Green Light (Sam Archer 7) (28 page)

Rosario
knew a number of his colleagues had regarded the vanishing of the
six gang members as a blessing, feeling their time and resources
were better spent assisting law-abiding citizens rather than the
scum of the city. However he’d felt differently. To him a missing
person was a missing person, no matter who they were; a detective
couldn’t pick and choose the cases to work. It looked highly likely
someone on his turf was taking these people out and that wasn’t
something he was prepared to tolerate.

So he was the exception in the 2
^nd
District when the six guys
had been reported missing. In the weeks and months that followed,
the Department had moved on but the family members of those missing
sure as hell hadn’t. In the early days of the investigation a
couple of girlfriends and a mother of two of the missing men had
made a habit of coming to the station to ask if there’d been any
progress, but there hadn’t and they’d been told they’d be contacted
if there were any developments. They never received that
call.

And just
when they thought everything had settled down and whoever was
responsible for these disappearances had either left town or
settled their score, the last two low-level pimps associated with
the missing men also vanished.

The
general view in the Department had been that a rival gang had
whacked them but Rosario had never bought that. No gang member he’d
ever encountered had managed to avoid leaving evidence; murdering
someone was a messy business. Guns, blades or bats were usually the
weapons of choice, all of which left traces of blood, DNA and often
fingerprints, not to mention a body. However, whoever had been
responsible for these pimps’ disappearances hadn’t left so much as
a hair fibre. Street cameras had revealed nothing and witnesses
were non-existent.

Curious and frustrated in equal measure by the lack of
progress, Rosario had pursued the case in his spare time. He’d
worked with Forensics, the lab, a criminal psychologist and even
tried to get the missing persons shown on
America’s Most Wanted
which had
nearly cost him his promotion, his Lieutenant at the time livid
that Rosario had almost announced to the nation that the Department
had eight open case-files from a potential serial killer that they
were nowhere near close to solving.

Forget they ever existed,
he was
ordered.

However,
he hadn’t. Sitting at his desk, he turned back to his computer and
tapped away on the keypad, bringing up the NCIS database and
preparing to perform a ritual which he’d done every few days for
almost six years.

Crime-scene reports had stated that traces of lye had been
detected in the bathtubs of all the victims’ residences; apparently
lye was quite common
when killers try to
dispose of bodies, a method drug cartels were known to use.
However, that particular concoction had never been seen before. If
the bodies had been disposed of in that way, it indicated that the
disappearances had been carefully planned and meticulously carried
out. These were no random killings.

Since
then, Rosario had searched the NCIC every now and then to see if
any similar cases had shown up anywhere in the country. If whoever
was responsible had done this eight times on his patch, Rosario was
sure they’d do it again.

And he’d
been correct.

There’d
been a spate of similar incidents in Chicago last year a thousand
miles east, the top guys of a particular gang disappearing over a
period of ten months, three at the same time and two lower-level
pimps months later. He’d flown out there on his own dime and time;
being a police Lieutenant, albeit from another city, he had some
clout and had received access to the missing persons’ files. He’d
questioned the girls who’d been run by the missing men, but just
like back in Denver they hadn’t been able to tell him
anything.

If
Rosario was correct in thinking the same people were responsible,
the number of suspected victims was now in double digits. Still no
clearer as to motive, he’d been optimistic when he’d picked up that
trail last year, but since Chicago it had gone cold. The killer, or
killers, had either stopped or moved on, but it wasn’t in Rosario’s
nature to give up.

About to
finish for the day, he saw the search taking place on the screen
and leaned back in his chair, looking out at the setting
sun.

A few
moments later, a series of beeps got his attention.

Swinging
round, he read the results in front of him and the hairs on the
back of his neck stood up.

‘
Holy shit.’

Crime-scene reports with a lye concoction being found at the
scene of a suspected missing person had been filed today, one in
Pennsylvania and a spate of them in New York.

All
reported within the past hour.

A note
on the screen told him the NYPD had requested three files from the
San Diego Police Department, one of whom was for a woman who’d been
killed on the site of one of the lye discoveries in an East Village
apartment in New York. According to the note, she’d been disposing
of a body at the scene, working with two other men called Nicolas
Henderson and Sebastian Tully, all born in Pittsburgh with previous
in California.

San
Diego to Denver was a thousand miles, the same as Denver to
Chicago. A methodical procession eastwards, where the three of them
had been born. He stared at the dead woman’s photo, Nina Lister,
then searched for Henderson and Tully’s files, the system quickly
producing results.

He spent
a moment examining the faces of the people who could very well have
eluded him for over half a decade. Not a gang; a large man, a
smaller one and a hundred and thirty pound woman.

Then he
snatched up the phone on his desk.

*

Inside
the NYPD Conference Room on the other side of the country, Archer,
April and Ethan were sitting in silence, looking at the ten new
female faces that had joined Santiago, Goya, Valdez and Carvalho on
the screen. Only three of the girls had been arrested in the past;
the others had had their photos pulled from either the DMV or
Covenant Housing records.

As he
sat there, Archer suddenly realised he hadn’t called St Luke’s in a
while to check on Alice. Drawing his cell, he scrolled for the
number but then Shepherd suddenly reappeared in the doorway, his
phone to his ear.

‘
Can you send them over?’ he said, clicking at Ethan to get his
attention and pointing at his laptop. As Ethan responded, Shepherd
continued to listen to the call. ‘I’ll keep you posted. Thanks,
Jack.’

Ending
the call, he pocketed the phone, looking over at Ethan who was
opening some files he’d just received.

