Chapter 9
“You
know, if you keep coming in so early you’re going to start making me look bad,”
Green noted as he arrived at his desk.
Briscoe
replaced the receiver of his phone and suggested good-naturedly, “If you’re
worried, you could try getting your butt out of bed a little earlier.” Turning
more serious, he added, “I wanted to get started tracking down Fisher. Isabel
still wasn’t home but she’s supposed to be at work by nine. I called the
“That explains why he wasn’t in the system as
a sex offender. Did she tell you anything about what happened?”
“She said
Fisher was accused of abducting a fourteen year old girl. Evidently, the girl
had run away from home and he found her wandering the streets one night. She
wouldn’t tell him her last name or where she lived. According to him, he
offered to let her spend the night at his apartment just so she’d have a safe
place to stay. He claimed she told him she was seventeen and that he didn’t
know how young she really was or he would’ve called the cops. The father of the
girl was long gone and the mother was an alcoholic who didn’t even notice that
her daughter was missing for a couple of days, so it didn’t get reported until
the day after Fisher picked her up. But once it hit the
Green let
out a low whistle. “Why do I get the feeling that little girl’s guardian angel
was working overtime?”
“Yeah,”
Briscoe agreed succinctly. “Too bad Corinna Braden wasn’t so lucky. Fisher’s
graduated from going out and picking up runaways to luring girls to him using a
computer. The detective said the thing she remembered most about him was how
taken the girl was with him after they had spent only one day together. She
couldn’t tell them enough how he had ‘come to her rescue.’ Sound familiar?”
Green
nodded. “Sounds like he had a way with girls back then, too. While we’re
waiting to talk with Isabel, why don’t we do a little high-tech police work to
try to find this guy?” At Briscoe’s questioning look, he reached into the
bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out the residence telephone directory.
Dropping it onto his desk with a thud, he said, “Our Eric Fisher may not have a
***Briscoe
stuck his head in Van Buren’s office as she finished a phone call. “Ed and I
are heading out. There were six Eric Fishers in the phone book and we’ve got
four to track down. The other two were the ones we eliminated at the D.M.V.
yesterday. We’re also going to stop in and see Isabel when she shows up for her
shift at the coffee shop.”
“Before
you do that, I want you to pay Skoda a visit and see if he can provide you with
a profile,” she urged. “The more you know about the killer’s habits, the easier
it’s going to be to find him and make the case against him.”
“We need
all the help we can get,” he agreed.
“I know
how hard you and Ed have been working this case and I don’t want to add to the
pressure, but I sure would like to be able to tell the chief we have a suspect
in our sights.”
Briscoe
nodded and promised, “You’ll be the first to know once we have something.”
***Emil Skoda leaned back in his chair and
interlaced his fingers behind his head, puffing small breaths out from between
his lips thoughtfully. “Well,” he began slowly, “if it’s the same guy, given
what happened in
“Yes,”
Green concurred. “After watching the tape from the security camera, I would’ve
guessed him to be in his late teens, maybe early twenties. But going by his
arrest record, he’s now twenty-six. In the four year old mug shot from
“Most
pedophiles and juvenile rapists are a little older than that, but looking
younger than his age could actually be a factor in getting him started early.
Kids are drawn to those closer to their own age. He may have found it so easy
to come into contact with young girls that it encouraged him to act on his
abnormal desires.”
“I’m sure
it would’ve helped him with Corinna Braden. If she had found someone who looked
a lot older than her waiting when they met, she probably would’ve kept on
walking,” Green agreed.
“So what
are we looking for?” Briscoe asked.
“Given
his appearance and penchant for young teens, don’t bother looking for him at
the local playground. It would be difficult for him to blend into that
environment. You’ll more likely find him in places like arcades, movie
theaters, or near middle and high schools. And once he’s there he may situate
himself so that when an opportunity presents itself, he can casually join in a
conversation, maybe to offer some advice or directions, or to help with a
problem in order to win approval and trust.”
Briscoe
exchanged a look with his partner. “We know he’s good at offering advice.”
“He’s
also going to be very interested in any news reports or articles pertaining to
the murder he committed. He’ll see it as his
murder, his victim. Part of the
thrill for him is a certain sense of notoriety, even if he’s the only one who
knows to whom the reports are referring. He feeds off of what he sees and hears
about the murder. You’ve picked up enough of these guys to know that once you
find him and search his place, you’ll probably find newspaper clippings and
such dealing with the case.”
