Authors: J. A. Faura
For his part, Steven was processing what he had been told. There was nothing surprising about anything he heard, except the way Pruitt had broken his professional approach, even though he knew once he made his decision Steven was going to do what he was going to do. It was as if he wanted to get whatever had spooked him off his chest and to warn his friend about what he would probably end up seeing, all without having to be obvious about it.
Steven knew that in situations like these, humans, all humans, were always likely to imagine the worst and even controlling his emotions he was no different. A thousand horrible images flooded his mind. He didn’t fight it, he just let it come as he knew it would sooner or later and then processed it accordingly. Now that he knew what happened to the girls, he remembered what the General had said and wondered what it was he was going to do about it. He had an idea, but he hadn’t made up his mind.
Now he was going to have to completely compartmentalize his life. By now, the police, the fire department, or both, were opening Riche’s warehouse, and he needed to get home before his family learned anything. Once he spoke with his mother-in-law and made sure the kids were okay, he would have to figure out where Marybeth was, really was, emotionally. This story would dominate the news for the next few weeks, if not months, and he knew no matter how hard he tried he would never be able to shield her from it for long, and he wasn’t optimistic about how she would react. He needed to put a plan in place to put Tracy to rest, and to get his kids through it with as little disruption to their lives as possible. He had already made the decision that once Tracy was taken care of, Bethany and Chris would go back to their grandmother’s house along with their mother. Right now, that was the only way Steven could think of keeping his family out of what was sure to be a media frenzy.
As he sat in the booth with his coffee in front of him he was going through a checklist of what he would have to do when it came to the family coming to New York from various cities across the country, dealing with funeral arrangements, and a thousand other things. The reality was that he was doing everything in his power to avoid the inevitable, deciding what to do about Riche. He knew what he was planning on doing tonight, but beyond that it was a haze for Steven, and that was not a feeling he was comfortable or familiar with. He had a few hours before daylight and then it would be all over the news, so if he was going to do what he had in mind, he had to get moving. He put a twenty on the table, put the sugar dispenser on it and walked out of the diner.
The entire warehouse complex had been cordoned off, and there were more vehicles from all the pertinent agencies than could be counted. NYPD, the FBI, the medical examiner’s office, the fire department and hazardous materials teams had all been dispatched. The news vans and helicopters would not be far behind. Grady had been the first detective to speak to the first officers on the scene. Actually, the first on the scene had been the New York Fire Department with two black and whites just behind them. Melvin had called in the hazardous material spill and the assault on him and his dog. When the fire department got there, they could tell immediately by the smell that they had a caustic and hazardous agent coming from warehouse 11. The police took a statement from Melvin and took possession of the dart he had been shot with. Before the hazmat team arrived, both the police and the fire department had made the decision to break into the warehouse to ensure there was nothing still spilling the sludge and to determine whether the entire block would need to be evacuated.
Once they were in the warehouse, the horror that had made up Donald Riche’s existence became known to the world. All four uniformed NYPD officers and the firemen present were being debriefed and counseled by the time Grady got there. Mullins had gotten there 15 minutes after Grady, and by that time there were at least 10 black and whites, two engines, the hazmat team and a helicopter at the scene. Grady had waited for Mullins to go back inside. Once the detective squad and the crime scene investigations team had been deployed, access to the warehouse was completely cut off to everyone who was not absolutely necessary.
Grady had done a quick walk-through and ordered everybody not essential to the immediate processing of the scene out of the warehouse. They still didn’t know what chemicals they were dealing with, whether they were flammable or caustic. He had waited for the hazmat team to green light the CSI and FBI lab guys to go back in. The people from the coroner’s office would go in next. Grady could tell who had been in the warehouse and who hadn’t just by looking at their expressions. Those that had gotten sick had been discreet about it when they could be, but the haunted look in their eyes wasn’t something they could get rid of. Grady himself had a hard time reconciling what he had seen with any semblance of reality or even humanity.
After an entire career in the NYPD, he thought he was pretty much impermeable to anything, and he was, he just had never imagined he would ever be exposed to anything like this. He doubted there was one soul right here right now, no matter how long they’d been at the job, that could have seen anything like this in their worst nightmares.
A SWAT team had already been dispatched to Donald Riche’s apartment and he had been taken into custody without any incident. He was back at the precinct and not saying a word. He had been allowed to call his lawyer. Mark Mullins had been there to make sure everything had gone by the book and that no one got a little too zealous doing their job when it came to handling Riche, something that tended to happen from time to time with child murderers and rapists.
The last thing they wanted was for some technicality or another to put a kink in the case, although from what Grady had seen in the warehouse and what he’d been told by the crime scene investigations team, there was a mountain of biological material all over the place and Grady was willing to bet that most of it was Riche’s. Still the best thing that could happen is that Riche would confess once faced with the evidence.
He had asked for Riche to be allowed to talk to his attorney but not to be interrogated yet. As Grady was thinking that the DA’s office would also want to send someone down for the questioning, Mark Mullins finally arrived at the scene.
Grady threw away the styrofoam cup with cold coffee he had been holding and met Mullins before he got all the way to the warehouse, “How did it go?”
Mullins, holding his own cup of fresher coffee, answered, “By the book. No resistance, no trouble, nothing. Riche answered the door, the SWAT point man knocked and he answered before they’d needed to bust down the door. They took him into custody and that was that.”
He took a sip of his coffee and went on, “He was brought to the station and again everything went by the book. By the time he got there, everyone knew and everyone was waiting to see him. I was there to greet him and make sure nobody got cute or heroic.”
Grady asked, “How did he respond when you greeted him? What did he look like?”
Mullins took another sip, shook his head and answered the question. “I have to tell you, Bob, it was creepy as hell. He saw me and recognized me and just said, ‘Good evening, Detective Mullins.’ Just that, nothing else, but it wasn’t what he said that made the whole thing creepy, it was his expression.
