Don't Close Your Eyes (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 1) (16 page)

Twain continued to be the target of idle curiosity as he raced through Yeager Airport.
He had become accustomed to the uninvited stares, had hardened himself against them over the years. He tugged his cell phone from his pocket and tried Chalice once again. He heard the phone ring four times and then the switching signal as his call was once again transferred to voicemail. He had left two messages already. There was little point in leaving a third. Each breathless and frantic message had instructed her to call back as soon as humanly possible. As if that wasn’t enough, he had added, “This is urgent,” at the end of each one.

Blast! Where is she?
he wondered. The pieces were still falling into place. He had learned so much in so little time. He turned the corner and headed full speed toward the departure gate. He had so much to tell her. He couldn’t wait to get her on the phone.

The last flight back to New York was about to leave. “Wheels up at 10:05 sharp!” he had been told when he booked the tickets over the phone. He glanced at his watch. 10:06. “Blast!” The departure gate was in sight now. He could see the illuminated boarding gate number, but nothing else. His view of the gate area was obscured by the congestion of humanity, travelers intent on their own arrangements. He hoped that the airline’s claim for promptness was grossly exaggerated.

Desperation swept across his face as he came upon the gate. The airline attendant was sealing the jetway door. “No! Please wait,” Twain called out frantically. The attendant’s eyes widened at the sight of him approaching. He was expecting an argument, but much to his surprise, the attendant tugged a ring of keys from her pants pocket and proceeded to unlock the door.

“The two of you just made it,” the attendant stated in a reassuring voice. She was a pleasant senior with silvery-blue hair. Her nameplate read Clara. “The flight was delayed a few minutes because of bad weather between here and New York.” She extended her hand and took the tickets from Twain. “It’s your lucky day. We’re pretty prompt, you know.”

“So I’ve heard.” Twain was panting through his bandana. The heat and moisture on his face felt like he had just run through the Yucatán jungle at the height of the summer rainy season.

“You must have run a long way.” Clara tore the boarding passes along the perforation and handed them back to Twain. His cell phone rang. “You’ll have to turn that off,” she told him. “There are phones onboard.”

“This won’t be but a moment,” Twain said, turning away from her.

“I can’t hold the flight any longer, Sir. Please go aboard.”

“Sorry.” Twain looked at her apologetically and answered the phone. “Hello.”

“Nigel, it’s Detective Chalice. What the hell is going on? Are you all right?”

Twain could feel the extent of the concern in her voice. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Where are you?” He was thrilled to hear her voice and wanted to tell her everything he had learned, but not over the phone, not news like this. He couldn’t. As a trained psychiatrist of many years, Twain knew that this kind of information was best presented face to face. Even then, he knew, Chalice’s reaction would not be good. Of all the things he knew about Stephanie Chalice, this would hurt her the most.

“I’m at the station house. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Hillary Glenn has been abducted.”

“Please board the plane,” Clara insisted. She was growing visibly upset. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”

“Stephanie, I’m just boarding a plane at the moment. Don’t go anywhere,” he warned. “You’re in grave danger.”

“From whom?”

“I’ll call back the minute we’re airborne. Please, promise me that you’ll stay exactly where you are until you hear back from me.”

“Call me right back.”

“I will.” Twain ended the call. “Unavoidable,” he said, apologetically to the silver-haired matron. Under her watchful eye, he and his newly found companion boarded their flight to New York.

I got out of the police van with Mike Gluck, Bill Hanley, and Ed Holeran.
Hanley had worked with my dad and had come up from the academy with him. Holeran was a former narcotics detective who had transferred to homicide. He was no kid, but as savvy as they came. Gluck was a youngster like me, a six-foot-eight Jewish boy from Borough Park. He was bright, but too nice for his own good as far as I was concerned. I’d seen him play basketball at a PBA picnic. He had hands of stone and a pair of lead feet to match. Between sports and police work, he had definitely made the wiser choice going with the NYPD.

They weren’t Lido, but they were good men, all three of them. Lido had been temporarily reassigned and had become the department’s liaison to the FBI in the investigation of Hilary Glenn’s kidnapping.

I had spoken with Lido on the way over. It sounded like he and Ambler were becoming close. God only knew what the two of them were talking about. All right, we all know they were talking about me. I would have loved to be privy to their conversations; two investigators, each manipulating the other, trying to get the dirt on Stephanie Chalice without letting on to the other. The bullshit must have been incredible.

