“Did you tell him she was my partner?”
“And your ex-girlfriend. Full disclosure. At first he thought that might be awkward, but I told him it was your idea to introduce them.”
Cheryl’s phone chirped. She checked her incoming text and stood up. “Duty calls,” she said. “I’ve got to run. I know you’re crazy-busy. So am I. I’ll call you later. Let me know what Kylie thinks about Shane.”
She leaned over, gave me a quick kiss, and left me sitting there. I drained the coffee in my cup, and Gerri appeared instantly and topped it off.
“Your breakfast is almost ready,” she said, “but while we’re waiting, I have a question. How much wine did you drink last night to come up with the bright idea of fixing your ex-girlfriend up with your current girlfriend’s blood relative?”
“I swear to God, it was a total misunderstanding. I said something, Cheryl heard something else, and now…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence, so Gerri finished it for me. “And now you’re afraid that if you tell Cheryl that the last thing you want to do is fix Kylie up with a good-looking, successful man who can cook, you will wind up, as the French say, in the château de bowwow.”
I nodded. “That pretty much sums it up.”
Gerri put the coffeepot back on a burner and sat down across from me. I was about to get breakfast with a side order of therapy—whether I wanted it or not.
CHAPTER 19
Gary Banta was a pro. He weaved the ambulance, siren wailing, through the morning traffic on Fifth Avenue with Indy Speedway proficiency. Most vehicles, willingly or grudgingly, pulled over quickly and gave him a wide berth. In a big city like New York, people know that response time to a 911 call can mean the difference between life and death. They also know there’s a fat fine if they fail to yield.
The traffic signals are timed so that if a driver maintains the speed limit, the lights in front of him will turn green before he gets to them. But an ambulance clipping along at breakneck speed gets ahead of the sequence, so Gary had to whoop-whoop at every corner to run the red lights and avoid barreling into the crosstown traffic.
At Seventy-Fourth and Fifth, he pulled up to the canopy of a stately nineteen-story prewar building.
“Such gross injustice,” his partner, Julio, said. “The most beautiful apartment houses in New York, and they’re always filled with rich old white ladies.”
Gary shook his head. He’d heard Julio on the subject before. He left the lights flashing as they got out.
A uniformed doorman came rushing to the curb. “What’s going on?” he said.
Gary checked his iPad. “We got a call for an elderly woman, difficulty breathing. Apartment eight C. The name is Ogden.”
“Bunny. Bunny Ogden,” the doorman said. “I have her son’s cell number. I can call him right now.”
“Hang tight, bro,” Gary said to the doorman as Julio opened the ambulance’s back doors and dropped a gurney to the pavement. “Wait till we get back down. Let’s see what’s going on before you hit the panic button.”
They grabbed their gear, an oxygen tank, and the gurney and headed for the building. The doorman ran ahead, opened the door, and rang for the elevator.
They rode up to the eighth floor in silence and wheeled the gurney down the hall to 8C. Julio rang the doorbell.
It took about twenty seconds before a female voice on the other side responded. “Who is it?”
“Ambulance for Mrs. Ogden. Please let us in.”
A lock clicked, and a uniformed nurse opened the door. She looked at the two EMTs, the stretcher on wheels, and the oxygen and tried to take it all in. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“We got a call that Mrs. Ogden was in respiratory distress,” Gary said.
“She’s fine. She’s watching TV. Who called? Was it her son?”
“Ma’am, please,” Gary said. “If you have questions, call our dispatcher, but legally we can’t leave the apartment until we check on the patient. Please let us in.”
The nurse stepped aside, and the two men entered.
“What’s your name, ma’am?” Gary asked.
“Lydia Humphries.” She reached into her pocket and took out a cell phone. “I’m calling Mr. Ogden,” she said. “Something’s not right.”
“One more question before you call,” Gary said as Julio shut the apartment door behind them. “How long have you been working for Mrs. Ogden?”
