Good Day to Die Read Online Free Page B

got my attention. The Thong murders had begun more than a year ago. One killing a month for seven long months, then nothing. The department, in its infinite wisdom, had tried to bury the first three, assigning them to Homicide as if they were routine incidents. Then some cop had leaked the facts to a CBS reporter with close ties to New York’s considerable homosexual community. That considerable community had responded with an organized fury not seen since the heyday of the Vietnam protest era.
    And why shouldn’t they? Devastated by a disease called AIDS, subject to attack by roving packs of demented teenagers, how could they view the NYPD’s response as anything but another demonstration of the city’s indifference to their plight? Indifference that was a logical extension of the conventional wisdom that whatever happens to a faggot is part of God’s punishment for a demonstrably evil lifestyle.
    For the first few weeks, the crowds at City Hall and Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence, were massive, with large numbers of ordinary citizens as well as a dozen gay advocacy groups in attendance. A serial killer was walking the streets, a predator seeking victims. How could the cops (and, as far as the demonstrators were concerned, the mayor and every other politician) try to cover it up? A year later, months after the killings had suddenly stopped, small groups of demonstrators holding lit candles continued to follow the mayor from one public event to the next.
    The NYPD (following a series of carefully orchestrated mea culpas) had been forced to go public. The sixteen cops assigned to investigate the first three killings quickly grew to a hundred, then two hundred, then six hundred at the peak of the investigation. A hotline had been set up, the FBI called in, and psychologists galore invited to speculate on the killer’s motivation.
    All to no avail. The killings had stopped five months before Vanessa Bouton appeared in my life and the task force, with nothing new to investigate, had begun to wind down.
    “What’s the matter, Detective, cat got your tongue? Is the wise guy out of wisdom?” Her grin had broadened considerably.
    “I admit you’ve got my complete attention.” I shifted in my seat, trying to get my brain to pursue exactly what this piece of information meant to me. “Is that the official position of the NYPD?” I knew it couldn’t be even as I asked the question. If the task force was buying Vanessa Bouton’s theory, it’d be doing its own investigating.
    “No, it’s not.” The grin faded as she returned to her formidable former self.
    “Does the department know you’re here?”
    “Do you think that’s a proper question for a piss-ant detective to put to a captain? You might want to do yourself a favor, Means, and not presume anything. Not unless you plan to stay in this lab for the rest of your career.”
    She obviously expected a response, but I refused to give her one. The only thing she could do (as she so kindly pointed out) was leave me where I was. I was already being punished.
    “What do you know about serial killers?” she asked after a moment.
    “They don’t get caught unless they make a mistake.”
    “That’s not very much.”
    “Look, Captain, the last serial killer we had in New York was the copycat Zodiac killer. He managed to kill one man and wound several others before he disappeared. How many homicides have we had since then? Two thousand? Three thousand? Five thousand? Serial killers are big problems for politicians, not cops.”
    It was the truth and it was obvious. The myth of the serial killer—that he’s out there and waiting to get you —terrifies the voters, who put pressure on the pols, who put pressure on the department. But the department is not, and never has been, the individual cops who do their jobs every day. The whole, in this case, is not the sum of its parts. The whole, meaning the New York City Police Department, is a political bureaucracy