“Anything
else?” Briscoe asked. “We need something that’s going to help us make the case
against him once we do find him.”
“Given
the precautions he’s taken to cover his tracks, you already know he’s
intelligent. It isn’t going to be easy to catch him doing something blatant
that you can use against him. If he thinks he’s gotten away with the murder, he
could be feeling a little cocky which may make him bolder and more open when
approaching young girls. But he’s still going to be cautious. Your garden
variety pedophile can get away with biding his time and watching for the right
moment to snatch a child. There doesn’t necessarily have to be any preliminary
contact between him and his victim. But someone who targets older kids has a
tougher job. He doesn’t want to be seen with his victims but he usually has to
spend at least a little time establishing some sort of relationship with them
in order to get them alone since a teenager isn’t as easy prey as a smaller child.
That’s what makes the Internet so attractive to these guys. They can establish
a relationship anonymously without coming anywhere near their victim. They’re
also experts at reading kids in order to choose a victim because they study and
observe the behavior of every child they can. They find something on which to
establish a relationship by convincing the child that they have something in
common with him or her. So while this man may not target someone he has a
personal relationship with as a victim, he wouldn’t be above using any child he
comes into contact with to sharpen his skills and keep in practice.”
“So you
don’t think this is a one-shot offense?” Briscoe questioned.
“If
you’re dealing with the same man who was arrested in Des Moines, he’s already
given it more than one shot. He just blew the first one. If you don’t catch
him, though, I’d say odds are heavy that he’s going to reoffend.”
“Can you
give us any idea how soon he’s going to be looking for his next victim?” Green
asked.
Skoda
shrugged. “He’s always looking. But my guess is he’ll wait until the hoopla
over this one dies down a bit. If he waited four years in between this one and
his last offense, he’ll probably give it a little time before he gets serious
about the next one. Reliving what he did to his last victim should hold him for
a while. With what little you’ve given me to work with on this particular man,
though, it’s hard to predict.”
Briscoe
nodded. “Thanks, Doc. We’ll keep you in the loop.”
***“He has a police record in Iowa so we were
wondering if he showed you a driver’s license from there, or if it was from New
York,” Green explained.
“Now that
you mention it, I think it was from out of state. It was a different color or
something. But I don’t remember where it was from. It’s been a while and I was
mostly looking at the date – and the picture. Eric is really hot. I can’t
believe you think he’s the one. He’s such a nice guy.”
“We’re
not positive he is the one, but we sure would like to find him and have a chat.
When was the last time you saw him, Isabel?” Briscoe asked.
She
tapped the counter top thoughtfully. “You know, come to think of it, I don’t
believe he’s been here in over a week now.”
“Did he
ever give you any indication about where he lived or worked?”
“Not that
I can think of. He was always kind of quiet. He seemed uncomfortable if I tried
to get him to talk for more than a few minutes. I figured he might have a
girlfriend or something.”
Green pulled
out a business card and jotted a number on it, then handed it to her. “This is
my cell phone number. If you see Fisher anytime or anywhere, day or night, call
me right away.”
“I will,”
she promised. “But I still think you’re wrong about him.”
As they
walked from the shop, Briscoe noted, “The reason Fisher didn’t spend time
talking to Isabel wasn’t because he had a girlfriend. It was because she was
too old for him. He likes them young, before they have enough experience in
life to recognize what a predator he is.”
“Let’s
check out the remaining three Eric Fishers on our list. One way or the other,
I’d like to find out by the weekend if Fisher is our man.”
“Oh, he’s
the one,” Briscoe assured him. “Old habits die hard. He tried and failed with one
girl and succeeded in getting another. All we have to do is find a way to prove
it.”
***“Now that we’ve scratched fifty-something Eric
Fisher from the list, it has to be either this guy or the next,” Green
concluded.
“Let’s
hope so.” Briscoe indicated a building they were approaching. “This is it.
We’re looking for unit number 1424.” He looked up and shook his head as Green
pulled over to the curb. “This sure is a far cry from Seventh Avenue Eric
Fisher’s place with its view of Central Park.”
After entering
the run-down apartment building, they found the elevator to be out of order,
blocked with a hastily nailed two-by-four across its frame. Passing a door
marked “manager” and continuing toward the back of the building, they were met
with the usual sounds of domestic life carrying down the main staircase: crying
children, blaring music, and slamming doors. As they proceeded up the scuffed
wooden steps, the usual smells of domestic life bombarded them as well.
