There was another single figure, a man, in the dog park. He sat across from Mac on a wooden bench and watched his short-legged pug waddle around the grass and dirt. The man, in his forties or fifties, looked tired. His arms were draped over the bench and he eyed Mac and Rufus warily. This was Manhattan, the middle of the night.
Rufus and the pug walked slowly up to each other, sniffed and then stepped away to take care of their own business.
Then Rufus moved to the man on the bench, sniffed and hurried back to Mac, who reached down, petted him and whispered, "I know."
The man on the other bench was carrying something that Rufus had been taught to detect and report. It could be drugs or a gun. In spite of the heat that had bled into the night, Mac wore a light jacket under which were his holster and gun.
He had decided that the man with the pug was almost certainly not a threat. He was a man with a dog.
Mac thought about his wife, Claire, again. His thoughts of grief were not that different from those of Kyle Shelton, though he didn't put them in the words of a philosopher.
A hot night like this back in Chicago, coming back from the wedding of Claire's cousin. Too much to drink but happy, comforted by her closeness. They had walked instead of going home, talked instead of sleeping, made plans instead of accepting the need for sleep. It had been a good night. There had been many of them. Not enough of them.
Mac got up. The man on the bench watched him leave, his pug rubbing against his leg.
In a few hours, he would find Kyle Shelton. In a few hours he would talk to Jacob Vorhees again. In a few hours the investigation of the murder of the Vorhees family would be over, but it would not be the end of the horror for the boy and the young man who liked to quote philosophers.
Mac looked at his watch: 3:20 a.m.
It was 3:20 a.m.
Sak Pyon looked at the illuminated dial of the clock on the bedside table. He carefully peeled back the sheet, sat up slowly and got out of bed, moving softly across the floor toward the bathroom. He did not want to disturb his sleeping wife.
Nothing like this had happened in at least five years, maybe more. He slept without an alarm clock and woke automatically at 4:15 a.m. every day. He got washed, brushed his teeth and hair, dressed and left the apartment without making a sound. He would pick up coffee and a fresh blueberry muffin before he got to the shop.
Because he was early and because he had much to think about, Pyon decided to walk to work. The young policeman would probably be back about the sketch Pyon had drawn, a sketch not of the man who had gone through his shop and almost certainly killed the strange Jewish boy next door. Only last night before he had fallen asleep did he realize that he had drawn a stand-up comedian from one of the television shows he had seen on the Comedy Network. The policeman would almost certainly be back.
Pyon kept walking, the day already pre-dawn muggy. In Korea, the summer heat had not bothered him, but a quarter of a century in New York had changed him.
He thought of the man he should have sketched, should have told the policeman about, but Pyon had remembered the moment when the other man had entered the store and moved to the counter and leaned over, invading Pyon's space, eyes unblinking as he quietly said, "I have your home address and the home address in Hartford of your daughter. Your granddaughter's name is Anna. She's five."
Pyon nodded, afraid that he understood what he was being told.
"I have not been here today," the man said. "If you tell anyone, the police, your wife, your daughter, anyone, I will kill your family. Do you believe me?"
Pyon believed the man, who hovered over him with a look much like that of the militia officer who had killed Pyon's father with a single shot to the head, killed him calmly in front of the family. Pyon believed this man.
And so he had lied to the policeman and made a sketch of a television actor whose name he did not know. Pyon, as he approached the shop on the still-darkened street, gave serious consideration to quietly selling the shop to one of the several people who had shown interest. He could sell the shop, pack and… no. The man would find him. He would certainly know where to find Pyon's daughter, Tina, who lived in Hartford with her husband and Pyon's granddaughter. The man would find them. Of this he was sure.
Perhaps the oddest thing about the threat delivered by the man, thought Pyon, was the fact that it had been delivered in almost perfect Korean.
He looked at his watch as he turned on the light. It was almost 5:30 a.m. Through the window he could see the coming dawn over the buildings across the street.
At 5:30 a.m., Aiden Burn's radio came on with the news on the half hour. She got up. She was meeting Hawkes at 6:30 a.m. He had left a voice message on her cell phone saying he had reexamined the bodies of the two dead men and had returned to the crime scenes. He had found something interesting.
Stella and Flack would be wearing down Joshua again this morning, but she wasn't sure about him. Evidence led both toward and away from Arvin Bloom. Her report had laid out the pros and cons. Her report did not include her gut feeling.
She was dressed, showered and through the door by six a.m.
At six a.m. Joshua was found in his holding cell by a guard bringing breakfast. Joshua sat still on his cot, palms out, both deeply gashed. Blood drenched the cot and formed a small dark lake on the floor. Joshua's face was white.
The guard, a man named Michael Molton who had twenty-two years of service, put the tray on the floor, called out for help and moved to find something with which he could stop the bleeding. It was only when Adams was bent over and pressing the part of the blanket that wasn't covered with blood against the wounds that he looked down at Joshua's bare feet in a second pool of blood. Both feet also bore gashes like the ones in his palms. On the floor near the cot, the guard saw a bloody piece of rusted metal about the size of a cell phone.
Molton thought he had seen everything, but this was a new one. And, he thought, the day is just starting.
It was six minutes past six in the morning.
11
"THEY LOOK LIKE MOB HITS," said Hawkes, his eyes moving between the two sheet-covered dead men on the tables in front of him. They were turned facedown. "But whoever did it is even better than a mob hit man."
Aiden watched as Hawkes leaned over the body of Asher Glick.
"Two shots,.40 caliber fired from no more than an inch away," Hawkes said. "Found the bullets in the flesh under the tongue, less than half an inch apart. The other one…"
He pointed at the body of Besser.
"Same thing. Bullets from the same gun fired about an inch away. Bullets found lodged in the skull over the right temple about an inch apart."
An examination of the bullets from the victims identified them as.40 caliber Smith & Wessons. They were looking for a pistol, one that could fit in a pocket. They were also looking for a semiautomatic, which would allow the killer to get off two shots quickly. Aiden knew there were pistols no more than five and a half inches long and weighing twenty-two ounces. Aiden told Hawkes.
"Indeed," said Hawkes, "but there was something interesting, which was why I left you the message."
Aiden's eyes were fixed on him.
"Victim one, Glick," said Hawkes, "was standing when he was shot."
"Blood trail a little over three feet from where he fell or was placed," she confirmed.
"Right," said Hawkes. "Victim two was seated."
"Blood spatter on the chair he was sitting in," she said.
"Checked the angle of entry again," said Hawkes. "This time assuming we were dealing with a pro. If he held the gun something like this…"
Hawkes stood straight up, hand out as if he were a kid playing war, aimed at Aiden.