Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) (20 page)

Karp’s eyes drifted to another photograph on the wall—a black-and-white of a smiling young man in an army uniform.

“That’s my Dan,” Gladys said. “Stewart was only five and Meghan an infant when he shipped over to Vietnam.” Her voice caught. “He never came home.”

“You certainly did well raising your children,” Karp replied.

“Thank you.” The old woman smiled. “But to be honest, it was easy. They were both such good kids. Never any trouble really.”

Meghan cleared her throat and said, “Mr. Karp, I’m sure you didn’t come all this way to talk about our family. You said you had something you wanted to check out? Something to do with Stewie’s personal effects?”

Karp nodded. “I don’t want to get your hopes up. But something you said about this picture not being right jolted a memory. It might not mean anything, but I wanted to see if my memory was correct.”

“Of course,” Meghan said, and pointed to the staircase. “Stewie’s room is upstairs. Some of his things are in storage. But his clothes and some other things, like his wallet and watch, are still in boxes in his room.”

“That will be great,” Karp said, and followed her up the stairs with Fulton behind him.

Walking into Stewart Reed’s room was like entering the living space of a teenage boy. Apparently, his mother had kept it as it was when he left for law school. There were posters of rock musicians on the walls. A New York Mets baseball cap and another for the New York Jets hung on pegs. A large model of the Starship
Enterprise
was suspended with fishing line above a twin bed. Over in the corner, a bookshelf was lined with offerings that included
The Lord of the Rings, On the Road, The Naked and the Dead
, and
In Cold Blood
, all alphabetized by author’s name. There were several photographs of Stewart on the walls and on the neatly ordered desk: him in the marching band uniform of Maspeth High School, and
with different pretty young women, apparently just before going out on a date or to a dance.

Karp noticed that Reed was well dressed even as a boy and a teenager. “He certainly had a flair for style,” he noted.

Meghan Reed laughed. “Yeah, he was always more of a clothes horse than I was,” she said. “Some guys get jobs in high school so they can buy cars or stereos. But whatever Stewart wasn’t putting away for college, he spent on his clothes. And pity the poor younger sister who accidentally spilled something on one of his shirts or stepped on the toe of his shoe.” She pointed to several boxes in a corner opposite the bookshelf. “Those are the things brought from his apartment.”

“Do you know if they contained the clothes he was wearing the night he died?”

Meghan’s eyes widened for a moment, but then she shook her head. “No, I picked those up from the funeral home. The suit is hanging in the closet.”

“What about his shoes?”

Meghan walked over to the closet, opened the door, and leaned over to retrieve a pair of dress shoes. “These?”

Karp stepped forward and carefully examined the Allen-Edmonds. Then he handed them to Fulton. “Clay, do you notice anything?”

The detective looked the shoes over and nodded. “Yeah, the toes and tops of the shoes are scuffed.”

“That strike you in any way?”

“Only that I’ve known Stewart for close to ten years, and in all of that time, not once did I ever see him wear a pair of scuffed-up dress shoes. Hell, the man even kept his running shoes spotless. In fact, I never saw a hair out of place, a stain on his shirt or suitcoat. He was one fastidious cat, man.”

Karp smiled. “Exactly.”

Meghan leaned over to get a better look at the shoes and then looked back to the two men. “What’s it mean?”

“Maybe nothing,” Karp replied. “But that’s what I was thinking about when I, too, thought that something wasn’t right with the picture. When I saw Stewbie that night, I only glanced at what he
was wearing. It didn’t seem important, so I didn’t make any note of it. But looking back, it suddenly struck me…Stewbie’s shoes were scuffed. And I knew that was what was bothering me. Put it together with all the rest—the Catholic background, his character as a man—and it doesn’t add up.”

“So what’s your next step?” Meghan asked.

“Well, I think I may want a second opinion on Stewbie’s autopsy,” Karp answered. “I need to get back to the office and make a call to Denver.”

“Swanburg?” Fulton asked.

“Yeah, I want to bring Jack in on this,” Karp replied. He turned to Meghan. “I really don’t know if this will lead anywhere. But we’ll follow it until the road leads somewhere or dead-ends.”

“That’s all we can ask,” Meghan replied, and led them back down the stairs to where her mother was waiting.

When Karp leaned over to shake the older woman’s hand, she reached up for him and hugged him. “Thank you, Mr. Karp. I’m not looking forward to spending eternity without my son.”

“I can’t guarantee anything, Mrs. Reed,” Karp said. “But I promise you, I’ll give it my all.”

“I know you will, Mr. Karp. And I know you’ll prove that my Stewie did not kill himself. There is a reason you came to my home today, Mr. Karp, it was the Lord who asked you to come.”

