seen the article.
She began to skim the piece of writing for details. It was lengthy, so she decided to just do a Find search on the page. She got a hit immediately.
“Interesting,” she said to no one in particular.
Michael Roman’s wife was named Abigail.
Sondra and James Arsenault sat in the squad room of the 112th Precinct. Sondra had never been in a police station before, and she had no idea how unrelentingly grim they could be.
In her time as a social worker she had met many types of people. Granted, the nature of her work meant that many of the people with whom she came in contact were in some way troubled but, for Sondra Arsenault, this was both the joy and the challenge. While it was true that some people entered the mental health field with a god complex – an exaggerated sense of hubris in which a patient is formed and molded by the therapist into a vision of normalcy – most of Sondra’s colleagues in the field were dedicated people to whom a person entering into therapy was not a blank slate to be recreated in some sense of normalcy, but rather that few behaviors are hardwired, and that adjustment could be made.
Until today. As she scrolled through computer screen after computer screen of mugshots she realized she had seen more evil in an hour than she had seen in her previous eighteen years in the field of mental health.
Looking at these faces she was reminded of the difference between working the city and working the suburbs. Perhaps Detective Powell had been right when she asked her about where she applied her science, and whether there might be a difference in what happened in a city, as opposed the comfort and safety of the suburbs.
The detective was right. There was a difference.
Powell stepped into the cramped, windowless room. “How are you guys doing?”
Sondra looked up. “All of these men have broken the law?”
Powell cleared a chair of papers, sat down. “Some more than once,” she said with an understanding smile. “Some more than ten times. Some are working their way through the alphabet – assault, burglary, car theft, driving without a permit.” She winced at her reach on that one, but no one seemed to notice. “Have you seen anyone who looks familiar?”
“This is what frightens me,” Sondra said. “I have seen a few people who look familiar. Or maybe I’m just projecting.”
“Don’t worry if you don’t find the man who broke into your house among these photographs. He may not be in the system. It’s always worth a shot, though.”
Powell opened up a 9? 12 envelope. She had printed off two pictures from the New York Magazine article. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to show you a couple of other photographs.”
“Sure,” Sondra said.
Powell held forth the first one. It was a picture of Michael Roman, taken from the cover of the magazine. He was leaning against a BMW convertible coupe, black trousers and open white shirt, his suit coat over his shoulder, looking pretty GQ, if Powell had to say so herself. Powell had cropped out the magazine’s logo, and everything else that might indicate it came from a magazine. She didn’t want to give the woman the impression this was some kind of celebrity, even though he probably was in certain New York legal circles. It might taint the woman’s identification, although Powell found Sondra Arsenault to be a careful, meticulous professional, and didn’t think she’d fall for the hype. “Do you know this man?”
Sondra took it from her, looked at it closely. She shook her head. “No.”
“This was taken five years ago. Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m quite sure.”
“He doesn’t look at all familiar to you?”
More scrutiny, probably just to be polite. “I’ve never seen this man before in my life.”
“Okay,” Powell said. “Thanks. Mr Arsenault?”
James Arsenault shook his head immediately. Powell noticed that his lips were chapped and cracked and white. In his hand was a small bottle of Tylenol. He was probably taking one every twenty minutes, without water. This guy was a wreck.
Powell put the first picture back in the envelope, handed the woman the second photograph. This one too had been cropped. “What about her?” she asked. “Does this woman look familiar?”
Sondra took the color copy of the magazine page. “That’s her!” she said. “That’s the woman who gave me Viktor Harkov’s phone number.”
“This is Abby?”
“Yes. No question.”
“And you don’t know her last name, where she lives, where she works, anything else about her?”
“No,” Sondra said. “Sorry. I met her at the conference, we talked about adopting, and she told me that she and her husband had just adopted, and that she knew a lawyer who did a really good job. She gave me Viktor Harkov’s phone number, and that was about it.”
“Did she say anything to you about his methods, the way he worked?”
“No,” Sondra said, perhaps more forcefully than she would have liked. “I mean, I later got the impression that Abby may not have known that the guy was a little…”
“I know what you mean,” Powell said, finding no reason to supply Sondra Arsenault with a pejorative term for a man who was at that moment being dissected on a cold steel table in South Jamaica. They all knew who he was and what he did. The question, if there would be a question, was what did Abby Roman know about the man, and when did she know it? Before she recommended Harkov to the Arsenaults, or after.
There had been two sets of twins illegally brokered by Viktor Harkov in 2005. Two sets of girls. If Harkov’s killer had visited the Arsenault house perhaps he was now in search of the other pair of twins. Perhaps he had already found them. Perhaps there was another family in jeopardy.
Like Cape Fear, Powell thought.
She had to get that movie, check it out.
While the arsenaults spoke to a police artist, and created a composite of the man who had broken into their house, Detective Desiree Powell left the Homicide Squad, stopped at the Homestead on Lefferts Boulevard for a cherry strudel and a coffee.
Within twenty minutes she was on the Van Wyck, heading toward a small town in Crane County called Eden Falls.
THIRTY-NINE
There were four vehicles in the parking lot. A pair of Fiestas that looked like rental cars, a ten-year-old van, and the blue Ford.
Michael walked slowly over to one of the Fiestas. It was parked three spaces away from the Ford. He glanced quickly at the Ford and saw that the man sitting in the driver’s seat was black, perhaps in his twenties, earbuds in his ears. He had most likely seen Michael emerge from Room 119, but had paid no attention to the man in the baggy raincoat, tweed hat, and sunglasses. He had his eyes closed, his head bobbing to the music.
Michael stepped over the low guard-rail fence behind the cars. He searched the area near the expressway for something, anything. He found a short length of steel rebar, the material used to strengthen concrete. He picked up the pipe, slid it into his waistband in the back, then dropped to the ground behind the Ford. He waited a full minute. The man in the car had not seen him in the rear-view or side mirrors. Michael crawled along the ground, along the right side of the Ford, then circled in front of the car. When he reached the left front tire, he took out a small piece of the broken mirror. He had wrapped it in a washcloth, but it had cut through the fabric. His hand was bleeding. He began to cut along the tire, right at the rim. After a minute or so, he heard the air begin to leak out.
Two minutes later, with the tire almost flat, Michael crawled to the back of the car, stood up, and made his way back over to the Fiesta.
When he reached the car, he dug into his pocket as if he was fishing around for car keys. He glanced over at the driver of the Ford. The man looked over. Michael pointed to the front tire on the Ford, mouthed a few words.
