The Cicada Prophecy ; Unlucky Day ; The Candidate Read online

“Not if it was a random shooting. Let’s see if we can narrow down the location of the shooter.”

  3

  Wellington Hotel, Midtown Manhattan, 18th Floor Guest Room

  July 4, 12:30 p.m.

  So this is who I'm up against. One middle-aged NYPD detective and his dutiful sidekick.

  Following standard procedure, I see. Interviewing the witnesses, scoping the crime scene, probing for clues. Except in this case, there are precious few. A distant gunshot, an as-yet-unrecovered slug, no discernible motive, and no suspect. Good luck with that.

  The lady cop is kind of cute, though.

  What brings a woman into this line of business? This is a man's domain, the business of killing. It's a testosterone-fueled affair played by angry men. No place for a lady.

  She’s practically bursting out of her tight slacks and blouse. I can see her nipples protruding under her blouse. My high-powered scope is useful for other things besides killing people.

  Does this turn you on, sweetheart? Chasing bad guys, cleaning up other people's dirty business?

  What to make of her partner? He's obviously in charge, asking all the questions. Clean cut, fit and trim. Probably ex-military. He doesn't waste much time, gets right down to it. Surveying the crime scene, noting the obvious, collecting relevant details from the witnesses. He looks a little shaken by the blood though, for an experienced cop. Maybe this hits a little close to home?

  A witness is showing him his phone and the detective is noting the time of the shooting. I can make out the number. That could come in handy a little later. How convenient that my hotel thought to provide a pen and notepad with my free room. Perhaps I’ll give the witness’s friend a ring sometime. Just to remind everybody I'm always watching and keep them on their toes. A little mindfuck every now and then never hurt anyone.

  They're pointing in my direction now. Can you see me? I see you. Right in my crosshairs.

  But I've had my fill today. I'll see you again—sooner than you think. Come look for me. You won’t find me. I don't leave tracks.

  Let the games begin.

  4

  Staten Island

  July 5, 11:30 a.m.

  Joe knocked on the front door of a gray clapboard house in south-central Staten Island. The home had flaking paint on its wood siding and a lopsided porch that squeaked under his weight. A pale middle-aged woman wearing a nightgown answered the door. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.

  This was one aspect of his job that Joe hated. Interviewing bereaved family members to search for clues was never a pleasant task. He'd experienced the horror of losing a loved one to violent crime himself and knew firsthand how invasive a police investigation could be. He didn’t waste any time with preliminaries.

  “I’m Detective Joe Bannon with the NYPD, and this is my partner, Hannah Trimble. We're investigating the shooting of Sofia Raccheti yesterday. May we have a few minutes of your time?”

  The woman pulled the door back and motioned them inside. A balding man in sweat pants and a sleeveless undershirt lay in a lounge chair, watching TV. The woman sat at a vinyl-covered kitchen table in the open family room and offered the detectives a cup of espresso.

  “Thank you,” Joe said. The detectives took adjacent seats at the table. “Are you Franca and Mario Raccheti, the young woman's parents?”

  “Yes,” the woman said, trying to steady a cup of espresso between her shaking hands. “Have you found her killer? What kind of animale would murder a pregnant woman and her unborn child?”

  Joe's eyes narrowed in sympathy.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am. This is what we're here to determine.”

  He noticed a photo collage on the kitchen wall showing a young girl at various stages of development. They seemed to stop around the age of thirteen or fourteen. He flashed back to when his own family mementos ended abruptly. A lone intruder had broken into his home while he was serving in the military overseas and violently attacked his wife and young son. The boy succumbed to his injuries days later.

  The woman dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and sniffed her nose, pulling Joe back to the present.

  “Did your daughter mention any trouble she'd had recently?” he asked. “Anyone who might mean her harm?”

  “Not that I knew of. She wasn’t home much. We spoke over supper two days ago. She didn't sound upset. We talked about the usual things. How she was feeling, her plans for the baby…”

  The woman’s back suddenly heaved and she began sobbing uncontrollably, renewing the memory of her double loss. Joe reached out and held her hand.

  “Did she live here with you full time?”

  “Yes—”

  “When she wasn't shacking up with all those ragazzo,” her husband interrupted, staring impassively at the TV screen.

  Joe’s muscles involuntarily tensed. How a parent could be so callous about a recently deceased loved one left a bad taste in his mouth. He reached for a packet of sugar from a bowl in the middle of the table and tore off the top edge.

  “Were you both here at the time of the shooting yesterday around noontime?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the woman said. “We don't get out much. We've only got Mario’s disability pension to get by on.”

  “I understand your daughter was unmarried. Do you happen to know who the father of the baby was and his whereabouts?”

  The woman's husband snickered from the armchair.

  “She didn't talk much about that,” the woman said, glaring at her husband. “I don’t think she knew who the father was—”

  “It could have been any one of those brutti who called here,” the husband said. “Good luck tracking them down.”

  Joe emptied the packet of sugar into his cup and swirled the mixture noisily with a metal spoon. His mind wandered back almost twenty years.

