Spectrum (The Karen Vail Series) (33 page)

50

>JUNIOR’S RESTAURANT

1102 8th Avenue

Brooklyn, New York

Present day: Wednesday, July 16

Junior’s was founded in 1950 and claimed to serve New York’s best cheesecake, the choice of actors, singers, prominent politicians, professional athletes, and authors.

It also served a pretty good breakfast, and Russo had suggested it as a meeting place where he, Protch, and Vail could spread out in the back and grind through the details of the Hades case, point by point.

Junior’s served lunch too—a good thing, because not only did Russo think they’d be there all day, but because he couldn’t order a piece of cheesecake for breakfast without getting an argument from Vail … though she claimed she might “allow” him to have some later in the day.

The waiter sat them down and handed out menus. Vail dumped their cardboard filing box on the chair to her left and then leaned back to study the framed photos on the wall, most with a Brooklyn Bridge theme: black-and-white photos, art deco drawings, and pen-and-ink architectural sketches of the structure, along with an authentic yellow reflectorized street sign commemorating its centennial:

BROOKLYN BR

CLOSED

ALL DAY

MAY 24 1983

“Always good to get together with you two,” Proschetta said, “but other than having a whole lot of free time now, I’m not sure what I can do to help you out.”

Vail wanted to tell them about her engagement, but they had a job to do and she did not want to take time out of their important session, and divert their energies, from the task at hand. If they had time later, or if they took a break, she would pass on the news.

“You’re not sure what you can do to help?” She pushed aside the breakfast menu. “You had forty-three years on the job. That experience counts for something.”

Russo looked at Vail over the top of his menu. “I think it counts for a lot.”

“I was kidding.” Vail turned to Proschetta. “First off, our case involves an obsession with Greek women. And you know the Greek community. You spent time in Astoria, right?”

“About fifteen years, yeah. At the 114th. I told you about that case I had with Dominic Crinelli and that family back in 1973—”

“Wait a minute.” She looked at Russo and her mind flooded with such a rush of excitement she could not form the thoughts, or the words, fast enough. “Crinelli. The Greeks. The women— Your case with Crinelli, the kid.”

Proschetta chuckled. “Karen, you’re not making much sense. But yeah, like I was saying, I told you about that case twenty years ago. At Yonah Shimmels.”

“Yeah, yeah. When Crinelli beat the rap. And the kid they kidnapped, chained to the railroad tracks—”

“Hang on a second,” Russo said, setting his menu down and turning to Proschetta. “I remember that, when you broke your knuckles with the rock trying to bust the chain.”

“Right. This Greek family had all sorts of trouble, then the kid was taken—”

“They were Greek?” Vail asked. “The family, that kid?”

“Yeah, Astoria had—has—a strong Greek population.”

Vail reached across the table and grabbed Russo’s forearm. “This is the connection. This is it, I know it.”

“Well,
I
don’t know it,” Proschetta said. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Talk in complete sentences, okay?”

“Okay, fine,” Vail said. “Let’s back up.” She recapped the time line of the Hades case for Proschetta. When they finished, Vail sat back. “We’re definitely onto something here.”

“Go on,” Russo said.

Proschetta inched forward in his chair. “Yeah, so this guy had a fight in a bowling alley. The one who started it—something with a G. George or Greg. Gregory. No, Gregor. He got injured pretty bad, ended up blind and disabled. The community ostracized the other guy—pretty sure his name was spelled like a spice.”

“Herb?” Russo asked.

Proschetta frowned.

“What? That was a good guess. I was gonna say rosemary, but—”

Proschetta snapped his fingers. “Basil. Basil worked as a furrier in a factory owned by Gregor’s dad. After the fight, his father fired Basil and no one in the area would hire him. Can’t remember exactly what happened, but Basil tried to patch things up with Gregor. That didn’t go too good, so Basil got desperate and told Gregor to tell his father that he wanted his job back or he’d tell the police his dad was importing illegal furs from Greece. Next thing, Basil’s beaten to death by four thugs. Dominic Crinelli’s the one who got fingered.”

Vail stood up and began pacing. “So we’ve got a Greek family whose lives are destroyed by a fight this guy Basil had with this other guy Gregor—who I’m guessing was mobbed up?”