‘
Put ‘em up,’ he said.

Ethan tapped several keys and hit
Enter
.

A beat
later, thirteen new mug-shots appeared on the main
screen.

‘
I just got a call from a detective in Denver who’s had an
unsolved multiple missing persons file for six years,’ he said.
‘This is a case-file that’s spread across three different states,
from Denver, Chicago to here. Henderson, Tully and Lister left a
trail.’

‘
How do we know it’s the same crew?’ Marquez asked.

‘
Forensics. The specific lye concoction found at the residence
of each missing person was an exact chemical match to the shit we
found at Santiago’s and what SWAT found in Scranton. And there’s
another link.’

‘
Every guy on this board was in some way involved in the sex
trade,’ Ethan finished, reading the file on his laptop.

‘
Twenty seven unsolved homicides?’ Archer said, looking at the
thirteen faces on the screen and the fourteen on the
Victims
board. ‘Are you
kidding me?’

‘
Across three cities and three thousand miles,’ Shepherd said.
‘And this was inner city work too. South-side Chicago, Five Points
in Denver, the East Village here in New York. This was done right
under the noses of the cities’ police forces but they were never
caught; the Denver PD Lieutenant said until today he’d never even
had a suspect profile.’

‘
So Henderson, Tully and Lister are serial killers,’ Ethan
said. ‘Randomly targeting people in the sex trade.’

‘
This isn’t random,’ Archer said. ‘These people were
deliberately targeted. There’s a purpose here. In ninety nine
percent of murder cases in the sex industry, serial killers target
the girls, not the pimps controlling them.’

‘
So?’

‘
Look at those guys.’ He pointed at the thirteen new faces, all
hard-faced, tough-looking men. ‘They look like the kind of people
you’d want to piss off?’

Ethan
didn’t reply.

‘
Why mix it up with them if this was just about stacking up
bodies or feeding a fetish?’ Archer continued. ‘Why not just target
the girls? They’d be a hell of a lot easier to take
out.’

‘
So they get to New York and start killing the girls too?’
Marquez said. ‘Why suddenly change their MO? Before, they only
killed the male members of the three gangs.’

‘
Make that four,’ Hendricks said as he walked into the room,
having been absent for over thirty minutes.

‘
What are you talking about, Jake?’ Shepherd said.

‘
I went to visit our Russian friend at the hospital,’ Hendricks
replied. ‘And he just started talking.’

THIRTY FIVE

Across
the East River at St Luke’s, Josh was sitting in the recovery room
with Michelle. She was still sedated after the operation to repair
the damage to her arm and sleeping peacefully. According to the
doctors, all had gone to plan; she’d been clipped by that initial
burst but none of the rounds had stayed inside her tricep. She’d
been out of the OR for fifteen minutes and he was waiting for her
to wake up, wanting to be there when she did. He’d been shot a few
months back and knew how much he’d appreciated her support at the
time.

Leaning
back in his chair, he sighed. It was only 9:35pm but it had been a
whirlwind of a day. Towards the end of Michelle’s surgery he’d
received a call from Marquez telling him his kids were all safe at
the Bureau and their address had been the first name on a list that
had contained their whole team. She’d also told him about April
Evans and their suspicions about the ten missing women; thinking
back to how they’d found Alex Santiago, Josh had put two and two
together. It wasn’t a nice image.

It had been thirty minutes or so since they’d spoken. He was
torn between staying beside his wife and wanting to re-join his
team immediately to get to work on this case and find out just
who’d done this to her. He withdrew his cell to dial Archer and let
him know he’d be on his way just as soon just as his wife came to,
then suddenly remembered Vargas was also being treated here, up on
the 14
^th
floor. No doubt Archer and the others would appreciate an
update; now Michelle had been shot, Josh had a much better
understanding of how his detective partner had felt.

Squeezing his unconscious wife’s hand and only intending to
be gone for a few minutes, Josh rose and walked to the door,
shutting it behind him quietly. Moving down the corridor, he headed
towards the elevators and pushed the button.

It dinged a few moments later and he stepped inside,
jabbing
14
.

‘
The four gunmen who tried to wax our families are Russian
Mafia,’ Hendricks explained. ‘They’re part of a crew who operate
down in Little Odessa in Brooklyn. The shooter at Mount Sinai
claimed that eleven of their guys have gone missing over the past
year and this was a revenge attack.’

‘
Eleven?’ Marquez said incredulously. ‘And why us? What the
hell have we got to do with it?’

Hendricks walked over the desk and picking up the phone,
dialled a number.

‘
I’ll let someone else explain,’ he said, the receiver to his
ear. ‘Mark, it’s Jake. I’m back; I’m putting you on speaker. You’re
with the investigation team.’

‘
OK.’

‘
This is Mark Massaro. He’s a detective at the Organised Crime
Control Bureau in Brooklyn. Tell them what you told me,
Mark.’

‘
The four guys who visited your homes belong to a group called
the
Prizraki.
My
team’s been working them for months; once Jake told me what
happened earlier, I wanted to speak with you personally. Hopefully
it might help your investigation.’

‘
What can you tell us, Mark?’ Shepherd asked.

‘
The
Prizraki
are one of the most feared of thousands of Russian criminal
organisations. These groups used to be outlaws but after the USSR
and communism fell in the 90s, more than 6,000 separate Mafia
factions emerged and the
Prizraki
was one of them; the literal translation into
English is
ghosts.
We also know for a fact they operated under an old code
called Thieves Law.

‘
Thieves Law?’ Shepherd repeated. ‘What the hell’s
that?’