Blood on the Sun (CSI: NY) (10 page)

There was only one person remaining to talk to. Flack told everyone that they could go. All of them looked at Joshua, who nodded, smiled, made it clear that he would be all right.

“His name was Joel Besser,” said Joshua in the interrogation room when the others were gone. “He was twenty-one years old.”

As the others had said, Joshua confirmed that Joel had volunteered to stay behind only minutes before the others had left to have lunch in the park. Joshua also confirmed that Joel was more than liked. He was loved.

“He was murdered not for personality or spirit,” said Joshua, “but because of what he represented.”

“Which was?” asked Flack.

“Heresy in the eyes of the closed-minded and ignorant,” said Joshua. “He was a Jew for Yeshua and that threatened people.”

“People?” asked Flack.

“Need I say it?” said Joshua, closing his eyes. “The Orthodox, not two blocks from here.”

“We’ll look into it,” said Flack.

“When can we have Joel’s body?”

“Up to the medical examiner,” said Flack. “Would you please pull your hair back from your forehead?”

Joshua complied.

There was a swollen and cut red bump at the man’s hairline.

“When did you get that and how?” asked Flack, indicating that Joshua could release his hair.

“About an hour ago,” said Joshua calmly. “I beat my head against the wall. You can see over there.”

Flack turned and saw the indentation in the plaster board. He also saw what appeared to be a slash of blood.

“Why?” asked Flack.

“To show my grief over our loss,” Joshua said. “The congregants watched and wept. When one of our people die, we want to share their pain. The Orthodox tear their clothes.

“We are Jews,” Joshua said, his voice starting to rise, “Jews who suffer from discrimination by other Jewish denominations and by Christians.”

“Where were you when Joel Basser was murdered?” Flack asked.

Joshua smiled knowingly and said nothing.

“Every person in your congregation says you left after five minutes in the park and didn’t come back till it was time to head back to the synagogue.”

“I left Morley Solomon in charge to talk about Einstein and the Messiah,” said Joshua. “It’s a passion of his.”

“And where did you go?”

“A bar,” said Joshua. “Babe Bryson’s. You can ask the bartender. I was there for about forty-five minutes.”

“Doing what?” asked Flack.

“Drinking,” said Joshua. “I’m an alcoholic.”

The well-worn wooden floor was decked with numbered red cones, which Aiden Burn had carefully placed around the chair where Joel Besser had been shot, as well as in a semi-regular line along each side of the continuous blood trail that led back to the storage room where the victim lay crucified on a cross drawn in chalk on the floor.

There was a single, creaking overhead fan turning slowly, producing nothing but noise. The smell of blood was warm and thick.

Aiden had taken photographs and blood samples and sprayed for fingerprints, although both she and Stella were reasonably sure the killer had worn gloves, an assumption supported by the fact that Aiden had found no prints on any of the four bolts driven into the dead man’s hands and feet.

Stella leaned close to the body of the young man and used a Sirchie vacuum on his shirt, pants, arms. Back at the lab they would compare the photos of the chalk marks at each of the crucifixion murder scenes. Stella could already see that the marks were a match, but with a difference. These chalk marks were done more evenly, straighter.

The words in Hebrew were printed with much more care than at the earlier crime scene. The killer had taken some time.

As for the finger-thick nails through the dead man’s palms and feet, they were much larger than those that had been used on Asher Glick. But they were driven in deeper. She had no doubt that Sheldon Hawkes would come to the same conclusion: the nails were driven in by someone using his left hand, someone powerful.

Aiden stepped into the storage room and looked around, taking more photographs. They had found no hammer, no extra nails. This time the killer had come prepared, brought his own tools.

Stella stood up and said, “He came through that door and went right up to Besser and shot him twice. Daylight. Windows uncovered. Could have been seen. Then he dragged the body back here. He picked a bad time and place to kill.”

“Killing Glick and crucifying him in a synagogue on a weekday morning took time. That was a bad time and place to kill too, but he got away with it,” said Aiden. “At least for now.”

“He likes to take chances,” said Stella. “Why?”

“Let’s go back to the lab, wait for the ME’s report and see what we’ve got,” said Aiden.

Stella nodded her agreement.

The paramedics were parked on the street. The street was full of people of various colors, sizes and ethnic clothing. Aiden had taken photographs of the crowd. Not likely the killer would be out there, but she would check them against the photographs of the crowd outside the synagogue in which Asher Glick had been murdered.

Aiden knew it was possible that several innocent, curious people in the photographs were at both crime scenes. The murders had taken place only a few blocks from each other.

Aiden signaled to the paramedics, who came in with a body cart. She guided them around the cones to the small back room. One of the paramedics was a woman, black, pretty, no more than twenty-five. Her shoulders, arms and legs were well-muscled. The man was about the same age, white, big, strong.

They looked down at the body, showing no emotion as Stella said, “Leave the nails in the body. Move them as little as possible. Pry them up slowly. It’s going to be a little tough. They’re deep in the floor.”

Both paramedics nodded. They had the tools and the experience and now they had a new story, one of the more interesting ones, something they could tell their family and friends.

“ ‘Sheep follow sheep,’ ” said the man, whose black-on-white plastic nameplate identified him as Abrams. He was looking down at the words written in chalk at the foot of the body.

