“I think she knows she’s got something good,” Koulermos said. “The word is out that Erin Easton was abducted.”
“Bring her over, and let’s find out.”
The cop went back to the squad car, and I turned to Kylie. “You want me to take this?” It was more of a statement than a question. Kylie’s batting average interviewing hookers was hovering somewhere around .000.
“Good idea. They all hate me.”
“Don’t take it personally. They just respond better to male authority figures.” I turned to McMaster. “You’re male, but you’ve got no authority, so let me do the talking.”
He nodded. He was lucky to be along for the ride, and he knew it.
Venetia Jones stepped out of the squad car wearing a purple cocktail dress and fuck-me pumps. Prostitutes in tight short shorts and fishnet stockings are from an era gone by; the women today dress like they’re going out for an evening of clubbing.
Her ID card said she was thirty-four, but up close she looked a lot older. She’d probably been on the streets for half her life, and the hazards of her trade had taken their toll. I studied her face and looked into her eyes. I could see the mileage and the battle scars, but if there was ever a fire in her soul, it wasn’t there that night.
“The officer tells me you saw someone get out of that truck,” I said.
“Yeah. One male, one female, both white.”
“Can you describe the woman?”
“Downtown hair, fake-ass titties.”
“Come on, Venetia, I need more than that.”
She smiled. “I know what you need, baby, but you gotta pay me to care.”
On the street, information is currency, and when a hooker has something she thinks a cop can use, she negotiates.
“Do you take gold?” I handed her my card with the gold detective shield on it. “It’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. Call me if you’re ever in a jam. It’s good for one time only.”
She looked at the card and handed it back. “Sorry, Zach. I don’t need any juice down the road. I have an ongoing situation that needs tending to immediately. If you want to help me with that, we can talk.”
She was playing hardball. She knew she had what I wanted. “Tell me your situation, and we’ll take it from there,” I said.
“A few weeks ago I met this nice white boy at a bar. We hit it off, went to his hotel room, did a little partying, and he must have been exhausted, because he passed out cold.”
“Maybe it was something he drank,” I said.
“Well, he don’t pay me to fix him breakfast, so I pack up and leave him sprawled on the bed.”
“Define pack up,” I said.
She laughed. “You a damn smart cop. I was in a big hurry, and by accident his Rolex fell into my purse while I was gathering my things.”
“Did you run right back and return it?”
“I was gonna, but the next day the cops came down on me. Can you believe it? This pencil-dick rich boy is pressing charges against me, a poor working girl.”
“The married ones keep it quiet, so I’m guessing he doesn’t have a wife and kids,” I said.
“No—just a broom up his ass. Damn fool wants to make a whole federal case out of it. Now, if you know someone at the DA’s office who could make it go away, my memory just might come back, and I could tell you about them white folk who got out of that truck.”
“How about the Rolex? Can that come back too?”
“You drive a hard bargain, Zach, but hell, why not?”
“I have a friend at eighty Centre Street. If what you’ve got is good.”
“Baby, what I got is so good, you gonna tell me to keep the Rolex.” She took an iPhone out of her purse, tapped in her password, and pulled up a photo. I leaned over her left shoulder, and Kylie came around the other side. McMaster didn’t wait for an invitation. He poked his head above Kylie’s.
The picture was dark, but we could see Erin Easton in her sparkling pink top being helped out of the back of the box truck by a man. His face was turned away from the camera, but he was wearing the same baseball cap we had seen in the surveillance video.
“It gets better,” Venetia said. She swiped the screen, and this time Erin and her abductor were in close-up, their faces lit by one of the glaring overhead parking-lot lights.
“Shit, shit, shit!” McMaster said. His hand swooped in and grabbed her phone.
Venetia immediately let loose a barrage of F-bombs and tried to wrestle it back. Koulermos jumped in and pulled her off him.
In less than three seconds, I went from the high of catching a break to full-blown rage at a rogue retiree.
I wheeled around. “Phone!” I said.
McMaster handed it over. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Not now!” I turned back to Venetia. “You okay, Ms. Jones?”
“I’m good,” she said. “You good?”
“Real good. I’m going to need to keep your phone.”
“No problem. I got a backup…or two.”
“Did you see where they went?”
“Sorry, honey. I got a business call just then. By the time I looked up again they was gone. One thing I can tell you—wherever they went, they wasn’t walking. That girl was not too steady on them red-bottom stilettos.”
“Thanks. Officer Koulermos will take you to the precinct. I want you to write up everything you saw. He’ll also take the case number on that little Rolex misunderstanding.”
She flashed me a smile that was one part gratitude and three parts victory.
I handed the cop a twenty. “Buy Ms. Jones some dinner.”
“There’s a real fine sushi-takeout place on Amsterdam,” she said, “but it’s not cheap.”
I handed the cop another twenty. It was a small price to pay for a picture of the kidnapper.
As soon as Koulermos led Venetia to the car, I turned to McMaster and held her phone to his face. “Who is he?” I said. “And where do I find him?”
CHAPTER 13
His name is Bobby Dodd,” McMaster said. “He’s been obsessed with Erin for years. It goes back long before I started working for her. He’s broken into her home four times. Once here in New York, another time at her house in Aspen, and twice at her villa in Tuscany.”
