Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) (35 page)

Marlene groped for a chair and sat down, feeling suddenly nauseous and dizzy. “Kane has Lucy? How did it happen?”

Grale sighed and tried to explain. He said that he’d known in his heart that Kane wasn’t dead. “I could feel him, like a malignant tumor you can’t see but know is growing inside of you. But I wanted to believe that it was just my imagination, all those years of trying to catch and kill the demon that inhabits that body. But I was distracted by these other evil plots and evil men.”

One such plot involved the Sons of Man, and Amir al-Sistani was the key to finding out what they had planned and stopping them. “I decided to use him to draw them out, but I couldn’t just let him go and follow him. They’d know that something was up. I was trying to think of a way to accomplish this when Lucy asked to talk to me. We met the night her boyfriend left with Jaxon. I was waiting in the alley near the loft when she came around the corner with Gilgamesh.”

Lucy’s original goal was to ask him to release al-Sistani to Jaxon.
“We think he may have information about a large-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil,”
she’d pleaded.

“Where is Jaxon?”
he replied. He didn’t trust law enforcement agencies; they’d all been infiltrated by agents for the Sons of Man, and it had nearly cost him his life several times.
“How do I know they won’t just let al-Sistani go? Maybe that’s part of their plan…make sure he lives to fight another day.”

“Jaxon’s different,”
Lucy replied.

“Maybe,”
he said.
“I’d like to think so after working with him to stop the attack on the stock exchange. But what about his men? And just because he has al-Sistani doesn’t mean he’ll be allowed to interrogate or prosecute him. But why not ask me himself? Why send you…doesn’t he know I’m a dangerous lunatic…a ‘murderous vigilante,’ I believe the
Times
called me?”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,”
she replied.
“In fact, he ordered me not to try to contact you. You’re right, he does think you’re mentally unstable and, perhaps without even meaning to, hurt me.”

Grale’s face saddened as he finished relaying that last sentence, and Marlene saw how the comment had cut him. She also heard it in his voice when he said, “I told her that I could never hurt her.
Nor, if I could help it, would anybody else ever harm her.” He sighed, part of which came out as a deep, rumbling cough from his thin chest. “But I’m afraid I may have failed at that.”

“What happened?” Marlene said.

“I told her about my idea of following al-Sistani to the source of the danger. She thought about it for a minute and then came up with her plan. She said she wanted me to feign increasing madness”—Grale laughed—“not a very far stretch, and that I was growing obsessed with her. I knew that I had a spy among my people who was reporting to his unknown master about al-Sistani. We’d followed him one night to a meeting with his contact, who we later abducted and…made him want to talk to us…he didn’t have the name of who he worked for, just some powerful person, who I now know is Kane but didn’t then.”

Grale had been hoping to use the spy to reach this mystery terrorist when Lucy came to him with her idea. She wanted to be “kidnapped” by the enemy and held hostage until exchanged for al-Sistani.
“They’ll believe they have the upper hand,”
she’d said.
“And not suspect that al-Sistani is a Trojan horse.”

Grale leaned forward and looked earnestly into Marlene’s eyes. “I hope you’ll believe me when I say I told her no. I said it was too risky. But that feisty girl I once knew has turned into a tough-minded young woman, who told me that she was willing to risk her life if it meant saving hundreds or thousands of other lives. She gave me a choice. I could hand over al-Sistani to Jaxon, and she’d go happily home to New Mexico, or she was going to find a way to get herself kidnapped and then I’d have to make the exchange. At least this way, she said, I could protect her…. But she was wrong.”

With the spy’s help word got back to Kane that Grale was mad and infatuated with Lucy. Then it was arranged to have her kidnapped by Kane’s men with the help of “an old friend…Edward Treacher. If there is one bright spot in any of this, Edward received a rather handsome advance for his treason, which has been largely donated to this mission, though Edward did need a new coat and boots.”

“That doesn’t tell me what happened to my daughter,” Marlene replied.

Grale looked down at the floor. “The plan was that an exchange of prisoners would be arranged. That I’d get Lucy for my connubial bed…which would make you my mother-in-law.”

“David, please, get to the point?”

“Ah yes, sorry, my mind wanders sometimes these days,” he replied. “Anyway, I’d get Lucy, and Kane would get al-Sistani…with one of those microchip GPS locators that can be found in pet collars inserted into a shoe.”

“So what went wrong? Why isn’t my daughter home in New Mexico?”

