Chapter 7: November 22nd – New York – Morning

Again more plot heavy discussion in here... better than 4-5. As the deadline draws closer these entries may be a little less edited for grammar and such as I'm trying to make deadlines. Chapters 4-5 will be re-written when this is done. After I've finished writing the book, I'll be re-publishing these chapter by chapter with edits and such so that's good!

Chapter 8 by tomorrow night! Hopefully...

Chapter 7: November 22nd – New York – Morning

                In a large conference room commonly used for presentations, media events, and awards ceremonies at the 27^th precinct, 9 long tables stretch along three of the four walls. Against the forth wall are five easels holding white boards and another easel holding up a covered picture.  The three tables represent a portion of the ongoing Angel investigation. The first table along the same wall as the door represented unsolved cases two weeks prior to the shooting that may be related to the Angel. The second table which is to the right of the first table makes up evidence collected from the Horizon Slayings which happened only a few days ago. Across from the door is a stage where presentations would normally be presented, currently on the stage are Joseph Pierre, Michael Morrow, Agent Kwok and Agent Mach, behind them were the easels. To the right from the stage, across from the second table is the third table which represents everything they have on the Angel and hi shooting against God’s Divinity United. In the middle of the room stood several agents and detectives from the NYPD and the FBI all gathered in a room. Joseph called for this meeting yesterday; the term he used for this is evidence cleansing.  

                Joseph Pierre walks to the podium dressed in a long black coat, t-shirt, and jeans. He taps the microphone a few times to get people’s attention. He speaks slowly as his French Canadian accent may be hard for some people to understand. “Hello everyone, my name is Joseph Pierre and you’ve probably seen me walk around the station a few times in the past couple of days. I’m originally from the Canadian RCMP and I’m part of a task force that specializes in odd cases like this one. Recently I was in Vancouver and apprehended someone who is suspected of being the serial killer, Vampire. For those who don’t know, The Vampire would capture his prisoners, puncture their neck with fanged grills, and hang them upside down until all of their blood leaves the body. The puncture wounds on the neck wouldn’t heal or stop bleeding.” He paused and reached for one of the four bottles of water on the podium, taking a sip. Joseph continues.

                “Going further back I’ve also helped the NYPD close a case here a few years ago and I’ve dealt with everything from psychotic serial killers to rampaging spree shooters. The idea here today is to re-evaluate all the evidence we have regarding this Angel shooter and determine our next course of action. I believe this is a good use of our time seeing as we’ve gathered a lot of new evidence in the past several hours including the Horizon slayings. Presenting first is Agent Mach talking about cases we believe may be tied with the God’s Divinity United shooting or the Horizon slayings.” Joseph goes to sit down, carrying his water with him. Agent Mach stands up, taking his place at the podium. Agent Mach is dressed in formal business clothing with a shirt and tie, which is better than Joseph’s more casual look.

                “Hello everyone, thanks for being here today. If I can just get everyone to turn around towards the entrance of the room you will see several case files that I believe may be related to either the shootings or the slayings that occurred in the past several days. Most of the officers who work on these cases are here today, so hopefully if any questions arise we may be able to answer them and say why they’re related to these cases.” Agent Mach pauses for a second; flipping through notes he’s brought up with him.

                “First case I wish to bring up his an ongoing investigation at the FBI that I’ve been personally working on and that is missing weaponry in police stations in the United States. One of the odder situations when this happened is in Baltimore when several G36’s have gone missing from a SWAT van. Baltimore police are the only force in the states currently equipped with the G36’s, we believe that whoever stole these must’ve sold one to the Angel in the church shooting.” He paused for a moment to look at the crowd for any questions, finally someone from the NYPD with a heavier set asked a question.

            “So are we assuming he is someone with gang ties?”

            Joseph stayed in his seat and watched John as he handled this question. Joseph himself doesn’t believe the Angel has any ties with the criminal element except for himself, something about spree shooters and organized gangs doesn’t seem to go hand in hand. Agent Mach answered the question, “No, but we’ve done a search of local weapon shops for anyone who’ve sold a G36 recently and all of the weapons have been accounted for and the owners checked up upon. I believe if we find out what happened to these missing guns we create some sort of trail that leads to the identity of the Angel.”

