The Frenzy War (8 page)

“Hi, boy.” Warmth greeted Mace as he passed the dining room table and set his keys next to the mail. As he passed through the dining room to the living room with the dog at his heels, he saw Patty standing in her playpen with Anna Sanchez, her nanny, kneeling before her.

Patty's eyes lit up. “Dada! Dada! Dada!” She raised her arms, her fingers opening and closing.

Mace scooped up his daughter and rubbed his nose against hers. “Hi, sweetie. How was your day? Did you give Anna a hard time?”

Anna stood beside him. At twenty, she wore clips in her dark hair and a white sweater. She lived downstairs with her parents and two brothers. “No, Captain. She never gives me a hard time. She's a good girl.”

“If only she'd embrace potty training.”

“Oh, she's too young. All children are different. I know. I taught my brothers. Your dinner's in the oven. Take it out in half an hour.”

“Thank you. Have a good night.”

“You too.” Anna exited and closed the door.

Mace turned on the TV and switched the channel to Manhattan Minute News. “Did you have an interesting day?
Daddy didn't. Daddy never has interesting days at work anymore, but that's a good thing. Let's see what Mommy told Anna to make for dinner.” He carried Patty into the narrow kitchen and opened the oven door, with Sniper in tow. “Mm, baked ziti.”

Cheryl's voice came from the TV.

“Mama?”

Mace carried the toddler into the living room. “Mama will be home soon. She
did
have an interesting day.”

On TV, Cheryl stood outside the Detective Bureau Manhattan. “Police officials have released the following information regarding the murder of eighteen-year-old Jason Lourdes at the Synful Reading bookstore on St. Mark's Place this morning. The murder weapon appears to have been a
sword
…”

And so it begins,
Mace thought.

“Look at all these cars,” Karol said as she drove along the residential street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. “How many of them do you think are ours?”

Willy studied the parked cars as their headlights illuminated them. “All of them.”

She found a parking spot at the end of the long block. Willy got out and waited for her to join him on the sidewalk, and they backtracked to the house they wanted. Willy rang the doorbell, and when a uniformed PO answered the door, he flashed his shield. “Diega and Williams, Manhattan Homicide South.”

The PO guided them into the living room, which had been converted into a command station. Soares and Cato, wearing headsets, sat at a table upon which a digital recorder had been hooked up to the main telephone line. Another PO sat in a chair, two detectives on the sofa. Chinese food in containers waited on the coffee table.

“How's it going?” Willy said.

Soares stretched his arms. “We've had a few tips and dispatched patrol units to investigate, but nothing panned out. You?”

“Nada. Can we speak to the father?”

Soares nodded to the PO who had brought Willy and Karol in. The officer went upstairs and returned a minute later, followed by a paunchy, middle-aged man with black hair.

Cato gestured to Willy and Karol. “Mr. Wilson, this is Detective Diega and Detective Wilson from Manhattan Homicide South. They're investigating Jason's murder and would like to ask you some questions.”

Marshal Wilson regarded them with sagging eyes. “I already answered these guys' questions three times.”

“We're sorry,” Karol said. “It's what we do. You never know what piece of seemingly innocuous information could help us with both cases.”

Marshal sighed. “All right, let's get this over with.”

When Cheryl Mace walked through her living room door, she saw that Tony had already set the table, served dinner, placed Patty in her high chair, and was spoon-feeding their daughter macaroni and cheese.

“Mama! Mama! Mama!”

“Hello, my beautiful baby.” She kissed Patty, then her husband.

“How was your day?” Tony said. “I'm sure you heard the news.”

“I've been following your reports.”

“That isn't how you heard the news.”

“Willy called me.”

Cheryl sat at the table. “What did he say?”

Tony just smiled.

“Well, he didn't say anything to me, and I was the first reporter on the scene.”

“I'm sure you were.”

“I had to wait for Public Affairs to release a statement.”

“That's how it works.”

She sampled her ziti.
Not bad.
Anna was a good cook, even if her Italian food never quite tasted authentic. “Synful Reading. A decapitation by sword. What do you think?”

Tony wiped Patty's face and turned his attention to his own food. “I have no thoughts on the matter. I'm only a lowly administrator.”

Chewing her food, Cheryl studied his eyes. Two years earlier, Tony had told her he had witnessed the Manhattan Werewolf tear an upstate tribal policeman to pieces in the Village. He had gone so far as to call the perp a real werewolf: an actual flesh and blood and fur monster. She had advised him not to make that claim in his report, but he ignored her, and now she was grateful he had a job at all.

