March 9, 4.49 p.m.
Lafayette sat on the desk. ‘Where you been, Harper?’
‘Collecting symbols.’ He threw down two photographs. ‘We found these 88 symbols at the woods where Abby Goldenberg was taken. So I went back to the Capske crime scene – and guess what? He left an 88 on the corner of the alleyway.’
‘Might not be him.’
‘No, but it’s another link, Captain, between Capske and Abby. We could have a Nazi killer on our hands. An 88 Killer.’
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions.’
‘I won’t. How did things go at your meeting with the Feds?’
‘They want us to keep them informed.’
‘So they backed off?’
‘They backed off. Your print and link to Lukanov was enough.’
Harper hit the desk. ‘That’s good. Now I need another favor.’
‘What?’
‘Abby Goldenberg. Can you swing it under our jurisdiction on the evidence of these 88 symbols and the Lukanov link?’
‘I think I can pull it off Missing Persons. They don’t want it, but she’s not necessarily dead, is she?’
‘We’re hunting a killer and she’s linked, let it be enough for now.’
‘Okay, Harper, but keep me right up to speed on this.’
Harper agreed and headed down to the investigation room. He met up with Eddie. ‘What you got, Eddie?’
‘We’ve got nothing,’ said Eddie. ‘We cross-referenced homicides with reported hate crime and Jewish identity and we got nothing. Sorry.’
Harper sighed. ‘You go take a break. I’ll give it a go.’
Eddie pushed back from the desk and swung his legs out. ‘Thanks, I need to eat. You want something?’
‘Yeah, anything you can get.’
Eddie left and Harper sat in his seat and looked at Eddie’s searches. He’d tried everything. There were four murders highlighted. Two more drug shootings involving Caucasian victims, one Brooklyn murder and one Brooklyn mugging-homicide. Harper read the details. The two drug shootings belonged to the Bronx. The two white kids had been dealing under the noses of the suppliers. They were punished.
Harper stood up and walked around the precinct investigation room. The killer had killed before, so what were they missing? Maybe he had killed and taken the bodies like he might have done with Abby.
Harper logged in again. He tried to cross-reference missing Jewish girls with the MO. Harper looked down list after list. He felt the thud each time the unimaginable crimes flickered to life on his screen. Faces of the dead, bodies photographed in harsh light from every angle. No crime scene on TV could ever convey the banality, the lack of humanity. But there was no link.
Harper trawled through, going through month after month, not knowing what he was looking for, feeling like he was struggling through the darkest jungle, with predators all around. People shot, stabbed, battered, crushed, raped, torn, slashed. Words mingled in Harper’s mind with the images and he had to bat them all aside to keep the emotion away.
A thought hit him as he went through each murder. What if it wasn’t an unsolved murder? What if someone had been put away for the murder? Miscarriages of justice weren’t all that rare.
Harper realized that they hadn’t searched solved homicides, only cold cases and open cases. He put in his search parameters. Single gunshot wound, Jewish victim, writing on the body. He was seven victims down the search results, when he stopped.
Her name was Esther Haeber. She’d been killed in Brooklyn two months earlier. Esther Haeber, possibly the first victim of the 88 Killer, now resting in the Records Office with someone else paying for the crime. He noted the Investigating Officer and signed off.