What Have You Done Page 20

  Grandpa began waving his hands frantically. “Okay! Okay!” He started talking in Cantonese as he rifled through his box of pictures.

  Liam could hear more screams behind him and now realized what was happening. “Hurry up.”

  The old man came away with a picture and gave it to the boy. The boy quickly looked at it and handed it over. “We don’t know who he is. He came up to us and gave us the picture to give to you. He pay us two hundred dollars to do it and keep it secret. We didn’t know anyone would get hurt. Please don’t shoot me. I don’t want to get arrested. You go away now. Please. I won’t ask for picture from you anymore. I leave you alone.”

  Liam took the photo and studied it. The figure appeared to be a man. He was dressed in a gray pullover sweatshirt and black sweatpants. The hood on the sweatshirt was up over his head, and his face was covered with a scarf. The figure had been in the process of turning away when Grandpa had taken his picture. Who was this man?

  “You don’t know who this is?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  “No,” Kiki replied. “He come to us like that. That’s all we see.”

  Liam stuffed the picture in his pocket and ran down to the edge of the dock. He stopped and looked back toward the street. The police would be approaching from both directions, and SWAT would be dispatched. There was only one place to go, although his legs refused to take him any farther.

  “Come on,” he urged himself.

  Sirens. Louder now.

  Liam carefully walked onto the slip that held Sean’s boat. The platform rocked up and down as he inched his way forward, whimpering, willing himself to move faster. He stepped onto the back of the boat and climbed aboard, quickly running around, unsnapping the cover and throwing it into the water. He knew Sean kept a spare set of keys in a locked cubby above the steering wheel. He couldn’t afford to get caught. Not now. This was the only way.

  It took three shots with the butt of the flare gun to crack the plastic covering over the cubby. He grabbed the keys, pushed them into the ignition, and turned it on. The motor was out of the water. He pressed the button he’d watched Sean press so many times before and waited for the motor to lower itself down. His breathing was heavy and short. The boat rocked as the deck had done, lifted by his shifting weight and the swells in the current.

  Four police cruisers pulled up onto the dock as people continued to scurry for cover. The officers spilled from each unit, weapons drawn, aimed at their suspect.

  “Stop right there, and turn off the engine,” a voice boomed from one of the patrol car’s loudspeakers. “Place your hands above your head, and interlock your fingers. Do it!”

  The blades of the rotor were just touching the surface of the water. Liam slipped on the life jacket that was next to the steering wheel and looked behind him. Two of the officers were making their way toward the slip. There was no time left. He started the engine and pushed the throttle forward, launching the boat, full speed, into the Delaware River as the side cleats popped under the thrust of the vessel that was still tied to the dock. He turned around and saw the officers running back toward their cars. They would call this in, and the police would launch their own marine unit along with a Coast Guard backup. He needed to use every second he could to his advantage.

  His grip on the boat’s chrome wheel slipped as he turned the boat east toward New Jersey. He was actually out on the water, the one place that frightened him the most. His knees would not hold him for long, as he was growing weaker with each passing moment.

  The flashing lights from the dock grew smaller with distance. There was movement in his periphery, and Liam turned to see what it was. A helicopter, still nothing more than a dot in the sky, was heading straight for him. The boat bounced in and out of the water as he pushed the throttle even harder, slamming against the choppy surface. The helicopter was gaining on him. He could hear the rotor blades thumping as it closed in on its target. He weaved his way around other vessels as best he could. The other boats were moving both with and against him in the channel. The echo of their air horns momentarily drowned out the helicopter that was in pursuit.

  “Come on!” Liam shouted aloud. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest.

  He pulled the boat slightly north and could see a massive barge heading toward him, just under the Ben Franklin Bridge. The helicopter was very close now, almost on top of him. Without thinking through what he was doing, Liam pushed the throttle the rest of the way forward and steered the boat toward the barge.

  “You can do this. You can do this.”

  The barge was about three hundred yards away. He aimed the bow toward the side of it. The coastline of New Jersey was right next to him now as he tightened his angle and pulled back on the throttle. He eased the boat as close to the barge as he could, then pointed it north.

  “You can do this. You can do this.”

  The helicopter was practically on top of him. If he could make it to the bridge, it would have to peel back, fly over the bridge, and pick him back up on the other side. That was what he was counting on. This was it. Now or never.

  As the shadow of the Ben Franklin caught the front end of the boat, Liam passed the massive barge. He let go of the steering wheel, stepped to the edge, and stared into the black water, knowing what he had to do to survive but unable to get his body moving. His bottom lip began to tremble as he held his breath and jumped. The river finally had him.

  The water was ice on his skin. He broke the surface and for a moment could see Sean’s boat bumping up against the side of the barge as the two vessels passed each other. It was still heading north, this time without him. Suddenly, he was sucked back under, but he bounced up again with the help of his life jacket. His body turned numb almost instantly, the current sweeping him south with a ferocity he hadn’t been expecting.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” he panted, panic overtaking him.