            The group seem to agree with Agent Mach by muttering to themselves. Agent Mach went with his next case he believes ties in with the Angel shootings. “A few days ago I went and investigated the downtown body modification scene, and I’ve learned a few local tattooist and body modification specialist have gone missing. The first one goes by the nickname Ink, he’s primarily a tattoo artist and dapples in piercings, the second one is named Trixie, he is a burly guy who’s done it all from horn manipulation to face tattooing. As we know, reports have suggested the Angel has Wings modified onto his bo---“ Agent Mach is cut off by another FBI agent in the crowd, a younger looking man with faux Mohawk.

            “Going from implants to steel wings is bit of a large step. How do we know these are professionals that did this?”

            Agent Mach replies, “We don’t. Someone has to do it, I just figure maybe them finding out what happened may’ve irked them and they ran.” Another cold trail Joseph thought, colder than Mach’s missing guns idea. The kid in the crowd was right, these are two different modifications and such a body modification made in public? Pictures would’ve probably surfaced from the internet with random tourist or bystanders wanting to take a picture with the man getting wing implants at the tattoo shop.  Agent Mach continued with his list of cases, none of which appealed to Joseph or his theories about the Angel shooter. When Mach reaches his 4^th case he then says, “Then we have O’Healy’s granddaughter…”

            The words perked Joseph up from Mach’s lousy performance. He didn’t know that Paul’s granddaughter died, and everything started to make sense. Agent Mach continued to speak about how it was the same bullets found at both crime scenes, but Joseph is already making the connections in his head. Paul O’Healy asked him to come out here to kill the Angel and he said it was for revenge, which means Paul must’ve known that the Angel killed his daughter, but how? Words sink into Joseph’s head as Mach continues to talk about the case, Joseph half hears that any footage from the street cameras had been wiped along with the crime scene being cleaned up except for the random bullets they’ve found in the nearby trees, close to where the bodies were found. By the time Joseph Pierre came back fully into reality, Michael Morrow is on the podium talking about the Horizon Slayings that occurred a few days ago.

            Michael gestures towards the second table to his right. Photographs of the thirteen heads that were mailed out to several government office buildings in brown boxes are laid out on the table with a note found with one of the heads saying, Pretenders to thy Throne. Michael Morrow begins his short presentation. “Hello everyone, a few days ago a package delivered by an unknown urban male containing the Head of Gerald Fitzroy, a known associate in the Horizon church. Since the delivery we’ve found twelve more heads including our Angel suspect Carl Henderson. This is what we know about the slayings, the beheading was done post-mortem and sent to government buildings. If you look at the pictures of each head, on the photo it’ll say where exactly the head was found. As for any other information we’re severally lacking in that department.” At this time Joseph got up from his seat and walked out of the assembly, only to return a few moments later with the pamphlet the Horizon followers gave him when he landed. He gave this pamphlet to Michael who was still presenting, looking at it on stage. “What am I looking for?” He turns to Joseph, but as he did he flips the pamphlet and found a big clue on where the murders could’ve taken place.

               

            On the back of the pamphlet is an address, date, and time of the next Horizon introduction gathering in New York. The meeting took place on November 19^th in the evening just after the Horizon church supported the Angel’s attacks. Michael Morrow continued speaking, this time in a more confident tone. “Ah, we just found out that there was a meeting at a local Community center in Harlem the night they’ve been killed on the 19^th.  This is good, we can follow up on this later…” Michael trails off again trying to process the new information. “As for why the Horizon members were killed, the note is supposed to lead us to believe that the Angel did it, I don’t think it was.”

            Someone from a crowd spoke up, “Then who do you think it was?”

            Michael Morrow without missing a beat answer’s the man’s question. “Well if I knew, I wouldn’t be fucking talking about this. If it wasn’t the Angel then it could be some neighbourhood justice or… perhaps the word got out that Carl Henderson was a suspect which would mean it got leaked somehow.” The timing between them pointing Carl as a suspect and the murders are razor thin, if it was a leak it would’ve been someone close to the case giving out information or answering questions he shouldn’t have given out.

