Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
The fine print in the course "Detective stories as a source of crime investigation logics."
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The Bronx Crux Murders
- Thread starter windar
- Start date
Repertor
Artifex Imaginum
Poirot is a Belgian, Det. Moore.Calling him a Frenchman is a crucifiable crime.
Damn it, Reggie! It was an honest mistake. How was I to know that Poirot was a Belgian?
Repertor
Artifex Imaginum
messaline
Crucified Amazon
...View attachment 504875 Oh Shit! How did I ever miss that minor detail?
... And she says that she's a NPDY'detective ! In France, she only could pretend to be a "gardien de la paix", devoted to the traffic !
... but even those ones are actually abolished !
Sinking fast! 
Gorgeous writing! And you wonder why you keep getting crucified around here. Too late to think of how you could have been a piccolo player now, I guess.
So that manifesto thing was all a ruse. They were always going to crucify her, while the police wasted time publishing it. Bastards. You just can't trust criminals nowadays.
No you weren't. You're always fond of her.Is this the end for Detective Moore?
I was just getting quite fond of her.
DO I HAVE TIME FOR ONE MORE COFFEE?
Last edited by a moderator:
windar
Teller of Tales
To be accurate they said that if the manifesto wasn't published, they would crucify her, but they didn't say what they would do if it was published.
Donnelly is a lawyer after all
.
windar
Teller of Tales
25.
New York is the city that never sleeps and Stan knew there would be none for him this night. He paced the squad room, reviewing each tip that came in to the tip line, prioritizing the ones which needed to be followed up right away and the ones which could be ignored for the moment.
It was near midnight, coming up on 48 hours after Barb had disappeared, when Detective Garcia motioned him over. Calls from Spanish speakers were being routed to Spanish speaking officers. “We’ve got a Dominican lady, Lourdes Diaz, who thinks she remembers seeing a white van turning into a street where there are a lot of abandoned factories yesterday.”
“Where?” Stan asked, his heart pounding in his chest.
“Near the nursing home in the Bronx where she works as an aide. She doesn’t know the name of the street, but she can show us if we take her there.”
“What are you waiting for? Go get her and take her there!” Stan said. As he watched Garcia head for the door, Stan felt a tingle run down his spine. “Hold on a minute, Garcia, I’m coming with you.”
Lourdes Diaz lived in a crappy tenement building on a crappy street in the South Bronx. She looked as tired from her day’s work lifting elderly patients into and out of bed as her building looked from a century of housing poor people. She spoke only a little English, and even though Stan had picked up some Spanish in all those years on the force, he was glad to let Garcia do the talking.
Garcia translated her story: She had been wheeling one of the elderly ladies up and down the driveway of the nursing home to get some fresh air when she had seen una camioneta blanca, a white van, go by. As she had reached the end of the driveway, she noticed it well down the street, turning into a dead-end street that led to an industrial area with some warehouses and a few abandoned factories. She was sure it was yesterday, but she wasn’t sure exactly what time.
Diaz hadn’t thought anything of it at the time and she didn’t watch TV news much nor look at news on line, even on Spanish sites. Stan supposed she figured that nothing in the news was going to make her situation better. He couldn’t disagree with that.
But tonight, for some reason, she had come home and turned on one of the Spanish TV stations as they were running the evening news. There, she heard that the police were looking for a white van, remembered what she seen and called the number on the screen. Stan wanted to kiss her. He hoped that if this was really the break they been waiting for that some banker or hedge fund billionaire would step forward and shower some money on this wonderful woman.
But that was for later. Right now, Garcia explained that they wanted her to come with them and show them where she had seen the van turn in. With lights flashing and sirens blazing, they covered the distance, normally a 20 minute trip, in less than 10. They killed the lights and sirens as they approached the nursing home, passing it and turning slowly into the dead end street that Diaz pointed to.
They made a pass through the parking areas of each of the buildings, seeing no vehicles and no signs of life until, near the end of the block, they rounded the side of one of the buildings and saw the vehicle.
It wasn’t a white van, but it was a blue Camry, like the one Jacob Masters owned. Stan ran the plates through the DMV database. Bingo! This was the place! Stan’s heart was pounding in his chest.
Garcia told the Diaz woman to wait in the car. He and Stan drew their guns and Stan grabbed a flashlight. With the flashlight in his left hand and the gun in his right, Stan led the way inside, moving slowly so as not to trip on the many pieces of debris that littered the concrete floor. If there was an armed perp here, Stan was a sitting duck, but he didn’t care; only finding Barb mattered now.