“I came here in September, so…nine months.”
Gary reached into his equipment bag and pulled out a gun. He held it up to her head and removed the phone from her hand.
“After nine months, I’m sure you know where the old lady keeps the money and the jewelry, Lydia, and if you want to get out of here alive, you’ll tell us.”
CHAPTER 20
When I got back to the station Kylie was still asleep. I walked over to the bed and stared down at her, and my thoughts invariably drifted back to a time a thousand years ago when hers was the face I woke up to every morning.
We were both young, just starting out at the academy, working our tails off night and day to impress our instructors—and each other—with how smart we were. Turns out she was smarter. She graduated at the top of our class, five notches ahead of me. I congratulated her with a gift, a T-shirt with a giant 1 on the front.
The next day she returned the gesture by giving me a T-shirt that said A RESPECTABLE 6.
Our love affair only lasted twenty-eight days, but they were the most unforgettable four weeks of my life. The crushing blow came on the twenty-ninth day, when she told me that her longtime boyfriend, Spence Harrington, had come out of rehab, and she’d decided to give him one last chance.
A year later they were married. Eleven years after that, Spence returned to his coke addiction with a vengeance and wound up in the ICU after a near-fatal overdose. This past January, he completely dropped out of sight. They’re still married, but only on paper.
I took one of the breakfast burritos and held it under her nose. It got an immediate response. “Mmmph,” she said. “That smells like heaven.”
“It’s all yours when you wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
She opened her eyes. “That’s Detective Sleeping Beauty to you. Did you find Erin yet?”
“No.”
She frowned. “Rats.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but how about a little gratitude for the burrito?”
She swung her legs off the bed and took a healthy bite out of the sandwich. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks a lot.”
I handed her a cup of coffee. “How you doing there, K-Mac?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“No. You haven’t been your regular, annoying pain-in-the-ass self lately, and I’m your partner. I’m genuinely concerned.”
“Well, partner, my professional life is aces. I love my job, I love the unit, and I love the people I work with. It’s my personal life that kind of sucks. In the five months since Spence disappeared, I’ve only had one brief relationship—CJ.”
“The poker player,” I said. “He seems nice enough.”
“Seemed nice enough. It’s all past tense. He moved back to Hawaii. Which leaves me stumbling around my big, beautiful two-bedroom apartment with no husband, no boyfriend, and no desire to download one of those apps where you have a choice of swiping left or swiping right.”
“So you’re lonely,” I said.
She laughed. “Is that a euphemism or are you missing the point? I’m not lonely. I’m horny.”
“Aha. I wish I could help you.”
“You help me more than you know,” she said. “And I’m not just talking about this incredible sausage, egg, and cheese burrito. You were there for me every step of the way when Spence was spiraling out of control. I know there were times when you had to choose between spending the night with Cheryl or holding my hand when I went careening around Harlem, the Bronx, and Atlantic City in search of my drug-addled husband. You’re not just my pa
rtner, Zach. You’re my rock. You’re my best friend.”
She stood up, wrapped her arms around me, and kissed me on the cheek.
“I’m going to shower and get dressed,” she said. “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”
She left me standing there, my pulse racing, my brain flooded with emotions I had no desire to deal with.
Over the past year I’ve fallen deeply in love with Cheryl. I can look down the road and see a long, happy future with her. But I’ve never fallen out of love with Kylie. I keep it under control most of the time, but when I look down the road in the opposite direction, I see a brief, blissful past that I can’t let go.
There are times, like this very moment, when I wish that Kylie and I could somehow be friends with benefits.
But I know I have to settle for friends with baggage.
CHAPTER 21
Kylie and I couldn’t possibly tackle the Easton case on our own, so the borough chief had drafted a small battalion of detectives to back us up. Within hours of the abduction, they descended on the third floor of the precinct and commandeered every inch of workspace that is normally assigned to Community Affairs.
