s the obvious, but it doesn’t really help us much. There’s no apparent pattern, which itself is odd. What do most serials have in common? A sense of ritual. They have a preferred way of killing and a preferred type of victim. And yet our Regulator is all over the map. The lack of a pattern could be a pattern in itself,” Silver countered.

Sam winced and shook his head. “The lack of a predictable routine would also be consistent with the theory that this is something besides a serial killer. Like the terrorist funding thing. If the murders are somehow related to that, then these killings could be a ruse to make targeted executions appear to be the random work of a nut. Like a boyfriend who kills his girlfriend and tries to make it look like a robbery. That strikes me as more likely.”

“I’m not discounting that, but it doesn’t feel right.”

“Feel right? With all due respect, feelings aren’t really germane to the science and method of tracking a serial, are they?” Sam said with a chuckle. Several of the other agents smiled.

Silver felt anger stirring, but maintained her composure. “Ordinarily I’d agree with you, but sometimes the subconscious processes all the information and arrives at a conclusion before we’re aware of why. While I understand your skepticism, I’d also remind you that I’m running this show, and I’m telling you that I think there’s more to the way he’s killing them than just random chance. For Christ’s sake, he decapitated the last one. How much work was involved in doing that? It makes more sense to me that there was a reason he chose decapitation. There’s enough meaning in the act for him to warrant his preparing the cards with an allusion to the manner in which they died. That could be the way we find him.”

Seth nodded. “I get it, but I’m not sure where to begin. Where would you start?”

“There’s a strong vengeance or vigilantism aspect to this. He views himself as judge and jury, not to mention executioner, and he’s decided they deserve to die. So the obvious question is, why? Why does he think they deserve to die? I believe that the answer to the why lies in the way he’s killing. It’s associated.”

“Maybe he believes they did something to him, specifically. I mean, obviously he believes that they did something to society in general based on his statement to the Herald. But perhaps the method is more literal than we think and there’s something deeper at play,” Seth observed.

“I don’t follow,” Sam said.

“Is it possible that he has somehow been harmed?” Silver mused, “or feels he has, in the same way as he’s killing the victims — that the manner of execution is a re-enactment of some sort? Maybe this is some sort of an eye for an eye. Nobody’s advanced that idea, but it seems like it’s worth considering.”

“Anything’s possible. It’s possible that none of this means anything more than the obvious. The question is not what’s possible, it’s what’s probable…” Sam said.

Silver bristled. She was getting tired of his condescending attitude.

“How would these men have harmed him in the same way?” Seth asked.

“That’s the question we should be asking,” Silver replied.

Everyone looked at her expectantly.

“I think we should go down the road that he’s been involved in, or was affected by, similar tragedies. That he’s killing in a specific way to emulate damage that was done to him.” She held up her hand, silencing any discussion. “It’s worth looking at. What I would suggest is that we run a computer search for any events that mirror the circumstances of the killings. Decapitations. Stabbings. Death by fire.”

“That will be a massive list,” Sam argued.

“Yes, it will. Especially if we go national. But once we have the list, we can start sorting for geography, or any links or connections to the financial industry. It may come up cold, but it’s worth doing.”

Seth scribbled some quick notes. “Can’t hurt to run the queries,” he agreed. “Worst case, we don’t find anything that makes any sense. In which case we’re right back where we’re sitting — waiting for the next victim…”

“I’m sure that there’s some sort of pathology to this we’re missing. Sure, he’s pissed off at the bankers — he said as much in his communique to the press. But lots of people are. The economy is in the toilet, unemployment is an ongoing problem, people are struggling to make ends meet…and it’s all because of the financial industry, which took outsized risks, forced the world to the brink when its bets went bad, and banked massive bonuses in the process. But Joe Mainstreet hasn’t put his broker’s head on a pike. Maybe some would like to, but they haven’t.” Silver studied the assembled faces of the agents. “Only for our man, it’s different. He’s crossed the line and taken it upon himself to right the world’s wrongs. I don’t believe that’s necessarily psychosis. I think if we look hard enough, we’re going to find that something happened to take him over the edge — and it could be that the something is playing a part in his selection criteria, as well as his method of killing. If I’m right then there might just be a connection we can make that will lead us to him, or at least give us a group of candidate suspects. Does everyone see the logic?”

“Sure, but I want to go on record as saying that this seems like it will be a huge waste of resources based on nothing more than a hunch,” Sam stated flatly.

Silver encouraged healthy give and take on her team, but it was time to shut Sam down. “Do you have some sort of a problem, Sam? Someone piss on your Wheaties this morning?” She again held up a hand. “Don’t answer that — I don’t want to know. Your sentiments are noted, but this isn’t a request or a suggestion. I want Seth to do a preliminary pull based on the murder criteria, and I’m uninterested in your views as to whether that’s the smartest use of the taxpayer dollar. I know you think the terrorist angle has legs, but unless there’s something substantial that comes up tying the rest of the victims into it, that’s a dead end. So, Richard, please keep digging on their backgrounds and finances, Seth, please pull all cases that in any way resemble the killings going back a decade, and Sam, get the traffic feed analysis done in case we get lucky there. That’s all for today.”

Sam looked as if he had been punched in the throat, which gave her some slim satisfaction. He was typical of a certain breed at the Bureau — smug, arrogant and convinced that he was better capable of running the task force than she was. But she was the boss, and as much as she hated putting her foot down, enough was enough. The assignment to go over the traffic feeds was a tedious, grueling job, so perhaps a few days of that would blunt his insolence.

There was more discussion on logistics before the meeting wound down and everyone received their marching orders.

Silver returned to her office and closed the door, tired from the tension of having to combat insurrection in her ranks. She idly wished that she could return to the good old days before she was in a supervisory position, when all she had to do was be good at her job and catch bad guys.

Nothing in life was ever easy. That’s the lesson she’d learned so far. And just when you thought you had a handle on things, they changed, often for the worse.

But she was convinced she was on to something about the killings.

And when she got one of these feelings, it had always been a good idea to pursue it.

Even if her a-hole subordinate thought she was an idiot.

Taking a grimaced sip of her cold coffee, she pulled open her drawer and fished out a piece of Gudrun chocolate — a truffle. Studying it for a moment, she popped it into her mouth, savoring the guilty pleasure in the calm of her environment.

Thank God for chocolate.