Chapter One
Fraying Threads
It was one of those ethereal nights, when the stars seemed somewhat swollen and sunken deeply into a dark, indigo sky. The moon hung as if it were weary of its eternal task of showing the way home and seemed to shine just a bit less. Some would say the universe was in torment over what it was forced to witness year after year, millennium after millennium. Everyone burns out and perhaps Mother Nature had, at last, reached the end of her seemingly infinite patience.
So it was no surprise that the weary staff manning the phones and taking 911 calls, that the boards were lighting up more frequently than usual. New York City was, admittedly, a dangerous cesspool of terror and violence, but this cold, February night appeared one of the most savage in the emergency phones' history.
Anne Hollingsworth, a striking African-American woman, with dread locks and eyes as large and luminous as a cat's. She had recently returned to work after a lengthy illness and was hoping that things would not get too out of hand until she regained her sea legs, as it were. She pulled her kerchief more tightly around her frail neck and hoped that none of her co-workers would be able to tell that her hair was just a wig. Chemotheraphy, administered for the past six months to battle the scourge of breast cancer, had robbed her of her priceless tresses and caused dark circles under her eyes. Sure, she had been sick, but was not about to illicit sympathy from anyone. That was just not Anne's style.
As she sat, briefly reflecting on her two small children, alone with a sitter and likely being allowed to stay up way past their bedtime, her phone rang shrilly, plunging her into action, with that familiar racing heartbeat. Would it be another domestic dispute? A murder or murder-in-progress? Or would the call simply be from a teary child whose beloved cat had run away from home?
She answered the call and heard laboured breathing on the other end of the line. It sounded like a young woman, but Anne Hollingsworth could not tell for certain. Then a raspy, female voice began, frantically, punctuating her fractured sentences with hysterical screams, "Help me! Oh, please, someone!!! I'm being murdered! This guy has a knife!!! Oh, God, I don't wanna die!! I don't wanna die!!" Please!!!!"
The woman's address lit up almost instantly, so Anne called the squad car nearest the scene to rush on over to twelve fifty Becher Street in the Lower East Side. "Better get a move on," Anne urged, a lump forming in her dry throat, as she realized in the farthest recesses of her soul that those police officers would most likely be just in time to put the victim into one of those ugly, black body bags. It had happened far too often and Anne Hollingsworth, mother of children who would grow up amidst guns at their schools and threats by older kids, sighed heavily and shook the depressing thoughts from her consiousness. She could not, after all, let this stressful job affect her too much. If she did, she'd be of no use and may as well hand in her resignation. She needed this job, since her deadbeat husband had swept a sweet young thing off of her expensive, platform-heeled feet and carried her into midlife-crisis heaven.
* * * * * * * * *
Briscoe and Green, the detectives who happened to be the cops closest to the victim's address, were also doubtful of a happy ending to this midnight horror. Lennie Briscoe, a veteran of the department who had seen his share of senseless carnage, found he was no longer able to hide behind his self-constructive wall of objectivity as expertly as he had in the past.
The death of his daughter, the hands-down favourite who more closely resembled the sleepy-eyed, sixty-year-old detective with the lop-sided smile and smooth one-liners, had taken a gigantic toll. He still got terrible stomach cramps at the thought of how violently his beloved child had met her demise. Talking about it didn't help; Green, Lennie's partner for the past two and a half years, had made Herculian attempts to quell some of his partner's grief, but knew that this was the most stressful and difficult situation to face: A child dying before the parent. It should never happen. But it did. Why, why hadn't he been able to stop it?
"Here's the place. Want to take bets on what we'll find?" Green's voice was heavy with fatigue and job burnout. Like Briscoe, he'd seen far too much tragedy to be healthy. He now knew, without any shred of doubt, that things were only going to get worse in the future. All of Clinton's campaigns to end violence were but a spit in the proverbial ocean. The devil was on the loose in New York and he was taking no prisoners. Sure, the death penalty was back, but it had been proven many times not to be a deterrent. It was revenge, plain and simple, but not a solution.
Ascending the dilapidated stairway, which, to Green's'disgust, was crawling with sabre-toothed rats, they located apartment 5C and rapped loudly on the wooden door. "Police! Open up!" Yelled Briscoe, grabbing his gun. Silence greeted the two detectives, so, upon seeing no landlord on the premises, Green forced the door open and cautiously entered the incredibly filty apartment. Pistol at the ready, Logan moved from room to room, while Briscoe rummaged through drawers and closets.