They saved us a lot of legwork, phone work, and grunt work, but they also generated a ton of paperwork. In a criminal investigation, anything and everything connected to the case has to be preserved, cataloged, and available to the court. There was a basket on my desk where they deposited all those reports.
By the time I ate my breakfast and settled in, the basket was buried under a mountain of DD-5s with ripped-out notepad pages stapled to them; computer printouts of background checks of the hundreds of wedding guests, venue employees, and other witnesses; CDs of surveillance videos; and the usual slew of phone messages.
“I hope you brought a broom,” Kylie said. “Your desk looks like a subway track after New Year’s Eve.”
We recruited Danny Corcoran to help us organize it all while we focused on Bobby Dodd.
He didn’t own a car, which meant whatever vehicle he’d used to transport Erin after he ditched the box truck could have been stolen. We assigned a team to wade through the stolen-vehicle database, check out any that had been recovered, and see if there were any prints or DNA left behind that could connect it to Erin or Dodd.
Our crime scene team found the wireless cameras Dodd had planted that allowed him to know exactly what was going on during the wedding. It meant that McMaster had been wrong–Dodd hadn’t tracked Erin through her tweets.
TARU confirmed that the cameras had been taping everything and that Dodd could have watched it all remotely from around the corner or from halfway around the world.
McMaster had told us that Dodd was more street smart than book smart, but he had stalked Erin Easton with all the cunning and proficiency of a criminal mastermind who knew how to stay ahead of his prey, her security team, and, now, the cops.
The case was still shrouded in secrecy, but by midmorning we knew we had to put Dodd’s name into the national criminal database. We also knew we couldn’t do it without clearing it with our boss.
We went to her office.
“Captain, we want to put Bobby Dodd’s name into the NCIC database,” I said. “We won’t connect him to the Easton kidnapping. We just want to register him as a criminal wanted for a major felony who should be apprehended on sight.”
We watched her consider the suggestion.
“Boss,” Kylie said, “don’t think about the upside. We don’t expect anything to come of it. Think about the downside. If we don’t do it and he gets stopped for a traffic violation in Jersey and let go, all our careers are going to take a sharp nosedive.”
She nodded. “Cover Your Ass 101,” she said. “Do it.”
Her phone rang, and she looked at the caller ID. “Chief of Ds. Don’t go away,” she told us. “I’m sure he’s got questions about the kidnapping.” She picked up. “This is Captain Cates. Good morning, Chief.” A long pause, then she said, “Yes, sir, they’re right here in my office now.” She picked up a pen and started writing. Thirty seconds later, she said, “Yes, sir, they’re on their way.” She hung up. “The chief wants the two of you uptown at a home invasion,” she said.
“You’re kidding,” Kylie said. “Why didn’t you tell him that we’re neck-deep in this kidnapping, and we’re running on fumes as it is?”
“Because I don’t question every order that comes down from my commanding officer, MacDonald. You should try it some time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you have a ransom demand?” Cates asked.
“Not yet.”
“Then your team can muddle along without you for a few hours.”
“Did the chief happen to say why he picked us?”
“He didn’t pick you. The order came down from a higher authority.”
“The PC?”
“Elected official,” Cates said.
“Captain,” Kylie said, “I realize it’s good politics for the squad that Mayor Sykes has adopted me and Zach as her pet cops, but someone should tell her we can’t handle every case that comes down the pike. This should be assigned to a precinct detective. Why does a home invasion need Red?”
“MacDonald, do you really think that nobody along the food chain thought to ask that?” Cates said. “This isn’t the mayor’s idea. She’s just another pawn on the chessboard. The woman who was robbed is Bunny Ogden. Do you know who that is?”
“Never heard of her.”
“Perhaps you’ve heard of her nephew, the governor of the state of New York. It doesn’t get any redder than that.”
CHAPTER 22
If we needed to know just how important Bunny Ogden was, we didn’t have to look any farther than the blue-and-yellow New York State Police car parked outside her Fifth Avenue apartment building.