Upon
reaching the fourth floor, they made their way to a door that had the numbers
“14” and “4” tacked onto it, separated by the impression of a missing “2” faded
onto the cracked green paint.
“Sure is
quiet in there,” Green noted after knocking.
They
waited for several seconds, then knocked again.
“Let’s
talk with some of his neighbors,” Briscoe suggested when they received no
response.
Selecting
a door with sounds emanating from behind it, they knocked and were greeted
seconds later by a woman with a toddler on her hip.
“Are you
here to look at the stove?” she asked before either could speak. “The super
said he was going to send someone yesterday. That makes two days now since I’ve
been able to make a decent meal for my kids.”
“No, I’m
sorry, we’re not here about the stove,” Green responded, holding out his badge.
“We’re police detectives. We wanted to talk to your neighbor, Eric Fisher, but
it doesn’t look like he’s home. Do you have any idea when he’ll be back?”
“He’s at
work. He doesn’t get home until later.”
“Do you
know where he works?”
“Why do
you want to know?” she asked suspiciously. “He’s been nice to me and my kids
since their dad took off. I don’t want to bring him any trouble.”
“I can
understand that,” Green assured her. “We just need to ask him some questions, Ms.
…?”
“Johnson,” she supplied brusquely. “Eric works at a grocery store
somewhere. Sometimes he brings me packages of diapers that got opened a little
when they were put on the shelf or cans of food that got dented. He’s been
really good to my daughters, too. He always has candy for them and he walks
them to the park two blocks over once in a while. Like I said, I don’t want to
cause him any trouble.”
“You have
daughters?” Briscoe asked with a smile. “So do I. I’ll bet yours are lovely.
How old are they?”
“One is
nine and the other is twelve,” she answered more amiably, seeming to relax
somewhat at his off-hand compliment.
“Cute
ages,” Briscoe nodded. “So, what time does Eric usually get home?”
“I don’t
know. He works different shifts. Sometimes he works all night. Last week, my
baby was sick and I knocked on his door in the middle of the night and he
wasn’t home, so it’s hard to say.”
“Do you
remember what night that was?” Green asked.
“It was
early in the week, on a Monday, I think.” She nodded after reflecting for a
second. “Yeah, it was sometime after midnight on Monday, around 3:00 maybe. I
had to get another neighbor to watch my girls while I took the baby to the
doctor.”
“By after
midnight on Monday, you mean early Tuesday, right?”
She
nodded her agreement. “We went to the County Hospital. The doctor there saw my
baby Tuesday morning.”
Briscoe
pulled out a photo and showed it to the woman. “Is this your neighbor?”
She studied
the picture and shook her head. “No, that’s not him. Eric has blond hair and
dark brown eyes.”
He
returned the photo to his pocket and said, “Well, it looks like we’ve bothered
you for nothing. There’s another man with the same name who has a truckload of
unpaid parking tickets. We must’ve gotten the wrong address.”
“You must
have,” she agreed. “The Eric who lives across the hall doesn’t even own a car.
He takes the bus to work every day.”
Shaking
his head, Briscoe said, “Boy, do we feel foolish. If you could see your way
around mentioning anything to him about our visit, we’d really appreciate it,
Ms. Johnson. It would save us some major embarrassment. And you know, since
you’ve been so helpful, why don’t we stop by the super’s apartment on the way
out and remind him about your stove?”
“Okay,”
she quickly agreed. “My kids are getting tired of sandwiches. Thanks.”
When the
detectives had started back down the stairs, Green asked, “Is there some reason
why you showed her a picture of Allen Jarvis instead of the one of Fisher?”
“Didn’t
you hear her? Her description of him matches our photo. He’s friendly with her
daughters. That fits with what Skoda said about our perp. And he wasn’t home on
the night of the murder. If my hunch is right and this is our guy, I don’t want
a neighbor who thinks he’s a knight in shining armor to give him a heads up
before we get to him. We’ll see if the super can identify him off our photo.”
***Green checked his watch as they exited the
building. “Depending on the shift he worked today, Fisher could be home any
minute or we might have to wait hours before he shows up.”
“Let’s
see how fast we can get a warrant to search his place,” Briscoe suggested,
pulling out his cell phone. “I’ll call Serena.”
