“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
No clear response.
“Mr. Bulke, did you see your attacker?”
The eyes gyrated in their sockets, and his wet mouth opened. “The… face.”
“What face? What did it look like?”
“Twisted… Oh, God…”
He groaned, mumbled something unintelligible.
“Can you be more specific, sir? Male or female?”
A whimper, a brief shake of the head.
“One, or more than one?”
“One,” came the croaked reply.
Hayward looked at the EMT. He shrugged.
She turned, gestured to a detective waiting nearby. “Stay with him on the way to the hospital. If he becomes more coherent, get a complete description of his attacker. I want to know what we’re up against.”
“Yes, Captain.”
She straightened up, looked around at the small group of police. “Whoever or whatever this is, we’ve got it cornered. I want us to go in. Now.”
“Shouldn’t we call for a SWAT team?” said Visconti.
“It would take hours before a SWAT team could gear up and get over here. And their rules of engagement are so ponderous they’d slow everything down. There was fresh blood on that wallet—there’s a chance Lipper might still be alive and a hostage.” She looked around. “I want you three to come with me: Sergeant Visconti, Officer Martin, and Detective Sergeant O’Connor.”
There was a silence. The three officers exchanged glances.
“Is there a problem? It’s four against one.”
More hesitant looks.
She sighed. “Don’t tell me you boys have bought into the rumors the museum guards are spreading? What, you think we’re going to get jammed up by a mummy?”
Visconti colored, and by way of answer removed his weapon and gave it a quick check. The others followed suit.
“Turn off your radios, cell phones, pagers, everything. I don’t want to be creeping up on the perp and suddenly hear Beethoven’s Fifth coming from your BlackBerry.”
They nodded.
Hayward took out a photocopy she’d requested of the attic layout of the museum and pressed it flat on a box. “Okay. This section of the attic is divided into sixteen narrow rooms—here—divided into two long lines under parallel roofs, with a connecting passage at the far end. Think of it as a U. Besides the stairway down, there’s only one possible escape route: a rooftop accessible through this row of windows, here. I’ve already had it covered. The skylights are supposed to be barred. Which means the only way for the killer to escape is through us… He’s cornered.”
She paused, looked at them each in turn. “We advance in pairs: quick observation of each room and retreat, then move and cover. I’ll partner with O’Connor. Martin, you and Visconti stay a half-room behind. Don’t overcommit. And remember: we’ve got to proceed under the assumption—the hope—that Lipper’s still alive and being held hostage. We can’t risk killing him. Only if you have verification that Lipper’s already wasted can you use deadly force—and then only if absolutely necessary. Are we clear on this?”
They all nodded.
“I’ll lead.”
When none of the three protested or made the usual faux-gallant comments about its being a job for a man, Hayward took it as a sign that women were finally being accepted in the force. Or maybe the three were just scared silent.
They stepped carefully through the crime scene, Hayward leading, O’Connor at her heels. The floor was smeared with blood, and a shelf of specimen jars lay where it had fallen, shards of glass and the broken, putrid remains of eels scattered in puddles of foul-smelling preservative. They moved past the guard at the far end of the crime scene and into the next room of the attic. The temporary lights set up around the crime scene were fainter here, cloaking the room in near-darkness.
Hayward and O’Connor moved to either side of the doorway. She gave a quick peek inside, ducked back, nodded to O’Connor, then proceeded.
Empty. More shelves had been thrown over, the glass littering the floor, filling the room with the choking stench of preservative. These jars seemed to have been filled with small rodents. A pile of papers had been dashed about and numerous stored objects flung helter-skelter. It reminded her, in a way, of the preliminary autopsy report on DeMeo: the killer had rooted about haphazardly among his internal organs, ripping and pulling stuff out with a kind of crazy, disorganized violence. A sick kind of vandalism.
She crept up to the next door, waited until the others were in position, ducked around for a visual. Another room, like the previous, completely trashed. One of the dingy skylights had been broken, but the bars above it were still intact. No escape that way.