All three women looked at him.

“That’s what it says,” said the man. “Hebrew. I think it’s from the Talmud. He spelled sheep wrong.”

The phone call came late in the afternoon while Mac was sitting alone going over the computer-generated crime scene images Danny had created, checking the Internet for information on linden trees and their parasites.

“Someone wants to talk to the CSI in charge of the Vorhees case,” the lab tech who had taken the call said.

“Man?”

“Yes.”

“And he said ’CSI’?” asked Mac, who was looking at the screen, where a pulpy white creature was inching its way along the rim of a heart-shaped leaf.

“Right,” said the lab tech. “You taking it?”

“Put it through,” said Mac. When he heard the click indicating an open line, he said, “Detective Taylor.”

“Kyle Shelton,” Shelton replied calmly.

Mac hit a button on the white phone carrier and put the phone back in its cradle. The call, now on speaker, was being automatically traced.

“What’s on your mind?” asked Mac, who was busily going to the desktop file on the Vorhees case. He opened it and quickly found the pages on Kyle Shelton.

“You ever serve in the military?”

“Marines,” said Mac.

“Me too,” said Shelton, “but you know that.”

“I know it,” he agreed. “Is the boy alive?”

“Depends,” said Shelton. “Life and death are transitions, a continuum.”

“Is he alive?” Mac asked again.

“Yes,” said Shelton wearily.

“You killed his family,” said Mac.

“ ‘I am become Death, shatterer of worlds,’ ” said Shelton. “You know who said that? J. Robert Oppenheimer when he saw the first atomic explosion.”

“You’ve been playing games with us,” said Mac. “Why?”

“Games aren’t over,” said Shelton. “I have a present for you.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ve had time to trace this call,” Shelton said. “Come here and find it.”

“Shelton,” Mac said.

“Sorry,” said Shelton. “Out of time.”

He hung up. Mac pressed a button and a voice answered.

“We’ve got it. We’re on the way.”

“Where?” asked Mac.

“He called from the Vorhees’ house.”

Flack sat back, his hands folded on the table, his head cocked slightly to the right. He was looking at Joshua and waiting.

“I’m not a fraud,” said Joshua. “My mission is no small sordid cult.”

“Do the others know about the drinking?” asked Flack.

“No,” said Joshua. “I’m being tested by the Lord. Yeshua will show me the way.”

“Meanwhile you have to have a drink during the day,” said Flack.

“Yes,” said Joshua with a sigh, “but I do not get drunk and I’m always lucid and focused.”

“You kill Glick?” asked Flack.

“No.”

“Joel Besser?”

“Why would I kill one of our own?” Joshua said incredulously.

“Divert suspicion,” said Flack. “Or maybe he knew you killed Glick and was going to tell us.”

The room was air-conditioned, but the air-conditioner was unable to function at full strength during a heat wave like this one. Flack knew from experience that there would be deaths from the heat, mostly old people living with open windows and unable to afford a fan, unable to get up, go down a flight of stairs or two and walk a block or more to an air-conditioned food market or a museum or the library. More people would die because of the suffocating heat than from murder.

“You have a devious mind,” said Joshua.

“The job requires it,” said Flack without emotion. He opened a file folder in front of him.

“And the murder of an innocent like Joel Besser brings on the images I see waking and sleeping, the images that fade, but not completely, when I have a drink or two,” said Joshua.

“Images?” asked Flack.

“Black babies, children,” said Joshua, leaning forward. “Starving, ribs showing, leg bones without muscle, heads too large, pleading eyes too wide, beyond hope, mouths open, letting in flies. My faith is tested every moment of every day. Why would a benevolent God and His son allow this to happen? My mission is to understand. My weakness is that I am afraid the challenge is beyond my powers.”

Joshua put his head in his hands, sobbed and said, “In a very real sense, I am responsible for the death of Joel Besser. I brought him into our fold with the promise of fellowship, a return to his abandoned Jewish identity and the hope of eternal life.”

Joshua looked up at Flack, eyes wet, face slack.

“At times like this, I find it almost impossible to believe in those things. Do you believe in God? That there is a God?”

“Sometimes,” said Flack, looking down at the file in the open folder. “You have any idea who might want to kill Joel Besser?”

“Yes,” said Joshua.

“Let’s talk about it and then check your hands for gun residue.”

“Always a policeman,” said Joshua, shaking his head.

“Always,” said Flack.

The two uniformed officers at the Vorhees house had gone by the book. The problem was that the book changed every few years. A shrill sound was coming from a door across the entry hall. The two officers had gone to the door, weapons in hand, careful of where they were stepping in case there was trace evidence on the floor. The sound grew louder and more unpleasant with each step they took. The officer in the lead, Kitteridge, was young, broad shouldered, about thirty, a raspberry birthmark on his left cheek. The other officer, Nash, was overweight and probably close to retirement.

The younger officer pushed open the kitchen door. There was no one inside, but on the white table in the middle of the room was a telephone steadily giving off a low scream. As much as they wanted the noise to stop, they knew enough not to step into the kitchen and hang it up. The older officer closed the kitchen door and said, “Front, back?”