Rise of a Phoenix: Rise of a Phoenix Read online

  “Yeh, I got it,” he said. “We will be there as soon as we can.” He finished scribbling and put the phone down.

  “We got one on the east side,” he said, waving the bit of paper in his hand. “M.E is already there.”

  The two men grabbed their jackets and headed for the elevator at the far end of the room. “I’ll meet you guys downstairs,” Sam said, swigging the remains of the coffee down. She grabbed her jacket and waited for the return of the elevator.

  The street was full of onlookers, press, and TV, she thought to herself. McCall had purposely parked quite a way from the scene, she knew that stretching her legs would do her good and it gave her time to get her head straight and her senses tuned. She parked, and then slipped out of the cool of the air-conditioned vehicle to the raging heat of the morning. Shutting the door, she then combed her shoulder-length brown hair through her fingers. Then, with a confident tap on her service pistol, slipped on a pair of sunglasses. She was ready.

  Walking up the barriers, she noticed the large crowd of people shoving each other aside to get a look, and some press photographers trying for the shot that would make them big money. In the corner by the walled entrance to the crime scene stood a tall broad-shouldered officer that on Sam’s approach smiled, tipped his cap and lifted the tape for her. She ducked under the yellow police barrier, and as she stood up on the inside, McCall thanked him and smiled.

  Stopping for a moment before venturing down, she viewed the crowd then turned once more to the veteran cop.

  “Tom, can we get these people back?” she asked “A long way back?”

  Tom chuckled then proceeded to move the barriers back further.

  “Come on, folks, show’s over, come on now, let’s go.” The other officers followed suit, getting rid of the crowd.

  Detective Sam McCall walked up to her two colleagues, who were busy questioning witnesses. As she approached Detective Tooms he looked up from the notebook which he was busy scribbling in, and met her gaze. She stood for a moment, letting him finish up. He thanked the two students he’d been talking to, and as they left McCall walked up to him.

  “So what we got?” she asked him.

  Tooms pointed out the couple who sat huddled together on the steps of an ambulance.

  “John and Sue Mitchell, both thirty years old, just celebrated their wedding anniversary when they decided to go up the alley. Next thing these guys are hearing screaming and the students called 911.”

  She regarded the couple, registered their fear.

  “You been down there yet?” she asked him.

  Tooms shook his head, “Been waiting on you. You want to talk to them first?” McCall nodded while she watched John and Sue cling tightly to each other.

  “What the hell is down there?” McCall thought. She thanked Tooms and headed for the ambulance.

  John and Sue Mitchell sat there, still shivering with fear as a result of what they had witnessed, their shoulders covered by blankets as they each grasped a cup of steaming coffee. As she approached them, she nodded to the paramedic who was attending to them; he immediately knew that as a, Give us a minute gesture. As he left them she gave him a quick silent thank you. He just smiled.

  She took a minute to jot down the time, date and location in her notebook, then proceeded to start the interview:

  “Hi, I am Detective Sam McCall.”

  “Hi, I’m John Mitchell and this is my wife Sue.” The woman gave a slight nod.

  “I know it’s difficult but I really need you to go through what happened.”

  Sam gave them a sympathetic smile. They both looked at each other and nodded. It was Sue who started talking: “Well we had just had dinner at some Italian restaurant around two blocks away.”

  Her voice was as shaky as the rest of her.

  “You see it’s our anniversary and it was the first chance we’ve had to go out alone without the kids,” John explained, making an effort to keep his voice calm.

  Sue continued after giving his hand a little squeeze. “Well we were just walking, enjoying the evening when John pulls me down here to well ... to be alone.” She looked down to the ground and blushed.

  “Why?” Sam enquired, then she figured it out. “Oh OK, sure I got it.” McCall felt embarrassed for the woman. “Go on Mrs. Mitchell, but I think you can leave out those details,” she added, trying not to smile.

