On the board in front of them they had a large eight-month calendar. Every call, receipt, purchase or interaction was noted by each date. They were piecing together her life story from Internet forums, relatives, friends and the accumulated electronic data.
After just a few hours, the eight-month period was beginning to fill out. Harper stared at the board. Every time he spotted a date where Lucy was with Mr X, he had his team cross-check each receipt.
Harper had the team bring in every person who knew Lucy Steller. The interview rooms were all full and the corridors outside were lined with people. Someone had to have seen Lucy with this man, but they’d been at it for hours already and not a soul had seen him.
Denise walked up to Harper. He was staring at the cases. He had put the picture of Abby side-by-side with Lucy. He could see something. A pattern. He looked from Abby to Lucy to Capske. There was something there. What was it that was nagging away in his head? Something connected them. He looked across at the kidnapping of the children. All the unanswered questions came at once. What was the blue eagle the kids saw on the killer? How did the killer sit for hours with Capske with no one bothering him? How did he know about the safe house?
Harper’s mind clicked once, then twice. He saw a picture in his mind. He saw another. Some route through all these threads seemed to be forming, but he just couldn’t quite catch it.
‘The boot-print,’ he called to Swanson. ‘What did CSU say?’
‘Nothing at all. It’s just a boot-print. No matches on record.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Harper. ‘Come on, something must break here. Eddie, anything from the interviews?’
‘Nothing yet,’ shouted Eddie, ‘but we’re trying.’
Everyone was silent, working the case, poring over and over every detail.
Denise raised her head. ‘I’ve found nothing in any of Lucy’s old journals, not one reference to his name or appearance.’
‘Then we’ve really got nothing,’ said Harper. He looked up and saw Heming’s face staring out from one of the boards.
‘Where did you disappear to, Heming?’ said Harper. He stared at the pictures of Lucy and Abby. They might be both alive, somewhere out there, with a man intent on torturing and killing them. Harper looked up again at the board. Something was speaking to him, he just couldn’t quite hear it.
Back at the start of it all, they still hadn’t worked out how the killer had enticed David Capske to East Harlem. Maybe there was something in it. They’d made so many small discoveries — the whole Nazi story — but none of it led to the killer. They knew so much, but so little. Then something emerged. He hit the desk.
Denise looked across. ‘What is it?’
‘Your profile, Denise. Listen, I’ve had this feeling all along. This terrible feeling that he’s always ahead of us, always in the know.’
‘What are you saying?’ said Denise.
Harper pulled out his shield and looked at it. ‘Remember the bird of prey that Ruth Glass chose? A blue eagle. We thought it was the Eagle of the Third Reich, didn’t we? We fell into that trap. Listen, Denise, the killer took a big risk in taking those kids. I think they hold the key.’
‘But they won’t let us near them. You’ve no idea where they are.’
‘Maybe they’ve already given us the answer,’ said Harper.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The cop who came out of Lukanov’s apartment. He fooled the detectives, right? And you know what else? I even think that’s how he got away with staying so long at the bodies.’
‘I don’t follow,’ said Denise.
‘How the hell did he drive the Auxiliary truck to the heart of a police operation without impersonating a cop?’
‘I still don’t see what you’re driving at.’
‘I’ve got an idea.’ He looked at Denise. ‘Come with me.’
Chapter Ninety-Four
Lucy looked all around her. She was in a brick room with a barred window. She looked up at the ceiling. Four shower heads.
She knew enough about history to know that this was no shower. She looked out of the Plexiglass and saw the metal tubes leading to the bin. She had smelled the strange smell from inside the van. Almond.
Outside, in his antechamber, a man was sitting on a chair staring into the window. It was him. Someone she had known. Someone she had made a mistake about. An evil man. He was concentrating. He clenched his fists hard in their leather gloves.
He walked through to the next room. He didn’t appear to want to look at her. He returned with a metal can and walked over to the plastic bucket. Lucy watched him, terror in her eyes. She placed both hands on the Plexiglass and hit hard.
He would not look at her. He took the new can and opened it. Poured the whole tube of Zyklon B pellets into the plastic bucket. Then he turned and stared at Lucy. All he had to do was open the channel.
She tried to recall events, but her mind wasn’t functioning. He must have drugged her. She couldn’t remember things in the right order. Lots of the last few hours were blank. She could remember further back. She was his girlfriend, the love of his life, his black-and-white happy ending, his meaning, his everything. Not someone else’s.
He walked across to the cell and stared inside.
‘You’re going to die,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Once upon a time, you made me sane. Just the warm curl of your skin and the smell of your neck — that’s all it took, and the hatred was a world away. You gave me redemption, Lucy, then you took it away.’
She stared up at him, the tape around her mouth preventing her from speaking, preventing her from pleading.
‘You were more than my lover. You never understood that you were my antidote. You were my hope and you left me.’
He pressed his face against the Plexiglass. ‘I have so much hate and anger inside me now, Lucy, that I can’t get rid of it. I have killed because of you. Then I realized why you hated me. Because you want a Jew for your bed.’ He reached out his hand. ‘I still want you, but I hate myself for it. You excite and repulse me. I found someone who looked like you,’ he said, through the Plexiglass, ‘but she wasn’t enough. She didn’t feel like you, Lucy. She didn’t have what you have. Her name is Abby. She was bigger than you, Lucy. I had to starve her just so I could feel her ribs like I could always feel yours.’
Lucy stared out, shocked and silent. She was going to die. She knew it with horrible certainty.
Chapter Ninety-Five
Harper drove down the side of Central Park with Eddie and Denise in the car.
‘Where are we going?’ Denise asked.
‘To test a theory.’
‘What theory?’
‘Just keep your mind open and try to think of what kind of person this could be.’
Harper turned off and parked in East Drive surrounded by trees. He got out of the car. ‘Hear that?’
‘No,’ said Eddie.