My phone call to Lido had explained where I was and what I was doing. He and Ambler were sitting on pins and needles, waiting to hear what I had found.

We’d used the unmarked and come up the block undetected using no lights nor sirens. Twain had told me little, except the man’s name. He said, “The man you’re looking for is Zachary Clovin. I’ll have a great deal to tell you when I get back.” He communicated that his plane was getting in late and that he had a lot of exciting news to tell me the next day. I’d pushed him to find out more, but the mysterious doctor insisted on telling me in person. The last thing he said was troubling, “Be careful, Stephanie. This man is looking for you. “

Clovin lived in a walk-up on Sixty-third, between First and Second, a top-floor apartment facing the street. We left Gluck out front, knowing that if Clovin fell while fleeing down the fire escape, Gluck, with his hands of stone, would drop him. You can’t say we don’t think things through, even if it’s only for our own amusement.

There was no sheet on Clovin, meaning that either he had turned homicidal late in life, or had never been caught. I was betting on the latter. We had his military records. Clovin had served a twenty-year hitch. He had been all over the world with the Army Corps of Engineers—eminent qualifications for a perp that had working knowledge of the Roosevelt Island tram and had rigged a passenger elevator.

I pulled his military photograph from my pocket and studied it. There was something hauntingly familiar about Clovin, but try as I might, I couldn’t place him. The man’s face had perp written all over it. A flattop haircut wasn’t good enough for this guy. He was buzzed bald. Clovin had that hardened look, as if he had survived torture or something. Maniacal too: like some kind of failed laboratory experiment.

The tenement was old but immaculate. Too bad. It always added to the ambiance when rats scurried past your feet while you were trying to take down a crazed murderer. Oh well, I’d have to make do.

Hanley, Holeran, and I moved up the staircase in unison, guns drawn. The stairwell had an unsettling chill in the early hours of evening, almost eerily so. I was suddenly feeling very sober. It was a combination of things: the crazed look on Clovin’s face and the dead women. Were there only two dead women? If Twain was right, we had just scratched the surface. I felt outrage building within inside me.
Control it
, I told myself.
Stay cool under pressure. This guy is smart. Be smarter.

I had relayed Twain’s remarks to my new partners and they insisted that I enter behind them.

“Department of Health,” Hanley announced after knocking three times. He was on the left side of the door. Holeran and I were on the right. He knocked again. “Hello, hello. Anyone home? We’re here to check out a complaint.” A nervous moment passed in silence. Hanley raised his eyebrows. You can only stand in a combat position in the hallway of a dimly lit tenement for so long without looking stupid. The sound of shattering glass sent us into action.

“Gluck!” Holeran peeled off and charged down the stairs to back up the basketball star. Hanley turned and faced the door. He put his two hundred twenty pounds into it and took it off the frame.

He took the lead. I was right at his butt. Again, it was nothing like Lido’s. We stole into the apartment. All was quiet. There wasn’t much to it, a two-roomer with a small eat-in kitchen. The place reeked of ammonia and something else that I was sure could peel paint. I could see the windows immediately upon entering. The fire escape was visible through one of them. No broken glass.

We moved toward the window. Down on the street, Gluck and Holeran had someone in custody. I knew in an instant that it wasn’t Clovin. We had accidentally rousted Clovin’s next-door neighbor, likely a paranoid street dealer. We’d get nothing on this guy either. I was betting that it would be your typical flush and flee proposition.

Hanley and I began casing the apartment. Clovin’s bedroom was our first port of call. “Sweet, merciful Jesus,” I heard Hanley call out from the bedroom. “Chalice, oh my God. Come take a look.”

Funny, one picture is worth a thousand words, but a wall of pictures could be summarized in two. “Holy shit!” It was all there in front of us. The faces of Ellen Redner and Samantha Harris were the ones I recognized, but there were others. No doubt, they too had met with the same unhappy ending. Twain had been, forgive the play on words, dead on.

He had found Redner and Harris through the newspaper. I took a moment to read the articles Clovin had clipped and taped to the walls. Samantha Harris’ photo had appeared in the Sunday Times, a colorful piece about a mature woman in a business dominated by young bucks. Colorful? Yes, as in blood red. The byline was Software Sam.

Ellen Redner had received an honorarium for her charitable work with Children of the South Bronx. These were special women: intelligent and strong. Was that it, a woman’s place was in the home, dutifully by her man’s side? Was death the price for their independence? Was it supposed to be mine?