He stopped and raised his flashlight. “What the fuck?” he said. Ahead, near the far wall, was a sort of Roman Forum type structure topped with big letters, “SPQR”, just like was on the notes from the killers. Barb had said that was the motto of Rome. Just like “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect” was the motto of the NYPD.
“It looks like Caesar’s Palace in Vegas,” Garcia said. “I went there on vacation last year.”
Stan moved the flashlight around the open space, illuminating different areas until he saw it-the cross, the last two pieces of oak timber Jake had bought from Rich Miller. And there on the cross, was Barb! And she was naked!
Heedless of the danger, not knowing whether Barb was alive or dead, Stan rushed towards the cross over the uneven floor. He felt his foot hit some piece of debris and felt himself falling forwards. He did what he had learned in his training, rolling into a ball to take the impact. As he fell, he heard the gunshots and the sound of bullets whizzing past the spot where his head had been a second ago.
Behind him, he heard, “Mierda!” He knew that Spanish word all too well. In the pause between shots, he called softly, “You OK, Manny?”
“I’ve been hit in the leg, Stan.” Goldman wanted to return fire, but he couldn’t be sure where the shots had come from and firing his gun would only give their position away. His flashlight, still illuminated, lay a few feet away on the floor. He rolled towards it, grabbed it and immediately shut it off.
There was a second volley of gunfire. Stan heard the bullets pinging off metal just ahead of him. He rolled a few feet forward and felt the skeleton of some long-abandoned piece of machinery from whatever factory had occupied the premises back when New York made things, not just financial instruments. There was a space underneath that he ducked through, and was now shielded from the shooter or shooters more likely, since the volume of gunfire suggested at least two.
“Manny, get under here!” Stan called softly, hoping the detective would hear him.
“It hurts like a motherfucker,” Garcia said, but with a series of groans and Spanish imprecations, he joined Stan in the safe haven behind the hunk of junk metal.
“Let me look at it, Manny,” Stan said. He shone the flashlight for a second on Garcia’s leg. It looked bad, but not likely to be fatal if he got attention soon. Another volley rang out as bullets pinged into the metal above them.
Stan pulled out his phone and called the station. “I found Moore. She’s on a cross; I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. The perps are armed and Garcia’s been hit in the leg and he’s bleeding fairly badly. Send every cop, fire and EMT in the whole goddamn city! And make it quick!” He gave the best description he could of the location and the layout of the factory.
Within a few minutes, Stan heard the sirens in the distance, getting closer, even though the sound was stifled a bit by the humid air. Soon, he heard the “Thwoop!” of chopper blades overhead, its searchlight shining through the broken skylights into the abandoned factory, illuminating Barb on her cross like some medieval icon.
Stan’s phone vibrated. He extracted it from his pocket. “Goldman,” he responded as quietly as possible.
“Stan, it’s Dave Portelli.” Stan had worked with Lieutenant Portelli, Team Leader of the Bronx SWAT team on a number of cases. There was no one he would rather have on the scene in this situation.
“Moore may still be alive and Garcia’s been hit; there’s no time to waste, Dave.”
“I know Stan, we’re just doing a final review of the plans. Can we go over the layout one more time?” Stan explained where he and Garcia were, where Barb’s cross was and where he thought the shots from the perps had come from. “OK, Stan,” Portelli replied. “Listen, put down your weapons, both of you. We don’t want you shot by accident. If you see any of my guys, just yell ‘Jeter!’ and they’ll know not to shoot. That’s Jeter, as in Derek. You got that?”
“I guess you know I’m a Yankees fan, Dave,” Stan replied.
“Who doesn’t, Stan?” Dave said, “Now we’re going to give them 60 seconds to come out and then we’re going in. Talk to you later.”
A few seconds later, an amplified voice boomed from outside, “The building is surrounded. Put your weapons down and come out with your hands up. You have 60 seconds.” Masters and whoever was with him responded with another volley.
The fire was returned from somewhere behind Stan, followed by percussion grenades that filled the empty space of the former factory with smoke that had Stan and Manny coughing. In a moment, the entire place was swarming with squads of heavily armed, helmeted SWAT team members wearing bulletproof vests and infrared goggles. Dozens of shots rang out as they ran towards the far end of the factory. After a few minutes and dozens more shots, a loud voice yelled, “We got em’. Two of them, both dead. One fits the description of Jacob Masters and the other is an even bigger gorilla.”
That was the signal for teams of fire rescuers and EMTs to swarm into the building. Stan stood up and called several of them over to tend to Garcia. Then, unable to restrain himself any longer, he rushed to the cross, which was now a surreal scene, illuminated by floodlights and surrounded by about twenty or so rescuers, all discussing in animated fashion how they should handle this situation.