“Right again,” Proschetta said. “The family Crinelli worked for, the Castiglias, had their hands in that fur business. They were skimming the profits. When Basil threatened to rat out the furrier, the Castiglias protected their investment.”

Vail spun around and faced Russo. “Hang on a minute. You said this Gregor was blinded in the fight, right? Our UNSUB slashes,
destroys
the eyes.” Vail sat back down. “Protch, tell me about the fight.”

Proschetta laughed. “You’re kidding, right? That was forty years ago. I’ve done pretty damn good remembering this much.”

“We need that info. This is the Hades case, right here.”

Proschetta pulled out his phone. “Let me make a call, see if they can pull the sixty-one from the file.” He dialed and wandered off.

Russo and Vail sat and stared at each other. “We got everything but the link to the women.” She looked up to find Proschetta standing next to her.

“Just remembered something. After that episode when the kid was kidnapped, the family moved.” Proschetta stopped, twisted the phone handset back in front of his lips. “Yeah, pull the file. I’ll be right over.”

He ended the call and continued: “They moved to Ellis Island. They felt threatened—or they were threatened, I can’t remember—by the Castiglias. Yeah, they told them to get out of town and not come back. But one of ’em had elderly grandparents in a home or something, so they moved, but not so far that they couldn’t visit them.”

“Ellis Island?” Vail asked. “Wasn’t it abandoned?”

“Yeah,” Russo said. “Park service turned the main immigration building on Island 1 into a museum in the late ’70s, I think, then did a major renovation in the 80s. But the hospital complex, Island 3, they’ve never done anything with those buildings. Too expensive.”

“They lived there for several years,” Proschetta said. “Like maybe ’73 to ’80 or ’81. Until their daughter was murdered.”

“Wait, what?” Vail stood up from her chair. “Their daughter was murdered?”
The first vic?

“Probably ’80 or ’81. The mother—Laura, or something like that—she had me called out to the crime scene, a high school in the city, near Battery Park. She refused to talk to the detectives. Would only talk to me. She was worried the Castiglias were involved, and back then, in the ’70s, the Castiglias had people in the department on their payroll. She didn’t trust anyone but me.”

Vail’s mind was awash with questions. “We need the autopsy photos from that case. We need the whole case file.” She pointed at Russo. “Can you call? Get it?”

Russo started dialing.

“Did the vic have a design on the back of her neck? The daughter?”

Proschetta canted his eyes up toward the ceiling as he thought. “Not that I can remember.”

“An X,” Vail said. “With letters in the quadrants formed by the X?”

“Wait, an X. Yeah, there was an X drawn on the base of the skull.”

Russo raised a hand and wiggled his fingers in front of Proschetta. “Deputy Inspector Proschetta will tell you exactly what we need.” Russo handed him the phone and rose from his chair. “I can’t fuckin’ believe this, Karen. The answers to this case have been in front of our noses the entire time. I feel so stupid. And incredibly happy.”

“We need to go to Ellis Island.”

“Ellis Island? You heard Protch. They left there thirty-some odd years ago.”

“Some serials have a place, a sanctuary, where they either do their killing or bring their trophies. They store the trophies there to relive the kills.s We have to search the hospital buildings. The whole island.”

“We’d need an army of officers.”

Proschetta hung up. “An army? For what?”

“Do you know where they lived on the island?”

“The old hospital buildings on Island 3, that’s all I know. A few days into the investigation, I was taken off the case. Not surprisingly, because it wasn’t my case to begin with.”

Vail pushed her chair in. “Let’s go. Harbor can take us over. I’ll call them on the way. We’ll start looking until you can get us a more specific location.”

“
If
I can get you a more specific location,” Proschetta said. “I’ll see if I can locate the mother. Laura. Or Lana. Or—”

“We’re taking the car,” Russo said. “I’ll have a uni pick you up.”

“Oh,” Vail said. “Whatever happened with the daughter’s case?”

“I called for an update at some point. It was—” He looked down at the table. “Oh, come on …” His head snapped up. “Jenkins. Horace Jenkins had the case. He said it went cold. They were looking at the girl’s brother, but they couldn’t make a case and, well, the kid had been through enough. He’s the one who was kidnapped by the Castiglias.”

“Oh, shit. Okay, I see where this is going.”

“I’m sure Jenkins worked the case up. The kid was a little strange. There was something off about him after the kidnapping. ’Course, back then, no one knew about post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“How was she killed?”