There were three others. The newspaper clippings about these women were posthumous, obituaries from local papers. These three were the fruits of Clovin’s labor rather than his research. I checked the dates. They were all prior to Redner and Harris. Twain was right again. Clovin’s first three homicides had been too subtle. The messages and gunshot victims had been his way of getting attention. I’d say he’d accomplished what he had set out to do.

Hilary Glenn apparently deserved honorable mention. Several clippings were set off apart from the rest, arranged in a line on Clovin’s night table. She met his requirements and then some: rich, successful, and in the public eye, not exactly the demure or homespun type. I cursed myself for not having seen it coming.

Hanley bounded into the room. He had worked up a sweat tossing the other room. “I found the stuff he used to build those homemade silencers: tennis balls, steel wool, PVC pipe, hacksaw, and these, thank God.” Wearing latex gloves, Hanley held a weapon in each hand. “A Feather 9mm RAV and a MAC-10. Better in my hands than his.”

“Big amen. We’d better alert Lido and Ambler. They’re chomping at the bit, waiting to hear from us.”

“I’ll take care of it.” He lumbered out of the room purposefully. We had our man; now all we had to do was catch the son of a bitch.

I turned back to the wall of death. This time, it really got to me. Was Twain right about this too? Had Clovin done all of this just to get my attention? There were five already dead, likely six. Hilary Glenn’s chances of making it to the Senate were looking extremely remote, distant in fact.

The images on the wall hit me in the gut. What kind of cop was I? I needed answers and I needed them now. I had to stop this bastard. I didn’t know why the perp had made it personal and it was killing me. Damn it! Why hadn’t I forced Twain to tell me what he knew? I had been in such a hurry to nab Clovin that I forgot the first rule of good detection: Know the perp and know what he’s thinking in order to know what he’s planning. I had acted too quickly and now all I could do was guess.

I pulled on my gloves and began going through Clovin’s stuff. The first drawer was empty except for a metal container of Altoids breath mints. There were blotter squares within it, probably tabs of LSD, a box full of Mad Hatters. How horrifyingly appropriate.

The end table’s top drawer contained a folded side-by-side frame which I opened. Facing me was one new image and one that was familiar. The first photo was that of a young girl. She looked about eleven or twelve, dark hair, a bit on the frail side. It was an old picture; I could tell by the yellowed border around the photograph and the period dress the child was wearing.
Who is she?
I wondered. The other half contained another newspaper clipping. The headline read: “New Year’s Blast Avoided.” It was my photo, taken as I led Gamal Haddad, the New Year’s Eve terrorist, into custody. I have to say that the picture captured it all—the face, the eyes, and the take-no-crap expression; everything the perp needed to know. For some reason, I had become the object of his fatal desire, doomed for my accomplishments. Or was it for what I represented: strength, success, and independence in a man’s world? Or was he just a homicidal maniac?

Now that we were sure who the killer was, we’d be able to get a ton of information from the intelligence community. The prospects of finding Clovin were good, but I had learned that there were no guarantees in life. Our files were full of wanted perps—horrible, vile monsters that had never been apprehended. That said, Zachary Clovin would be brought to justice. I give you my guarantee.

I found Ishmael Gray at the Nassau County Correctional Facility in East Meadow, New York.
East Meadow was a bustling little suburb not far from the oft referred to Levittown. It looked pretty, but the traffic was as bad as it is in Manhattan. I thought about the house-in-the-suburbs proposition that Ma was pushing on me. It just seemed to me that the suburbs should be more tranquil than this. Strip mall after strip mall, massive assisted-living communities for seniors, and a big-ass correctional facility right smack dab in the center. That boat was looking more and more like the right decision all the time.

I had donned my most unflattering pantsuit in anticipation of my visit to the correctional facility. There’s no point in describing it. It was just blah, a present from my cousin in Staten Island. God only knows why I hadn’t given it away. It was one of those “Softer side of Sears” getups. In any case, it was closer to a burlap bag than anything else I owned.

The other convicts seemed unaware of Gray’s presence as he rolled his wheelchair into the visitor’s room. Gray’s hair was light brown, parted in the center and grown out to his shoulders. Inactivity had cultivated a large potbelly, upon which his folded hands rested peacefully. “Gray, Ishmael Gray?” I asked.