As he and Fulton left the row house, Karp hoped that he hadn’t given a false hope to the women inside. He had almost reached the Lincoln sedan when Meghan walked out of the door and called to him. She was carrying a briefcase, which she held out to him as she came down the steps of the landing.

“Mom wanted me to give you this. Apparently he left this over here that night when he picked up Mom for dinner and forgot it. He called her just before…before he died and said he’d pick it up the next day. She forgot about it until now. We don’t know what’s in it, but we hope that didn’t cause a problem.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Karp replied, taking the briefcase. “I’ll take a look and see if there’s anything that belongs at the DAO. Then I’ll return it and any personal effects.”

“Go ahead and give it to one of your guys who needs it,”
Meghan replied. “It’s a pretty expensive one…Stewie always liked nice things. We gave it to him at Christmas a few years ago, but the engraved ‘SR’ tag comes off. Oh and here’s the key to it from his key ring.”

“Thank you,” Karp replied. “I have someone in mind who I think would appreciate the thought that it was his.”

Inside the Lincoln and headed back to Manhattan, Karp used the key to open the briefcase. There wasn’t much inside of it. Just a photograph of a pretty brunette woman standing next to a young boy dressed in a cowboy hat, a vest with a sheriff’s star pinned to the chest, and fringed chaps. The boy held a toy six-shooter, which he was pointing at the camera.

There was a yellow sticky note on the back of the photograph with the words “
pantaloni di cuoio dispari
” written in Reed’s neat penmanship. He was reminded of the conversation in his office with Guma, Murrow, Katz, and Reed.
“I still have a copy of the photograph in the file, he’s all dressed up like a little cowboy…in fact, I’m working on something one of our witnesses—that Italian guy, Hilario Gianneschi—said that may actually be related.”

Karp turned the photo back around and looked at the little boy with the gun.
What did Stewbie see in this photograph?
he wondered, and then took out his cell phone and punched in a number. A few rings later, a man answered. “Jack? Butch Karp. Have you got a minute?”

“Y
OU’RE A BAD MAN,” THE VOICE SAID.
“Y
OU’RE GOING TO KILL
a lot of people.”

“Quit sniveling,” Erik said with disgust. “You’ve always been such a goody two-shoes.”

The voice sounded young, like that of a boy. “One of us has to try to be nice,” it replied. “Or we’ll all go to hell because of you.”

Erik laughed but it was not a pleasant sound, just cruel and mocking. “Well, what are you going to do about it,
little
brother? You’ve never had the balls to stand up to me. Oh, I forgot, as a perpetual ten-year-old, you don’t have any balls.”

“Oh yeah? I did that time at St. Patrick’s Cathedral when you were going to do a bad thing to my friend Lucy. It ruined your big plans, too.”

“And almost got us killed. I swear, Andy, you are such an idiot.”

“I wanted to die,” Andy retorted. “I wanted
us
to die. All of us. At least I would have done one good thing.”

“I would have done one good thing,”
Erik sneered as he mimicked the boy’s high-pitched voice. “I’d let you die if I could. You make me sick with your holier-than-thou bullshit, you snot-nosed little brat.”

“At least I don’t look like you,” Andy taunted. “You’re the boogeyman!”

The comment had the desired effect. Erik glared and then turned away to stare out the window of the Brooklyn Heights mansion at the Manhattan skyline, which was bathed in the copper light of the late afternoon autumn sun. He caught his reflection in the glass and shuddered, his ravaged lips pulling back from his perfect teeth in a snarl. He’d once been one of the most eligible and sought-after bachelors in New York City, the wealthy scion of the founder of a prestigious white-shoe law firm. Now he reminded himself of a snake shedding its scales, only instead of a fresh new skin, what lay beneath was a rotting, bloody, pus-marked horror mask. In another century, such a visage would have been attributed to leprosy, but that wasn’t the case.

And it’s Karp’s fault, him and his fucking family,
he thought. The hatred that roiled beneath his ruined countenance competed with the chill of fear that the thought of Karp dredged up.
Nemesis
. Ever since he’d met the man, the word had popped into his mind whenever he pictured his enemy’s face or remembered how the district attorney foiled his plans. Nemesis—the Greek goddess of retributive justice, only in this case nemesis was six feet five, still taut and muscular, and the district attorney of New York.

Erik calmed himself by thinking of the girl he held prisoner. He’d intended on raping Lucy Karp in St. Patrick’s and only his “little brother’s” interference had prevented it. Still, he’d fled with her as his hostage, fantasizing how he would wait and then someday send Butch Karp photographs of his impregnated daughter.
Sweet revenge for dear old Dad.
But then that lunatic Grale showed up in the nick of time and the end result was Lucy’s rescue and this…this…
this monstrosity of a face
.