“Uh, suffocated. And they found a sponge soaked with chloroform at the scene.”

“Chloroform. To incapacitate her, quietly. Probably from behind. Cuts to the eyes?”

Proschetta shook his head. “Not that I remember.”

“Get in touch with Jenkins,” Vail said. “And try to locate the kid. Call us with anything. I have a feeling we’re gonna be there awhile.” She gave Proschetta a pat on the shoulder. “And you thought retirement was going to be boring?”

51

>BATTERY PARK

Lower Manhattan

Present day: Wednesday, July 16

They arrived at Harbor Patrol and found their ride waiting. The SAFE rigid inflatable boat had a rim of NYPD blue and a small light gray cabin, and was large enough to carry a handful of passengers.

Vail and Russo boarded and were greeted by the officer, who was decked out in cargo pants and a fleece jacket.

Vail followed him into the cabin and stood to the man’s right, at the control panel. After his radio chirped the all clear by the dock worker, he gunned the dual Yamaha outboard engines and they set off for Ellis Island.

He glanced over at Vail a couple of times, then asked, “Have we met before?” He apparently found his own comment humorous, because he laughed and quickly added, “No, that’s not a pickup line. I mean it. You look familiar.”

She quickly scanned his face. “You too. I was with the department back in the ’90s.”

“I’ve been at Harbor most of my career.”

She noticed his name badge—Prisco—and immediately placed it. “Nine-eleven,” Vail said. “You pulled me into that Burger King when the first tower fell.”

“That’s right.”

“If you don’t mind,” Russo said, “I’d rather change the subject.”

That makes two of us. Probably three.

Russo grabbed the knob of the rear cabin door and swung it open. “Gonna grab some air.”

“Hang on out there, loo. Don’t want to have to fish you outta the drink.”

“That would really screw up our day,” Vail said.

“You’re not kidding,” Prisco said with a chuckle. “Trust me, it’s happened. Not fun for the guy who takes the plunge.” He twisted around and checked on Russo, then said, “So, you left the department and went over to the dark side. The FBI.”

“Yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” She laughed, then steadied herself against the rock of a wave.

“Going over to the island on a case?”

The boat lurched a bit more violently on a larger wave. “Sorry about that. Water’s a little choppy today.” He turned around and yelled, over the engine noise, “Lieutenant, hang on, please!” He swung back and moved a lever. “Let me get out of the ferry’s wake.”

Vail tightened her grip, and as she reached for the bar with her other hand, saw a shimmering of silver on the floor. Maintaining her hold, she bent over and picked it up.

“Whatcha got there?” Prisco asked.

“An earring. A nice one.”

He glanced over. “Pretty. But it’s not mine. Honest.” He laughed. “Probably belongs to Maria. She’s got the night shift. You should bring it by the Harbor Patrol office when you get back, tell ’em it’s Officer Lopez’s.”

“Mind doing it when you get back there? I’ve got a full plate.”

“Yeah, no worries,” Prisco said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Vail handed it over and he slipped it into his pocket.

“And there she is,” Prisco said, gesturing with his chin toward the large immigration building as it became visible in the distance. “The place took a big hit from Sandy. Lotsa damage. They had to take some exhibits off the island because the windows and doors were trashed. Place was closed for months.”

“As a native New Yorker, I hate to admit it. But I’ve never been here.”

Prisco cut back on the engines and the boat slowed. “You know how many friends I got who’ve never been to the Empire State Building? Or the Statue of Liberty? It’s a thing with New Yorkers, I guess.”

A few minutes later, the main building passed before them. Vail imagined her ancestors coming over from Ireland, walking through those very doors, lugging all their possessions in one or two suitcases. She would have to try to find a moment when her mother’s mind was lucid enough to get some family history from her.

The water was calm around the inlet, which was a welcome development since Vail’s stomach was starting to get queasy from all the up and down motion.

“Where would you like me to drop you? Front of the building here, or around back?”

“We’re going to the old hospital complex.”

“That’d be Island 3. Let’s make it easy on you. There’s a small dock around back, north side. I’ll let you off and you can just hike southwest along Island 2 then hang a left, south, onto Island 3. It’s all connected.”

A couple of minutes later, they were disembarking onto the small pier.

