“Less crowded than I expected,” Jon answered, ignoring the second question.
“Did you walk through Grand Central on the way?” Jon nodded, and Halladay continued, “Yeah, the thinning out is definitely noticeable in there…. It’s still busy, but it’s not Grand Central Station, if you know what I mean.”
Jon nodded again, and smiled slightly to acknowledge the joke. It wasn’t all that funny, but he didn’t want to alienate his new partner at the beginning.
“About a third of us have left the city,” Halladay explained. “And a lot of the subways have been shut down because of the flooding.”
“Why did so many people leave?” Jon asked. “Constant darkness get to them after a while?”
“Yeah, and other things. Only a few ways to get on and off the island now, and just the general quality of life is lower, ’cause the city is hurting for money.”
“And a lot of people are wearing those masks,” Jon added. “Some interesting fashions.”
“They don’t know whether the air here can really kill you, or even hurt your health. But you heard about that, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“So why aren’t you wearing one?”
“I don’t expect to be in this city for very long,” Jon answered. “Why aren’t you?”
“I guess I don’t expect to be on this planet for very long,” he said with a crooked smile. “Or really want to.”
The elevator stopped and they stepped out into a utilitarian hallway, leading Jon to presume that this wasn’t a typical floor of rented offices, which would likely be more stylish.
“I’m taking you to the places we know that he went, in order,” Halladay said. “His first stop was the security camera room, which puts a kink in my roof theory, because there’s pretty good coverage of the path from the roof entrance to the elevators—probably ’cause they’re worried about jumpers or the quarter-mile-high club. But maybe the perp knew how to wriggle around the cameras, or took the chance that the guy watching them wouldn’t notice.”
Halladay nodded to a police guard standing outside the room, pulled aside the yellow tape on the door, and opened it. “Whatever happened, the camera guy was surprised. As you can see.”
A uniformed rent-a-cop sat in a chair in front of the banks of video screens, having swiveled around to see who had entered the room. The man’s hand was on his gun but the weapon was still in its holster, and a seeping bullet wound stained his forehead.
“Smart,” Halladay said as he waved his hand at the screens. “Uses a silencer to be safe, takes out this guy, can see a lot of things from here. Where the cameras are and aren’t. Who in the building is vulnerable. This was during the latest stretch of daylight, of course, so a lot of people stayed home from work out of fear, while others wanted to be outside out of fascination. So when the killer was here, there were a lot of people working alone in various parts of the building. He picked out a couple, and you’re about to see what he did to them.”
“But he couldn’t tamper with the recordings?” Jon asked.
“No, not without some kind of very high clearance. Which he definitely didn’t have, because… look.”
Halladay punched a button in front of one of the bigger screens in the middle, and un-paused a loop that he and the security personnel had found earlier. It was a shot from a hallway ceiling outside an elevator entrance, and it showed a middle-aged female in office attire waiting at the door and then walking through it when the elevator arrived. Then another figure flashed in from outside the camera’s view and blocked the door before it could close. He was wearing something that covered most of his face—either a piece of ski apparel or one of those health masks. The killer was short but muscular, built like a bowling ball. He pulled open his jacket as he blocked the door and liberated some duct tape that seemed to be attached to the inside of the coat, next to some other objects that sparkled with light briefly before he passed out of view and into the elevator.
Jon wondered what he’d just seen, but fortunately Halladay or some technician had appended to the brief recording a slow motion version of those few seconds.
“Those are knives,” Jon said after watching it.
“A whole collection of ’em,” Halladay agreed. “That’s how he’s done most of his victims, and that’s one of the reasons you’re here, I’m thinking. Didn’t the Full Moon guy in Philly like knives, too?”
“Yeah,” Jon said, pointing to the bandage that still graced the bottom of his chin. “I’m not much of a fan.”
“This is the only video memento we have of our perp’s little trip to One Hundred Park Avenue,” Halladay said, returning to the task at hand. “There are only cameras on the elevator doors on some floors, at the discretion of the tenants. And we don’t get much from this clip, except to give the research staff some work trying to find out who might make custom leather jackets for serial killers… or chefs or cutlery salesmen or whoever might buy something like that.”
“Too bad there wasn’t a camera inside the elevator,” Jon said.
“No…. It’s actually good there wasn’t a camera in there.”
The big detective led Jon out of the room and reattached the police tape, and soon they were back in an elevator heading up to the fourteenth floor.
“Did I hear the rumor correctly?” Halladay asked, studying the ceiling of the car. “That you’ve been given a private number for the King?” When Jon didn’t answer, he added, “Must be nice.”
Jon didn’t answer again, and the elevator reached its destination.
“He got on with the woman the floor above this,” Halladay said as they exited. “Stopped it in between the two floors to do his dirty work, then pried a door open and crawled out. We brought it down to this level.”
Jon didn’t hear the end of what his new partner was saying, because they were standing in front of another elevator that was diagonally across the hallway from the one they had ridden. And inside was the body of the unlucky woman who had found out what the knives were for. Her face was unmolested except for the swath of duct tape covering her mouth, but her lower midsection was a bloody mess from what was apparently a series of stabs and slashes directed at her genitals, or womb, or both. The Full Moon Killer in Philadelphia had defiled that part of women’s bodies for his own twisted pleasure, but for some reason this Dayfall Killer was destroying them.
“It’s like Jack the Ripper,” Halladay said.
“How many of the previous vics have been this same M.O.?” Jon asked.
“All of them. But one out of the first seven was a male, and number eight, who’s upstairs, is also a male. And he’s only done that three times.”
Halladay pointed to the back wall of the elevator, above the body, where some letters were scrawled in blood. They spelled, TIME DIEM.
“What does that mean,” Jon said, “‘time of day’?”
“No, I guess you say it ‘timay’ and it’s an imper… er… or whatever it’s called. A command. It means, ‘Fear the Day.’”
“Oh,” Jon said.
“Don’t worry, someone had to tell me, too.” The older cop started to move away to the next scene, but Jon put his hand on an arm to stop him.
“He exited on this floor, right?” Jon said. “Because the camera above didn’t get him leaving.”
“That’s right.”
“Where’s the blood?” Jon asked, looking around at the floor. “There’s so much in the elevator…. How did he not get some on his shoes and leave a trail?”
“Good question. Maybe he was really careful. Maybe he wore plastic bags on ’em and put those bags in another plastic bag.”
“And the knives,” Jon added. “He’s not gonna put them back in his jacket all wet, is he?”