The Devil_s Garden

TWENTY-SEVEN

The Queens Homicide Squad was located on the second floor of the 112th Precinct headquarters in Forest Hills, a square, nondescript building with mint-green panels below the windows, and a black marble entrance.

Of the twelve full-time homicide detectives, only two were women, and that was just the way Desiree Powell liked it. Although she had many female friends on the job, most of them were drawn to other squads as a career – vice, narcotics, forensic investigation. Powell knew she had a knack for this work, always had, even as a child. There was logic to it all, but it was more than that. As a student she had been far better at algebra than geometry. A always led to B then to C. Always. If it didn’t, you had the wrong A to begin with. She did not consider that she had a gift – few investigators were gifted at detection. She believed it was something that came from instinct; you either had the nose, and the gut, or you didn’t.

She had recently investigated a case in North Corona where the victim, a forty-nine-year-old white male, a family man with a wife and three children, was found lying on his backyard, middle of a nice summer day, his head bashed in. There was no weapon found, no witnesses, no suspects. There was, however, a ladder leaning up against the back of his house. The man’s wife said when she left for work that day, her husband told her he was going to replace a few shingles. CSU found blood on the roof, in the gutter as well, which led them to conclude that the man had been bludgeoned on the roof, and not in the backyard as they had originally thought.

Desiree Powell mused: Who climbs a ladder, bludgeons a man, watches the victim roll off, then climbs back down? Why risk being seen by the entire neighborhood? Why not wait until the guy was on the ground, or in the house?

Three times during the neighborhood canvass Powell found she’d had to stop for a moment and wait for the jets overhead to pass. The neighborhood was directly in the flight path of LaGuardia airport.

When the case stalled, Powell reached out to an old friend in TSA, who in turn called a few of the airlines and discovered that, on the day the man died, a cargo plane had reported some engine trouble on takeoff from LaGuardia. Powell visited the hangar and discovered that a piece of metal had come off the engine housing, a piece never recovered by investigators. She also discovered that the plane had passed directly over the community of North Corona. She brought back CSU, and they did a search of the chimney. Inside, they found a chunk of metal near the flue, a ragged piece that fit the engine’s housing perfectly. It was caked with the dead man’s blood.

Airplane, Body, Chimney.

ABC.

Sometimes Powell scared herself.

Marco Fontova walked into the duty room, dropped into his chair on the opposite side of the desk, one of nine or so desks in the small, paper-clogged office. He glanced once at the whiteboards on the wall, the board displaying who was in court that day, who was on the range. He checked his box for mail.

“Nice suit, by the way,” Powell said. She didn’t really mean it, but the kid was a peacock, and she liked to keep him happy. “New?”

Fontova smiled, opened up the jacket. The lining was mauve paisley. “Like it?”

It was a special brand of ugly. “Very becoming. What do we have?”

Fontova had a thick sheaf of paper in his hand, as well as a CD in a clear crystal case. “We have a printout of some of the files on Harkov’s computer, along with a copy of the original data files.”

“That was fast.”

“You want the big half or the small half?”

“I’ll take it all. You know I love this stuff.”

Fontova gave it to her.

Powell looked at the files. It was a database, a listing of Harkov’s clients. The dates went back ten years, and had to contain three hundred names. There were brief notations regarding the nature of the work Harkov had done for these people. Most were civil matters, but there were a number of criminal matters.

Was their killer in here somewhere?

The brutality of the murder suggested something other than a robbery. This was revenge. No one took the time to do what was done to Viktor Harkov just because they had a few hours to spare.

There were really only a few reasons to torture someone. Two, actually, that Powell could think of. One, the hatred for the victim ran so deep, the sense of vengeance was so strong, that nothing less than a slow, painful death would salve the loathing. The other reason was that you wanted information from that person, information the person was not ready to give up. That was pretty much it. Unless you just happened to have a taste for it, which, even for New York City, was fairly uncommon.

According to the database, Viktor Harkov was only a mediocre criminal defense attorney. He had won only half the criminal trials in which he was involved. Of the cases he had lost, the longest prison term imposed on one of his clients was a five-year stretch at Dannemora.

Was that a long enough sentence for someone to want to extract this depth of revenge upon release? Powell imagined it was possible, depending on the person.

Their initial canvass of the scene and the neighborhood had produced nothing. Once again, a ghost had floated through the crowded streets of New York City, committed murder, and floated out.

“Let’s run the people whose cases he lost,” Powell said. “Maybe someone thought he didn’t provide a vigorous enough defense and had it in for him.”

“You mean like in Cape Fear?”

Powell just stared at him.

“Cape Fear? The movie?”