  How much fault does a neglectful parent play in a child's premature death? he wondered. Could he have saved his own child if he'd been more attentive and not so far away trying to save the rest of the world?

  Hannah noticed her partner's distraction and picked up the conversation.

  “Did you see any bruises or signs of physical violence?” she asked.

  The woman looked down at the table.

  “I don't think she was having any trouble like that…”

  Hannah wondered if there might be a third party interest in the child.

  “Did she talk with you about her plans for the baby and who would bring it up?”

  The woman sobbed again at the thought of her deceased grandchild and paused to collect herself.

  “Only about her staying with us so we could help care for the baby. At least until she settled down with somebody.”

  The woman's husband flashed a dismissive glance at his wife.

  “Fat chance of that.”

  The woman slapped her hand on the table, spilling her half-filled cup of espresso.

  “Mario, can't you be kind toward your daughter just once? She didn't deserve this. She’s our bambina!”

  Joe was torn between his desire to throttle the uncaring father and comfort the distraught mother. Stealing an angry glance in the man's direction, he drew a napkin from the centerpiece and helped the woman clean up the spilled coffee.

  “I know how difficult this must be for you, ma’am,” he said. “We'll do everything we can to find who did this to your daughter and bring the killer to justice.”

  Joe's phone suddenly buzzed, and he glanced at the screen. It was a message from his precinct lieutenant.

  There's been another sniper shooting. Corner of William and Wall. Investigate asap.

  Joe handed the woman his card.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. and Mrs. Raccheti. If either of you think of something that might help with this case, please call us. We'll be in touch again soon.”

  The detectives exited the house and walked down the rickety front steps.

  “What's up, Joe?” Hannah asked. “You ended the interview pretty abruptly. Got some news on the perp?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Looks like he's struck again. Same MO, different social class. Wall Street this time. He appears to be picking off his victims indiscriminately. Let's catch the next ferry and see if we can make any sense from this new hit.”

  “These people certainly weren’t much help,” Hannah sighed. “No sign of obvious foul play on the domestic front.”

  “Other than her deadbeat father, perhaps. Too bad we can't arrest him for willful neglect or emotional abuse.”

  “You almost can’t blame the girl for getting knocked up under those conditions. Any excuse to escape that kind of environment.”

  “Maybe she just got unlucky. Twice.”

  5

  Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, 421 East 26th Street

  July 6, 9:00 a.m.

  Joe and Hannah walked into the examination room of the Chief Medical Examiner for New York City, escorted by the ME’s personal assistant. Two naked bodies lay draped under white sheets on adjacent stainless-steel dissection tables. Only their blood-splattered faces were visible. A gray-haired doctor in a lab coat sat hunched over a microscope at a nearby desk. He peered up when the two detectives entered the room.

  “Hannah, Joe—good to see you again,” he said, standing to greet them. “Though as always, I wish it were under happier circumstances.”

  As the head forensic pathologist for one of the most violent cities in the United States, Dr. Miles Lundberg had consulted on many autopsy findings with the two detectives. Board certified in neurosurgery and ballistics examination, he had more experience with bullet wounds and head trauma than just about anyone in America.

  “Yes, Miles,” Joe replied. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid this one could be a bit more
troublesome than most.”

  Miles wrinkled his brow.

  “You mean because of the similarities in the attacks?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Two shootings from a long-range sniper directly to the head, one day apart in heavy pedestrian traffic. It looks ominous.”

  “Two data points don't yet establish a reliable trend. Though I agree these shootings are atypical.”

  “How so? What have you found?”

  “The first similarity is with the ballistics. Both slugs are of the same type and weight.”

  “Hollow point?”

  Miles picked up two deformed bullets from a metal tray beside the microscope and held them up for Joe and Hannah to examine. The flattened tops of the bullets looked like little gray flower blossoms, their soft lead tips stripped neatly back along perforated grooves like a half-peeled banana. The stems of the bullets retained their perfect cylindrical shape, encased in a shiny brass metal coating. They almost looked to Joe like miniature sculptures, until he noticed specs of blood on the lead, reminding him how they’d ended two innocent lives.

  “Technically, they're jacketed soft-point bullets,” Miles clarified. “They don't expand and deform as much as a hollow point. Just enough to widen the bullet upon impact to increase tissue damage. But not enough to stop its travel inside the victim.”

  “So both bullets passed right through the victims?”

  “Yes—with enough residual momentum to lodge several inches into other bystanders, based on the hospital report.”

  Joe took one of the bullets from Miles' hand and examined its cylindrical coatings. He could see faint, twisted parallel scoring on the cylinder.

  “Have you been able to compare the ballistic fingerprint?”

  “Yes, they match precisely. There’s absolutely no doubt they were fired from the same weapon.”

  Joe rolled the bullet slowly across his palm.

  “Can you estimate what type of gun was used based on the weight and caliber?”

  Normally this would be a job for the police ballistics department, but Joe respected Miles’ experience in this area and he was eager to confirm his suspicions.