Grale shook his head. “I don’t know. The exchange was going along as I thought it would. I knew they would try to ambush me and keep Lucy, so we had their people in our sights before we began the prisoner exchange. They were no problem, but then for some reason, Lucy insisted on going back to Kane.”

“Why?”

“Apparently she has some plan,” Grale replied. “She passed a message to my man and then demanded to go back to Kane.”

“What was this message?”

“Hold on, I’ll let you hear it from the man who heard it,” he said, and then shouted, “
Edward! Would you come in now, please
?”

The door opened and Edward Treacher stepped in, ducking slightly as he passed under the transom. “‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do….’ That’s Luke 23:34 and I think a little more than appropriate at this moment. Hello, Marlene.”

Treacher recounted how he’d led Lucy by a rope and collar to the clearing where he met up with Paulito, the dwarf, and al-Sistani. “Paulito was the spy,” Grale said. “But his purpose had been served, and we could not allow him to shout a warning to Kane.”

“‘The truth shall set you free…’ the truth and a slug from a .45 derringer,” Treacher said. “That’s John 8:32 by the way. Lucy told me there wasn’t much time, but she had to go back and needed me to remember her messages.”

Treacher’s eyes looked around wildly, as if he was back at Cleopatra’s Needle. “I told her there was no way. I begged her to go with me to David. But she wouldn’t listen. She said she was going to run back if I didn’t take her and that would look suspicious. She said
she had a plan—that ‘he is the only one who can stop himself’ and that she was the only one who knew how to make him.”

“I still don’t understand,” Marlene said.

“I don’t think anyone does yet,” Grale said. “But there’s more…Edward, tell her the messages.”

“Of course, one was that she believed that she was being held in Brooklyn, possibly Brooklyn Heights. She said, ‘Somewhere with a view. He said I’d have ringside seats.’ And she said that her dad should expect a call from Kane on her cell phone and to tell Jaxon because he’d know what to do. Then she made me take her back. I’m sorry, I tried to tell her.”

“I understand, Edward,” Marlene said. “It sounds like she had you between a rock and a hard place. In fact, that was a big risk for you to take her back to Kane. How did you know he wouldn’t just kill you?”

“Lots of good people are taking risks for good causes these days,” Treacher said. “If Lucy was willing to risk going back to that monster, then I could make it look like I was trying to make a buck by cheating David. Plus, I used the ol’ Br’er Rabbit reverse psychology gambit.”

“Br’er Rabbit?”

“Yes, you know, from the Uncle Remus folktales,” Treacher said. “It’s not very PC these days, but remember the story about the time when Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear caught Br’er Rabbit and were trying to decide what to do with him? They talked about roasting him, and hanging him, and drowning him, which he said was fine with him—‘hang me as high as you want’—as long as they didn’t throw him in the briar patch. ‘Anything but the briar patch.’ So of course the two dummies threw him in the briar patch only to find out that Br’er Rabbit had been born and bred there. And that’s how he escaped. So I pleaded with Kane not to send me back to David Grale. I cried that I was only trying to make a buck and that Grale would have my head. ‘Please don’t make me go down there.’ Which, of course, got me flung into the briar patch.”

“But since it wouldn’t do to have Edward survive,” Grale interjected, “which might make Kane suspicious, we cut off Edward’s head and rolled it under one of the streetlamps.”

“Actually, I borrowed the head from an old friend who’s a night watchman at Madame Tussauds wax museum on Forty-second Street,” Treacher continued. “He let me have the head of Hagrid, that big, hairy fellow from the Harry Potter movies. I have to say I don’t think I look quite that bad, but it was good enough when covered with some ketchup to fool Kane at a distance. I am going to be in some trouble, as David saw fit to roll the head across the hard ground and it suffered some damage, with rocks and debris stuck in the wax.”

“That’s very imaginative,” Marlene said. “But if I can get back to the subject, did my daughter say anything else?”

“She told me to tell David that no matter what happens to her, she said to keep the faith and his time will come.”

“I know faith is code for her being in danger,” Marlene said, “but what does she mean by your time will come?”

“I’m not absolutely sure,” Grale said. “I think she thought of it last minute and had to be a bit more oblique in front of Kane when she said it. But I believe she was telling me to find her, but when I do to wait until the right moment to strike. Where that will be and when, I’m still trying to ascertain.”

Marlene stood up and Grale rose, too. “What about al-Sistani,” she asked, “and the tracking device in his shoe?”

“We were able to trace it to Fulton Ferry Park beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. We located the shoe, but it was on a bum who found it in a Dumpster in the park.”

