Chapter Two
Ganze
Megan Hunt, Assistant Medical Examiner for Brooklyn, New York, looks out over the field of white sheeted forms that dot the grassy expanse of Prospect Park. Her arm sweep indicates she'd started at the farthest left side near the tree line and took each body in turn, which makes the one at their feet number six out of twelve.
"Every one of the wounds so far has an entry diameter of 11 millimeters, which puts it in the .357 class."
"Serious stopping power," Pete says.
"But look at this."
They crouch down, Hunt lifts the sheet far enough to display the torso of a woman in her mid-20's. The hole dead centers her chest, where the halter obscures little. "It went in, pierced her sternum, heart and then her spine, but it's a through-and-through, came out the back. Now what would you expect in the back?"
"You know the saying," Myka says, "'in like a grape, out like a melon'."
"Yes, you'd expect that. But look at this." Together Megan and Pete turn the woman on her side. The bloody exit hole shows the shell had gone through her spine, and the hole is the same diameter as the entry wound. "Now what do you suppose that shell had to have been made of to go through at least the sternum and spine and not be misshapen?"
"I wouldn't guess." Myka looks to her crouching partner.
"Nothing I saw in the Corps, but I've been out for a while. The worst guess I would put it as is a Teflon coated 'cop killer'."
"A nasty weapon," Hunt concurs.
x
The so-called 'cop killer' is designed to penetrate a Kevlar vest, but at its best even that may not be immune to blunting after going through two layers of bone.
Pete looks up from the body, thinking of the worst possible alternative and hoping reality would not be so bad. "Needle point?"
"You have me."
He cannot remember a time when he would let a beautiful woman use that line without a comeback, but the body between them has removed all spirit from the moment.
x
"How far was the shooter?" Myka's thinking a few feet to get this much power to drive completely through the bodies.
"I can't even tell you how far. No witness I heard saw a shooter or heard any shots."
They scan the area, but the huge lawn tells them nothing. The park is a wide-open space, much greater than an acre in area, and the nearest place an assailant could hide would be in a car on the roadway, over 250 feet away at its closest point.
But the shooter could not have fired from the woods to their left, the orientation is off. All of the sheets show the bodies lay from the road outward, not from the tree line.
Additionally, the woods are being searched by teams of police using classic grid formations to hunt for the eventual projectile after it had gone through the body, but from the looks of them the officers are finding very little.
"All of them are like this?"
"I have six more to do," Hunt says, indicating the rest of the field and the widely scattered sheets. "You're welcome to come along. Perhaps we can put something together."
xxx
Artie Nielsen and Leena Frederic have landed in West Palm Beach, where the term tropical applies far too well. When they'd left the Palm Beach International terminal, they'd walked from that pleasant air conditioned and humidity-controlled reception area into an oven so humid they'd started to perspire within their first forty steps. Though they'd dressed in anticipation of the heat, he in a short sleeved (brown, of course) shirt while she had opted for sleeveless top and mid length skirt, the first blast had taken their breaths away and they'd moved as quickly as they dared to the line of Taxis at the curb.
Artie carries his NSA shield, and Leena's is an excellent fabrication even to the extent of not being pristine, useful for those times when she serves as his field partner. No one would question its authenticity and that of the photo ID any more than they could her as-rarely-used USSS or ATF credentials.
They'd made their way directly to the hospital, having many reasons to make this as brief a visit as possible. They'd traveled light, Artie with his leather satchel and Leena with a change of top and other essentials, but they're determined to 'snag, bag, tag and get out'.
Alfred Ganze, age 58, had been flash frozen in his office and had been taken to Columbia Hospital at 2151 45th Street, a wise choice considering their proficiency in Emergency and Trauma Care. The agents intend to find out how skilled the medical staff is in treating a patient who had not been buried in ice nor suffers from frostbite, but had been flash frozen by a temperature that's going to be hard to explain anywhere other than in the Arctic in dead winter.
Their shields, together with the psychological ploy of 'if you're trespassing, act like you own the place', win them access to the ICU division without having to go through the lobby Reception area and bluff a relationship with Ganze.
Once in the correct section, and not minding the air conditioning, they approach a Nurse at the central station.
"Good morning," Artie says while they display their shields with as little time to examine them consistent with casual custom, "Special Agents Frederic and Nielsen, National Security Agency; we're looking for Mr. Alfred Ganze."
The woman consults her computer. "Yes, he's in Room B. I believe his doctor is with him now."
"Thank you."
xx
They're sure that his physician is in the room, for he must be one of the four men surrounding the bed. Alfred Ganze lies upon the bed, his raised hands and his posture consistent with someone who is standing and sorting through mail. He'd been found in his office, beside his desk, yet his hands are empty.
There is a sense of how quickly he'd been frozen by the positions of the strands of his hair, each frozen in what was probably a mild breeze as might come from an air conditioner, all suppositions to be checked later. The computer report had said that this morning the temperature had already been one hundred four degrees. They wish the outside temperature had stayed that mild.
"Excuse me," the taller black doctor says with a definite 'excuse you' tone. "You're not supposed to be in here."
Artie senses that their IDs are probably going to gain them twenty seconds, so after using four of them on introductions, he asks "What is this man's condition?"
"Frozen," seems intended to freeze them out.
"I think I might be able to determine what happened to him." When you're holding deuces and treys, bluff.
"Really. What?"
The readout on the monitor above Ganze's head displays –84 degrees Fahrenheit. "What was his temperature when he was admitted?"
"Minus one hundred nineteen," one of the other doctors says. "We're trying to find a safe way to thaw him out, but thus far we have no ideas."
"I dare say not. Well, thank you, must leave." He ushers Leena out the door. When it closes behind them, he takes her elbow and they walk down the corridor.
"Artie, what about Albert Butz's glasses?" she asks sotto voce.
"Got them," he says, hefting his leather satchel. "That's the good news. The question becomes," he stops and looks back, "how do we get them on him without causing a Security uproar?"
"And a worse question is: is he the only one or just the first?"
xxx
"What… the… Hell… is this?"
Pete and Myka, working the ninth body with Dr. Megan Hunt in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, had noticed several Police Officers moving to and congregating several feet into the left woods, so they'd left the Assistant Medical Examiner behind and hurried to be part of that investigation. At eighteen feet into the unofficial tree line they see one tree has a neat bore hole slightly to the right of center. It looks to be four feet high, leading to Pete's rhetorical question.
He doesn't have a micrometer ruler, though he determines to get one as soon as he can, for he eyeballs the hole at 11 millimeters. The hole is smooth and has gone through the tree with no chipping or other damage.
"How high is that?" he asks generally, and one of the Officers glances, first at the gold shield at his belt, then at him.
"Forty-nine inches."
One of the officers bends down and peers through from the other side, then points past the tree to a spot on the distant road. In moments, Myka and Pete are alone.
Though taller than his partner, Pete steps around the tree and bends to the hole. "Hey, Mykes, check this out."
When she looks through the hole, a tunnel better than seven inches long and as smooth as though drilled by a Master Carpenter, she sees the distant officers setting a base at the edge of the distant road and are commencing a search out and in along that line.
"Now look from out here."
She straightens and looks at what the view through the hole had limited.
"Whoever fired this shot," Pete concludes, "had first bulls eyed your friend's victim number three."