Just then, Lennie heard shouting hoarsely, "Hey, get in here real quick!" Briscoe, his mouth tasting sour, hurried over to the bedroom where a young woman of about twenty-eight lay, spread-eagled on a bare mattress, covered in slashes. "Oh, my God," Green muttered, pressing his hand on the woman's carotted artery to see if it was still beating. "Well, she's alive at least. Any sign of the perp?"
Ed heard the ambulance arrive. "He's obviously long gone." "Hey, Lennie, just how the hell did anyone get either in or out?"
"Unless he's still in here somewhere." Briscoe knew, as he said this, that he was being utterly foolish. He'd personally checked every nook and cranny in the squllid place and had uncovered nothing but clothes strewn about, a closet full of green mould.
As the two ambulance attendants examined the victim, Lennie noticed that she was fully dressed, which indicated that she had not likely been raped or violated in any way. As a matter of fact, the woman had an almost peaceful look on her face, as though the knife wounds had somehow been a pleasant experience for her. "That's nonsense," Briscoe thought, shaking the crazy idea out of his head. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip with the sleeve of his winter coat and walked over to where his partner was writing up a report.
"Any feelings on this case?" he asked, while Green completed his logging.
"I don't know, Lennie. This is a strange one, alright. I just located the weapon, under the pillow, of all places. Why the hell would it be there? I mean, did this perp, who obviously has the talents of Harry Houdini, get in here, stab the girl, place the weapon underneath her head and then somehow make his way out without disturbing any locks? I honestly don't like to think of the posibility." Green rubbed the back of his neck, then spoke in words that caaused a stifling pall to fall over both officers. "I don't think we're looking at an attempted murder here, Lennie. I think this is self-abuse."
Briscoe knew in the deepest recesses of his heart that his partner was dead-on correct. He'd seen this before, but not to this extent. It was usually young girls and women, who slashed their arms, as well as other parts of their bodies. Why they did it, he couldn't fathom, but they were usually sent from the ER to a psychiatric facility. "You absolutely sure about this one?" Briscoe asked, glancing at all the blood that saturated the shabby sheets and spilled over onto the floor.
"Yep. I've seen it before, four years ago. This teenage girl, pretty, intelligent----kept cutting herself with razor blades, torn-apart soda cans, anything she could get her hands on".
Briscoe was flabbergasted and more than a little bit turned off. "What kind of release could a person get from slashing themselves to pieces? And why are we are on this case?"
"Because we have to rule out foul play, Lennie. You know the drill. Uncover all the rocks until you find the one that has the squirming larvae under it."
"The only squirming larvae I ever saw was what those damn survivors rammed down their gullets to win that stupid million dollars. If you ask me, between that and this crap, I'm ready to pilot a spaceship to Mars." Lennie felt his blood pressure beginning to rise a few notches. Here were countless victims of violent crime, wounded against their will and here were he and Green investigating a screwed up girl who had nothing better to do on a Saturday night than treat her body like a torn canvas. He had noted that she had slashes from her throat to her ankles and everywhere in between. No way either of his kids would ever resort to that sick method of getting attention. They'd always done it the positive and healthy way.
Briscoe was unaware that he was being insensitive and judgmental. Anyone without experience in the problems of people who abuse themselves, often to death, need help, compassion and understanding, not rebukes and disgust. But he and Green were cops, not psychiatrists. Lennie wondered what his former partner, the brash and blunt Mike Logan, would have said. Probably something along the lines of, "Hell, if she wants to disfigure herself and spill a gallon of blood, well, I say, let her."
* * * * * * * * *
-4- At the hospital, the young woman with the multitude of slashes was treated, receiving two pints of blood and three of plasma. She required three hundred stitches to close the wounds and awoke several hours later in the hallway of the busy emergency area. Doctors and nurses milled about, working diligently and efficiently, but not paying much attention to the multi-scarred patient.
The atmosphere was thick with the acrid stench of death and dying and, although the lighting was bright and the walls a festive yellow, one could never mistake this establishment for anything else than what it was: Either the last place someone would ever be as a living specimen, a type of medical holding cell for those who would pull through whatever traumas with which they had to deal.
"Please, someone----could I get a drink of water?" The young woman, who'd told the resident treating her was Kelly, began fidgetting, as the hours crept by and it seemed as though she had been, essentially, deserted. As she propped herself awkwardly and feebly on her elbows, Kelly was distraught to see detectives Briscoe and Green standing nearby, talking to the attending resident.
"So what do we do---arrest her for hurting herself?" Lennie was tiring of this charade, as he put it, wishing he was at the Nicks game he'd forfeited to work this dismal night. "I mean, it's pretty cut and dry---uh, no pun intended. The girl got pissed off, did her number with the blades and called for help to save her from herself. It's a waste of our time, doc----we're homicide detectives, not police shrinks. Now can we do whatever freaking paperwork there is to do and get the hell out of this depressing place?"