The last movie Desiree Powell had seen was Jaws. She hadn’t been to the movies, or Rockaway Beach, since. “Right,” she said. “Exactly. Just like Cape Fear.”

Powell glanced at the crime-scene photos. This was a monster, this guy. A real boogeyman. And he was currently walking the streets of her city, breathing her air, which was just unacceptable.

Not for long, she thought.

Not for long.

The courtroom seemed dreamlike, an alien landscape populated with strange apparitions. Yes, the bench was where it always was. The defense and prosecution tables were just about where they always had been. The court reporter sat at her station, machine on its tripod, her nimble fingers at the ready.

Michael had entered this room hundreds of times, had held the lives of both victims and defendants in the balance, had navigated the rocky shoals of justice with skill and precision and no small measure of luck. But each of those times he had been in control.

Be wise, Michael. I will contact you soon.

Michael ransacked his memory, trying to place the voice he had heard on the phone. He could not.

My full name is Aleksander Savisaar. I want you to call me Aleks. I am telling you this because I know you are not going to contact the authorities.

He did not recognize the man’s name, either. Was it someone he had once prosecuted? Was it a relative of someone he had put in prison, or upon whom the state of New York had imposed the death penalty? Was this about vengeance? Money? Was this someone with a grievance against the legal system taking it out on him?

The lot of anyone in a district attorney’s office, or anyone in any branch of law enforcement, was to be ever vigilant. You spend your working life locking up criminals, only to have these people one day get out, many times holding you responsible for their miserable lives.

Had he neglected or failed to see this coming, and now his family was going to pay for it?

With all these questions unanswered, Michael was certain of one thing. The man who had called him was responsible for the atrocity of Viktor Harkov’s brutal murder.

Michael glanced into the gallery. At the back of the courtroom he saw the two detectives from the 114 who had initially been given the task of investigating the murder of Colin Harris. It would be so easy to cross the room, lean over, and tell them what was happening.

Be wise, Michael. I will contact you soon.

A few moments later, the jury was led back into the courtroom. Judge Gregg summarized what he had said earlier.

Normally, Michael would watch the defendant at a moment such as this. Instead, he looked at the faces of the jurors, the faces of the gallery, the faces of the police officers and officers of the court scattered around the room. He even watched the court reporter.

Was one of these people watching him?

“Mr Roman,” Judge Gregg said. “You may continue.”

Michael Roman stood, walked around the table, and began to speak. He was certain he apologized to the jury for the interruption. There was no doubt he gave a brief recap to where he had been. Unquestioningly, he picked up essentially where he had left off.

He just didn’t hear any of it. Not a word. Instead, his focus was on the people around him. Faces, eyes, hands, body language.

There was a man, perhaps fifty, sitting in the front row of the gallery. He had a scar on his neck, a military buzz cut, thick arms.

There was a woman, two rows back. Forties, too much make-up, too much jewelry. She wore long fake red fingernails. One nail was missing on her left hand.

There was a young man at the back of the gallery, a stocky kid in his twenties with an earring in his left ear. He seemed to be tracking Michael’s movement across the courtroom with a particularly close scrutiny.

Michael looked at the faces of the people in the jury. He had an ideal juror – all lawyers did, both defense and prosecutors. You always wanted to go with a juror who would be sympathetic to your case. Contrary to popular belief, lawyers did not want anyone on the jury who was free from bias or prejudice. Just the opposite. You wanted someone who held the right bias and prejudice. As a prosecutor, Michael wanted the Con Ed worker, the bus driver, the tax-paying citizen over forty. He wanted the person old enough to have grown weary of crime and criminals and excuses. The last person he wanted was the twenty-three-year-old inner-city school teacher, ever the true believer. For Michael, the less idealistic the juror, the better.

As he scanned the jury, he tried to remember what they had discussed during the voir dire. What a lot of people didn’t know was that the seemingly extemporaneous banter with a prosecutor or defense attorney was as telling, or more telling, than the direct questions. As a rule, this all came to Michael in toto during a trial. But today was a little different, wasn’t it? He couldn’t remember a thing.

Had Aleks, the man on the phone, the man who had kidnapped his family, gotten to someone on the jury? One of the alternates? One of the gallery? Had he gotten to one of the officers of the court?

Who was watching him?

“Mr Roman?”

Michael turned. The judge was talking to him. He had no idea what he was saying, what he had said. Moreover, he had no idea how long he had been gone. He turned and glanced at the jury. They were all staring at him, fidgeting, waiting, anticipating his next word. What had his last word been? It was every lawyer’s nightmare. Except today, it was nothing compared to Michael Roman’s real nightmare.

“Your honor?”

Judge Gregg motioned him to the bench. Michael turned, looked at the defendant.

Patrick Ghegan was smiling.