Stan pushed his way through the crowd to the bottom of the cross, where he stood gazing up at Barb, not knowing if she was alive or dead. Then, he heard a soft moan. “Dead women don’t moan,” he thought. “Barb!” he shouted. Another moan, this one a bit louder. “Hold on, Barb, it’s me, Stan. We’re going to get you down from there.”
Finally, the strategy decided upon, several large firemen grasped the crossbar and lifted the cross from its hole in the concrete while several more braced the upright. Carefully, so as not to hurt Barb any more than necessary, straining with the effort, they lowered the cross slowly until it was lying on the ground. Within less than a minute, the EMTs had an IV in her arm to rehydrate her and an oxygen mask on her face to ease the burden on her overworked lungs. They covered her body with blankets, despite the sultriness of the evening. Stan stroked her forehead, pushing aside the strands of sweat-soaked hair. “You’re going to be OK, Barb, just hang in there,” he said softly to her. She smiled weakly through the mask.
There was some discussion among the EMTs and calls to the hospital trying to decide the best way to remove the nails. In the end, the trauma surgeons back at the hospital felt it would be safer to remove them in the ER, so the FDNY used a chain saw to remove enough of the timbers so that the cross could fit into an ambulance.
Stan was standing next to Barb as they were about to load her into the ambulance, still nailed to the wood. Although she couldn’t move her hands, he was sure she was trying to signal him with her eyes. “Hold it guys. I think she’s trying to tell me something and it may be important. Could you take the mask off just for a second?”
One of the EMTs lifted the mask. Stan bent down so he could hear. In a hoarse voice, Barb croaked, “Donnelly. Gerhart.”
“They were in on this?” Stan asked. Barb nodded.
“It just figures, doesn’t it?” Stan muttered, replacing the mask.
New York is the city that never sleeps and Stan knew there would be none for him this night. He paced the squad room, reviewing each tip that came in to the tip line, prioritizing the ones which needed to be followed up right away and the ones which could be ignored for the moment.
It was near midnight, coming up on 48 hours after Barb had disappeared, when Detective Garcia motioned him over. Calls from Spanish speakers were being routed to Spanish speaking officers. “We’ve got a Dominican lady, Lourdes Diaz, who thinks she remembers seeing a white van turning into a street where there are a lot of abandoned factories yesterday.”
“Where?” Stan asked, his heart pounding in his chest.
“Near the nursing home in the Bronx where she works as an aide. She doesn’t know the name of the street, but she can show us if we take her there.”
“What are you waiting for? Go get her and take her there!” Stan said. As he watched Garcia head for the door, Stan felt a tingle run down his spine. “Hold on a minute, Garcia, I’m coming with you.”
Lourdes Diaz lived in a crappy tenement building on a crappy street in the South Bronx. She looked as tired from her day’s work lifting elderly patients into and out of bed as her building looked from a century of housing poor people. She spoke only a little English, and even though Stan had picked up some Spanish in all those years on the force, he was glad to let Garcia do the talking.
Garcia translated her story: She had been wheeling one of the elderly ladies up and down the driveway of the nursing home to get some fresh air when she had seen una camioneta blanca, a white van, go by. As she had reached the end of the driveway, she noticed it well down the street, turning into a dead-end street that led to an industrial area with some warehouses and a few abandoned factories. She was sure it was yesterday, but she wasn’t sure exactly what time.
Diaz hadn’t thought anything of it at the time and she didn’t watch TV news much nor look at news on line, even on Spanish sites. Stan supposed she figured that nothing in the news was going to make her situation better. He couldn’t disagree with that.
But tonight, for some reason, she had come home and turned on one of the Spanish TV stations as they were running the evening news. There, she heard that the police were looking for a white van, remembered what she seen and called the number on the screen. Stan wanted to kiss her. He hoped that if this was really the break they been waiting for that some banker or hedge fund billionaire would step forward and shower some money on this wonderful woman.
But that was for later. Right now, Garcia explained that they wanted her to come with them and show them where she had seen the van turn in. With lights flashing and sirens blazing, they covered the distance, normally a 20 minute trip, in less than 10. They killed the lights and sirens as they approached the nursing home, passing it and turning slowly into the dead end street that Diaz pointed to.
They made a pass through the parking areas of each of the buildings, seeing no vehicles and no signs of life until, near the end of the block, they rounded the side of one of the buildings and saw the vehicle.
