Chapter 8: Dead End
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“Good morning.”
“You’re early today,” Cassidy acknowledged as she walked to her workstation.
Alan looked away from his computer monitor to give Cassidy a smile.
“I thought I would come in early and get a jump on things. How are you feeling?”
Cassidy gave Alan a curious look of as she hung up her coat.
“I’m okay,” Cassidy reported with a little sorrow. “About last Friday… I was tired.”
“No, you weren’t,” Alan tossed back with a grin on his face. “You were frustrated and pissed off, and I was the sounding board that you could vent it out on.”
Cassidy noted Alan’s good mood and was relieved. She returned his smile before speaking again.
“Just the same, I’m sorry.”
It’s fine. It’s fine,” Alan responded while pecking at the keys on his computer keyboard.
Cassidy noted Alan’s attention to his monitor and became curious about what he was doing. It was unusual for Alan to be working with his computer when he could push most busy work off to her, and as far as she knew there was nothing to be done that she could not do.
“What are you doing?” Cassidy asked with a frown.
“Something I read yesterday was gnawing on me all last night,” Alan answered while examining his monitor, “and I’m just looking into it.”
“Is it about the case?” Cassidy asked.
“Yes. In several of the missing person investigations, witnesses reported seeing the victims using taxis, Uber and Lyft vehicles to get around.” Alan explained as he continued to study his monitor.
“Yeah, but not on the days they went missing,” Cassidy countered.
“I know, but it got me to thinking that the driver could have taken a private call or scheduled the ride days earlier,” Alan suggested tentatively.
Cassidy was momentarily perplexed. She was not sure what Alan was suggesting.
“Where are you going with this?” Cassidy asked with a confused expression.
“What if the killer is a ride-share driver who takes off the book gigs every now and then?” Alan queried hopefully.
Cassidy immediately picked up on Alan’s train of thought that the victims may have gotten into vehicles that were not sent to them through dispatchers.
“It’s an idea, but how do you test that?” Cassidy asked.
Alan felt partially support by Cassidy’s question and became eager to share.
“Okay, we dismiss taxis because there were only a couple of witness observations of vics coming home in one,” Alan enthusiastically spoke. “I went through all the missing person investigation files and found a couple of references to Lyft vehicles by friends and neighbors and seven on Uber, so I think we should concentrate on Uber first.
“But we know that none of our vics made phone calls before they left their homes on the day they went missing,” Cassidy argued.
“That doesn’t prove they didn’t arrange for a ride by an Uber or a Lyft driver on another day,” Alan countered.
Cassidy shook her head in disbelief.
“This sounds like a waste of time.”
“Think about it,” Alan rifled back. “If they did get into an Uber and there’s no record of it, then that would make our vics ideal targets for a driver who is not above killing a passenger for the money in his or her pockets.”
“I can’t believe this was about money,” Cassidy disputed sternly and shaking her head. “It’s too much risk for pocket change.”
“So, he gets his kicks off killing people, but it fits,” Alan countered. “It’s not like there hasn’t been crimes committed inside ride-share cars before. We’re talking about a dual sex serial killer here. There has to be a component to this that has nothing to do with sex.”
“Maybe,” Cassidy conceded with a shrug.
“They get into the car, somehow the driver poisons them, he takes their money and then dispose of the body,” Alan suggested with excitement. “It fits.”
“But we don’t know that they were poisoned,” Cassidy quickly disputed.
“What we do know is that they were not bludgeoned, shot or stabbed,” Alan argued back with equal swiftness. “At this point, poison is the most likely murder weapon. Who knows? We could be looking at a female killer.”
Alan’s remark gave Cassidy cause to stop and think. Poison did lend itself toward a female killer, and it did work well with the fact that the female victims did not appear to have been sexually assaulted.
“We should at least look into it,” Alan proffered.
“We only have two days left before the mayor brings in his dream team,” Cassidy pondered aloud.
“So, you want to spend the next three days questioning more friends of the vics,” Alan asked with astonishment. “All of that is in the missing person files. It’s a dead end.”
Cassidy gave the idea some more thought.