            Another voice from the large crowd of police detectives and federal agents can be heard by everyone, “So does that mean the Angel is dead then if our main suspect is dead?” Joseph thought about this while Michael answered his question, “We haven’t seen any activity from the Angel after the shooting or sighting, it’s a possibility but until we can know for sure the case is still active, open, and under high priority.” There are a few more questions about this scenario, if the Angel wasn’t the killer then why send the heads with an odd message, and if it was the Angel then does that mean he gets jealous if people take credit for his killings? These thoughts are disturbing to Joseph to think about, the Horizon slayings was done in a ritualistic way with the post-mortem beheadings instead of the careless killing spree. Then there was that Bartender at the bar, trying to stop Hal from talking to him and Agent Kwok. The room went silent, and it was now Joseph’s turn to talk about the Angel and the current plan of attack.

            With the help of Agent Kwok, Joseph started his presentation. “So what now? We have a lot of questions asked and no answers to give. However, I do believe we have a good description and detailed sketch of our shooter.” With that Agent Kwok revealed the covered painting by pulling the blanket revealing the portrait. One side of the painting shows a face of a younger male with blonde hair and blue eyes, while the body picture shows him standing roughly at 6’0 with smooth metallic wings from his back, and a pair of underwear.  Joseph explains the description, “Although initial reports say that the Angel is naked, the church area was filled with smoke, fire, and chaos that we believe it could be tanned shorts or even pants and most of the people were not thinking straight. Reason for this line of thought is that no cameras during or after the shooting managed to capture a photo of a naked man walking around the area. However we did find a lot of white skinned males with tanned pants, we’re currently grabbing a list of names based on that data.”

            “Now, what do we do now? I would like a small force led by Agent Mach to follow up on the missing guns. Michael Morrow and a partner will investigate the community center where this Horizon introduction meeting was supposed to take place. Agent Kwok and a small team will go back to Summerville to investigate the Horizon church with court orders. The rest of you put yourself in teams and investigate where those heads came from and find the delivery man responsible of dropping off the packages. I’m going to follow up on my own personal leads and organize our efforts here at the 27^th, everyone got that?” The crowd said yes in agreement, and like that the case is more organized than it was with Michael leading it and they’re on the trail of the shooter, if he’s still alive.

            Few hours after the presentation Joseph is sitting at a spare desk located a few feet away from Michael’s office. The talk about the Vampire killings earlier made him want to check up on the case. The suspect was in court earlier that day to enter his please, an article on Google News said James Pilgrim or “Fyrestar” as he’s known in the Goth community pleaded Not Guilty today in court after being charged with the murders of twelve women and one attempted murder of another woman on the same evening he was caught. Joseph didn’t think anything of it, he didn’t receive an e-mail from the RCMP or Cassandra about him needing to be a witness in court, but then again he didn’t expect to see any e-mails coming from Cassandra anytime soon.

            Joseph hangs around the station until about five o’clock before getting up from his internet searching. Michael Morrow who just walked of his office sees Joseph. “Hey, I’m heading out to the community center, you want to come?” Joseph shook head.

            “No thanks, like I said I think I got a solid lead.” He said grabbing his coat that was hanging from the chair while he surf the internet.

            “Oh and sitting around is how you solve cases with a hot lead?” Michael commented, with a venomous tone because he has to go and investigate the place by himself while Joseph sits around.

            “Forgot, consultant. Don’t do real police work here.” Joseph said with a smirk. Michael turns around as he headed towards the door facing Joseph and raisings his hand in the hair with a jerking motion.

            “Jerk off.” Michael said before leaving the precinct.

            Joseph shrugs off the comment. It wasn’t like he’s been doing nothing all afternoon, most of the time he spent browsing he was putting 2 and 2 together, and he finally knows not only what happened to the missing evidence of Paul O’Healy’s granddaughter’s murder but who killed the Horizon members.