  “Well we got down here to, well, you know, and it wasn’t until we got to the end before we saw it—her.” Sue Mitchell broke down in tears and Sam waved to the paramedic to take the couple away.

  The woman detective seemed puzzled; she called over the other two officers to join her.

  “What we got, guys?” she asked.

  Tooms flipped open his notebook. “Well, those guys over there,” he pointed with the end of his pen towards the group of students sitting on the doorstep in front of a newsstand. “They saw the couple go down the alleyway and thought nothing of it till they heard screaming and thought the guy was doing a special on her and ran over and saw the body.” He closed the pad and returned it to the inner pocket of his short brown leather jacket.

  “Well, we got nothing over here just some passers-by, didn’t really see anything.” Tony, the other officer, pointed to an elderly couple standing beside an ambulance.

  McCall noticed that it was still the early hours, dawn hadn’t yet broken, and the alleyway was still in darkness.

  As they moved deeper into the dank and filthy alleyway McCall moved quickly out of the way, as a fresh-faced uniformed officer almost bowled her over. God-damn rookie, she thought, watching him heading for a mass of large heavy-looking wheeled garbage bins. Sam and her colleagues rounded a corner to find a slim African-American woman leaning over something; she wore blue medical overalls that had the words Medical Examiner in yellow print on the outside. Her back was towards them, which obscured their view of the body.

  “Hi, Sami,” she said without turning round. “Well we got a mean one here.”

  “Hi, Tina,” McCall replied, always happy to see her friend. “What are you saying? A mean one?” she asked Sam’s eye gazed past the back of the ME and the sight before her made her want to lose her breakfast.

  “Jesus, what the!”

  The other two covered their mouths and turned round.

  A young female lay on the cold ground, her naked body lay as if it had been posed, and her clothes lay folded next to her. All seemed relatively normal, apart from the body.

  “Yeh, like I said, this person is nasty ... Brilliant but nasty,” said the ME, instantly regretting calling him brilliant.

  “Why, what do you mean?” McCall asked curiously.

  “As you can see,” Tina pointed with a gloved finger towards an area where the front of the torso should have been,

  “The area here has been completely removed.” There was a large space, once occupied by a chest and stomach. All that remained was the upper and lower parts of the torso and the flesh and bone structure of her back. The lower section of the ribcage and raw naked flesh and muscle held it all together.

  “Till I get her back to the lab I won’t know any more, apart from the fact that she wasn’t killed here.”

  Sam looked puzzled for a minute then added with a confirmatory nod,

  “There’s a lack of blood.”

  The pretty M.E looked up at McCall with saddened eyes and nodded.

  “‘Lack of’ isn’t the word. I mean I found no blood anywhere, it’s as if she had been completely exsanguinated. But, hey, don’t shout vampire just yet,” she said, looking up and giving Tooms and Tony a Don’t think about it look just before they could make a comment.

  Tina waved at two orderlies to come and take away the ‘Jane Doe’, and the two men, both in their late twenties, brought over the body bag and trolley, then, taking great care, placed the corpse in the bag and took it back to the coroner’s wagon.

  The three officers waited for CSU to finish their sweep. Sam watched impatiently whi
le the team started to take photos and collect fibers and prints.

  “OK, detective,” called a familiar voice. The grey-haired man was in his late forties but still had the style and bearing of a much younger man.

  “You’re clear to go in,” he said smiling, treating her just as a grandfather might treat his granddaughter.

  “Did you find anything?” McCall was hoping that the killer had left something, but she already had a bad feeling about this case.

  “Not really. Son-of-a-bitch is smart, put her in an alley, put it like this we have too much data.” the newcomer gave her an uneasy smile.

  “Thanks, Jim. Oh say hi to Denise for me, will you?”

  He waved and left with the rest of the CSU.