“Okay, one day, but then we go back to questioning people who knew the victims. Agreed?”
Alan returned a halfhearted “okay.”
“So how do we do this?” Cassidy asked.
“E-Z Pass,” Alan answered as though he had unveiled a surprise.
Cassidy had no idea how Alan planned to use the E-Z Pass system. She knew that E-Z Passes had been used before to establish the general location and direction of movement of a particular vehicle, but she could not think of a way to use them for identifying dozens of ride-share vehicles moving all around the city. She gave Alan a puzzled look and waited for him to clarify.
“I have access to Uber’s employee database,” Alan eagerly reported.
“How did you get that?” Cassidy asked.
“The lieutenant got me a warrant, and I faxed it over,” Alan flatly answered while still working at his computer.
“You have been busy,” Cassidy stated.
“I plan to check the vehicles of the Uber drivers against the lists of toll booth payments that were made on all of the days that our last four vics disappeared,” Alan continued to explain without looking up from his computer.
“Why the last four?” Cassidy challenged.
“The receipts of E-Z Pass transactions only go back three years,” Alan returned.
Cassidy immediately recalled that only the last four victims were killed within the past three years.
“Well, that’s still a lot of drivers,” Cassidy pointed out. “Do you know how many Uber drivers are out there?”
“Thousands,” Alan answered in a word.
Immediately after making that declaration, Alan scrunched his face into a grimace and growled out a “damn” as he pushed himself back into his chair.
“What's wrong?” Cassidy asked as she got up from her chair and went to Alan’s side.
“I can’t get this thing to match up names from the Uber database with names in the E-Z Pass receipt records for the dates that the last four vics went missing.”
“Let me do it,” Cassidy said as she stepped in and took control of Alan’s keyboard and mouse.
Alan gladly surrendered the task. It took Cassidy a couple of minutes to setup the filter and run the search. It took the computer less than a minute to spit out 419 names.
“It’s still too many,” Cassidy said.
“Okay, so now we use their work hours,” Alan quickly instructed, pointing at the monitor.
Cassidy took a few minutes to configure another filter. It took the computer less than a minute to filter out the names of drivers who were working a fare during or within an hour after the disappearance of the last four victims. When the search was finished, the list was down to 32 names and five of them were female.
“It’s doable,” Alan stated with a smile.
“We don’t even know if we’re on the right track,” Cassidy surmised. “And even if the killer is a ride-share driver there’s no guarantee that he or she uses an E-Z Pass.”
Cassidy knew that anyone who drove for a living in New York City would almost certainly have and maintain an E-Z Pass, but she was reluctant to waste her time on what she perceived to be a long shot. The thought of spending the day looking for someone who meets Alan’s criteria but likely not have anything to do with the murders had Cassidy unnerved. The mayor’s one-week timeframe was pressuring her to not waste time.
“Hey, you’re the one that insists on being thorough,” Alan countered. “Are you just going to ignore this?”
Cassidy realized that fear was causing her to search for reasons not to go down a time consuming but viable path, so she shrugged her shoulders, shook her head in disbelief and decided to martial on in good humor.
“You came up with this last night?”
“I have my moments,” Alan returned with a broad smile.
“Okay, let’s wash these guys through the system and see how they look,” Cassidy acquiesced with a chuckle.
LINE BREAK
Boom! The sound reverberated through the door and walls like a terrifying thunder. For Cassidy, all movement beyond the shockwave came to a momentary standstill. In that same instant, wood splinters exploded through the apartment door and Detective Alan Mercer flew backwards as though an invisible fist had punched him in his left abdomen. He flew across the hall belching air as he slammed into the door behind him, then he slid down to a sitting position on the floor in wide-eyed shock. With an expression of terror on her face, Detective Cassidy Tremaine tripped over her own feet as she jumped back and away from the eruption. It was just past one o’clock in the afternoon.
“Son of a bitch!” Alan roared as he pushed himself up off the floor while removing his Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol from its holster.
While Mercer got back onto his feet, Cassidy screamed into her two-way radio, “Shots fired! Shots fired! Officer down!”