Marlene was silent for a moment, looking at the robed man who stood in front of her. She never knew quite what to make of him. Vigilante. Avenging Angel. Killer. “Why didn’t you come in and talk to Jaxon before my daughter thought this was the only way?”

Grale shrugged. “I thought about it, but decided against it. One, it would put him in an awkward position as a law officer in the company of an accused serial killer—me—doesn’t matter if they were all evil demons disguised as men, that’s not how the law sees it. But more important, what if Kane or any of the others involved are arrested and it comes out in the trial that Jaxon relied on information given to him by that same serial killer and religious wacko, some of it obtained through torture? I’m not a lawyer, but couldn’t that get the charges dismissed?”

Marlene nodded. “It’s possible.” Then without warning she reached out and slapped Grale hard across his face. “But that’s for playing God and leaving my daughter in the hands of a sociopath.”

Grale slowly wiped the blood from his mouth. “I deserved that and worse,” he said. “And I’m sure I’ll have to answer to a higher authority if something happens to Lucy.”

“That may be, David,” Marlene said icily, “but first you’ll have to answer to me.”

“K
ANE’S ALIVE AND HE’S GOT
L
UCY.”

No matter how many times Karp repeated the words Marlene had said to him when she got home the night before, they still made his heart pound. Each time, he had to remind himself of the little speech he’d given just the day before about trusting Lucy’s instincts and decision making.
But that was before Kane slithered back into the picture.

Just the thought of the man set his blood boiling. Kane was a man who slaughtered a schoolbus full of children and tried to murder thousands of other people in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, without batting an eyelid. And Karp knew his mortal battle with Kane wouldn’t be over until either he or Kane, or both, was dead.

Karp just prayed as he looked around the courtroom, trying to get his thoughts focused on the trial, that his daughter would not be a casualty along the way. For a moment it seemed surreal. Kenny Katz was toying with an apple at the prosecution table. On his dais, Judge Rosenmayer was looking over a note Karp had passed to the judge’s law clerk. He looked up and nodded to Karp.

“If we have no other business, I’ll ask that the jury be brought in,” Rosenmayer said.

Focus, Karp, it’s showtime. But Kane’s alive and he has my little girl!

Just a half hour earlier in his office, after Marlene had gone over her meeting with Grale the night before, Jaxon had suggested that he might want to ask the judge to postpone the trial.
“I don’t see how you’re going to be able to concentrate on Maplethorpe with Kane and Lucy on your mind,”
he’d said.
“And if you do get a call from Kane on Lucy’s phone, we’re going to want to be right on it.”

However, Marlene had a different opinion.
“I think you need to just push on with the trial,”
she’d said.
“Nothing’s probably going to happen right this minute, and you’re just going to sit around fretting. Plus, I wonder how carefully Kane is watching what we do. If you go ahead like nothing is different—instead of postponing a major trial and locking down with law enforcement authorities—maybe he’ll relax his guard.”

In the meantime, she said, he could keep his cell phone on vibrate,
“and let Kenny monitor it. Maybe talk to Rosenmayer before he summons the jury and tell him that you may need to ask for an emergency recess at some point. Tell him it’s a national security issue, and he won’t ask a bunch of questions.”

After hearing Marlene out, Jaxon changed his mind.
“On second thought, she’s right. I’ll have my surveillance guys hook you up so that we can hear whatever you say and, if you don’t mind having a small transmitter in your ear—can’t even see the thing—we can talk to you. We’ll make it something you activate if Kane calls or you need us.”

Jaxon explained that he needed to know the moment he picked up a call from Lucy’s cell phone.
“A lot of people don’t know this, but some of the newer, higher-end cell phones come with global positioning system technology,”
he’d said.
“A lot of this started after the 9-11 attacks to help law enforcement and firefighters locate people who make emergency calls on their cells. But it can be used to locate someone making other calls, too. Lucy’s got one of those phones.”

“So if she calls, you’ll be able to pinpoint the location?”
Karp asked.

Jaxon nodded.
“If there’s a good signal with transmission towers nearby, which is basically how we locate where the signal is coming from, we can narrow it down to two hundred, maybe even a hundred feet. Hopefully that will be enough. But it does take some time to get an exact fix, so you’ll want to keep whoever’s calling on the line as long as possible. This would be especially true if they’re traveling, because then, obviously, we’ll be tracking a moving target. It’s not an exact thing, but I think from that message that’s what Lucy’s counting on.”

