CHAPTER FOUR
Monday morning broke dull and low, the sky the colour of tin.
Kate had woken to the thin light that seeps in at the very cusp of dawn, unsure for a moment where she was — the strange smell of herbs and detergent, the hum of a refrigerator somewhere beyond the door.
Then she’d remembered: Torres’s mother’s apartment, Astoria, Monday. She couldn’t recall her dreams at all, and that thought gave her enough hope to stand up, stretch, and pad over to the little bathroom which, to her great surprise, Marcus had left in a state verging on bearable.
By the time she’d showered and dressed, Marcus was already in the kitchen, barefoot, leaning over a mug of coffee. The radio was muttering an old blues song through static. He gave her a look that said he’d slept as badly as she had.
Torres arrived at half past seven sharp, looking improbably neat for someone who’d had maybe three hours of sleep. She had soft rolls with her, courtesy of her invisible mother, and coffee that was so good Kate almost thought she was dreaming.
They loaded into her car, the rain from the night before still glistening on the asphalt. The streets were clogged with the slow pulse of Monday commuters, but Torres drove with the precision of someone who knew every light’s rhythm by heart.
“Alright,” she said, once they’d merged onto Queens Boulevard.
“We got a little something from the uniforms last night. Stairwell between the eleventh and twelfth floors of Brennan’s building.
They found a bloodstain — large, single location, about 12, 13 centimetres across.
No drag marks, no smears leading up or down.
Just one neat patch, like someone had set down a bag that leaked. ”
Marcus looked up from his coffee. “Leaked?”
“That’s what it looked like. Cops took samples and photos. My guess? Our guy was wearing protective gear during the kill — a coverall, poncho, something. Then, heading down, he stopped, took it off, rolled it, carried it out. That’s what the stain is. Residual seepage.”
“Slapdash,” Marcus said. “For a man who carves Hebrew verses into mahogany.”
Kate shook her head. “Not slapdash. Calculated. If he wanted to avoid leaving blood, he could have. He doesn’t mind us finding Brennan’s blood — maybe he even wants us to. But…” She trailed off, staring through the window.
Torres caught the hesitation. “But what?”
Kate turned. “What if it isn’t Brennan’s?”
Torres frowned.
“What if it’s the killer’s blood? Or a mix. His and Brennan’s. He could’ve cut himself — ritualistically, deliberately. If he’s continuing the pattern, he’ll be weaving the old covenant with the new. Blood in exchange for revelation.”
Marcus made a face. “So he slashes throats and dabbles in theology. Great.”
Torres exhaled. “You think he’s hurt?”
“If he’s the sort of extremist I think he is,” Kate said softly, “then he’s not afraid of pain. He uses it. Makes it part of the sermon.”
Torres nodded grimly. “Alright. I’ll get it to the lab for DNA. See what comes back.”
“Thanks.”
“Meanwhile,” Torres went on, turning into a narrower street lined with brick and graffiti, “I’ve got something to show you once we get to the precinct. It came in overnight.”
Kate glanced sideways at her. “What is it?”
“You’ll see. One of those ‘you’re not gonna believe this’ kind of things.”
The rest of the ride passed in silence. Outside, the city thickened — glass and scaffolding, yellow cabs, a thousand lives moving too fast to see. Kate watched a woman in a business suit cross the street with a child still half-asleep on her shoulder. The sight, so ordinary, made her chest ache.
The Fifteenth Precinct was a slab of stone and history — a building that looked like it had been dragged through several wars and come out more stubborn than before.
Inside, it smelled comfortingly familiar: burnt coffee, printer toner, bad breath.
Torres led them past a bullpen full of barely-woken detectives, up a flight of stairs to a row of smaller offices.
“Base of operations,” she said. “Try not to mind the décor. We call it ‘late-stage bureaucratic despair.’”
Marcus smiled faintly. “My favourite period.”
Torres dropped her coat over a chair. “Sit tight. I’ll find what I want to show you.” She disappeared down the corridor, muttering something crossly to herself.
Kate and Marcus exchanged a look. “So,” Marcus said. “First impressions?”
“About Torres?”
“About all of it.”
Kate leaned back, arms folded. “It’s too neat. Too deliberate. Cox is sending a message to me — through the verse, through the way Brennan died. And if Torres is right about that bloodstain, then he wanted it found. It’s a breadcrumb trail.”
“Breadcrumbs covered in haemoglobin,” Marcus said. “Charming.”
The door banged open. A man in a crumpled tweed jacket, fingerless gloves, and what might once have been a tie shuffled in carrying a tower of folders. His hair stood on end, and a faint smell of tobacco and old books accompanied him.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “And why are you in my chair?”
Marcus blinked. “Good morning to you too.”
The man dropped the folders with a crash. “Morning’s relative. Depends what you’ve been drinking. Who are you?”
Kate rose. “Agents Valentine and Reid, FBI. Detective Torres said—”
“Oh, the Feds,” he interrupted. “Christ on a spreadsheet. You lot breed like mould.”
Kate smiled thinly. “You must be Mankovitz.”
He peered at her, as if trying to decide whether she was real. “Guilty. Financial crimes, white-collar, all the sins of Mammon. What did Torres tell you about me?”
“That you’re ‘different’,” Marcus said.
Mankovitz grinned. “She’s learning diplomacy.” He rummaged through the chaos on his desk, emerging with a crumpled newspaper clipping and a pen that had clearly been chewed half to death. “Alright, kids, let’s talk about your dearly departed.”
