Next of Kin

by James Tucker

  And muscle wouldn’t be enough.

  The force had been applied right here, in order to gather and move the family.

  Quietly he circled around the group that included Malone. He walked aimlessly, almost in a trance, not thinking but only observing. He stopped and stared at the hallway leading to the back of the town house’s main floor.

  Hanging on the walls on either side of the hallway entrance were two old paintings. They were a kind of pair: two portraits of European royalty, at least that was what Buddy assumed. Both about three by four feet. Dark backgrounds with fair-skinned nobles in the foreground. One a young brunette in a light-blue dress and with pearls in her hair. The other a man with a short beard and a dark uniform with red and gold ribbons. Buddy continued to stare. The portraits were so similar, and yet there was something strange about the portrait of the woman in the blue dress.

  For a moment he couldn’t figure out what made it unique. Then he realized what it was.

  Her right eye twinkled. The painter had applied a fleck of white paint mixed with varnish to give that illusion.

  But the left eye was lifeless black.

  He went over to the portrait and examined it. Craning his neck forward and up, he had a better look.

  His pulse jumped.

  Placing his gloved hands on either side of the portrait’s ornate gold-colored frame, he gripped carefully and lifted it off the wall. Holding it off to the side, he looked at the wall section that had been behind the painting.

  He saw a small hole in the plaster. A hole made by a bullet. Small, low caliber.

  Terrifying to the family.

  Buddy’s imagining of the scene gained new detail. The killer had entered the house. The family hadn’t been sure they wanted to follow the orders to go upstairs to the master bathroom. The killer had fired a single bullet, to show they couldn’t refuse or they’d die right here in their foyer. He’d fired at a painting instead of a blank wall, either to damage the art in general or maybe that painting in particular.

  Buddy said, “Detective Gonzalez?”

  In a moment Gonzalez was at his side, following his glance, and understanding. Gonzalez took the painting from him and set it down, then summoned another of the CSU detectives.

  Chief Malone joined them. His face had gone white at CSU’s mention of the Third Reich’s most notorious death camp, but was now regaining its color at Buddy’s discovery of the bullet in the wall.

  CSU was already searching the floor for the shell casing.

  Malone put a hand on his shoulder. “Nice job, Buddy. And keep working the case while it’s fresh. The next few hours might make the difference.” The chief stared at him, to underscore the point that Buddy wasn’t to go home and sleep. He was to work all night.

  Then Malone returned to the CSU team.

  Normally Buddy wouldn’t have hesitated to be gone from home. But this time he was leaving Mei and Ben exposed.

  He walked into the living room, took out his phone, and dialed Mei’s number.

  “Buddy?” she asked. “Is everything all right?”

  He thought of the dead family upstairs, but there was no need to open that door. “Yeah,” he said. “We just came across some . . . some information about the Brook family. That’s why I’m calling. The chief needs me here, so it’s going to be an all-nighter. I’m sorry.”

  For a moment she didn’t respond. Then she said, “I understand.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Ben’s supposed to be my responsibility. Are you getting along?”

  “Oh, yes. He asked me to read to him, but I have nothing for children. So I found some art books.”

  Buddy said, “I hope not the ones with nudes.”

  She laughed. “Impressionists, mostly. Country scenes that would reassure him. And it worked, because he fell asleep right away. Buddy, he’s shaken up from everything, but it’s nice to have company while you’re gone.”

  Buddy looked over at the bright lights the CSU team had set up as they prepared to cut into the foyer wall for the bullet. “I’d like to be home with you,” he said. “Especially since Ben is there. And I want everyone to be safe. But the chief did us a favor and installed two cops in your downstairs lobby. You’ll be okay.”

  “But when will you be home?”

  “Maybe around breakfast.”

  “We’re fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about us.”

  But he did worry. After hanging up, he called Schmidt, the doorman for the Carlyle Residences.

  The line rang and rang, but Schmidt didn’t answer.

