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Chapter 63
By the time I left the hospital, I was emotionally spent. I’d stayed with Brett Hollis’s mother while her son was in surgery. Mrs. Hollis had told me what a good soccer player and student he’d been in school. She dropped in that the only thing he’d ever wanted to do was be a detective. Even after graduating from NYU and getting job offers in the private sector for more money, her Brett wanted to feel like he was contributing.
By the late afternoon, a surgeon who hadn’t bothered to change her bloody blue scrubs found Mrs. Hollis in the waiting room. I stayed with her to hear the news.
The doctor had sharp, clear eyes that focused solely on Mrs. Hollis. She said, “We’ve done everything we can do for today. We stopped all the internal bleeding and set some of the simple breaks. Tonight, an orthopedic surgeon will set his pelvis and left leg. And his nose is going to need plastic surgery. You can go up and visit him in a few minutes, but don’t expect much in the way of conversation.”
I appreciated the doctor’s direct, comprehensive delivery. Hollis’s mother and I walked up to the recovery room together. My partner, prone on his hospital bed, looked wrecked. He’d live, thank God, but he was facing a brutal recovery. I stood with Mrs. Hollis for a few minutes while she navigated the tubes and machines, held her son’s hand, and spoke to him quietly.
I said a few silent prayers over him, then eventually slipped out to return home to my own family, where I spent that evening laughing and playing games with Mary Catherine and my children, grateful for every minute of it. But even through my happiness, an unease took hold in the back of my mind, and it only intensified overnight.
I woke up troubled, staring at the white ceiling as Mary Catherine snored peacefully next to me. The familiar sound was calming.
The first rays of sunlight crept through the blinds, and then stark reality flooded in.
We had a copycat killer on our hands.
It was the only explanation. This killer had at least two victims. Maybe more. There could be more bodies that hadn’t been discovered yet.
I managed to get up, dressed, and out the door without waking anyone else. Which in my apartment is a real accomplishment, no matter what time you attempt it.
I was at my desk, going over everything I had on the Staten Island and SoHo homicides, when Harry Grissom walked into the office.
He stopped and looked at me. Then he checked his watch. “What the hell are you doing here so early?”
“Me? What about you? I thought elderly people needed as much sleep as they could get.”
“Funny. I wonder how hard you’d be laughing if I had you organize all the files according to suspect description and number of reports written.”
I patted the wooden chair next to my desk. He took a seat cautiously. Then, without pretext, I explained my copycat killer theory.
I pulled out the photos of the two victims from Staten Island and SoHo, Marilyn Shaw and Lila Stein. I set them on the desktop so Harry could see them clearly. “We have to be sure.”
Harry shook his head. “I never have to worry about much. You take on enough for both of us.”
Chapter 64
I didn’t waste much more time around the office. I was in my car, headed to Staten Island, just as the morning rush hour was picking up.
Detective Raina Rayesh was on the scene of a shooting in the Elm Park area and couldn’t meet me at Marilyn Shaw’s apartment, but she gave me her blessing to do a follow-up. I appreciated it. In police work, you never want to do anything that gives the appearance of trying to steal someone else’s case. So if a colleague gives permission for a follow-up, it signals complete trust.
I was standing outside the apartment, trying to get a feel for what the killer might have seen when looking at the building. As I stood there, a tall Hispanic man stepped out of the main door and walked right up to me. “Can I help you, Detective?” he said with a light accent.
I gave the man a bemused look. “How’d you know I was NYPD?”
“Since that poor girl was killed, most all of the people coming around here are detectives or media types, or rubbernecker creeps. Besides, you look like a cop. And you’re driving an Impala.”
I laughed. The friendly man turned out to be the building super, and he gave me a tour of the building before we went to Marilyn’s apartment.
We stepped around the crime-scene tape, and as the super opened the door, he said, “Nothing’s been touched. Once the investigation wraps, I don’t know how I’ll ever rent this apartment again. Landlords are supposed to tell potential tenants if a violent crime happened in an apartment. It’s a tough sales pitch.”
“Can’t argue that,” I said.
“I get it, of course. And God knows I’m not the only one struggling with that these days,” the super said ruefully, raising his eyebrows in acknowledgment of the recent murders all across the city.
He told me to pull the door shut when I was done, and I thanked him, then suddenly found myself alone in the apartment. Once again, I noticed the relative tidiness of the scene, especially compared to Chloe’s and Elaine’s apartments—no blood smeared on the walls, nothing really excessive aside from a significantly sized rusty-brown stain on the hardwood, about six feet from the door.
Such death markers always saddened me—the loss they represented, the people who would miss out on the rest of their lives. If I ever stopped feeling that way, I’d retire. The desire to obtain justice for these victims is what gets homicide detectives like me out of bed in the morning. Unfortunately, it’s also what keeps homicide detectives like me awake at night.
