Brendan could not do anything, neither move nor scream.
The man lifted his foot, a cowboy boot with a scuffed heel.
He brought it stomping down on Brendan’s head . . . and everything went black.
CHAPTER 27
Detective Kiser returned Fisk’s call within ten minutes, catching him before he got in to work.
“Detective Fisk,” said Kiser. “You calling again about the case you don’t have any interest in?”
“Exactly right,” said Fisk. The details had been gnawing at Fisk all night. “Thanks for the call back. I know you’re busy, so give me the one-minute download.”
“No identifications yet. Working on the tattoos, going through the database. Fingerprint on the cigarette butt is a true partial, and I’m told it might not be enough to help us pull it up through latents. The ‘friction ridge analysis’ is inconclusive, but could be enough to tie a perp to the scene, just not vice versa. There’s not enough to reliably put through the system. They are going to run some tests on how specific the partial is, but it doesn’t look great.”
“Okay,” said Fisk.
“We’re canvassing stores based on the bottling code on the Jarritos. We don’t have any outstanding missing persons reports that match our headless beachgoers.”
Fisk said, “Probably illegals then. More afraid of the police than trusting.”
“Yup,” said Kiser. “And we have no faces to put out on the news. There’s some internal debate about going out with the tats, but that seems like a desperation play to me. I don’t think we’ll get that far. Somebody’s going to come forward . . . if we don’t match up one of these bodies first.”
“Where are the bodies now?”
“Queens morgue. I don’t think they’re cutting them. Cause of death is self-evident.”
Fisk said, “They may want to know if they were dead before they were beheaded.”
“Maybe so,” said Kiser. “Thankfully, we’re getting out of my area of expertise there. Now give me the one-minute download on what this means to you.”
Fisk smiled. He didn’t know how to answer that exactly. The beep on his phone told him he didn’t have to. A second call coming in, this one from the office. “I’ve got another call I have to take.”
“No, you don’t,” said Kiser. “I need to know what I might be looking at—”
Fisk dumped him, switching over to the other call. “Fisk.”
“Where are you?” It was his boss, Dubin.
“Almost there,” said Fisk. This did not sound good.
Dubin read him an address in Bushwick. “Eight-three Precinct is on scene. They’ve got one DOA in a car in a cemetery.”
Fisk frowned, wondering how this mattered to him. “And?”
“The car is registered to the Mexican consulate.”
Fisk’s pulse rate jumped. Comandante Garza. “Is it a female?”
Dubin said, after a pause to read his alert, “I don’t have that.”
Fisk said, “Give me the address again.”
CHAPTER 28
Bushwick was a neighborhood in Brooklyn, just on the edge of Queens. After a very rough end of the twentieth century, which saw a spike in the drug trade and violent crime, the “Bushwick Initiative” and a concerted effort from the local precinct’s Narcotics Control Unit had started to revitalize the neighborhood. It was ethnically diverse, made up of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Salvadorans, but the fastest-growing group in the area was Mexicans.
Fisk badged his way through the police tape at the main gate of the Evergreens. The westernmost corner of the cemetery was right on the border of Queens. For Fisk, it was a long walk back to the crime scene, and he was moving quickly. The side gate the vehicle had entered through—the area that was geographically still in Bushwick, in the Eighty-third Precinct—was closed for crime scene processing. The lanes along the graves were hilly and well groomed. He passed a towering monument of a winged angel, came to the top of a rise, and saw the black vehicle in the distance.
The incident had drawn a nice crowd. As he drew closer, he recognized a captain, an assistant chief, two Secret Service agents, a gaggle of cops and crime scene techs, and a trio of Mexican bodyguards who looked ready to kill somebody.
Fisk was some thirty yards away when he spotted Garza, her black hair jumping out among the greenery and the gray headstones. Fisk’s pace slowed a bit. Not her. He felt a small measure of relief that he dismissed as simply a result of having met her the day before, and not wanting some harm to come to a person to whom he could put a name and face.
She was getting into it with the deputy inspector from the Eighty-third. It looked like a good squabble. The captain had six inches on her, but she was more than holding her own.
Fisk came up behind the captain, and when Garza saw him she paused just a moment, a distracted beat, before continuing. “This vehicle has diplomatic plates and is the property of the Mexican government.”
“This is a New York Police Department crime scene,” said the deputy inspector, a black man wearing rimless eyeglasses. “A homicide. That trumps any claims you or your government might have—”
“Not so, sir,” said Garza. “The homicide occurred within the vehicle, which is Mexican property, and we, as Mexican law enforcement officers, are authorized to investigate this crime. We will call on you for assistance, as needed.”
“Assistance?” This word was spat out by the imposing plainclothes woman standing shoulder to shoulder with the deputy inspector. She was a homicide detective in the Eighty-third. “We don’t assist in these matters, Officer . . . ?”
“Colonel Garza,” said the comandante, giving the American equivalent of her rank. “Mexican Federal Police, under assignment to President Umberto Vargas’s security detail. I have phone calls in to the Mexican ambassador in Washington, D.C., who is contacting the State Department.”
The tall homicide detective turned to her deputy inspector. “Sir, this smells to me like a goddamn cover-up.”
The deputy inspector wisely—and gently—forearmed the detective back and away. She looked mystified at the treatment, but then Fisk stepped up beside her.
“Stand down, not your fight,” he said.
She looked at him, saw the badge on his belt. “Not my fight? It’s my job.”
Fisk nodded to her confidentially, leading her back a few more steps. “It’s a fight the Eight-three is going to lose. I know that pisses you off.” He was referring to the three Mexican bodyguards standing near the vehicle. The NYPD was not used to being muscled. “Can you catch me up? Fisk, Intel Division.”
She gave her name as Sue Escher. Leading him toward the car, she couldn’t help but seize upon his being an Intel cop as a way to get back into the case. “They’re trampling all over my crime scene.”
The car was a black sedan. The rear license plate was bordered in blue on top, red on the bottom. Inside the red field were the words ISSUED BY AND PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE.
“Right there,” said Escher. “Property of the United States!”
“That’s just the plate,” Fisk explained to her, smiling at her earnest tenacity.
The Mexican bodyguards—more likely plainclothes EMP agents—moved near them in an attempt to cut them off. Fisk shook his head at the nearest one. “We can look, partner.”
The Mexican said nothing, his eyes hidden behind Oakley shades.
“We have a problem?” asked Fisk.
Again, no response.
“Good,” said Fisk.
The body lay lengthwise in the front seat, keeled over from behind the steering wheel. A male in his thirties or late twenties, Fisk guessed, with close-cropped black hair, wearing blue jeans and a thin, hooded sweatshirt.
Blood spray was splashed against the interior of the windshield, probably arterial. There was blood on the man’s cheek, his hands, and the seat beneath his body.