There was a knock at the door. “Stay out of sight, Andy,” he told the voice. “I don’t need you fucking this up again.” When Andy didn’t respond, he shouted, “Come in!”

The door opened and Crawford entered. The congressman smiled and extended his hand as he walked across the floor. “So tonight’s the big night.”

Erik ignored the hand and comment, but noticed that Crawford kept his eyes averted from his ruined face. He reached for the silver mask and fastened it in place. “Is everything ready in Trinidad?”

“Yes,” Crawford replied. “As soon as word is received that the Sheik is safely in our hands, everything else will be set in motion.”

“The Sheik,” Erik scoffed. “Everybody’s so dramatic. What is this, a comic book? Is Karp Batman? Does that make me the Joker…or the Riddler? Perhaps we should refer to Nadya as Catwoman—she’d look great in a tight leather suit.”

Crawford started to laugh but stopped when he saw the blue eyes behind the mask blazing with anger. “Do you think we can count on Grale showing up tonight with al-Sistani?” the congressman asked to cover his blunder.

Who knows when you’re dealing with a madman?
Erik thought, suppressing the little voice in his head that added,
Two madmen.
But he was quite sure that Grale would arrive as scheduled.

It was good to know an enemy’s weakness. Ever since the St. Patrick’s debacle, he’d been aware that Grale had a weakness for Lucy Karp. However, because he himself could not love a woman, and used them only for his pleasure, he had not at first thought of her as his opponent’s Achilles’ heel. Only when the traitor Treacher appeared at a certain import-export business and gave the password “Flashfire” as a sign that he was helping al-Sistani, and suggested that Lucy be taken hostage, had Erik seen the possibility.

The question had been whether to trust the filthy Judas who suggested it. Greed was something Erik understood. The promise of riches—indeed Treacher had already been paid an initial amount as promised by al-Sistani—had to be a terrible temptation for a bum on the streets. He himself would have jumped at the chance under similar circumstances, so he was inclined to believe it anyway.

Still, he didn’t just buy the man’s story without corroborating evidence. He’d been convinced by a spy he had among the ragged human offal who called themselves the Mole People. The spy told him that Grale was showing signs of increasing mental illness and a growing obsession with Lucy Karp. He seemed to consider himself the self-appointed guardian angel of the entire Karp family, except for the young woman he desired.

Perhaps he grows tired of spending cold nights alone beneath the streets of New York,
Erik mused.
Who better to warm your bed than an unwilling wench?

The depth of his obsession seemed confirmed when Lucy Karp’s abduction was reported to Grale. The spy described Erik’s enemy as having turned into a frothing-mad lunatic. And when he learned that one of his own, Treacher, had been behind it, he’d sworn to kill the man in the most horrible way he could devise.

Erik thought it funny to use Treacher as the go-between to carry his message: al-Sistani for Lucy Karp.
“If I return, he’ll know the deal is on,”
Treacher had said, trembling before the dilapidated throne of David Grale. The madman had glared down at him, his hand around the handle of his long knife, the tip of which he’d buried in the arm of the chair when the preacher was brought before him.
“If I don’t, there’s no deal and Lucy dies.”

Treacher was allowed to return with a time and place for the exchange, as well as a counteroffer: al-Sistani for Lucy Karp
and
Edward Treacher.

“Don’t worry,”
Erik had told the frightened man.
“I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re going to be a wealthy man, and I’ll even help you disappear.”

Erik’s spy had reported the meeting between Treacher and Grale, and how Grale had later sworn to cut his former friend’s head off. It hardly mattered; if all went according to plan, neither Grale nor Treacher were going to survive the night. As he’d told Dean Newbury, Lucy Karp was more than just a commodity to be traded for al-Sistani; she was the sacrificial lamb he would use to lure Grale into a trap.

Erik shuddered with the anticipated pleasure of killing the man. If Karp was his
nemesis
, then Grale was the sword of retribution. When he was dead, Lucy Karp would be at Erik’s mercy again. And there would still be enough time to torment Karp with knowing his daughter was suffering at his enemy’s hands before the district attorney also met his fate.

“Grale will show,” Erik assured Crawford.

“What about Karp?”

“What about him?”

“Well, I’m not superstitious,” Crawford replied. “But that guy or some member of his family always seems to have your number.”

Quick as a snake, Erik slapped the congressman across the face,
hard enough to knock him to the floor. “I’ll take care of Karp,” he said. “Just make sure you’ve done your part, or I swear you’ll wish you were dead.”

Crawford got up on an elbow and rubbed his bleeding lip. He swallowed hard and nodded. “I understand,” he said. “I’m ready.”

“Good,” Erik replied. “Now get out of here. I need a nap before I’m off to renew my acquaintance with Miss Karp and David Grale.”