  Arms that felt like logs began to slap at the surface as the survival instinct took over. The water was so cold. He started to gain control of himself as the current continued to try to take him out to sea. He fought with every ounce of energy he had as he began swimming closer toward the shore. Although the cover of the bridge still protected him, the current would sweep him out in a matter of seconds. He swallowed the cold black water as he tried to swim. Part of him wanted to stop paddling, take off the life jacket, and allow himself to sink. His mind began to fog over, and he wondered if hypothermia was already setting in. He heard his mother’s voice.

  We’re going to visit your father. One happy family.

  Liam’s foot got tangled in a fallen tree that stretched out from the bank of the river. This stopped his momentum and spun him around, allowing him something solid to grab on to. He struggled with all the strength he had and climbed atop the trunk, first throwing one foot over, then hoisting himself up around the rest of it. He cried out in both pain and fear until he was finally out of the water and on the tree. His body shivered uncontrollably. Across the way and south from where he now sat, he could see emergency lights flickering at the dock. He could hear the helicopter but could no longer see it from where he was under the bridge. The boat that had saved him grew smaller as it continued north in a current that pushed it around. There was no time to rest. It wouldn’t be long before either the helicopter or the marine units figured out the boat was empty. In situations such as these, it would be protocol to send the helicopter back around to retrace where he was last seen, which would be at the base of the bridge. Some of the men might board the barge to see if he had stowed away, but most would track him from the area he now sat at, catching breaths that came in harsh, raspy waves. They’d track both on foot and from overhead. They’d use dogs. He had to keep moving. He had to get to Lakewood.

  48

  The control room was a mass of confusion. Sean stayed out on the perimeter, watching everyone run this way and that, searching for his brother, who they were convinced was a murde
rer. The photo of Liam that had been up on the whiteboard was now replaced by a map of Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey, which was also enlarged on a digital screen at the front of the room. There was a red dot on Penn’s Landing where Sean’s boat had been moored and a dashed line that showed the route the boat had taken, which ended in a second red dot upriver that represented the place where the boat had crashed onto the shore. Smaller green dots pocked the screen on the New Jersey side, representing all the possible ways Liam could’ve escaped into the woods and, farther on, into the neighboring cities. No one had any answers. Their suspect had slipped away with the precision of a real convict, which bought Sean the time he needed to get things back on track.

  Keenan slammed down the phone. “The news chopper lost him after the barge passed. I can’t believe this!”

  “We have our own bird in the sky,” Phillips called over his shoulder as he studied a computer screen in front of him. “Camden PD has scrambled their SWAT units, and the BOLO is going out to every department in the county.”

  “What about news coverage?” Heckle asked.

  Phillips nodded. “Five and six o’clock. Lead story. Top of the hour. They’ll get his face out there.”

  Keenan walked from behind the desk he was at and looked up at the display screen. “How could the chopper lose him? They were following him the whole time.”

  Don pulled a sheet of paper from the printer and scanned it. “News choppers are for car accidents and fires,” he said. “Stable things. This isn’t LA, where you film a high-speed chase every other day. They didn’t have the expertise. They followed the moving object, which was the boat. By the time they realized the boat was empty, Liam was in the woods, and the brush cover camouflaged him from the sky. Not the pilot’s fault.”

  Phillips stood up and put his hands on his hips. “Okay, people, no more bitching. I don’t want to hear it, and it doesn’t get us any closer to bringing Liam in. Camden PD is on it, and our bird is in the air with their permission. Let’s keep working with what we have to try and figure all this out. And where is my traffic cam footage from the Guzio house?” He pointed to Heckle and Keenan. “You two get over to the command post in Camden. I want you on the ground if he’s spotted. This is our guy, and we bring him in our way.”

  The two detectives headed toward the exits. As Sean watched them go, he saw Jane in the hallway, motioning for him to come to her. He pushed off the wall he was leaning against and followed her outside.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  Jane was nervous. She kept looking around to make sure they were alone. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Back in the beginning of the investigation, Liam had me run an off-line search through NCIC. That’s how we found the second victim. We started with loading the criteria from our victim at the Tiger and spinning our search outward from Philadelphia in ten-mile increments.”

  “Okay.”

  “We found more.”

  Sean nodded and took her gently by the shoulder, guiding her up the hallway and through one of the exit doors that led into the parking lot. The sun was setting, but he could still feel it on his face when he walked outside. “What do you mean you found more?”

  Jane held out a file she’d been holding. “They aren’t as comprehensive as the Delaware victim, but there are enough pieces here to fit the MO of both the Miller vic and the prostitute in Wilmington.”

  Sean took the file and opened it. Inside, there were pictures and PDF copies of police homicide reports from all over the Northeast. Boston, Mamaroneck, Nantucket, Bridgeport, Baltimore.

  “NCIC picked them up because they were all prostitutes, abducted from remote locations like the train tracks or the harbor. Each victim was found the next day. It started with Boston. Vic was found behind a set of dumpsters in the back of a Starbucks. Strangled, hair cut off. Second vic was Mamaroneck, New York. Also strangled, but this time hung from a tree in a local park. Abducted in Yonkers. Hair cut as well.”