The resident was clearly upset at Lennie's caustic reaction. "Hey, this young lady has some serious problems. People don't injure themselves this severely unless some terrible trauma has occurred in their lives. Tossing her to the lions would be irresponsible and reprehensible."
"Well, just what do you expect us to do? Round up every sonofabitch who may not have played nice with this nutcase and put them
"Maybe he's right", replied Green, his soft, brown eyes brimming with compassion. Unlike his partner, Green felt sympathy for this young throwaway woman, a woman who not only hurt herself, but who was emotionally and psychologically abused by people not unlike himself and Briscoe. "Don't we owe Kelly a chance to hear her side of the story? Maybe there was someone, a boyfriend, perhaps, who mistreated her".
"Yeah, or her mother, father or, oh, let's not forget that grade three English teacher."
"Will you listen to yourself? You're worse than a freaking perp, Lennie. What the hell have you got against this woman anyway? You're acting like a complete asshole." Green was beginning to actively dislike his partner. He and Briscoe had never really connected, not the way Briscoe and Logan had. Green felt things more deeply and strongly; he wasn't a hardened, wise-cracking, close-to-the-burnout-point cop. "You know, Lennie, maybe you should request another partner, because I sure don't like what I'm seeing and hearing of you right now."
"Sure, go ahead. Won't be the first time it's happened. I just happen to think that what people do in the privacy of their own homes is solely their business. That's all. You can't seem to grasp that, can you? What, you're a freaking bleeding heart now? Look, Ed, she tied up the emergency phone lines, just because she decided she needed a bit of attention from us. Let's just close the book on this one and call it a night, okay?"
"Lennie, she called 911. What I grasp is that this little lady is in even worse shape than if someone else had did this to her. Now, I can understand your feelings. 911 should be reserved for people who are attacked by someone else. You're angry because this girl's wounds were self-inflicted. I see that as a cry for help. We're never going to agree on this one."
Obviously, the two detectives were at an impasse. Lennie went back to the car to finish his report while Green decided to talk to Kelly awhile and perhaps find out what led to this self-inflicted carnage.
"Hi", he said to the young woman, smiling warmly. "You say your name is Kelly? What happened tonight, Kelly?"
Kelly turned her face away from the detective to face the wall and was silent. Green noticed, through the hospital gown the woman was wearing, that her back was covered in scars as well. There didn't seem to be a square inch of skin that wasn't defiled with sharp implements or lit cigarrettes.
"Did you do all of this damage to yourself?" Green asked, careful not to get too close and scare her.
Kelly still refused to communicate and brought her thin knees up to her chest in the protective fetal position. She was a small bundle of pain, a package of everything that was wrong with a once-promising future marred by despair.
Just as Green was ready to walk away to get a coffee, a small, timid voice could be heard, saying shakily, "That other guy. I know him. Or, rather, I know of him".
Green turned back around to face the young woman who'd suddenly decided to break her wall of silence. "Lennie Briscoe? How can you possibly know him? You two are strangers to each other."
Kelly looked up at the kind detective, her green eyes filled to the brim with tears. "I'm not surprised he never heard of me. Not surprised at all." She began to cry, first gently, then loud, racking sobs that shook her frail body. "He wouldn't have told Briscoe about me. He's ashamed of me and pretends that I just don't exist."
"Who pretends, Kelly?" Green was curious.
"My brother. Lennie partnered with him for a few years". Kelly continued crying and wiping her eyes on the sheet covering her.
"What was his name?" Green asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. It came with the cacophony of mighty thunderclaps.
"Mike", she responded, her voice flat and emotionless. "Detective Mike Logan."
* * * * * * * * *
To be continued. Next: Chapter Two of the Novel. Please stay tuned and bookmark this site. Just fasten those virtual seat belts---you're in for a bumpy ride.
So what do you think of Mike Logan having a kind of "phantom sister"? Did we ever hear him speak of her? No, we heard about his mentally challenged niece, his abusive mother with the religious fixation and his father, who had the heart transplant. But a younger sister who had caused the Logan family untold anguish. Please come back and see what happens when Mike is forced to confront some pretty upsetting ghosts of his past. Oh, and do you want some pictures of him now? i realize he has not really put in an appearance yet, in this novel, but I'm talking about him now, right? I knew you'd see it my way. ;)
What? You want one more? Well, hey, I was never one to let any Chris Noth fan go hungry for graphics of Luscious Logan.