  “OK.” McCall turned to her two colleagues. “We need to do a canvass of the area, I want to find something that this bastard may have left.” She motioned for her colleagues to go to the further end of the blocked alleyway, while she went back to try and mentally reconstruct how he may have got ‘Jane’ there. She reached the entrance of the alley and realized that all the onlookers had gone, obviously leaving once the body had been taken.

  Looking round the entrance, she imagined a vehicle pulling up and stopping, then went though the movements of a person getting out and walking along the alleyway, assessing what he may have touched or banged against, trying to envisage the scene, and what he might have encountered.

  “Why here?” she thought aloud. “What’s so special about here?”

  As Sam stared down the breadth of the dark brittle-stoned passage she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. As she slowly opened them she was ready, taking her time, checking for something, anything.

  “Sometimes things are in plain sight,” her father used to say. So she stopped for a second as the thought of her dad brought a small unwelcome distraction to the moment. She shook off the memories and proceeded down the alley.

  There was nothing.

  Damn it, she thought. Who was this guy? Suddenly she had this feeling of not being alone. She turned to find at the alley’s entrance there was a tall dark figure, silhouetted by the bright sun behind him making an identification impossible. All she could make out was a long coat that flapped in the breeze of the large truck that powered past. Moving towards the figure, she drew out her badge and held it up.

  “Hey excuse me can I talk to you?” she yelled out. “Hey you!”

  But the figure remained motionless. Something seemed wrong about this guy, whoever he was. Suddenly something jammed up against her leg, and there was a loud screech as she kicked a ginger cat who had only been trying to be affectionate. She looked down, shocked at what had just happened, but when her focus returned to the figure he was gone.

  “Stupid animal!” she screamed, running in pursuit of the man. Reaching the mouth of the passage, she burst out, half expecting to see him running or a car speeding away. But there was nothing, just passers by suddenly turning at the sight of McCall. He had completely disappeared. Who hell was he and where did he go?

  THREE

  The midday sun was hot and stifling, which caused the bustling traffic to crawl across the city, ice cream vendors worked hard to supply the needy crowds that had gathered in the streets. Within the coolness of the Grand Central Station thousands of commuters hurried to find their platforms. As she headed for the exit, Susan Black nudged her way through the endless wash of motivated people. Pushing the brass door rails of the wood-and-glass doors Susan was suddenly taken aback by the sudden change in temperature, as the startling heat slapped her in the face.

  Stepping into the street, she headed for the coffee shop that sat under the Park Avenue Viaduct. She smiled to herself as she noticed a few heads turn, and detected appreciative glances. She was a sexy forty-year-old woman, her long blonde hair flowing attractively in the wind, her grey business suit hugging her neat slim body, accentuating the alluring curves. Men’s mouths dropped open, even some women stared in admiration, and she lapped up the attention. As she entered the coffee shop one man paid her special attention. This blond-haired man readjusted his sunglasses to get a better view, then picking up his cell phone, he pressed the speed dial and waited.

  “Yes,” the voice on the other end of the line was soft but the tone was like nails on a chalkboard. The dark haired man shivered at the sound of the voice in his ear.

  “I have just seen something I think you will like,” he said. There was a pause.

  “Can you bring it?”

  The blond man smiled,

  “Sure, I’ll pick something up for you.” He disconnected the call and put the cell phone into his jacket pocket and waited.

  Susan lived only a couple of blocks away so she decided to ‘walk off’ her long journey, and the hours of sitting; it was good to be back after a two-week business trip to Canada. As she waltzed down the busy streets, the sound of the wheeled suitcase rattled on the hard concrete, warning people to make way for her. She was not far from her apartment building when she stopped at an alleyway and listened: a faint sound emanated from the depths of the dirty alley. Moving slowly closer, she strained to make out the sound.

  What was that? An injured animal? She moved nearer to the noise until she realized it was the sound of a crying child.

  “Hello, are you hurt?” she asked. Releasing the grip on her case she edged in further until she found a little girl sitting in an old cardboard box, which was large enough to hold a freezer or some other large object. Susan knelt down just in front of the child, and at her.