After Cassidy shouted her location into her two-way radio, a second gunshot rang out. The bullet blasted through the door in front of Alan and into the door behind him, just to the left of his head. A third gunshot punched through the door and into Alan’s left shoulder. Horrified by seeing her partner shot for a second time and by the thought of what was likely still to come, Cassidy clumsily pocketed her two-way radio and went for her gun. Showing no debilitating ill effects from the two impacts to his person, Alan quickly recovered to duck down and to the right to avoid the next two shots through the door. With an expression of rage on his face, Alan kicked open the door and brought his gun to the ready. Cassidy recovered in time to bring her gun to the ready and in a stooped position, braced herself against the wall just to left of the door that Alan had just kicked open. The instant the door flew open, the explosion of a sixth gunshot rang out from inside the apartment. The impact of the projectile into the lower right side of Alan’s neck sent him sprawling backwards. As Alan fell back, he fired two poorly aimed shots into the apartment.
“Alan!” Cassidy shrieked as she watched him go down onto the hall floor.
Cassidy was terrorized by the sudden gun battle that had erupted from out of nowhere. She quickly looked at her partner as he lay on the hall floor bleeding from the neck. Her eyes were wide open from fear. Her mouth was partially open as she hyperventilated. She froze. Her partner was still a visible target for the shooter. Her desire to save Alan from the shooter was checked by her fear of being shot herself. After a second of hesitation, she heard the sound of two clicks from inside the apartment. Motivated by the thought that the shooter’s gun was empty, Cassidy pushed herself up to full stance and rushed into the doorway, leading with her gun at the ready. She saw a single individual in the room: a man, middle-age, wearing a white T-shirt and dark slacks. A look of crazed terror shaped his facial expression. His hands were in the act of reloading a revolver. As Cassidy recognized his actions, she fired five shots from her Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol, hitting her target with each shot. Seconds after Cassidy’s successive burst of gunfire, Albert Haynes lay writhing and gurgling in pain on the floor before slipping into unconsciousness then death.
For a moment, Cassidy was stunned by what had just happened and by what she had done. A few seconds later, she regained her faculties, secured the area as best she could with a quick scan of the room and then raced back to Alan’s side. He was unconscious by then and barely alive. In a panic, she slowed the loss of blood from his neck wound by pressing her gloves against it. She paid no attention to the other areas of his body, assuming that his body armor had successfully stopped the bullets from penetrating into his person. A head popped out of a doorway down the hall and Cassidy yelled instructions at him.
“Call 911! Call 911! Officer down! Call 911!”
The head disappeared back into the apartment. Cassidy turned her attention back to Alan. With tears in her eyes, she pleaded for him to stay with her, to stay awake, to keep breathing. The only sign of life coming from Alan was the glazed look in his eyes. Cassidy stayed by his side until the first uniformed officers arrived, carrying gauze and a medical kit from their car, and took her place by Alan’s side. Paramedics arrived a few minutes later and Alan was hurried away to the closest hospital. He was pronounced dead on arrival.
Cassidy arrived at the hospital half an hour later with a support escort and driver, Detective 2nd Grade Sarah Murphy. Cassidy was informed of Alan’s passing within minutes of her arrival. Despite this information, she chose to wait at the hospital for Alan’s wife. Helen Mercer arrived outside of the examination room where her husband’s body lay for nearly an hour. With an expression of shock on her face, Helen approached a tearful Cassidy. She hesitated briefly to take in Cassidy’s blood-stained clothes and then went through into the examination room. Neither knew what to say to the other at that moment. Several minutes later, Helen came out of the room sobbing. Cassidy stood up to meet her.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Helen,” Cassidy entreated.
Helen stopped to give Cassidy a nod of acceptance and then continued to move by with her head bowed and sobbing. Cassidy watched her leave before gathering her belongings so that she could go home as well. Detective Murphy followed her lead and together they set off for the exit. Just inside the emergency room door, Cassidy was intercepted by Lieutenant Graham who was coming to see her.
“You okay?” Lt. Graham asked softly.
