The Isis Covenant

IV

‘Jesus, will somebody check if Charlie Manson’s still in jail?’

After five years in homicide, Detective Danny Fisher could have predicted the essentials of what she was about to see in the house just off the expressway in Brooklyn Heights, but the specifics tested even her legendary composure. She stood in the doorway and took in the scene with eyes long trained to look beyond the human tragedy to the physics and the mechanics of death. Six bodies in the spacious, open-plan room. The father, tall, slim and dark, strung up naked by the arms from a light fitting fixed to the ceiling and, from the blackened scorch marks that disfigured his body, the source of most of the burned-pork smell that almost overwhelmed the rank, sewer stench of bowels emptied by terror. The mother, blonde and tanned, with what had been a good body, was strapped to some sort of makeshift frame, her arms wide and her legs spread. Fisher studied her face. She would have been beautiful but for the horror that marked her end. The torn shreds of a silky peach nightgown partly covered the body, her features were a mask of blood, one breast had been sliced off and Danny didn’t like to guess what else had been done. Young folks, in their mid-thirties maybe, but she could confirm that later. The four children, three girls and a boy, aged between approximately four and thirteen, lay slumped in a row on a large couch, their blond heads matted with gore and their hands secured behind their backs with plastic ties. All of the dead had four-inch strips of brown plastic tape across their mouths.

‘You think it’s a drugs hit?’

Fisher pursed her thin lips and glared at her partner, who wore the same shapeless blue protective suit. Hank Zeller should have known better than to ask her to speculate in front of the help.

‘I doubt if even the Colombians would have tortured the kids. Time of death?’

The coroner’s technician looked up from where he was working over the body of one of the children.

‘Best estimate? Between one and three this morning. Maybe I can narrow it down more when I get a core temperature. The adult male is no good — there’s too much residual heat from his burns affecting the body. My best chance is with the female, but I’ll need more time.’

Fisher nodded. It meant the killings had probably happened between five and seven hours earlier. She had uniformed cops checking with the neighbours for signs of any unusual activity. If they were lucky some insomniac would have seen or heard the killers’ vehicle. The gags explained why no one had been alerted by screaming and called 911.

She and Zeller waited another hour while the forensics and fingerprints people checked every inch of the house for possible evidence, sifting through the piles of paper strewn across each room from drawers that had been torn out and upturned, and taking minute samples of dust and fabric.

‘We’re done.’ The crime scene manager wiped a hand across his brow.

Fisher gave him a look that didn’t require any translation. He produced a noncommittal shrug. ‘The place is smothered in prints; all shapes and sizes, but I think you’ll find they’re mostly either family or friends. We have smudges on the light switch, the light cable and on the tape used to gag the victims. My guess is that your perp or perps wore gloves. Big help, huh? One thing: from the position of the smudges on the tape, I’d say the material used on the father and mother had been positioned and removed more than once. Okay? I’ll send in the medical examiner. Let me know when you need the coroner’s guys for the bodies.’

The tall detective nodded and waited until she and Zeller were alone with the dead.

‘So what do we think?’

Zeller stared intently at the scene. ‘They were after information. But what kind of information? The dead guy is a hardware store manager. No known criminal contacts. We sent a blue-and-white to check out the store. There was no sign of illegal entry. No sign of a search. Whatever they were looking for, they found it here.’

He studied his partner as Fisher took up the story. Tall and rangy, with piercing electric-blue eyes, Danny Fisher was an enigma even to her closest colleagues at the 84th Precinct building on Gold Street. She had a reputation for never socializing with her fellow detectives, which, in their peculiar male-dominated world, had led to the inevitable questions about her sexuality: never proved. Zeller had heard the stories about the guys who had tried to make a move on the thirty-three-year-old and the painful consequences that followed. He had no intention of joining their number.