“Brennan,” Kate said.
“One of the new-old guard — born poor, rose fast, got rich faster. People like that scare the establishment because they remind them how fragile the system is. Brennan and his lot — they came up the quick and dirty way. No Ivy League trust funds, no internships through Daddy’s golf buddies.
Just hustle, leverage and a total lack of conscience. ”
Marcus frowned. “So he wasn’t a choirboy.”
Mankovitz gave a short laugh. “Choirboy? He ran scams that’d make Satan blush. Ever heard of ‘pump and dump’?”
“Stock fraud,” Marcus said. “Inflate a stock’s value with hype, dump it once the price peaks.”
“Bravo. Brennan was one of the best. Eighties, early nineties — the Wild West years. He’d pick some total garbage company, convince half of Wall Street it was the next IBM, watch the price soar, then sell his shares before anyone realised the company made, I don’t know, left-handed staplers.
By the time the Feds caught on, he’d already turned it into seed money for legitimate investments. Smart bastard.”
Kate studied him. “You sound almost admiring.”
“I admire the architecture of greed,” Mankovitz said. “It’s elegant. Until it collapses. Then you get rubble — suicides, foreclosures, divorces. The great American compost heap.”
Kate exchanged a look with Marcus. “Could any of those old victims still hold a grudge?”
“Most of them are dust,” Mankovitz said. “Or bankrupt and drunk somewhere in Florida. But…” He leaned back, eyes gleaming. “They had kids. The sons and daughters of the fleeced. Revenge runs in the bloodline. You’d be amazed what people inherit besides money.”
“So you think this could be personal,” Marcus said.
“Personal, professional — with people like Brennan, the line’s invisible. But if you’re asking me where the real danger lies, I would say not in the victims. It’s his peers.”
“Peers?”
Mankovitz grinned, producing the newspaper clipping he’d been searching for. “Ever heard of the Magnificent Seven?”
“Sure,” said Marcus. “Yul Brinner, James Coburn, Steve McQueen…”
Mankovitz held a finger to his lips, then passed the yellowed page to Kate.
She took it from his hand and read. The headline was: The Magnificent Seven: Wall Street’s Young Turks Reshaping the Future of Finance. Seven faces stared out from the grainy photo — men in their twenties, all swagger and ambition. Brennan was in the middle, his grin sharp and confident.
“This was ’84,” Mankovitz said. “They were the golden boys. Moved markets, crashed them, moved them again. Thought they were gods. They all met up on a Friday night, in a little bar called Chez Brigitte, corner of 10th and West 58th. People would flock there, just to watch the gods party. Magnums of vintage Krug, show-girls, yards of powder.”
“And now?” Kate asked.
“Now? Two dead, one’s an addiction counsellor in Nevada, one’s doing twenty years federal time for wire fraud. That leaves three.”
“Brennan,” Marcus said. “And?”
“Alexis Aprahamian — still in the game, runs a hedge fund out of London, but flies back here when he needs a manicure. And Taylor-James McAffee — technically retired, though rumour says he’s running money through a shell operation in the Caymans.
Another rumor says Brennan kept records — names, deals, who took the bribes, who faked the numbers.
If those records ever saw daylight, a lot of rich men would burn. ”
“So your money’s on one of them,” Marcus said.
“My money’s always on greed,” Mankovitz said. “But yeah. If anyone had motive, it’s his old crew. They’re sharks. And sharks eat their own when the blood’s in the water.”
Kate handed the clipping back, her mind already assembling connections. “We’ll need interviews with Aprahamian, McAffee, and Brennan’s assistant.”
“Assistant’s name’s Tyler Smeaton,” Mankovitz said.
“Twenty-six, Stanford MBA, thinks Excel macros are an art form. I’ll get you his contact details.
And I can run checks into who lost out big-time to the Seven Schmucks when they were in their heyday.
Like I say, it could be a son or daughter who grew up with the consequences. ”
Kate nodded in thanks.
Torres reappeared in the doorway, holding an evidence bag. “Speaking of art,” she said. “Take a look at this.”
Inside the clear plastic was a desk drawer — dark wood, polished to a dull sheen.
“Techs pulled this from Brennan’s office,” Torres said. “It was the top drawer on the right. Nothing special inside — pens, receipts, a stress ball shaped like a globe. But when they took it out for prints, they found this.”
She flipped the drawer over. On the underside, in black ink, was a small, neat inscription:
2. Green Gables.
For a second, no one spoke.
Marcus leaned closer. “Number two,” he murmured. “The verse carved on the desk was number one.”
Torres nodded. “That’s what I figured. But does that mean there’s a three we haven’t found yet? How many messages does this guy usually leave?”
“We need to pull that office apart,” Marcus said. “Look under the carpet, if necessary.”
“Being done,” Torres said.
Kate said nothing. She was staring at the words as if they’d burned themselves into her retinas. Her face drained of colour.
“Kate?” Marcus asked quietly. “What is it?”
She took a step back. “Green Gables…” Her voice faltered. She blinked rapidly, once, twice. Then she pressed a trembling hand to her mouth.
“Kate?” Torres moved forward, concern cutting through her usual brusqueness. “You okay?”
Kate shook her head. “Yes.”
She turned away, her breath hitching, but it was too late. The tears came — sudden, unstoppable, raw. She ran from the room.