Meghan reeled in shock; her hand trembled as she took the photograph from the dying man’s hand.
It was Calliope Minter. Cali. That was what everyone called her. There was no mistaking the features. The man reached out to her and tried to say something.
She leaned forward, dimly aware of shouts and screams and the sounds of traffic around her. In the distance sirens rose and fell and grew louder. The man’s breathing grew shallower.
His eyes stared straight into Meghan’s. A hand clawed at her hair. It fell down and grabbed her hand in a tight grip.
‘What’s it? Do you know her? Where is she?’ she asked him urgently.
His lips moved, but no words came as his eyes glazed.
The crowd was shoved apart and paramedics came rushing to the scene. Meghan rose and stepped back, making room for them.
Her hands still trembled.
Control, babe. Get your stuff together.
She breathed deeply as she looked around. The onlookers were still gathered around. Still chattering excitedly. Many of them were snapping pictures on their phones, proof that they saw a killing, or at the least a dying man.
She stepped back a few more paces, going almost to the edge of the pavement and observed people more carefully.
I saw him from the other end of the crosswalk. He was part of the crowd, waiting to cross.
She looked carefully at the bystanders. Most of them were still looking at the fallen man, at the paramedics around him. Some of them were on their phones. A few of them were talking to one another.
A few met her eyes. No one looked away. No one drifted away casually.
No one looks like he could have knifed him. Appearances can be deceptive, though. A killer wouldn’t wear a billboard around his neck.
She searched further, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She brushed her hair back absentmindedly and felt wetness on her hand.
Blood. How did it get there? Was I knifed?
She shook her head impatiently, remembering. The man held my hand. It’s his blood. You’re still not thinking properly.
The spectators moved as if by an invisible force. Cops. Several cruisers squealed to a halt and officers leapt out. Some went over to the scene, others began questioning the onlookers.
Meghan moved towards them when she felt the hand on her shoulder.
‘You witnessed it?’
She turned to meet a pair of sleepy eyes which concealed a sharp mind. Detective Chang smiled and waved a hand in the direction of the scene. ‘We were driving past when we heard. It was so close to your office, Zak suggested we swing by.’
He looked past her at a tall man who looked like he had stepped out from a magazine cover.
Pizaka and Chang, First-Grade Detectives who headed a Major Case Squad in the NYPD, were an unlikely pairing. Pizaka was always immaculately turned out and had a very visible public profile. He had written several bestselling books and actively courted the media. Chang, on the other hand, with his rumpled suit and perennially sleepy look, gave the air of an absent minded professor.
Meghan and her twin, Beth, had known the two cops for years.
The sisters worked in a deep black U.S. agency that closed down threats to national security. Terrorists. Stolen weapons of mass destruction. International drug and people running gangs. The covert unit took on all of them.
The Agency, as it was known by the handful who were aware of its existence, was headed by a grey-eyed, ice-cool woman, Clare, in Washington DC, who reported only to the president. The president gave her the freedom to shape The Agency the way she wanted. He had only one demand; he wanted results. She had never let him down.
The agency’s lead agent was Zeb Carter, an ex-Special Forces operative who was responsible for its unique structure.
The agency’s eight agents, including Zeb and the twins, were based in New York and worked in a security consulting firm on Columbus Avenue. The firm advised corporations on personnel and premise security, undertook hostage negotiations, and investigated corporate spying.
The firm was their cover; they did undertake the corporate work as advertised, but only when they weren’t on Agency missions. This structure gave the Agency a near-zero admin footprint and had helped it stay clandestine.
All the agency’s operatives, but for the twins, were ex-Army; most of them ex-Special Forces. Several of them had freelanced as private military contractors, before Zeb had brought them together to form the Agency.
Zeb had rescued the twins in a previous mission; in turn, they had pestered him to join the Agency.
They had initially handled the logistics for the missions, but after working closely with Broker, the Agency’s intelligence analyst, had taken over running the intel too.
The eight of them were a close-knit team. They were family.
Zeb and the twins had first come across Pizaka and Chang when bringing down serial killers and terrorists in the city. The cops, who were leads on the cases, got the credit and their careers took off.
Pizaka and Chang didn’t know of the Agency’s existence. They knew that Zeb, the twins, and the other agents, worked in some firm that for some reason exerted tremendous clout.
They are smart enough to not ask many questions, Meghan thought and waited for Pizaka to join them.
‘Yeah,’ she answered Chang and gave the two a quick rundown of what she had seen. Chang waved at a couple of cops when she had finished, and summoned them.