It wasn’t a white van, but it was a blue Camry, like the one Jacob Masters owned. Stan ran the plates through the DMV database. Bingo! This was the place! Stan’s heart was pounding in his chest.
Garcia told the Diaz woman to wait in the car. He and Stan drew their guns and Stan grabbed a flashlight. With the flashlight in his left hand and the gun in his right, Stan led the way inside, moving slowly so as not to trip on the many pieces of debris that littered the concrete floor. If there was an armed perp here, Stan was a sitting duck, but he didn’t care; only finding Barb mattered now.
He stopped and raised his flashlight. “What the fuck?” he said. Ahead, near the far wall, was a sort of Roman Forum type structure topped with big letters, “SPQR”, just like was on the notes from the killers. Barb had said that was the motto of Rome. Just like “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect” was the motto of the NYPD.
“It looks like Caesar’s Palace in Vegas,” Garcia said. “I went there on vacation last year.”
Stan moved the flashlight around the open space, illuminating different areas until he saw it-the cross, the last two pieces of oak timber Jake had bought from Rich Miller. And there on the cross, was Barb! And she was naked!
Heedless of the danger, not knowing whether Barb was alive or dead, Stan rushed towards the cross over the uneven floor. He felt his foot hit some piece of debris and felt himself falling forwards. He did what he had learned in his training, rolling into a ball to take the impact. As he fell, he heard the gunshots and the sound of bullets whizzing past the spot where his head had been a second ago.
Behind him, he heard, “Mierda!” He knew that Spanish word all too well. In the pause between shots, he called softly, “You OK, Manny?”
“I’ve been hit in the leg, Stan.” Goldman wanted to return fire, but he couldn’t be sure where the shots had come from and firing his gun would only give their position away. His flashlight, still illuminated, lay a few feet away on the floor. He rolled towards it, grabbed it and immediately shut it off.
There was a second volley of gunfire. Stan heard the bullets pinging off metal just ahead of him. He rolled a few feet forward and felt the skeleton of some long-abandoned piece of machinery from whatever factory had occupied the premises back when New York made things, not just financial instruments. There was a space underneath that he ducked through, and was now shielded from the shooter or shooters more likely, since the volume of gunfire suggested at least two.
“Manny, get under here!” Stan called softly, hoping the detective would hear him.
“It hurts like a motherfucker,” Garcia said, but with a series of groans and Spanish imprecations, he joined Stan in the safe haven behind the hunk of junk metal.
“Let me look at it, Manny,” Stan said. He shone the flashlight for a second on Garcia’s leg. It looked bad, but not likely to be fatal if he got attention soon. Another volley rang out as bullets pinged into the metal above them.
Stan pulled out his phone and called the station. “I found Moore. She’s on a cross; I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. The perps are armed and Garcia’s been hit in the leg and he’s bleeding fairly badly. Send every cop, fire and EMT in the whole goddamn city! And make it quick!” He gave the best description he could of the location and the layout of the factory.
Within a few minutes, Stan heard the sirens in the distance, getting closer, even though the sound was stifled a bit by the humid air. Soon, he heard the “Thwoop!” of chopper blades overhead, its searchlight shining through the broken skylights into the abandoned factory, illuminating Barb on her cross like some medieval icon.
Stan’s phone vibrated. He extracted it from his pocket. “Goldman,” he responded as quietly as possible.
“Stan, it’s Dave Portelli.” Stan had worked with Lieutenant Portelli, Team Leader of the Bronx SWAT team on a number of cases. There was no one he would rather have on the scene in this situation.
“Moore may still be alive and Garcia’s been hit; there’s no time to waste, Dave.”
“I know Stan, we’re just doing a final review of the plans. Can we go over the layout one more time?” Stan explained where he and Garcia were, where Barb’s cross was and where he thought the shots from the perps had come from. “OK, Stan,” Portelli replied. “Listen, put down your weapons, both of you. We don’t want you shot by accident. If you see any of my guys, just yell ‘Jeter!’ and they’ll know not to shoot. That’s Jeter, as in Derek. You got that?”
“I guess you know I’m a Yankees fan, Dave,” Stan replied.
“Who doesn’t, Stan?” Dave said, “Now we’re going to give them 60 seconds to come out and then we’re going in. Talk to you later.”
A few seconds later, an amplified voice boomed from outside, “The building is surrounded. Put your weapons down and come out with your hands up. You have 60 seconds.” Masters and whoever was with him responded with another volley.