“Was he ever collared?” I asked.
“No. We knew it was him, but we never had enough proof.”
“Erin’s doing pretty well for herself if she’s got three homes,” Kylie said.
“She’s got five. It used to be six, but Hurricane Irma destroyed the beach house on Anguilla. Insurance covered less than twenty percent of the loss. Erin is a real estate junkie. As soon as she pulls together four or five million dollars, she starts looking for something new to buy or renovates and redecorates one of the houses she already owns. She makes a lot of money, but she has almost no liquid assets.”
“Maybe that’s why Dodd waited till after the wedding ceremony before he abducted her,” Kylie said. “She doesn’t have ransom money. Her new husband does.”
McMaster shook his head. “I had the same thought, and now I’m kicking myself for it. As soon as we knew she was kidnapped, my mind jumped to the ransom demands. That’s why I didn’t immediately think of Dodd. She’s got more than one stalker, and Dodd isn’t the type to do this for money.”
“Then what does he want?”
“Her,” McMaster said.
“You don’t think he’ll ask for ransom money?” Kylie said.
“He might. But that doesn’t mean he’ll let her go if we pay. The man’s got a PhD in crazy. I don’t know if God told him this or he just came up with the idea on his own, but he’s positive that he and Erin are soul mates and they’re destined to be together forever. He’s told her that in the letters and e-mails he’s sent her and in person every time he’s gotten close enough.”
“What about an order of protection?”
“If Erin filed an order against every looney tune who stood in the crowd professing his love for her, s
he’d spend a hell of a lot of time in court. Celebs know they live in a fishbowl. They don’t get litigious unless it gets physical or if there are kids involved. They just beef up security and move on with their well-documented lives.”
“What else can you tell us about Mr. Dodd?” I said.
“He’s forty years old, grew up in Clarksville, Tennessee. His grandfather was a stonemason and started teaching the kid the tricks of the trade when he was only ten. He was quite the craftsman, but his father was a Marine, and Bobby wanted to follow in Daddy’s footsteps. He enlisted in the Corps when he was eighteen and served twelve years, so he’s well trained in self-defense, weaponry, concealment, and survival techniques. He’s smart. Not like Jeopardy! smart; more like Rambo smart. If he decides to go underground and squirrel Erin away in some cabin in Idaho or Montana or God knows where, we’ll never find her.”
“You have a file on him?” I asked.
“A fat one. I can access it from my phone and send it wherever you want.”
“For starters, e-mail it to me and Kylie. We’ll open up a case with Real Time Crime and get people down at One PP digging up anything and everything they can find on Dodd. The private correspondence you have from him to Erin won’t be on their radar, so thanks—that’ll help.”
“We should call in the Violent Felony Squad,” Kylie said.
The computer cops at Real Time feed us valuable data, but they never leave their desks. The Violent Felony Squad is an elite team that will visit Dodd’s known hangouts, comb through his social media activity to track down possible accomplices, check his credit card usage, and try to find him by analyzing dozens of his other daily habits, patterns, and routines.
“I agree,” I said. “Violent Felony will give us eyes, ears, and feet on the street.”
“Are you sure that’s as deep as you want to go?” McMaster said. “We’ve got Dodd’s picture. If you release it to the media, you’ll have eight million pairs of eyes looking for—”
Kylie cut him off. “Dodd doesn’t know we know who he is. If we release his picture to the media or even just circulate it through the department, he’s going to find out. And if he’s as cunning as you say he is, once he knows we’re onto him, he may drop off the face of the earth completely. Violent Felony is the best way to do an intense search and keep it contained.”
“Your call,” McMaster said. Clearly he didn’t agree. But at least he was finally coming around to the understanding that he didn’t get a vote.
Kylie and I had bent the rules by bringing him up here. It had paid off because as Erin’s chief of security, he’d recognized the perp. But without that bird on his shoulder anymore, this was as far as he was going to go. I figured it would be easier on him if Kylie cut him loose. I gave her a head nod, and she caught it.
“Thanks for everything, Declan,” she said. “I got the e-mail you sent. Zach and I are going to shoot up to the Bronx and check out Dodd’s last known address.”
“I don’t suppose I could come along for the ride,” McMaster said. “I’d be willing to take a vow of silence.”
“Sure thing,” she said. “But since we’ll be out there trying to pick up information that will be used in court, I really should give the DA’s office a call and see if they still have that pesky rule about not letting civilians tag along on an active investigation.”
He laughed. “I’ll grab a cab back to the Hammerstein. Keep me in the loop.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “As much as I can.”
The three of us knew that wouldn’t be much, but it was better left unsaid.
CHAPTER 14
The Pelham Bay section of the Bronx is a safe, desirable, historically Italian-American neighborhood whose streets are lined with mature trees, moderately priced family cars, and post–World War II architecture.
“Welcome to 1955,” Kylie said as she pulled the car onto Zulette Avenue, where many of the homes were red brick with metal awnings and wrought-iron railings. She parked in front of a house that fit the mold, right down to the American flag in the window.