“He was completely calm, he wasn’t asking questions about the reason he was being arrested or saying anything about being innocent, nothing. His expression and the way he acted were almost like he was relieved. We booked him, fingerprinted him and I took him to a holding room.
“I asked him if he wanted something to drink and he asked for coffee. Before I could leave the room, he just said, ‘Detective, I will need to speak with my attorney, please.’ So I let him call his lawyer and that was that. His lawyer got there right before I headed over here, so I decided to wait for a few minutes. He went into the interview room and came back out about 10 minutes later, right before I was going to leave. He was white as a ghost and just let me know they were going to be a while.
“He looked haunted, Bob, like he was going back in because he had to, but what he really wanted to do was just to get the hell away. Maybe it was me just reading too much into all of this, but the whole thing was surreal and creepy as hell.”
Grady took it all in, he hung his head and then looked up at Mullins, “I don’t think it was you just reading too much into it. Go ahead and take a look at the scene. The CSI team and the medical examiner’s team are in there now. Everyone else is being kept clear of the scene, but they know you are coming.”
Mullins said, “Alright, I’ll head over there.”
He started on his way and Grady grabbed his arm before he could get on his way, “Mark, this one is bad. I know we talked about it and how bad it felt, but this is like nothing we ever thought about and it
will
give you nightmares. I haven’t gone to sleep and I’m already having them. The first guys on the scene are all being counseled and I think we’ll be looking at some posttraumatic claims before long. I’ll understand if you don’t want to take a look now. We’ll have all the pictures and evidence we need to hang a case on the guy from here and from his apartment, so I’ll understand if you want to steer clear for now.”
Mullins looked at Grady and saw something in his friend’s eyes he had never seen before, fear. Robert Grady, a grizzled and seasoned homicide detective in New York, someone who made his way up the ranks by being a beat cop, in the vice squad, organized crime detail and many others and had seen the worst humankind had to offer, had fear in his eyes. Whatever he had seen had scared Robert Grady and that more than anything else gave Mark Mullins pause, but he was a cop and this was also his case, and as much as he might want to avoid seeing something that was going to give him nightmares, he couldn’t shirk what he felt was part of his responsibility.
He looked Grady in the eye, squeezed his shoulder and went on his way. Mullins arrived at the crime scene, which was surrounded by uniformed officers and hazardous materials guys and a multitude of vans and trucks. He went straight into the scene and the first thing that hit him was the smell. There was a strong chemical smell, but mixed with it there was a smell Mullins was very familiar with, the smell of decomposition. Even with as many chemicals as there were in the warehouse, Mullins could still distinguish the smell of death.
Before he had a chance to actually see any of the bodies, Mullins found himself in the middle of what looked to have come straight out of a nightmare. The warehouse was clearly set up as a workshop of some sort. As he was trying to make some sort of sense out of what he was seeing, Mullins caught a glimpse of one of the open upright refrigerators and watched as one of the guys from the CSI team had to leave the warehouse because he couldn’t take it anymore. It was just a fleeting glance, but it was enough to make Mullins understand why Grady had looked so haunted. There was a little girl in there, obviously dead, but there was something else wrong with the picture. He couldn’t see exactly what, but he now knew he wouldn’t be looking into all of the freezers.
Mark Mullins was also a grizzled and experienced homicide detective with the NYPD and he had also seen horrible things, but he knew his limits and he knew he had never imagined anything like what he was seeing. He knew if he were to go farther in he might just want to hang it up, and he wasn’t ready for that. He took a look at the tools sitting on the bench, the power tools on the floor, the freezers and the little girl in the upright refrigerator, and put together the picture. That alone was hard for him to process and from what he could see, what Grady said made more sense to him. There was enough here now, and there would be even more after it was all processed and the coroner’s office was done with the autopsies, to make a case against Donald Riche.
Mark Mullins would hold true to his convictions and do everything he needed to do to carry out his job as well as he could, but looking at every body part in those freezers and refrigerators was not necessary for him to feel like he could do his job. If he did it now it would be more out of curiosity than out of necessity, and he just couldn’t live with that idea, the idea that he didn’t have to look but did anyway.
He took his handkerchief out of his pocket, put it up to his nose, and headed back to meet up with Grady. The two men looked each other in the eye without saying a word. They didn’t need to. Mullins could already tell what Grady was thinking about, Steven Loomis.
Mullins asked anyway, “Tracy Loomis?”
Grady nodded slightly and answered, “I made the ID earlier. I don’t know how we are going to want to handle that.”
Mullins said, “He seems like a pretty solid guy. I just don’t see him as a wild card.”
Grady looked long and hard at Mullins before saying anything, “I know he’s not, but you know we are going to have to level with him, and you were in there, you saw. How in the world can we even begin to imagine how a father is going to react to something like this happening to his six-year-old girl?”
Mullins nodded and then realized something, “How did they get into the warehouse, I mean who called it in and why?”
Grady answered, “The night watchman said he was knocked out by some sort of dart he pulled out of his chest. When he came to, his dog was still out with a half-eaten steak laced with tranquilizer lying beside him, and a strong chemical smell was coming from one of the warehouses.
“When he went to check which one it was coming from, he saw chemicals pouring out from warehouse 11. He called the chemicals in to hazardous materials and the police to give them the dart he says he pulled out of his chest. The first uniformed officers on the scene looked at the dart, had a conversation with the guard and started to think he might have made that part up, and that what really happened was that he fell asleep at the switch and the ‘accident’ happened while he was sleeping. The cameras were bypassed and the main power breaker switched off. The CSI guys have the dart and the half-eaten steak and are going to run tests to see what it was that was in them.”