“Yeah,” Cassidy returned with a nod.
Lt. Graham paused to study Cassidy a moment.
“They’re going to want to do an official debrief on the shooting, but I can push that back a few days.”
Cassidy took a moment to consider his offer. At that moment, she was not sure what she wanted to do, but it did not take her long to realize that she wanted to tell her account of this shooting as soon as possible.
“No, I’ll come in tomorrow,” Cassidy responded quickly. “I need to get it over with while it’s still fresh in my mind.”
“Okay,” Lt. Graham agreed with a nod. “But you don’t have to report in. You’re on administrative leave until the end of week.”
Cassidy wanted to challenge that order, but Lt. Graham quickly interrupted her thought.
“This is non-negotiable.”
Cassidy accepted this mandate with a nod.
“After that you’ll be on light duty until you complete and pass a psych exam,” Lt. Graham instructed.
“Okay,” Cassidy agreed.
“I’ll set up the debriefing for 10 a.m.,” Lt. Graham informed her. “Report to the conference room at that time.”
Cassidy agreed with an “okay” and a nod.
“There will be an officer involved shooting review,” Lt. Graham continued passively. “But I don’t won’t you to worry about that. It was a good shoot.”
Worrying about it was all Cassidy could do at the moment. Since the end of the encounter, she was in a daze about the whole event. It was not supposed to happen. They went there to talk to this guy. She had no idea why he started shooting at them. Her greatest fear was that the officers investigating this incident would misconstrue the events that led up to the shooting. As a police officer’s daughter, she knew enough about police shootings to understand that the killing of a civilian who was not wanted for anything was not likely to reflect well upon her, not even when the civilian fired first. There would always be some who would believe that she and/or Alan did something to provoke the exchange. Full vindication was dependent upon there being some evidentiary support for her claim that Albert Haynes fired first. Without this evidence, she knew that the police shooting review investigators would feel some pressure to highlight any credible infraction to evade a civilian complaint that they were covering something up. This concern notwithstanding, Cassidy expected her claim that the civilian fired first to bode well for her to some degree. She repeatedly rationalized in her head that the bullet holes in the door supported the truth of what happened.
Cassidy had no confidence in finding someone in the apartment building that would back up her claim that Haynes fired first. The community that he lived in was financially depressed and predominantly anti-police. Because of her awareness of the general condition of the community, her mind spent the past hour going over everything that happened and how she and Alan came to be there. She compared her memory with the preliminary report she gave at the site of the shooting before leaving for the hospital.
Albert Haynes was the sixth Uber driver they went looking for. She and Alan whittled the list of 32 names down to 9 that they believed to be worth questioning. What made them people of interest were their histories of violence and criminal records. Albert Haynes was the third driver they found.
“Are you sure that the review is going to go well?” Cassidy questioned Lt. Graham about the debriefing that she was scheduled to do the next day.
“Are you kidding?” Lt. Graham asked with a confused look on his face. “You got him. At the least you’re going to come out of this with a commendation.”
It was Cassidy’s turn to be confused. She had no idea what the Lieutenant was talking about and he quickly noticed her confused expression.
“No one told you?” Lt. Graham questioned with a slight smile. “He’s the guy. They found evidence in his apartment that links him to all 9 Greenbelt victims, keys, wallets, ID’s, credit cards. You got him.”
“He did it?” Cassidy asked with astonishment.
“Yeah,” Lt. Graham emphatically returned. “You closed the case.”
This news stunned Cassidy. The last thing she expected to hear was that Albert Haynes was the killer that they were looking for. She never had any faith in this line of their investigation. She only saw it as something to be briefly explored and then dispensed with in favor of researching the lives of the victims. At this moment, she did not know what to think. After a moment of silence, she was led away by Detective Murphy to complete the first leg of her trip home.
After her trip back to the precinct, Detective Murphy took Cassidy’s car and drove them both to her parent’s house. Detective Murphy was then driven back to the precinct in a waiting patrol car. It was just after five in the afternoon when Cassidy walked into her parent’s home. She found her children and her ex-husband, James waiting there with her parents.