  “That's the other interesting thing. It's an unusual configuration. Eight point six millimeters in diameter, not nine. Weight just under thirteen grams. I know this is normally your domain, but I looked up the specs to see if I could find a match.”

  Miles reached down and clicked the computer mouse on his desk. An image of a bullet cartridge about the length of Joe’s little finger popped up on the screen.

  “.338 Lapua Magnum cartridges. They match the specs exactly. Developed for military-grade long-range rifles. I'll leave it for your team to identify the specific weapon.”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Just as I feared. I was afraid we might be dealing with a highly trained sniper.” He looked at the splayed tops of the bullet in his hand, imagining the kind of tissue damage it created. “Can we ascertain anything useful from the victims’ wounds?”

  Miles led the two detectives to the examining tables and pointed with a gloved hand to a small red hole in the forehead of each of the two cadavers.

  “There again, I found unusual distinctions and similarities. Both entrance wounds are in the center of the face. Clean, concentric abrasions at the opening indicate the bullets impacted with a near-perpendicular trajectory.”

  Joe clenched his jaw to quell his roiling stomach. He’d seen his share of death and traumatic injury while serving in the military, but he’d never become fully desensitized to it. As a seasoned homicide detective, he didn’t want to betray any sign of squeamishness.

  “No powder burns?” he asked, trying to steady his voice.

  “No,” Miles said. “And no stippling of the skin around the wound. These shots weren’t fired at close range.”

  Joe thought back to the crime scene interviews.

  “Both eyewitness reports told of a gunshot coming from several blocks away. The streets in the vicinity of each shooting were lined with high-rise buildings on both sides. So the shooter must have been at a near ninety-degree angle directly facing his targets when he took the shot.”

  Hannah leaned in to look more closely at the wounds.

  “Both wounds are directly between the eyes,” she said. “How is it even possible to achieve that kind of accuracy from so far away?”

  Joe had already been doing some math based on his prior military experience.

  “During my tour in Iraq, special forces snipers would tell stories about taking out targets from over a mile away. Head shots each time. That was almost twenty years ago. I'm sure rifle technology has advanced even more since then.”

  “So we're dealing with a highly skilled sniper who can pick people off at will from a mile away?” Hannah said.

  “It's beginning to look like that, unfortunately.”

  Joe turned to the medical examiner.

  “Miles, can you tell us anything from the exit wounds about the vertical angle of the bullet? Maybe we can triangulate the sniper's elevation and distance with this information.”

  Miles stepped forward and rolled one of the cadavers onto its side to reveal a three-inch-wide gaping hole in the back of its skull. Joe resisted the urge to gag. His aversion to head injuries was personal.

  “The exit wound in both victims is larger than usual due to the expanded bullet diameter and severe intracranial pressure created by the high-speed bullet. You can see that the wound on the back of the head is slightly lower than the one on the front. If we take the middle of the exit hole as a reference point, I calculate the downward angle of trajectory on the first victim at a little over four degrees and close to five degrees for the second.”

  Joe thought back to his high school trigonometry classes.

  “From a distance of many city blocks, that equates to a pretty significant height above street level for the sniper's position. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “It would seem so. But don't forget to factor into your calculations that every bullet, even one fired from a high-speed rifle, has a distinct arc to its trajectory based on the downward force of gravity. A bullet fired from the distance you've suggested would have begun to slope down considerably by the time it hit the target.”

  “I'll have our ballistics whizzes back at the precinct figure that one out,” Joe said. “Any other details you can share that might help in identifying the shooter?”

  “Only that this guy obviously was trying to make some kind of statement. A soft-point bullet fired from a high-velocity weapon to the frontal lobe of the brain is all designed to create maximum damage. Most shooters use either hollow-point bullets to maximize internal trauma or full metal jacket bullets to increase penetration. In this case, the killer chose the best of both worlds, so to speak. It ensured not only sudden death but also maximum mess and collateral damage.”

  “You mean regarding the damage to other bystanders in the line of fire?” Hannah asked.

  Miles nodded.

  “Yes. Maybe he just wanted to ensure a lot of blood would be spilled to increase the shock value. It wasn't enough just to kill his victims. It’s almost as if he wanted everyone else to see the after-effects of the shooting. I'll leave it to your police psychologists to figure out his motivation, but this guy isn’t your run-of-the-mill shooter.”

  Joe grimaced as he considered the implications.

  “So we’re dealing with a highly skilled psychopath with a high-grade military weapon roaming the streets of New York, looking for random victims to satisfy his bloodlust.”

  Miles looked at the two detectives and nodded.

  “I hate to say it, but I have a feeling I'll be seeing more of you two in the days to come. Something tells me this guy is just getting started.”

  6

  The Pierre Hotel, Upper East Side

  July 6, 11:00 a.m.

  Shortly before noon on the day after the Wall Street shooting, a young bearded man wearing a gray suit and driving cap strode into the lobby of the Pierre Hotel. He pulled a roller suitcase with a long handle behind him. Well-dressed and purposeful, there would be no reason for the hotel staff to suspect the visitor of any ill intention.