‘He’s dead,’ one of them answered his question. ‘Nope, no identification. Nothing on his body.’
Chang thanked him and turned back to Meghan. ‘You know him?’
She shook her head. ‘First time I saw him.’ She showed them the photograph. ‘He was carrying this.’
Pizaka examined it at length and shrugged when he didn’t recognize the woman. ‘Recognize her?’ he asked his partner.
Meghan cut Chang off before he could answer. ‘That’s Calliope Minter. Cali.’
‘She’s been missing for nearly three years,’ a voice said breathlessly, from behind. Beth came from behind the cops and flashed a questioning are you okay look at her sister.
‘Her sister, Percy Minter, came to us about ten months back,’ Beth continued when Meghan nodded at her. ‘She wanted us to find her sister.’
Three hours later, Meghan and Beth Petersen were at One PP, where Chang and Pizaka had their offices. The on-the-scene cops had taken Meghan’s statement and Cali’s photograph. It would be dusted for prints, DNA traces, and anything else detectable on it.
The process of identifying the dead body would begin. Witness statements had been taken from the onlookers, but no one had seen or heard anything relevant.
‘Dude was walking one moment. The next, he was falling and there was blood all over,’ seemed to be the common refrain.
Security camera footages would be checked for any identity of the killer. The NYPD’s investigative machinery would kick in.
‘This case’s yours?’ Meghan asked Chang when all formalities had been completed.
‘Nope. Bennett and Johnson’s. Good detectives.’
‘Maybe we should take over,’ Pizaka suggested while polishing his shades. It was evening. They were indoors. None of that mattered to Pizaka. The shades went on his face and he glanced back at the twins and his partner.
‘What?’
Pizaka likes headlines and this one already has the makings of a good story. Unidentified dead man carrying photograph of a woman missing for three years. This case would further his career. Meghan looked at her sister and got a wink in return. She’s thinking the same thing.
Chang considered his partner for a few moments more and thought aloud. ‘Zak’s right. It’s not as if we have anything pressing on our plate. Bennet and Johnson have Cain as well. They’re stretched thin.’
Cain. Meghan couldn’t suppress a shiver.
Cain was a serial killer unlike any other the city had known. He had been active for five years and despite the massive manhunt, the cops still had no clues to his identity.
He preyed on women. He grabbed solitary women from the street and disappeared without a trace. Several days later, a body would turn up, in a garbage bin. Or in a parking lot. One had been found in a patrol car’s trunk.
The body would be horribly mutilated. Cuts and slashes and gouges. Sometimes parts would be missing. An ear. A nipple. A finger. The missing parts were never found. No rape was involved.
He had initially preyed on vulnerable women in the early years. Prostitutes. Bar girls. Those who worked late at night. His success seemed to have given him confidence and he had moved to killing professional women. Lawyers. Accountants. Doctors. No woman was safe. In each case, the victim had been grabbed on the street, when she was alone at night.
The killer never called the cops to take credit. He never made contact with the media. He was a ghost. His mental state was analyzed by talk show heads, by amateur psychiatrists. The NYPD released an e-profile for him.
He still remained undetected. A newspaper gave him a name. Cain. It stuck.
Only one woman had escaped from him. Thirty-two-years-old Caryl Bybee was a cleaner in a theater on Broadway. She had finished her shift after the last show, had shared a smoke with her co-workers, and was walking toward her car when Cain had attacked.
He had come from behind, a rough hand going over her mouth, another across her waist. A harsh whisper had sounded in her ear. ‘I’m Cain.’
She had twisted sharply, had elbowed him in the ribs, and had lashed out with her feet. His grip had loosened and then she was away, running faster than she ever had in her life, yelling loudly.
Despite her escape, she couldn’t describe Cain.
Average height, white, dark clothing, could fit a few million men in the city.
‘Let’s do it. Let’s take on this one.’ Chang’s words broke Meghan’s reverie and she turned to see him pull out his phone and speak into it softly.
She played idly with her cell phone while they waited for the cop to finish his call. Her finger clicked on a button and an image came up.
Cali Minter’s. The picture that the dead man had been carrying. Meghan had photographed it before handing the picture over to the cops.
Why was he carrying it?
‘Done,’ Chang called out from across the room in satisfaction. ‘The Commissioner says it’s ours. I mentioned the Petersens’ involvement. That helped.’
He came to the conference desk they were seated around and looked at Meghan. ‘You never saw him before?’ he asked, yet again.
Meghan didn’t reply. Not directly. She was remembering the dead man’s eyes. The way he clutched my hair. My hand. His lips moving.
‘I think he was coming to meet me.’