The fire was returned from somewhere behind Stan, followed by percussion grenades that filled the empty space of the former factory with smoke that had Stan and Manny coughing. In a moment, the entire place was swarming with squads of heavily armed, helmeted SWAT team members wearing bulletproof vests and infrared goggles. Dozens of shots rang out as they ran towards the far end of the factory. After a few minutes and dozens more shots, a loud voice yelled, “We got em’. Two of them, both dead. One fits the description of Jacob Masters and the other is an even bigger gorilla.”
That was the signal for teams of fire rescuers and EMTs to swarm into the building. Stan stood up and called several of them over to tend to Garcia. Then, unable to restrain himself any longer, he rushed to the cross, which was now a surreal scene, illuminated by floodlights and surrounded by about twenty or so rescuers, all discussing in animated fashion how they should handle this situation.
Stan pushed his way through the crowd to the bottom of the cross, where he stood gazing up at Barb, not knowing if she was alive or dead. Then, he heard a soft moan. “Dead women don’t moan,” he thought. “Barb!” he shouted. Another moan, this one a bit louder. “Hold on, Barb, it’s me, Stan. We’re going to get you down from there.”
Finally, the strategy decided upon, several large firemen grasped the crossbar and lifted the cross from its hole in the concrete while several more braced the upright. Carefully, so as not to hurt Barb any more than necessary, straining with the effort, they lowered the cross slowly until it was lying on the ground. Within less than a minute, the EMTs had an IV in her arm to rehydrate her and an oxygen mask on her face to ease the burden on her overworked lungs. They covered her body with blankets, despite the sultriness of the evening. Stan stroked her forehead, pushing aside the strands of sweat-soaked hair. “You’re going to be OK, Barb, just hang in there,” he said softly to her. She smiled weakly through the mask.
There was some discussion among the EMTs and calls to the hospital trying to decide the best way to remove the nails. In the end, the trauma surgeons back at the hospital felt it would be safer to remove them in the ER, so the FDNY used a chain saw to remove enough of the timbers so that the cross could fit into an ambulance.
Stan was standing next to Barb as they were about to load her into the ambulance, still nailed to the wood. Although she couldn’t move her hands, he was sure she was trying to signal him with her eyes. “Hold it guys. I think she’s trying to tell me something and it may be important. Could you take the mask off just for a second?”
One of the EMTs lifted the mask. Stan bent down so he could hear. In a hoarse voice, Barb croaked, “Donnelly. Gerhart.”
“They were in on this?” Stan asked. Barb nodded.
“It just figures, doesn’t it?” Stan muttered, replacing the mask.
RacingRodent
Consul
Well I am deducting points from Goldman for not calling in backup until after he was engaged...I mean for a start how does he expect just two not entirely fit detectives to search the premises in a timely and safe manner?
Good job on rescuing Moore Portelli, pass on congratulations to your team.
Nicely written Windar
Good job on rescuing Moore Portelli, pass on congratulations to your team.
Nicely written Windar
windar
Teller of Tales
Well I am deducting points from Goldman for not calling in backup until after he was engaged...I mean for a start how does he expect just two not entirely fit detectives to search the premises in a timely and safe manner?
Good job on rescuing Moore Portelli, pass on congratulations to your team.
Nicely written Windar
He was thinking with the little head, rather than the big one
. Modern police work is a team effort (you got that Moore?).
Now I hope to tie up loose ends, so pose any questions you have and I'll see if I can answer them in the epilog.
RacingRodent
Consul
Now I hope to tie up loose ends, so pose any questions you have and I'll see if I can answer them in the epilog.
Tie up? Not nail them down?
So Donnelly is a nut which is fairly normal in academia but Gerhardt's brand of nuttiness was more diametrically opposed to his day job, did he see himself as an infiltrator or was he once a real priest?
windar
Teller of Tales
Some ending!
With such a shootout, Det. Moore was lucky she was not hit by a stray bullet.
And thanks to Lourdes Diaz, whose life will now continue, lifting elderly people out and into their bed for poor payment. Until she breaks down from the heavy work herself.
Thanks, Lox.
There is one more chapter, so maybe some benefactor will kick in something to help her. And don't forget Rich Miller, his evidence was key. Though he'd probably blow any money he got on pot
.I thought about having Barb shot on the cross, but I think she already did that in one of her stories.
FDNY does not have 'The Jaws of Life' that could easily shear the heads of the spikes off???
We must blame Garcia for this... Remember that Goldman has some emotional ties to Miss Moore...Well I am deducting points from Goldman for not calling in backup until after he was engaged...I mean for a start how does he expect just two not entirely fit detectives to search the premises in a timely and safe manner?
Good job on rescuing Moore Portelli, pass on congratulations to your team.
Nicely written Windar
Great job, Windar and Barb!!!