  “Hi, are you lost, do you need help?” She didn’t reply. “Where’s your mummy?”

  Before Susan could turn round, she felt her body seize up as the taser bit into her back and she passed out.

  The next day Detective McCall headed to the precinct, still wondering whose body it was at the entrance of the alleyway. The day before, after examining the scene of the crime, the rest of the time was spent chasing missing persons files and hoping Tina, the Medical Examiner, had come up with something. McCall hated to drive in the mornings as the traffic was its usual nightmare, but what else could she do?

  Suddenly her radio crackled to life.

  “Hey, McCall, if you are on the way to the precinct, don’t bother, we are needed at Central Park. We are at the Bethesda Terrace.” It was Tony and he did not sound happy.

  “Why, what’s up?” McCall was almost afraid to ask.

  “We got another one, the son-of-a-bitch has struck again.”

  This time another voice spoke, it was rougher, deeper and more authoritative: the Captain.

  Bethesda Terrace was a late 1800s wonder, the two-level courtyard displaying a mix of red and white brick, beginning with the smaller forecourt on the upper level, to which on either side two large sandstone staircases came down to give entry to a weathered underpass. This made the place look as if it had once belonged to a castle or a cathedral. A magnificent fountain loomed at the other end of the fantastic courtyard. This was intended to be a place of dreams, a place for people to come and lose themselves in another time.

  The park was awash with police putting up crime-scene tape and barricades, the press in their droves setting up tripods and getting video cameras ready to go on air: a media circus.

  Sam pulled up her car as close as possible and surveyed the chaos.

  “Well, so much for keeping this one under wraps,” she said to herself, getting out of her car. McCall gave her gun a reassuring tap and then moved forward towards the tape.

  Cameras flashed and microphones were thrust in front of her face, and people were begging her for a statement, but she just shrugged them off, treating them like an unwanted infection.

  Passing the cordoned-off area, she moved freely, checking to make sure nothing out of the ordinary stuck out. A voice called out for her as she walked down the weathered sandstone steps, and looking round McCall saw the rest of the team and headed towards the crowd of plain-clothes officers, two of whom were Tony and Tooms. Th
ey were speaking to a very tall African-American man. This man was well over six feet with broad shoulders, wearing a blue suit that fitted tightly enough to advertise his large muscular arms but not tight enough to constrict his movements.

  As she approached she nodded to Tony and Tooms, and then acknowledged her superior, saying

  “Morning Captain.”

  “McCall.” He returned the greeting. “This is getting out of hand.”

  She noticed a blue cloth covering something on the ground by the large sculptured underpass opposite the large fountain near where they stood. The group moved over to where they found Tina crouched in front of a covered corpse.

  “Hi, Doc,” They all said to her. Concentrating hard, she just raised a hand and waved in response to their greetings.

  “So, Doc have you got a cause of death?” the Captain asked causing Doctor Franks turn round to face him.

  “Well, I’m not sure how she died,” the attractive M.E replied,

  “But I know ID is going to be a bitch.”

  As she said the words, she unveiled the corpse to reveal a woman. Her naked body looked trim and athletic, and unlike the last victim she was intact except for one small detail.

  “Well, it’s definitely your guy,” Tina continued.

  “Blood drained from the body just like last time but as you can see the head has been removed, and not just the head but also the neck all the way down to the collarbone.”

  Even the unflinching Captain had to look away.

  “We need to catch this bastard and fast,” Brant almost growled the words, “Before we have a full blown panic on our hands. Come on, let’s move, people.”

  “OK, Tony, you check for CCTV footage, they must have picked something up,” Sam McCall instructed.

  “Tooms, can you grab some uniforms and talk to as many people as you can, someone may have seen or heard something. Thanks, guys.” She looked round at the layout. The detective had to admit it was brilliantly staged: no buildings for miles and a road that ran right next to the steps. Getting witnesses would be nothing short of impossible.