Karp looked at Marlene, who gave him a tearful smile. At least this sounded hopeful.
“Speaking of calls, any word from Jojola or Tran?”
he’d asked.

Jaxon’s face grew grim and he shook his head.
“Nothing,”
he’d said. “
We’re still hoping that they’re simply out of communication range and following some hot lead they don’t want to abandon. That’s one of the problems with amateurs; they tend to freelance and break all the rules. On the other hand, I know those two might be getting up there a bit, but there aren’t a lot of young guys who can handle those two old jungle fighters, either.”

The agent had done his best to try to make the last part of his statement sound confident, but Karp caught the tightness in his voice. He knew that Jaxon was thinking that the worst-case scenario was also the most likely. But he still had a job to do.

“Where are you off to while I’m in court?”
Karp asked.

“We’re going to set up shop quietly over in Brooklyn Heights,”
Jaxon replied.
“It’s an educated guess, but I want to be as close as possible to where she and Kane might be when that call comes.”

As Jaxon got up, Blanchett, who’d been sitting quietly, his face taut, rose to go with him. But the older man turned and said,
“Ned, I’m going to leave you here with the district attorney.”

Blanchett’s face turned angry.
“What? No way, sir! If you’re in Brooklyn looking for Lucy, I want to be there, too.”

“Sorry, son, you’re emotionally involved—we all are to a degree, but you more than even me, and I can’t have two of us thinking with our hearts and not our heads,”
Jaxon said.
“But more than that,
I need you on the scene here. If that call comes in, I want you by Karp’s side and making sure that nothing happens to him. And keep your rifle handy, maybe Kane will want to meet with Butch, and you may get a shot.”

Ned looked hard at Jaxon for a moment but then dropped his head.
“Yes, sir,”
he said.

The last part may have convinced Blanchett, but Karp knew that Jaxon was also looking out for the young man in case they found Lucy and she was hurt…or worse.

“The defense calls…”

Kane’s alive and he has my little girl! Focus, Karp, now is not the time!

Portly and bald with a long, gray beard, Dr. Anthony Belli waddled up to the witness stand ready to challenge Hilario Gianneschi’s “interpretation” of what Maplethorpe said to him the night of Gail Perez’s death.

As he told the jury, he was a professor of languages, “specializing in English-as-a-second-language adaptation, and North Mediterranean languages,” at Columbia University. “I am fluent in Italian, Greek, French, and Spanish with a basic understanding of Arabic and Croatian.”

Belli testified that it was common for people speaking English as a second language to interpret what they heard in English in their native tongue, and that sometimes it doesn’t always translate exactly.

When it came time for Karp to question Belli, Karp easily dismissed this as a mere opinion and, during cross-examination, managed to get Belli to admit—albeit reluctantly—that Hilario Gianneschi’s English was more than adequate.

Next, the defense called another shrink, this one specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder. Psychologist Willow Spring, a large woman with a mop of blond hair, wore a tie-dye dress and described herself as a “Buddhist Freudian.” She equated the interaction between Maplethorpe and Gianneschi as a “perfect storm of PTSD…one a witness to a gruesome suicide, the other a witness to its immediate aftermath, on a psychological collision course.”

Spring said she’d interviewed Maplethorpe in a clinical setting using hypnosis. “When he was under, he had a quite different account of what he said to Gianneschi.”

“Is there a reason to believe that he would give a
factual
account?” Leonard said, emphasizing the word “factual” as he looked over at Karp.

“Yes, the cool thing about hypnosis is that people don’t lie,” she said.

“Then would you please tell the jury what you learned,” Leonard said.

“You betcha…well, for one thing he remembered calling Mr. Gianneschi and asking him to summon help,” Spring said. “This beautiful young woman who he hoped would find him attractive as a male had located a gun and shot herself in the head. A horrible, horrible tragedy and yet another reason handguns should be banned.”

Leonard ignored the handgun comment—not able to tell where the jury stood on that—and asked what happened next.

“Instead of summoning an ambulance, the concierge came himself,” Spring said. “Beginning to feel the first effects of PTSD, which are a confused state and disassociation from what just happened, Mr. Maplethorpe waited at his door, hoping paramedics would arrive to save the day. But instead, Mr. Gianneschi came alone.”

“At which point he says something about something ‘bad,’ depending on what version you believe,” Leonard said.

“Well, of course he feels bad about what just happened, it was his gun and he left it lying carelessly around,” Spring said.

“Does he think he’s killed her?”