“Want me to stick around, wait for you?” Prisco asked.

“No idea how long we’re gonna be. We’ll ring you up when we’re ready. At least one other detective’s gonna need to come over. Joe Slater.”

“Got it. If anyone’s coming over, I’ll be their ferry.”

Vail and Russo started walking along the path behind the buildings, past the Ellis Island bridge that led to New Jersey, en route to the hospital complex.

Russo’s phone vibrated as they made it to a narrow path along the island’s edge that followed the exterior of a long, enclosed brick hallway.

“I don’t see a way into that corridor,” Vail said.

Russo answered his phone while Vail pulled out her BlackBerry and called up Google Earth. She zoomed into the satellite imagery and waited a second for it to load. Although she struggled to make out details on her small screen, it looked like they could access most of the buildings from the periphery.

Russo hung up. “That was Protch. He’s still working on locating the file, but it’s been archived. They’re trying to dig it out right now.”

Vail knew the department didn’t computerize key aspects of its records system until—unbelievably—2007.

“Protch remembered that Livana, the mother, told him that they’d fixed up the building they were living in. So if we can find one that’s in better condition than the others, that’s probably it.”

Two-thirds of the way along the brick corridor, they came across a break in the building about twenty feet wide. Part of the roof was still intact, leading Vail to conclude that something had destroyed this missing section. They cut through and saw a couple of workers behind a dump truck.

“Hey, can we ask you something?” Vail held up her FBI badge as they approached the men. “We’re looking for one of the hospital buildings that’s in better condition than the others. Know which one that might be?”

“We’re just here rebuilding the seawall.” The men looked at each other. “Whaddya think,” one said to the other. “That corner building John pointed out on the walk-through.”

His colleague shrugged. “Probably.”

“How ’bout you take us over there?” Russo asked.

The man glanced at the badge clipped to Russo’s belt, then sighed. “Yeah, I can do that.”

He led the way along an old aggregate concrete sidewalk and past large brick buildings that must have been grand when new. The foliage was overgrown with weeds, wild grasses, and large trees.

“You should see pictures of this place when Ellis Island was fulla immigrants,” he said as he trudged along, his low-slung leather equipment belt clicking and clacking as the tools slapped against his thighs. “Buildings are kinda trashed inside, but it was once real nice.”

“Looks like it,” Vail said. The sound of crickets and what she thought were cicadas chirped loudly as they made their way past the buildings.

“Still,” the worker said, “it was a hospital, you know? If you were here, chances are good you were in a bad way, bad enough they didn’t want you bringin’ over that shit to the US and infecting people. And then there was the whacko psych ward.”

Whacko. Got it.

He led them to a building at the southern tip of the island, on the corner, and up a set of aging concrete stairs.

“This is it. Hope it’s what you’re lookin’ for.” He turned and headed back the way they came.

“Thanks,” Vail said.

The man raised a hand, not bothering to turn around.

Russo grabbed the rusted knob and pushed the door open. The wood slat floors were bare, the varnish long since eroded and worn through. The walls were peeling chunks of plaster down to the brick substructure, and the metal fixtures were rusting.

Vail continued walking into another section of the building and stopped in the doorway. “Bingo.” This area was like a different world. The rooms were well cared for. Although the paint had faded and some of it had been absorbed into the dry, thirsty walls, the place had a lived-in feeling.

“This was a home,” Vail said.

“Not bad, if they were living here for free.”

Vail walked into a fairly sizable room with four windows. Old-style radiators sat by each window and what appeared to be a framed mattress of some sort was pushed up against a far wall. She moved closer and crouched in front of it, poked at the material. “This was a waterbed.”

“Were waterbeds around in the mid-’70s?”

“If they weren’t, this wasn’t their place.”

“Look it up.”

As Russo scouted the hallways and other rooms, Vail pulled out her BlackBerry and discovered that the beds were, in fact, being sold at that time. “That’s a yes,” she said. “So this was probably their house. Russo?”

“In here. Found something.”

Vail followed his voice and pushed open a partially closed door. Flowery drawings covered the yellow walls. “A girl’s room.”

A poster was hanging from an area over the bed. Half of it had fallen and only the back was visible. Vail walked over and lifted it up, exposing the front image: Lee Majors as the Six Million Dollar Man.

