The Eighth Day

Chapter 13

Sam had heard the stories about how New York City got its nickname, the "Big Apple," and they were all bullshit. If New York City was an apple, it had fallen off its tree long ago and rotted to the core.

Even at this early hour they gathered, men and women lured by the prospect of violence. Like flies to the dying flesh of that apple, curious neighbors mingled on the sidewalk, a few still wearing their robes and slippers, held at bay by the fluorescent yellow and diagonal black lines that appeared on the street to mark the dimensions of the crime scene. They stared in fascination at the smear of red where Clint Nelson and Leonard Devine had kept their watch.

From time to time, Sam wondered why he bothered. Each morning, he woke and took a shower. He suited up and ate breakfast. He drove to work, and each day he faced countless acts of immorality and ungodliness that deepened his contempt for humanity. Evil came in the form of colorful pills, white powder, and a syringe. It dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt, a business suit, and sometimes it wore a uniform and carried a badge. It wielded a pistol, a rifle, a knife, a baseball bat, and anything else it could get its hands on to shoot, stab, and bludgeon. It stole cars, money, and lives. It raped, and it murdered, and it was everywhere.

But sometimes acts of kindness and compassion shone through like distant stars in the fabric of darkness. Sometimes, it was something small, like witnessing someone stop to help a stranger change a flat tire or offer their seat to an elderly woman on the subway. Sometimes it was big, like the men and women who gave their lives during the attack on Avalon Stadium during the Super Bowl.

He continued to stare out the window at the scene seventeen stories below. The killer often returned to revel in the aftermath of his handiwork, posing in the crowd as a concerned citizen. Perhaps he preened out there now, hidden behind a mask of compassion. Sam had reassigned a traffic video cam to watch the crowd just in case he was.

No one had witnessed the shooting, although several of the nearby residents confirmed hearing two gunshots an hour earlier. One for Nelson and one for Devine.

With a sigh, he turned from the window and paced forward, hands clasped behind his back. His footsteps echoed throughout the studio apartment, and the strangeness of it struck him again.

When they first met, Shawn Jaffe told Sam he'd moved from Ohio several weeks ago, and a cursory inspection of the apartment supported his claim. Jaffe had furnished the place with only the necessities.

A bed, dresser, and armoire populated the bedroom, and a microwave, a refrigerator, and a small table were all that was in the kitchen. The only food consisted of a freezer full of microwaveable meals and a half-empty bottle of scotch. A lack of photographs and keepsakes, along with a stack of cardboard boxes in the corner opposite the bedroom, created the illusion he'd yet to finish unpacking.

But once they opened the boxes, that theory flew out the window.

Inside, they found no pictures of family and friends, no souvenirs from vacations or memories of the past. Nothing of personal worth or importance. Instead, they found empty soda cans, balled-up newspaper pages, glass jars filled with nails, screws, and nuts, and a couple of bricks.

And that was all.

None of the officers from the evidence collection unit or any of the detectives, including Sam, could make heads or tails of it. Although not overjoyed to find the police at his door at one in the morning, the landlord became cooperative enough when they shoved a search warrant in his face, and he confirmed Jaffe had moved in two weeks ago. So why did Jaffe stack boxes of trash in his apartment to make it look like his unpacking efforts remained a work in progress? He'd fooled no one but himself.

The initial responding officers had found the door to the apartment locked and no signs of forced entry or a struggle. On the kitchen table, a briefcase and a half-empty glass tumbler stood on either side of a hard copy of the New York Times. Whether Jaffe had departed against his will or of his own volition remained a mystery.

Detective Nat Francis sidled alongside the table next to Sam. "Haven't seen one of those in ages," he said, jabbing a finger at the Times. "Printed newspaper. Wonder if it's one of those retro trends, like blogging."

It lay open to the classified ads, and Sam remembered that when he first met Jaffe, an app for the Times had been open on the restaurant table then, too, and it had also shown the classifieds. Jaffe had denied having any interest in them, yet here again lay a copy of the Times turned to the classifieds.

Sam tried calling Jaffe's smartphone, and a muffled marimba ringtone murmured from within the briefcase on the kitchen table. Conversations withered and heads turned. The detective slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, flipped the clasps on the briefcase, and opened it. Inside, he found a shuffle of papers comprising prospectuses, financial reports, and account statements for several of Jaffe's clients. On top of these lay the smartphone, still sounding its iconic timbre. Sam picked it up and thumbed the wake button. The screen came to life, and a retinal scan interface appeared.

"Goddamn technology."

"Locked?" someone asked.

"Yeah."

The room released its collective breath, and with a flick of his wrist, Sam tossed the phone back into the briefcase.

His mind reeled as he tried to fit the facts into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but it was as if he had half the pieces from two different puzzles—the newspaper, the boxes in the apartment with their bizarre contents, Devine and Nelson unaccounted for and blood in the street, the shooting at his home, Shawn Jaffe saving him from the kamikaze van, the bomb threat and the missing body, the drama and homicide at the Café del Mar, and at the end of the day, Jaffe nowhere to be found. No matter how he turned them, the pieces refused to fit together.

Detective Francis asked, "So what do you make of all this? You think your boy was snatched?"

Sam shook his head. "Hell if I know." He scratched the stubble on his jaw and said, "I need you to swing by One PP and see what they can get from his phone." One Police Plaza was the headquarters for the NYPD and home to the Technical Assistance Response Unit, which provided computer and electronic forensic support to the rest of the force.

"No problem," Francis said.

"Also, there are files on his clients in that briefcase. See what you can find on them. And find out what he was looking for in the classifieds. Maybe we can link it to—I don't know. Something. Anything."

"You got it."

Sam jabbed a finger at Ethan Mooney, a detective with jet-black hair who would've looked more in character wearing a high school letterman's jacket than a badge and a gun. "Mooney, you're coming with me."

Mooney raised his eyebrows. "Where to?"

"Jaffe's office."