Spring shook her mop of curly blond hair. “No, it’s obvious he doesn’t, because he says something to the effect of ‘Please tell her.’ Well, you can’t tell a dead person anything. So no, he thinks she’s still alive.’”

“What if Mr. Gianneschi heard correctly and Mr. Maplethorpe wanted him to say he was sorry?”

“Of course he’s sorry. He’s sorry that he didn’t give her a role in his play. He’s sorry that she misinterpreted his intentions. He’s sorry he had a gun. He’s sorry she shot herself. He’s got a lot to be sorry
about. It’s also sort of like a child who thinks that by saying he is sorry the results can somehow be reversed. Unfortunately, large-caliber gunshot wounds don’t work that way.”

Compounding the issue, Spring said, was the fact that Hilario Gianneschi was also suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. “He saw a body. He saw blood. He saw a gun. So when he heard the word ‘bad,’ he assumed he was being told that Mr. Maplethorpe had done something bad. Then when Mr. Maplethorpe said he felt sorry for what had just happened through his negligence, Mr. Gianneschi heard an admission of guilt. And when Mr. Maplethorpe said something along the lines of thinking she might be dead, Mr. Gianneschi, his mind trying to disassociate from the horror, hears ‘I think I killed her.’”

Leonard limped over to the lectern, where he arranged his note cards in some sort of mysterious order, like a gypsy reading fortunes. “Could there be another explanation for hearing ‘I think I killed her’?”

“Yes.” Spring nodded. “Mr. Maplethorpe, with his extreme feelings of guilt, may have actually said ‘I think I killed her.’”

“Does he mean it?”

Spring shook her head. “Not in the literal way,” she said. “But for those reasons I just described, in a figurative way, yes. He’s going to have to live the rest of his life knowing that he did not have that gun secured; I believe there are even laws about such things.”

Leonard shoved all his note cards into one pile, as if he’d seen all he needed to see. “You’re telling the jury that Mr. Maplethorpe felt so guilty about leaving his gun available that he actually was confessing to that, not murder.”

Spring nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, if he actually said ‘I think I killed her.’ However, I want to emphasize that if I was a betting woman—given Mr. Gianneschi’s language difficulties, as well as both men suffering from PTSD—it’s more likely that he is misquoting what was actually said, and that would be more along the lines of ‘I think she’s dead.’”

Leonard waved his note cards at Spring. “Ms. Spring, have you looked over Mr. Gianneschi’s interview with the police, and did anything about it jump out at you?”

“Well, I think it’s pretty clear that this was an interview with a man who is very aware that he’s in this country illegally,” Spring replied. “He understands that if he doesn’t cooperate with the authorities—if he doesn’t tell the police what they want to hear—things could go rough for him, and he might find himself in handcuffs and on the next plane to Italy.”

“So if the police interrogators sit him down and show him a photograph of a child in a cowboy outfit found in Mr. Maplethorpe’s apartment and ask him if anything looks familiar…”

“He’s going to want to give them the answer he thinks they want, such as saying that Mr. Maplethorpe was wearing something similar.”

“Thank you, Ms. Spring. No further questions.”

Karp was on his feet before Leonard sat down. “Ms. Spring, taking into account everything you just said, how much of it was factual and how much of it was opinion?”

Spring looked surprised by the question. “I like to think I base my opinion on fact.”

“Is that like a film based on fact?” Karp retorted. “Where they change things just a little…or a lot…we really don’t know.”

“No, I wasn’t changing anything. I just looked at what I was given and rendered an opinion.”

“And is that opinion subject to change?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Well, you just told the jury that Mr. Maplethorpe might have said ‘I think she’s dead,’ which in your opinion Mr. Gianneschi misquoted as ‘I think I killed her.’ But then you said that if Mr. Maplethorpe actually did say ‘I think I killed her,’ which is what Mr. Gianneschi testified to in this courtroom—no ifs, ands, or buts—then your opinion was that he said this because he was feeling guilty for leaving his gun lying around. So your opinion is subject to change depending on which version is true?”

Spring pursed her lips and blew out, then looked up at the ceiling.

“Ms. Spring, did you understand my question?”

“I’m thinking,” Spring replied testily.

“And your answer is…”

“You’re twisting it all around, but sure, anyone’s opinion can change if the facts change.”

“But aren’t facts something you know to be true, or can prove to be true?”

Spring pouted. “That sounds like one definition of the truth.”

“What other definition do you have? Perhaps you could share that with the jury.”