“A
warrant? With what we have? Or should I say with what we don’t have? We haven’t even spoken to Fisher
yet. For all we know, he could’ve been in Timbuktu when Corinna was killed.”
“I’m not interested
in his story and I’m not giving him the chance to lie his way out of an arrest,
then destroy whatever evidence might be in his apartment before we get there.
And that’s exactly what he’s going to do once he knows we’re on to him. The
super positively identified our photo. Fisher has a prior history with a young
girl and he was in the coffee shop when the e-mail was sent.” Briscoe shrugged.
“It’s not much, but it should be enough for Judge Livingston. He hands out
warrants like a meter maid hands out parking violations.” Turning his attention
to the phone, he said, “This is Detective Briscoe from the 27th
precinct. I need to speak with Serena Southerlyn.”
The
receptionist at One Hogan Place answered into his ear, “I’m sorry, Ms.
Southerlyn is in court. Can someone else help you?”
“No,
thanks. Can you have her call me at this number a.s.a.p.?”
“I’ll
give her the message, Detective.”
“Thanks.”
Briscoe began dialing again. “She’s in court. I’ll try her cell phone.” After
doing so, he had to resign himself to leaving another message.
They had
barely gotten back into the car when Green pointed to a figure coming from the
building they had just left. “Isn’t that Fisher?”
Briscoe
squinted and swore. “We barely missed him. He must have gone in while we were
talking to the super. I sure wish we knew our warrant was on the way.”
“You
could call Hogan Place back and ask for another A.D.A.”
“Another
A.D.A. might ask too many questions.”
Green
smiled wryly. “You mean an A.D.A. with more experience would want to know what
you had been smoking to ask for a warrant without probable cause?”
“In our
business, we go with what we’ve got. Serena will get us our warrant,” Briscoe
stated confidently. “We’ll just have to keep Fisher under surveillance until we
hear from her.”
Green
started the car after the man had reached the corner and began to slowly
follow. Upon turning onto the next street, they spotted him waiting a few yards
away at a bus stop.
“Great,”
Briscoe complained as Green drove past the small group of waiting people and
pulled over to the curb several car lengths ahead. “I hate tailing buses.”
Rolling down the window, he adjusted the side mirror in order to keep Fisher
within view.
“Look on
the bright side. He could’ve taken the subway,” Green observed.
After the
bus arrived and they watched Fisher climb aboard, they followed at a discreet
distance, pulling over and waiting at each of the buses’ pick-up points. When
they had followed for more than an hour and through two bus transfers, they
spotted Fisher disembarking.
Briscoe
nodded as Green parked the car. “The New York Public Library – that was a good
place to meet girls, even in my day.”
They left
the car and entered the building, splitting up to unobtrusively keep tabs on
their suspect. After following him through the labyrinth of sections and
waiting while he accessed the Internet using a library computer, they
eventually wound up in the student research area. Fisher selected a book and
settled at a table while Green searched a bookshelf behind him. Briscoe picked
up a discarded newspaper and sat down several feet away under the pretense of
reading. Glancing over the top of the newspaper, he noted that three teenage
girls were huddled over what appeared to be homework at the table next to
Fisher’s.
After
spending several minutes flipping through a book, Fisher got up to return it to
the shelf. As he brought back another selection, he smiled at the girls when he
passed, then sat in a chair nearer to their table. Moments later, when two of
girls got up and left the third alone, Fisher leaned toward her and spoke
quietly. The girl smiled and handed him a pencil. Fisher jotted something on a
scrap of paper, then gave the pencil back and struck up a subdued conversation
with her. Briscoe’s eyes fixed unwaveringly on him while he chatted with the
girl until her companions returned. The teenagers remained for only a few
minutes more before packing their belongings into backpacks and leaving. No
more than five minutes after they had done so, Fisher got up and also headed
for the exit, followed again by the detectives.
Once they
made it back to the car undetected, they kept a watchful eye on Fisher while he
waited for the bus.
Briscoe pulled
out his phone. “We need that warrant, now. I’m going to try Serena again.”
After several seconds, he queried into the phone, “Serena? It’s Lennie
Briscoe.”
“I just
got your message and was about to call you, Detective. What can I do for you?”
Southerlyn asked.
“Do you
remember reading in the papers about Corinna Braden, the fifteen year old who
was found floating in the Hudson first of last week? Ed and I are tailing a guy
named Eric Fisher who looks really good for the murder and we need a warrant to
search his place for evidence.”