‘Silent entry,’ Fisher said confidently. ‘They didn’t force the front door and the chain was in place, so most likely they got in through the French doors at the back of the house. They were quick and they were efficient. Parents first. Gun to the head while they were sleeping, maybe, and threaten the kids. That would be enough to keep them cooperative. Bring them down. Truss them up and gag them. That’s when the real fear would have come. Maybe they brought the kids in to watch, maybe not.’ She paused and stared at the four lifeless pyjama-clad bodies. ‘I think probably not. That came later. They would have started with the father. Just a little light grilling with the blow torch to loosen him up. He must have known by then there was no escape, that no matter how long he held out he was going to die. He should have talked.’ She turned to the woman, still splayed obscenely against the frame. ‘But we know he didn’t, because then they used the wife as leverage. He had to watch and he knew she was screaming at him inside to tell them what they wanted. Anything to save her from what they were doing. But he didn’t.’

‘Or he couldn’t.’

She nodded slowly. ‘Because he didn’t know what it was they thought he knew.’

‘Jesus, the poor bastard.’

‘That was when they gave him the full works.’ She stepped in front of the scorched figure and crouched, inspecting the areas of carbonized flesh. What kind of human being would burn a man’s balls off? ‘The kids were their last chance to get what they wanted. They brought them in, eldest first, baby of the family — his favourite? — last. They must have known they didn’t need to use the blow torch, the threat would have been enough. But they did, and that,’ she paused to chew on the thought until it turned into a conclusion, ‘that, and the fact that the woman’s breast has been cut off, makes one of them a sadist. Because it was gratuitous. First they tortured them, so he could feel their pain, then they questioned him. And when he didn’t answer, they killed them. One by one.’ She looked down at the matted blond curls of the eldest of the four dead children, a slim girl just beginning the transformation to womanhood. ‘By smashing their skulls in with a hammer.’

‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Detective.’ They turned to find the precinct’s medical examiner struggling into his coverall in the doorway. ‘A floater at the bridge,’ he said in explanation.

Fisher raised an eyebrow. Someone being found dead in the water at Brooklyn Bridge was so common it was hardly worth mentioning, and certainly no excuse for holding up an investigation into six homicides.

The examiner saw the look and shrugged. ‘Politics. Son of a city councillor.’ He switched on a digital recorder and moved quickly to the bodies, making his first brief inspection and at the same time speaking into the slim plastic rectangle. ‘First-degree burns on all four child victims, but initial inspection shows the cause of death to be blunt-force trauma to the skull. Adult female has suffered similar burning to the thighs, breast and stomach, left breast removed by a sharp instrument, probably …’ he bent to inspect the wound ‘… with a serrated edge. Also some evidence of sexual interference, but I won’t be able to confirm that until I carry out the autopsy. Again, her injuries would not have been enough to kill her.’ He frowned and inspected the area around the woman’s neck, which was hidden by her dark hair, then rose and did the same with the strung-up body in the centre of the room. When he was satisfied he turned to Fisher. ‘At first I reckoned they must have had their throats cut, and in a way I suppose they have, but it looks as if the major muscles, arteries and veins of the throat and neck have been severed by some kind of ligature. Whoever did it has come close to decapitating the victims.’

‘A garrotte?’

He stared at her. ‘Why, yes, I suppose that’s right. A garrotte. Probably made of some kind of very narrow gauge wire.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve never come across anything like it. These people had knives, certainly, probably guns. Why would somebody use such a primitive weapon when they had other, more efficient tools at their disposal?’

Fisher bit back the comment that it was her job to speculate on the how and the why, not his, but Zeller answered what had been a rhetorical question.

‘To make a point.’

Fisher shook her head.

‘Because he enjoyed it.’

The doctor nodded wearily and returned to the woman victim as the two detectives set off to inspect the rest of the house. ‘Hey, what’s this?’ The question was to no one in particular, but Fisher joined him beside the body and crouched at his side as he inspected the dried blood on the woman’s forehead. ‘There’s something here.’ He removed a pen and notebook from inside the coverall. ‘See, you can just make out the faint outline of the wound. It’s not like any natural cut or slash I’ve seen before.’ He drew a rough sketch on a page of the notebook. ‘See? A circle within a horizontal oval.’

‘Some kind of message? A gang symbol?’

‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘I’ll have a clearer picture when I get her cleaned up.’

Fisher nodded and got to her feet.

‘Such a nice family. What did you say their name was?’

Zeller turned. ‘We didn’t.’

Fisher looked back at the cosy domestic surroundings that had been turned into a scene of mass slaughter.

‘Hartmann.’