At the time, Tony had sent her out of town to stay with her parents, and while she was there, the governor had
sent the National Guard into the city … and the murders stopped. When she returned home, Tony had lacerations on his face, bite marks on one wrist, and a deep wound in his left shoulder. He told her he had been jumped by a gang. She didn't believe him, but she never pressed the point. The gashes on his forehead healed, leaving light scars that only turned visible when he grew angry, but the injury to his shoulder seemed permanent. He downplayed it, but she knew it caused him pain, and sometimes during thunderstorms his nightmares awoke her.

“Why did Willy call you, if not for insight?”

Tony shrugged. “I couldn't say.”

You mean you won't say.
Cheryl had started seeing Tony after he had apprehended Rodrigo Gomez, the serial killer known as the Full Moon Killer. She had been a reporter on that story and had interviewed Tony as the primary detective several times. When they became involved, he refused to answer any questions related to his job, a policy he continued to follow, other than during the period in which she had worked as a talk show producer.

“Didn't you tell me that someone from the Vatican took both halves of that broken sword?”

He looked at Patty. “Did I say that? I really don't remember.”

“Gabriel and Raphael Domini came to the crime scene. What was their sister's name?”

His eyes returned to hers. “Angela.”

“Right. Did she ever turn up again?”

Holding her gaze, Tony said, “No. I don't know where she is.”

At least he's telling the truth about that.

Valeria poured herself a cup of steaming tea. All six members of their party sat at the table in the second-floor office they had converted into a dining room. Other offices served as bedrooms. Valeria and Eun bunked together; Michael and Henri; and Myles and Angelo. They cooked in pairs, and tonight had been Myles's and Angelo's turn: chicken and beef souvlakis and a pasta salad. On the security monitor set upon a counter, the beast continued to rage at her imprisonment.

“She doesn't get tired,” Valeria said.

Michael sipped his coffee. “She will. A wounded wolf will run for days without stopping.”

“I'm worried about leaving it alone tonight,” Henri said. “Maybe one of us should stay behind.”

“We need everyone in the field. If it makes you feel better, tranquilize her before we leave. She'll still be out when we return.” Michael turned to Valeria. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. It's been a big day is all.”

Michael wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I suggest we all get a few hours' sleep. It's going to be an even bigger night.”

W
illy and Karol entered the Crime Scene Unit laboratory in the Forensics Division. Detectives in white lab coats sat with their backs to them, hunched over their terminals.

Matt Mostel waved from across the room, then met them in the middle.

“Are Rodriguez and Quarrel gone already?” Willy said.'

Mostel, pushing forty, spread his hands apart. “We find ‘ sticking to assigned shift times is more productive than working sixteen-hour days.”

“What a novel concept.”

“Where shall we start: blood samples, hair, or fingerprints?”

“Surprise us.”

“In that order, then.” Mostel led them over to a digital microscope that had a four-inch LCD screen and a built-in
camera. He switched on the screen, which lit up and revealed transparent orange blood cells with a pink hue moving around on a glass slide. “You're looking at a sample of my blood taken an hour ago.” He removed the slide and put in another. “Now you're looking at the vic's blood.”

The new cells squirmed faster.

“Are you sure you didn't confuse them?” Karol said.

Mostel offered her a patient smile. “He was murdered ten hours ago, but his blood cells are more active than mine.”

“Deprive a plant of sunlight and for a short period it grows faster than one that sees the light every day. Then it dies.”

Mostel blinked at Karol. “That was a very good analogy. But we don't know yet what the outcome will be for these little buggers.”

“They have to die sometime,” Willy said.

“I'm sure they will, but I'm more interested in how
busy
they are now. It isn't normal.”

He moved on to another microscope and activated its screen.

Willy scrutinized the image. “I see a black line.”

“That's a human hair. Take a good look at its thickness.” Mostel replaced the slide.

The new image showed a thicker black line.

“Okay, we went from a BIC fine point to a Sharpie marker,” Willy said.

“That's the hair of a dog. A Labrador, I believe. It's obviously much coarser.” He replaced the slide again. “This one was taken from the head of our victim.”

The third hair was thicker than the first and narrower than the second.

“And this one's juuuuuust right,” Willy said.

Mostel changed slides again. “We took this one from young Mr. Lourdes's chest.”

Willy narrowed his eyes. “They look the same to me.”

“That's because they are the same. Hairs removed from the vic's back, neck, arms, chest, stomach, pubis, thighs, calves, and feet are virtually identical in density.”

“That doesn't sound right,” Karol said.

“It isn't. Androgenic hair should be finer than hair found on a head.” Mostel led them over to his workstation, where he sat down and adjusted his monitor so they could see it better. Using a trackball, he brought up the image of a fingerprint. “This is Jason Lourdes's fingerprint on file.” A click brought up a longer fingerprint. “And this is the fingerprint of your victim.”