Gray replied without opening his eyes. “Used to be. Now I’m R22861.” His eyes sprang open without squinting. I saw at once that he was blind. “Either way, I’m the man you’re looking for.”

I’m Detective Chalice.”

“Nice to have a female visitor even if I can hardly make you out.”

“How bad is your vision?”

“I can see shadows, just enough to keep out of harm’s way. But I guess you’re not here for a second opinion on your outfit.” Gray took a couple of playful exaggerated sniffs. “That’s not polyester, is it?”

Shit! He has me dead to rights.
“Yeah, yeah it is.”

Gray winked. He wasn’t looking at me when he did, but the wink was meant for me. “You don’t seem like the polyester type.” You see, even a blind man knows. “So what can I help you with, Detective?”

“What can you tell us about Zachary Clovin?”

I could see surprise register on Gray’s face. “Ooo-wee, Old Zack the Wack. That crazy son of a bitch, what’s he done?”

“He’s a person of interest in a multiple homicide investigation.”

Gray bunched his chin and began rocking back and forth in his chair. “Multiple homicides, my, oh my. Always knew something like this would happen once he got out. Military discipline’s the only thing that kept that crazy fool in check. He was stoned half the time and off showering the rest. Don’t quite know how he served out all those years, and as an engineer, no less.”

“We contacted Sergeant Keith McKenna, your former CO. He said that if anyone could tell us about Clovin, it would be you.”

“Sure, we were close, close to dead.” Gray’s head lowered. “It’s a shame a man has to lose so much before he straightens out.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There are only two categories of lifers in the U.S. Army. You’ve got your Academy boys, ROTC and such, and you got your lost souls, the stupid asses, and the don’t-know-what-to-do-with-their-lives types. I was one of those. Zachary Clovin and I were two of the sorriest pieces of flop in the outfit. I was on the run, just a stupid kid who thought the Army would hide me from the police. See, I murdered a man and thought the uniform would make me invisible.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “It was a bad deal. What I did was justified, but the long years of running and hiding turned the facts into mush. A good lawyer could’ve straightened things out. Instead, I spent twenty years in the military. The police picked me up three months after my discharge. Twenty years of hiding and wasting my life,” he stated remorsefully. Gray quickly wiped the tear from his cheek. “Crap. You didn’t come to hear about me anyway. Wacky Zack and I were volunteers in an army experiment. I’ve been paid off by the government to keep my mouth shut, but look where I am today, blind and crippled, doing life in the middle of suburbia. Don’t figure I owe no one any allegiance.”

I placed my hand on Gray’s shoulder. “Tell us about it.”

Gray turned his head toward me. “Been a long time, Detective Chalice. Can’t remember the last time I felt a woman’s comforting touch. You’d better take your hand off my shoulder, though. Ain’t good for me to be seen this way.” I understood the implication and complied immediately. “Much obliged, ma’am. They did LSD testing on us. They thought LSD could be used for brainwashing and to disorient the enemy. Clovin and I spent three years in wonderland.” Gray chuckled. “I’ll be damned if the time didn’t pass like it was ten minutes. It took me a long time to shake it. LSD ain’t addicting like heroin or cocaine but you can sure take a liking to it, especially if the real world ain’t a happy place for you to be.”

Gray reversed his wheels until he was facing us again. “Clovin never shook it. He couldn’t get it from the army anymore, so he went off base and bought it. When he couldn’t find any, he’d swallow anything that came out of a test tube: BZ, psilocybin, mescaline . . . anything he could get his hands on. Clovin worked on engineering projects all over the world. He must have experimented with all kinds of shit. Can you imagine the sorry-ass construction that sick son of a bitch is responsible for?”

“I guess he wasn’t as strong as you were.” I didn’t know Gray’s story, not really. Everyone in the joint had a sob story and his was just one more. Despite all I knew, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the guy. A cop has got to be tough, but she’s also got to listen and have an ounce of carefully placed compassion.

“He was strong,” Gray continued. “He was damn strong. Whatever I was running from, the ghosts that were chasing Zack had him running twice as fast. Wouldn’t you after you burnt your family alive?”

I gasped. I suppose it was the long pause that tipped Gray as to our surprise. “Well that’s it, isn’t it; you’ve caught up with him the same way the law caught up with me?” Gray read the silence perfectly. “Oh no. Zack’s done something else, hasn’t he?”

Yes, all that and then some.