“Really?” Kylie said. “The governor wouldn’t send out troopers if Tiffany got robbed, but Aunt Bunny—I guess she rates.”
“Jordan, MacDonald.”
I looked up and saw the familiar face of Sean Kennedy, a sergeant with the Nineteenth.
“Hey, Sarge,” I said. “What have you got?”
“I’ve got half a dozen cops interviewing tenants and canvassing the neighborhood, but so far nobody remembers seeing anything except for the ambulance.”
“What ambulance?”
“Two perps wheeled up in what looked like a legitimate private bus, but we ran its name, and it was a phony,” Kennedy said. “They told the doorman they got a 911 call for Mrs. Ogden, went upstairs, tied up the old lady and her nurse, came down fifteen minutes later, told the doorman she was okay, and took off. The nurse managed to get herself loose after an hour, called it in, and once the department found out the vic’s connection to the governor, it turned into the crime of the century, which I’m guessing is why you’re here instead of looking for Erin Easton.”
“What about video surveillance?” Kylie asked.
“You gotta love rich people,” Kennedy said. “They have a few cameras in the elevator, the garage, and some of the nooks and crannies where the staff might goof off, but nothing out there on the street where it might do us any good. I talked to a Mr. Paul Aronson, president of the co-op board, and he says they frown on security cameras. Apparently ‘they’re ugly, they make the building look unsafe, and our residents’ comings and goings is none of anybody’s business.’”
“Doorman?”
“His name is Ed Carter. Nervous as hell. Already called his union rep. He’s afraid the building managers are going to can him. I told him the best way to get back in their good graces is to help with the investigation. I asked him to put together a list of visitors Mrs. Ogden has had in the past three months. I don’t know if it’ll help, but it’s a place to start.”
The lobby door opened, and a man wearing a gray uniform and a Stetson with a leather strap and a purple band around it strode out.
“Looks like you guys have a new best friend,” Kennedy said. “You deal with him. I’ll see
you back at the house.”
The sergeant walked off as the state cop approached us. “John Hollowell,” he said. “You the team from Red?”
He had a pair of gold oak-leaf clusters on his shirt.
“Yes, Major,” I said, and we introduced ourselves. “Are you part of the investigation?”
“Only if you ask me to be. Albany wanted me to stop by, check on Mrs. Ogden, and reach out to local law enforcement.” He handed me his card. “If there’s anything the state can do for you, call me twenty-four/seven. Have a good day.”
He gave us a crisp nod and walked toward his car.
“Albany sent him—a major,” Kylie said.
“Maybe not all of Albany,” I said. “Probably just the one guy who lives in the governor’s mansion on Eagle Street. I think it’s his subtle way of letting us know that we’re on his radar. Let’s go see if the doorman can help us find out who robbed Aunt Bunny.”
Mr. Carter was ready for us with a list of names going back to January. “Mrs. Ogden doesn’t get a lot of visitors,” he said. “Family, friends, the physical therapist—that’s about it.”
“How about deliveries, service people, or anyone else who isn’t in the inner circle?”
“All packages go to the concierge, who takes them upstairs personally. If the cable guy comes, the super goes up there with him. He doesn’t do that for everyone, but Mrs. Ogden’s son pays him extra. She doesn’t get any strangers, except maybe for this one guy. He’s black, in his forties, well dressed. His name is Maurice. That’s all I know. Just Maurice. He comes once a week. He asks for Mrs. Ogden, but my best guess is he’s really there for Lydia.”
“Who’s Lydia?”
“The nurse.”
“Why do you think he’s there for her?”
“I don’t know. She’s pretty good-looking. He usually stays an hour. I figure that gives him plenty of time to case the joint and still get in a little afternoon delight.”
CHAPTER 23
The NYPD org chart reads like alphabet soup, but those of us in the know can tell a lot about the priority of a case by which letters of the alphabet are assigned to work it.
NYPD Red 6 Page 7