“What do
you have for me to take to a judge?”
“We’ve
established that the Braden girl was having e-mail conversations with someone
she was on her way to meet on the night she was killed. Most of the messages
she received were sent from computers located in four different coffee shops.
Surveillance tapes show that Fisher was one of four regulars in one of the
shops at the exact time the victim received a message from there. We’ve
eliminated two of the other regulars because they have air-tight alibis, but
Fisher’s neighbor said he wasn’t home around the time of the murder. We’re sure
he’s is our man.”
“His
being at the coffee shop, especially with others present, isn’t much to go on,”
she hedged. “And just because he wasn’t home doesn’t mean he was out killing
the victim.”
Picking
up on her hesitancy, he quickly added, “He also has a previous arrest in Iowa
for abducting a fourteen year old girl and he’s been spending an unusual amount
of time with his neighbor’s little girls. We talked to Skoda about this. Fisher
fits the profile to a tee.”
“What
kind of alibi did he offer for the murder? Can you put him with the girl at any
time on the night she was killed?”
“We
haven’t questioned him yet,” he admitted. “We want to have the search warrant
in hand before we do that. There was no forensic evidence left on the body so
we don’t want to take a chance on him destroying anything in his apartment that
might tie him to the girl, like her clothes or belongings. If we get the
warrant first, we can always tear it up if we’re convinced he’s not our guy
after interrogating him.”
“Your
evidence is all circumstantial. If that’s all you have…”
Trying to
hide his annoyance, he said as persuasively as he could, “Look, we get warrants
on less than this all the time. Getting one before we question a suspect is
sort of an insurance policy when we’re reasonably sure we have the right
person. It’s something to hold over his head when we do sit down with him.”
“The
evidence to base a warrant on is thin. And I don’t think I can talk a judge
into giving you one just so you have something to hold over a suspect’s head,”
Southerlyn argued.
“Judge
Livingston will.”
“Judge
Livingston?”
“Yeah,
we’ve worked with him before. He knows us. Hey, all we’re asking is that you
try.”
Southerlyn contemplated a moment, then sighed into the phone. “All
right. I’ll see what I can do. I’m still at the court building so I’ll try to
catch Judge Livingston in his chambers. I’ll let you know what I come up with.”
Briscoe
returned his phone to his pocket as Fisher boarded a bus. “She’s already at the
court building so we should know something on the warrant soon.”
“You made
it sound like Fisher has a record. Don’t you think you should’ve told her that
he walked away from the incident with the girl in Des Moines?” Green reminded
him.
“Oh, did
he? I guess I forgot. At my age, those little details sometimes slip my mind.”
Green
glanced over to find Briscoe’s face the picture of innocence. Shaking his head,
he noted, “I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Partner.”
As they
followed Fisher back across town, it eventually became apparent that he was
returning to his apartment without taking any other excursions along the way.
Just before reaching the stop near where they had started, Briscoe’s cell phone
chimed.
“Judge
Livingston is in Part 23, which is still in session,” Southerlyn explained when
he answered. “If you need the warrant right away, I’ll have to approach another
judge with the request.”
“Another
judge may not be familiar with our work. It has to be Livingston,” he insisted.
“Then
you’ll have to wait. I’ll try to corner him during the next recess. I’ll call
you back as soon as I have something.”
Briscoe
relayed the information to Green, who asked, “Any suggestions as to how we can
buy ourselves some time until the warrant does arrive?”
“We could
stop the bus and claim we received a tip that there’s a shoe bomber aboard. We
can hold everyone while we examine their feet. Gives a whole new meaning to the
term ‘foot patrol’,” Briscoe suggested dryly.
“That’s
not funny,” Green admonished. “We’ll just have to take him at his place when
the warrant does get to us.”
When
Fisher disembarked around the corner from his apartment, Green pulled ahead and
stopped across the street from the building. Fisher continued to approach the
entrance, then casually glanced in their direction. He did a double take upon
spotting their car and stopped short, studying them suspiciously.
“Uh oh,”
Green declared, trying to appear uninterested as he scrunched down slightly. He
swore as Fisher began walking rapidly toward the front door, all the while
glancing toward their car. “I think he’s made us.”
With a determined
glint in his eyes, Briscoe threw open the car door. “Come on. We can’t let him
get into his apartment. Let’s go get the bastard.”