“Are you okay?” Margaret asked while hugging her daughter.
“Yeah, I’m okay, Mom,” Cassidy returned unconvincingly.
Margaret challenged her answer with a second inquiry and got the same reply but with more insistence. Cynthia and John immediately moved in to give their mother a hug which was not a normal act for them. Normally, they took their mother for granted, but their father and grandparents’ behavior had them convinced that something was wrong.
Cassidy was quick to assure her children that all was well, and with an abundance of smiles, kisses, tickles and hugs, she allayed their apprehensions. She devoted a considerable amount of time to reassuring them before seeing them comfortably seated in the living-room watching a DVD movie. Cassidy took advantage of their distraction to join her parents and James in the kitchen.
“Was it a good shoot?” James asked the moment she entered the room.
“Yes, it was a good shoot,” Cassidy responded, rather annoyed with the question.
"I was just asking," James explained defensively.
"I know," Cassidy responded apologetically. "I'm sorry."
James accepted Cassidy’s flustered apology with humility, and then suddenly, he realized his normally confident ex-wife had been traumatized. Now seeing Cassidy as a frightened woman, he felt his masculine sense of protection swell and take advantage of his manner and speech.
"Now, tell me what happened," James instructed with some condescension.
Cassidy rolled her eyes in reaction to the tenor of his query and then started to explain.
“He just started shooting through the door,” Cassidy began with constrained hand gestures. “Alan was struck with the first shot. He took it in the vest. I went to the floor when I jumped out of the way. Alan was hit again when he got up. By the time I got out a call for backup, Alan was bursting open the door. He took one in the neck. When I went in, the shooter was reloading his revolver and I shot him. That’s what happened.”
That’s a good shoot,” James advised with authoritarian bravado. “You shouldn’t get any blow back from the board about that.
"It doesn't have to be a bad shoot for the review board to find something wrong," Daniel corrected. "When you’re debrief you should bring a union lawyer with you."
Margaret was noticeably shocked by the suggestion that she might need a lawyer. Cassidy noticed her mother's distress and spoke up to relieve it.
"That won't be necessary, Dad," Cassidy countered with a nod.
"You shot a civilian without a warrant or probable cause for an arrest," Daniel disputed with a look of surprise. "It doesn't matter that he killed your partner. You need to prove you did everything by the book."
“He’s the guy,” Cassidy softly informed them with a shrug.
“What?” James asked with a confused look.
Daniel was equally confused, but he waited on Cassidy to explain.
“Evidence was found in his apartment that linked him to all nine bodies found in the Greenbelt,” Cassidy explained with a look of bewilderment. “He did it.”
Both James and Daniel were stunned by her report. Margaret was visibly happy to hear it.
“So, you’re going to be okay?” Margaret questioned, hopefully.
Cassidy had no immediate response. Her thoughts were elsewhere. She shook her head as if to say she did not know the answer to her question, and then spoke the words on her mind.
“Alan is dead.”
Margaret spent the next few minutes consoling her daughter over her loss. A little later, James said his goodbyes and set off for his home. Cassidy and her children ate supper with Margaret and Daniel, and with the urging of her mother and the endorsement of her father, she and her children spent the night there.
The next morning, Cassidy attended to her children with little regard for her own schedule. The debrief was scheduled for ten o'clock that morning. She knew she had plenty of time to make this meeting despite her growing preoccupation with the morning television news broadcast. The report of the shooting, the deaths of Detective Alan Mercer and Albert Haynes, the suspected Greenbelt Nine killer, was being widely, and repeatedly, reported.
Cassidy arrived outside of precinct 122's conference room at 9:55 a.m. The debriefing started on schedule and came to a completion shortly after twelve noon. At the end of these proceedings, Cassidy was informed that her investigation into the deaths of the Greenbelt Nine was over. She was told that a new pair of officers would conduct the follow up investigation to try to find answers to unanswered questions about the crimes. Behind that declaration, Cassidy was dismissed to her administrative leave with the appreciation of the board for a job well done.
ns216.73.216.13da2
and then Add to home screen.