  Sean kept reading the reports while Jane explained. He scrolled through each one, reading every line.

  “He goes back to Massachusetts for the third vic,” Jane continued. “Found in a motel in New Bedford. Strangled but left on the bed. Hair shaved more than cut this time.”

  “He was building up to it,” Sean said. “Liam was using these girls as models to build up to what he did to Kerri.”

  Jane nodded. “I was thinking the same thing because Bridgeport and Baltimore were almost identical. Vics were found hanged in a hotel, one from the clothes rack in the closet and one from the shower-curtain rod that was bolted in the wall. Heads shaved. By the time he got to our girl in Wilmington, he was almost perfect. The only thing missing was the laceration across the stomach. None of the practice victims were cut. I think our vic from the Tiger was what he’d been building up to.” She paused for a moment. “Wilmington PD also got back to me on their bone analysis of the exhumed prostitute. They found traces of ketamine hydrochloride. This is all Liam.”

  Sean closed the file and handed it back to Jane. He put his hands up to his face and sighed deeply. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “My only question is, Why would he suggest an NCIC search if he knew there was a chance we’d find his other victims?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to get caught.”

  “Then why is he running now?”

  “I don’t know. Who else knows about this? These other vics?”

  “Obviously I gotta bring it to Phillips and Heckle and Keenan. I just wanted you to know first. I thought that was the right thing to do. You didn’t ask for this, so I figured I’d give you a heads-up that this was about to go down.”

  Sean dropped his hands away from his face and put on the best smile he could. “I appreciate the heads-up. Go tell Phillips. I’ll be in, in a minute. I really don’t want to see his face when you tell him.”

  “Understood.”

  Jane walked back inside, leaving Sean alone in the parking lot. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed. Across the lot, a rat scurried from under a car with a half-eaten burrito in its mouth. It was gone in a matter of seconds, slipping through the opening of the sewer drain and disappearing into the darkness.

  “It’s me,” Sean said as he walked farther from the door. “Update. They found out about the other girls.”

  49

  The Lakewood police station was empty but for a lone officer working the front desk. Liam walked in and quickly checked his surroundings, trying not to act suspicious in the process. He marked each entrance and exit. There weren’t many. He took note of how the front desk stretched to each end of the wall. The only way into the belly of the station was through a black metal door around the corner from where the officer now sat. He’d have time to run if he needed it.

  There was no way to know if the BOLO back in Philadelphian reached as far as Lakewood, so Liam positioned himself halfway between the front desk and the door leading to the parking lot in case he was recognized. He’d found a change of clothes in a Goodwill bin behind a grocery store in Camden, so any description of what he was wearing would be different now. A taxi had taken him straight across the state to Lakewood without stopping. The cash he had was running low, and he knew his credit cards had probably been shut down, which would’ve been normal procedure. He was on his own, determined to find the truth.

  There was a local radio station streaming through two speakers in the ceiling. Beyond that, the crackle of the police dispatch radio echoed in the foyer. The officer behind the desk looked up from a paper he was reading. “Can I help you?”

  Liam cleared his throat, trying to project as much confidence as he could. This was risky but really the only way. “Hi. I’m Liam Dwyer. Forensics with the Philadelphia PD. We’re working a homicide and tracked a past police report filed from this department. I need a copy.”

  The officer stared at Liam. “You got ID?”

  “Sure.”
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  The officer took the ID, looked at it for a moment, and then shrugged. “No one called about any old records,” he said.

  “Really? They were supposed to call this morning so it would be waiting when I got here.”

  “Don’t know what to tell you. No one called.”

  Liam took Gerri’s hospital report from his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to the officer. It was wet from the river, but legible. “Can you get it for me now then? I’ll wait. The girl’s name and social are on this hospital report. Your records will match the date on the form. Same incident.”

  Whatever the officer was reading was clearly more important or entertaining than pulling an old file. He glanced at the hospital report and then pushed it away. “I can’t get it for you now. I’m the only one here, and someone has to work the desk. Come back tomorrow around noon, and we’ll have it for you.”

  “Sorry, but I need it now. We’re closing in on a suspect, and I need to be back in Philly with this report tonight. The victim is the woman named on this hospital record. You think you could do me a solid?”

  “I’m working solo here. Can’t leave the desk. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

  “Where do you keep the files?”

  “In boxes downstairs. We’re getting a new computer system next month, and we hired some kid to scan all the files so they’re electronic. Everything’s downstairs waiting for the software to be delivered. I wish I could help, but you gotta come back tomorrow. If you want, you can sign the release form now, and we’ll fax you the report, but it’s going to be tomorrow either way.”

  The more time he spent at the station was more time he allowed those who pursued him to send word. He had to get in and out as quickly as possible. “I can go through them,” he suggested. “I need this report, or my boss’ll have my ass. Let me find it. I’ll make a copy, and I’m outta here. Don’t even need to sign a release, so no one needs to know you did me a favor. The faster I get down there, the faster I’m gone.”