“Definitely a girl’s room,” Russo said. “The murdered teen.”

Aside from a few pieces of furniture, which were empty, there was not much there. Vail paused at one of the windows. “Hell of a view of the Statue of Liberty. It’s so close.”

“C’mon. Let’s get on with this.”

They moved across the hall.

“Boy’s room,” Vail said, looking around at the blue walls. “And a fireplace.”

She walked closer to the area where the waterbed was located and noticed markings on the wall. “Look at this.” She leaned in close and—“Holy shit. Is that what I think it is?”

Perfectly drawn Xs were lined up in rows and columns, each no larger than an inch.

Russo cleared his throat. “I got that feeling. You know what feeling I’m talking about?”

“The rush of excitement in your chest? That you’ve scored something big and you’ve taken a major step toward finding your suspect?”

“That’d be it.”

She knelt down low to examine the Xs more closely—and a floorboard shifted beneath her weight. Ow. She moved to ease the pain on her kneecap and noticed that the wood panels had been cut transversely.

“Russo, help me with this.”

“What’d you find?”

“I think a trapdoor to something.” Vail tried to pry the slat up with her fingernail, but Russo produced a pocket knife. She unfolded it and jammed the tip underneath the edge, lifted the section up and— “There are books in here.” She pulled out her BlackBerry and shined the light into the space. Seeing no rodents or booby-traps, she stuck her hand into the hole and pulled out multiple hardcovers and paperbacks, one or two at a time. They were covered in dust.

“You got gloves?”

Russo checked his pockets and rooted out a flattened mass of polyvinyl. He knelt beside her as Vail separated them, then stretched them over her hands and read off the titles of the books.

“
The Cannibal: A Study of Prolific Killer Albert Fish
, by Mel Heimer;
Confessions of the Boston Strangler
, by George Rae;
Bloodletters and Badmen
, by Jay Robert Nash;
Urge to Kill
, by Ward Damio;
The Co-ed Killer
, by Margaret Cheney;
The Torture Doctor
, by David Franke;
Chloroform in the Murder of William Marsh Rice
, by Shoshana Ellis;
The Killers Among Us
, by Douglas Underwood.” She looked at Russo.

“Holy fuck. We’ve got him, Karen.”

“Yeah, but who is he?”

“Dmitri,” Russo said. He gestured toward the edge of one of the books, which bore the name, written in pen across the yellowed pages.

“D,” she said. “And where are we? Ellis Island—an E and an I. The X logo he leaves on his vics. An E, an I, a D—and then a lowercase letter, seemingly in sequence, corresponding to each one of his kills.”

“So the kid had a fascination with killing. Anything else down there?”

She reached in and found another hardcover—
How Humans Die
—and a collection of
Playboy
magazines. She carefully thumbed through a few of the books, and noted some markings on the inside of the chip board covers.

“So what do you make of this?”

Vail thought a moment. “Assuming he was a young kid when he moved here, he found something that piqued his interest. Judging by the prices written in pencil on the inside of the covers, these were used books. I’m guessing he saw them at a store in the city and bought them, then squirreled them away under the floorboards so no one else would find them. He obsessed over killing and death. Maybe it met his curiosity, fed his dreams, fantasies, until it was no longer sufficient and he decided to experiment, to find the thing that would satisfy that building need.

“Common thing is for the offender to kill a small animal, sometimes cut it open to explore, see what’s inside. He does that, it excites him. Eventually, when it no longer satisfies him, he goes full bore, on a human. His sister may’ve been the first. She’d be easiest because she was here. He knew her, knew her habits. If he’s a psychopath, he has no problem with killing a member of his family. He’s got no bond, no connection.”

“Isn’t that more risky?”

“Absolutely, but psychopaths live for risk: the riskier the situation, the more thrilling it is, the more fun it is. But until we have the complete picture, we don’t know his reasoning. Even if we catch him, we still may never know. That said, maybe all the scrutiny after his sister’s death taught him to choose vics that have no direct connection to him.”

“That could be the rookie mistake we were looking for.”

“Right.” But she was preoccupied with the stack of books. “Wait a minute.
How Humans Die
—I think that was the one taken from Detective Berger’s mailbox, the book Carole Manos’s family found under the couch after CSU left. They brought it to the squad, it was put in Berger’s mailbox, and he vouchered it.”