  Buddy felt a chill on the back of his neck. “Chief?” he called toward the foyer.

  Malone broke away from the group and took a few steps into the living room. “What?”

  “Who were the two cops you assigned to guard my apartment?”

  “I don’t know. I asked Sergeant Jackson to put them in the lobby, one by the elevator and one by the fire stairs.”

  Buddy nodded and redialed Schmidt’s number. No answer.

  He hung up and dialed the sergeant.

  “Jackson.”

  “Sergeant, it’s Detective Buddy Lock.”

  “Hey, Buddy.”

  “Mind if I check in with the team guarding my apartment? The chief put me on a case, and I want to make sure everything’s solid at home.”

  “No problem. Let me check.”

  As Buddy listened to the shuffling of papers, he pulled out his notebook and pen from the side pocket of his suit coat.

  “Here we go,” Jackson said. “Randy Massey and Debby Bolan.” He then read off their mobile numbers.

  Buddy hung up and dialed Randy Massey. The line rang four times and then went to voicemail. He then dialed Debby Bolan. Again, the line rang four times and went to voicemail. He hung up and tried Schmidt a final time.

  But there was no answer.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mei pushed open the door to the guest bedroom. In the patch of light spilling from the hallway into the room, she saw Ben asleep, lying on his back, his chest rising and falling regularly. She thought it was delightful, having a boy in her home. She wanted a child of her own, she realized now. And she wasn’t getting any younger. Thirty-seven and approaching forty at the speed of light.

  She left the bedroom door ajar, went out into the hallway to the foyer, and switched off the light. Entering the living room, she stood for a moment by the windows and looked out over Central Park South and the Plaza Hotel. Thousands of people were down there, living and dining and fighting and making love. But from this distance and height, all were invisible to her. She could see nothing. From her living room the city was often as silent as if she were standing on a remote mountaintop.

  At the bar in the corner of the room, she poured some Jack Daniel’s into a crystal tumbler. She carried the tumbler over to the glass coffee table, set it down on a coaster, and sat cross-legged on the sofa. This had become her sanctuary. After her parents had given her the apartment, she’d redecorated. White walls with a large abstract painting by Joan Mitchell over the Steinway. Parquet floors mostly covered with a white rug, and leather furniture the color of slate from Roche Bobois. She’d made this her home, and had removed all evidence of her parents’ finicky décor. The fourteen-foot ceilings and molding remained, but she’d changed out everything else. She’d known for years that she was nothing like them.

  Dressed for bed, she wore black panties and no bra under a white terry-cloth bathrobe, with warm Ugg slippers on her feet. As Porter Gallery expected her to do in the evenings, she opened her laptop and began to check e-mail.

  She responded to a client’s request for more information on two of the Gentileschi paintings in the current show. Then she clicked on the Safari browser icon and searched for the Brook family. A Wikipedia entry appeared in the search results, and she clicked on the link and began reading. After going through basic information about Brook Instruments, its estimated revenues and profits, products, and employee count, sh
e reached a section entitled “Founding.” This she read with particular interest:

  Gerhardt Bruch, a chemist and the son of a common laborer and a seamstress, founded Bruch Instrumente in Berlin, Germany, in the spring of 1935. At this time he’d been married to Hilda Mann Bruch for nine years, and they had a three-year-old son named Walter. They had no other children, possibly due to injuries Hilda Bruch suffered during an attempted robbery on the Friedrichstrasse.

  Gerhardt Bruch created a new process to dye steel that he called the Bruch’sche Brennen, or, in English, “Brook Burn.” Its possibilities for military use brought him to the attention of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and to Heinrich Himmler, who ran the Third Reich’s concentration camps, where slave labor was used in the application of the Brook Burn.

  Hearing the faint whirring sounds of the elevator moving upward and then coming to rest on her floor, she looked up from the computer screen. Buddy must be home earlier than he expected, she thought.

  Yet the elevator door didn’t open.