The lights were on in several rooms upstairs, but the downstairs, with its separate entrance to a basement apartment, was dark.
“The landlady is awake, the perp is in the wind,” Kylie said as we walked up a flight of brick stairs and rang the doorbell.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice demanded from inside.
“Police,” Kylie said as we both held up our shields to the peephole. “We’d like to speak to Lucille Speranza.”
“About what?”
“Your tenant.”
Most people can’t hide the way they feel about cops, and they usually give themselves away immediately. I can break them down into three basic groups: those who are spooked by anyone in law enforcement; those who basically respect us and appreciate what we do; and those who distrust, don’t like, or downright hate us on sight.
As soon as Mrs. Speranza opened the door, I could tell she fell squarely into that last group. She was a seventy-seven-year-old widow who stood five-foot-nothing high and weighed in at about two hundred pounds. She had a hawk nose, a mop of Cheetos-colored curly hair that clashed with her red-flowered dress, and a chip on each shoulder.
Instead of a concerned Is everything okay?, she hit us with “What’s your problem?”
“Do you have a tenant by the name of Bobby Dodd?” Kylie said.
“What kind of stupid question is that?” Speranza said. “You know I do, otherwise why else would you show up here in the middle of the night? What did he do?”
“We’d just like to ask him a few questions.”
“I’m not surprised the cops are after him. I never trusted him.”
“Is there a reason?”
“He’s got no wife, no kids, no girlfriend. I never see him with people. How many more reasons do you need?”
“He rents the apartment downstairs, correct?” I asked.
“Of course he rents the downstairs. You think he lives up here with me?”
“The apartment is dark.”
“Then I guess he’s not home, and I have no idea where he is. Is that all?”
“No, ma’am. When was the last time you saw him?”
“A few days ago.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Tuesday. No, Wednesday. He was carrying some laundry bags.”
“Does he have a car?”
“I don’t know. If he does, he doesn’t park it in front of the house.”
“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” I asked.
“I already told you. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.”
“Do you mind if we search his apartment?” Kylie asked.
Speranza thought about it. “And if I say no?”
“We’ll be back at three a.m. with a search warrant.”
“Wait here. I’ll get a key.” She closed the door hard.
“The middle of the night?” Kylie said. “It’s a quarter to eleven, her lights were on, and she’s still dressed.”
“The case is only a few hours old,” I said, “but clearly she’s out of the running for Miss Congeniality.”
Speranza returned wearing a lime-green cardigan over her red dress and carrying an oversize purse. We followed her down to the entrance of the basement apartment. She dug into the purse for a key, found it, and unlocked the door.
“Stand back,” Kylie said as we entered. I turned on a light.
“I told you he’s not there,” Speranza said. “The furniture is mine, so don’t mess the place up with fingerprint dust and all that crap.” She followed us in, and there was no point in trying to keep her out.
The room was a good size, about twenty by twenty-five feet. There was a tiny kitchenette with a breakfast bar, a sofa covered in a pink and green floral fabric, a plush burgundy reclining chair, a walnut dresser from the forties, a chrome and glass coffee table from the sixties, and a Sony TV from a bygone predigital era.
“The couch op
ens up to a bed,” Speranza said. “The toilet is over there.” Kylie and I started to open drawers and doors. “What’d he do?” Speranza asked. “Rob a bank?”
“Does he strike you as a bank robber?” Kylie asked.
Speranza muttered something in Italian. I understood enough of it to know that she and Kylie were never going to be besties.
It took us less than ten minutes to search and photograph the place. There was no sign of Dodd, no hint of where he’d gone or what he’d been up to while he was there.
“You done?” Speranza said.
“For now,” I said. “We’re going to send a forensics team to go over it more thoroughly, but for the moment, it’s off-limits.”
“No big deal. I don’t use it. It’s strictly a rental.”
“Off-limits means you can’t rent it,” Kylie said.
“Till when?”
“I can’t say. It’s part of an active police investigation.”
“Fine, but it’s June. You better be finished investigating by September first.”
“What happens then?”
“Dodd’s paid up till the end of August. What happens on September first is I either get a new tenant or I start charging the police department rent.”
CHAPTER 15
Jamie Gibbs is full of shit,” Kylie said.
We had just crossed the RFK Bridge from the Bronx into Manhattan and were headed back to the precinct. It didn’t matter that it was after midnight; the house would be jumping with detectives digging through notes from the hundreds of interviews they’d done, hoping to find the one nugget that could be a career-changing home run. Breathing down their necks would be a gaggle of anxious bosses demanding immediate answers because they needed immediate answers for their own anxious bosses.
It was the last place on earth I wanted to be.
“Everybody we met tonight is full of shit,” I said. “Why single out poor Jamie?”
“When I said we wanted to talk to his mother, he got a little weepy, like maybe whoever took Erin took Mama Bear too. But that’s bullshit. Veronica Gibbs is a rock star in her own right. If someone abducted her, one of her many minions would know in a heartbeat and sound the alarm, and TV networks would interrupt their regularly scheduled programming. Jamie knows that better than anyone. So why even suggest that she might have been kidnapped?”
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