When the congressman had picked himself up and left, Erik turned back to the view of Manhattan. The sun had set and a gray mist was rising from the rivers and the harbor. The lights of the city’s skyscrapers and the Brooklyn Bridge were winking on.

Erik rubbed his brow. He needed a nap; the headaches were getting worse—sometimes he seemed to even black out and couldn’t account for time. He looked again at the skyline; it made him feel better to imagine how it was about to change.

Soon,
he thought,
they’ll bow before me like before a king, and then they’ll all regret what was done to me. Karp most of all.

Lucy felt another presence in the room where she sat hooded, naked, and bound to a chair, shivering in the dark, her hair still wet from the last visit by her torturer. But she had not heard the door open or anyone in the room, until the slight rustling of cloth, as if someone in a robe or dress was moving around her.

“Prepare yourself, my child,
he’s
coming,” a woman said softly in Spanish.

“St. Teresa?” Lucy’s voice was tinged with fear. While to some, having a patron saint might sound reassuring, St. Teresa of Avila’s presence meant that imminent, potentially fatal danger was near.

“Yes, it is I,” the apparition replied. “You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Lucy tried to gather her thoughts to answer the saint. She had no idea where she was…
except I know we crossed a bridge,
she’d told herself.
I could hear it when the sound of the tires on the road changed. But New Jersey? Brooklyn? Queens?
The only man she’d seen since she’d been dragged into the building, stripped of her
clothes, and searched was her torturer, Abu, a hulking Yemeni who rarely spoke except to interrogate her. When he was gone, the room was dark and silent; no outside noises or light penetrated the space. The only other human contact was the voice of a man who called himself Erik, who issued orders to Abu over a cellular speakerphone with a lisping yet somehow familiar voice.

Lucy shook her head. “I can’t think,” she told the saint.

After her abduction, she’d assumed that she would be questioned about what agency she worked for and who else was involved. So she was prepared and refused to answer. So they tortured her by waterboarding.

Abu would come into the room, lay the chair on its back with Lucy strapped in, and then pour water over the hood. It mimicked the process of drowning through forced suffocation and the inhalation of water; if she tried to breathe, all she got was water, down her nose, down her throat. Intellectually she understood that she was not really drowning, but there was no way as she gagged and convulsed to convince her body or her subconscious mind that she wasn’t dying.

Her torturer seemed indifferent to what he was doing. Except for a brief comment before the first time—“for my brothers at Guantanamo”—he seemed to neither enjoy nor dislike tormenting her. He asked his questions dispassionately, and even when challenging or accusing her, his voice rarely displayed much emotion.

Lucy tried to resist. When she realized that she would not be able to hold out, she even hoped that Abu would make a mistake and kill her. But she soon realized that Abu was very skilled, and she would not be allowed to die—at least not until they had what they wanted. So she’d decided to begin reluctantly answering questions while she was still somewhat coherent and could control what she talked about.

Lucy first stalled by answering some of Abu’s questions in a variety of the languages she was adept at speaking, as though she’d partially lost her mind but was trying to cooperate. At first this confused Abu, who stopped the torture apparently to confer with his superior and possibly interpret what she’d said, which were essentially nonsense rhymes. When he returned, he punished her with a
session in which he didn’t even bother to ask any questions. But he said that when he returned the next time, she would answer “truthfully in English” or the waterboarding would begin immediately.

When he returned, she answered his questions in English. But she did so as she’d been taught by one of Jaxon’s men, a survival specialist, with partial truths and information that was either already known to her captors or harmless to her people. She said she worked as an interpreter for a VIP security firm run by former FBI agent Espey Jaxon. They did work for private companies and individuals, as well as the government.

“Then what were you doing in Dagestan?”
Abu asked.

Lucy wasn’t surprised. She thought her abduction would be tied to Nadya Malovo and that by answering at least somewhat truthfully, she would be perceived as cooperating without revealing any new information.
“I was there as an interpreter for a team attempting to catch a terrorist named Ajmaani.”

“You were there to assassinate this person,”
Abu accused.

“I was part of a team sent to kill her,”
she agreed.
“But my job was to interpret and help the team by speaking for them when necessary.”

“Why was the team sent to kill Ajmaani?”

Lucy shrugged against her bonds.
“She’s a terrorist,”
she responded.
“If there was more to it than that, no one told me. We received information that she was in Dagestan, and our clients asked us to eliminate her.”

“The terrorist U.S. government, you mean,”
Abu said.

“I’m not given that information,”
she replied.
“I’m just an interpreter.”

Suddenly, Abu slapped her—hard but not as hard as she would have expected. Still, it was a rare demonstration of emotion.
“Liar!”
he said.