  In front of the door was the antique medicine cabinet that she and Ben had pushed back in place when Buddy left. Atop it, the glass of water stood, unmoving.

  She listened carefully but couldn’t hear anything.

  After closing the laptop and setting it on the coffee table, she walked across the living room and into the foyer. The elevator door remained closed.

  She stood quietly, unmoving, holding her breath.

  From inside the elevator came faint sounds, as if someone were taking small steps or shifting weight from one foot to the other.

  Buddy had warned her there might be some danger, but that didn’t change the fact that she felt secure in the apartment. She was twenty-five floors up. The security lock on the elevator had always worked well. Schmidt was downstairs, as were two police officers.

  Buddy must have misplaced his access card, she thought. He must be fumbling through his clothes, searching for it. And she knew that when the security lock was set within the apartment, even the card wouldn’t provide access. She took a step forward and reached to flip the security switch that would allow the elevator door to open.

  But she hesitated, returned her hand to her side. “Hello?” she called.

  The sounds within the elevator ceased.

  “Buddy?” she said. “Is that you?”

  There was no answer.

  A sensation like cold fingers crawled up the nape of her neck. She took a step back, turned, and looked into the darkened hallway that led to the bedrooms. She didn’t think she should call Buddy. If he weren’t in the elevator, there wasn’t anything he could do. But should she call 911?

  Three firm knocks sounded from inside the elevator.

  The noise startled her. She took another step back. She glanced again at the switch locking the elevator door in the left, or locked, position. Someone was in the elevator cab, just a few feet from her. It didn’t whirr upward or downward but remained on the other side of the door. She heard shuffling noises.

  She stepped forward again. “Who is it?” she called.

  Thud! Thud! Thud!

  She jumped. The knocking had become a rough pounding. It wasn’t Buddy behind the door but someone else—someone who wanted to get into her apartment. The cold fingertips moved down her spine and around her chest—and tightened. She had difficulty breathing and she felt weak.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  She knew she had to move. There was only one choice. She turned, ran into the kitchen, and dialed 911 on her landline.

  Five seconds and the dispatcher answered. “What is the emergency, please?”

  “This is Mei Adams. I’m in unit twenty-five A of the Carlyle Residences at Seventy-Sixth just east of Madison. Someone is breaking into my apartment! Please send the police! Now! ”

  Boom! Boom!

  CLANK!

  The sound had changed. Harder and louder. Not a fist or a knuckle against the door but something metallic. The butt end of a knife, perhaps. Or a wrench. Or the stock of a gun.

  “Ma’am,” the dispatcher said, “are you alone or are there others with you?”

  Mei gripped the phone more tightly. “A boy. Ten years old.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Clank! Clank! Clank!

  She couldn’t answer. She’d run out of time. Leaving the phone on the counter, she dashed along the short hallway from the kitchen to the foyer. The elevator remained closed, but not all the way. A gap had appeared between the elevator door and the wall. The gap wasn’t large enough for someone to squeeze through. Not yet.

  But it was three inches wide.

  Something extended through the gap. In an instant she recognized it. Blunt on one end, sharp on the other. Silvery steel and deadly. Shining dully and being worked to pry the door open. As it moved, she saw that it was slick with blood. It was a hatchet.

  Oh my God! she thought. She stifled a scream and sprinted into the hallway to the bedrooms. As she ran, she remembered there was only one way of escape. But she had to reach it in time. Reach and use it. She flicked on the hallway light and pushed open the door to the guest bedroom.

  Ben was standing in his T-shirt and boxer shorts, trembling. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  She took his hand and said, “We need to go. Right away! ” She yanked him out of the bedroom and toward the far end of the hallway.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  The sound of metal echoed through the apartment. Then stopped. She heard the shifting of the Chinese medicine cabinet, the shattering water glass they’d set on top of it.

  Someone had gotten in.

  She pulled Ben into the laundry room at the end of the hall and to the right. It was a small room with a sink above a cabinet, a washer and dryer, and racks to hang clothes. The floor was white tile. The walls were white. There was no window. But there was a single door.

  The door was to the left of the washing machine and gave access to the fire stairs.

  She feared that someone was waiting on the other side of the door. Someone coordinating with the person who’d gotten in through the elevator. But she had to take the risk. Remaining in the apartment would mean certain death.

  She swallowed once, drew the dead bolt, and opened the door.

  Nothing.

  Just an empty concrete staircase lit by a series of dim overhead lights, each protected by a wire mesh guard.

  “You go first,” she whispered. “Hurry!”

  He darted onto the stairs and began going down them in his bare feet. Very fast. Faster than she could go, even in her slippers. But not before closing, quietly as she could, the door behind her. Then she took after Ben, skittering down the stairs. She barely landed on each steel-bordered tread before dropping down onto the next, the concrete stairs hurting her feet through her rubber-soled slippers.

  After several floors she saw little footprints. At first she thought Ben had sweaty feet. Then she realized the moisture from the boy’s footprints was blood. The rough concrete steps edged with metal had cut his feet. Soon he began to cry aloud.

  She caught up with him but didn’t slow him, didn’t ask him to stop, didn’t offer to carry him. His comfort didn’t matter. Survival was all. And he was faster on his own two feet than if she carried him.

  The stairs switched back at every floor. Back and forth in a blur. Some of the lights above had burned out, and Mei and Ben plunged through shadowy sections without slowing their frantic pace. A few times Mei turned behind her and glanced up at the stairs they’d just come down, but she couldn’t see or hear anyone else.

  They were nearly out of breath, adrenaline driving them on. Her legs felt rubbery and weak. Her lungs felt as if they would burst. But she kept going. And after descending twenty-five floors, they reached the metal door that opened into the lobby.

  Ben halted abruptly and waited.

  Mei approached the door in slow motion, as if in a dream. Maybe the person who broke into her apartment was waiting for them in the lobby. Just
on the other side of the door. With a hatchet. Or a knife. Or a gun.

  Her pulse raced and her hand shook. But she reached for the door handle, turned it slowly, and pushed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Buddy tensed when the door opened. He pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster, raised the gun, and aimed at the door. He touched the trigger with the pad of his index finger. He didn’t say anything. He just waited. Tried to be calm. He’d jumped into his Charger and driven like a madman the few blocks south from Bruno Brook’s town house on East Seventy-Ninth to the Carlyle on East Seventy-Sixth Street. The dead bodies he’d seen upon his arrival sank his hopes. He assumed Mei was dead. The boy, too. His chest tightened with anxiety. He forced himself to breathe, if only to keep the Glock steady.

  He knew that if Mei were gone, he’d have no reason to live. He couldn’t endure another catastrophic loss. As if in anticipation, the lobby seemed to darken. His body turned cold.

  Between him and the fire door lay Schmidt, barely alive, a dark pool of blood forming from a gash at the side of his head. Schmidt breathed shallowly and appeared to be unconscious, but he’d been the lucky one. He might live, unlike the two cops who lay like grotesque statues on the marble floors. They’d been disfigured. With a hatchet, Buddy guessed. He could see where the blade had cut them, the man in the neck and what remained of his face, the woman in the shoulder blades—the bones protruded white and bloody through her uniform. The cops’ guns had been drawn and as they’d fallen, the guns had dropped onto the marble. They’d recognized the threat but hadn’t been fast enough. And they’d been trained, unlike Mei and Ben.

  Thank God. He breathed deeply and lowered the Glock as Mei stepped through the fire door and into the lobby. Her face was damp with perspiration, her black hair disheveled. She tightened the belt of her bathrobe.

  “Mei!” he called.

  She saw him and began to cry. He walked around the bodies of Schmidt and the two cops and went toward her. She ran into his arms, and he embraced her tightly. He felt the warmth of her skin against his face, the softness of her hair, the lemon scent she wore. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and he closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the sensation of her body against his.