Next thing he knew he was sliding headfirst into a dim room. A pantry, heavily stocked. Shit—that meant the kitchen was right outside. And every patrol cop knew that with its plethora of knives, frying pans, and other potential weapons, the kitchen was the most dangerous room in a house. Of course, the man wouldn’t need any of that if he had a gun.
Jack’s gun.
He crouched down, breathing way too loud, and yanked its replacement out of its holster.
He listened.
CHAPTER twenty-six
AT THAT SAME MOMENT, one hundred and ninety miles to the south, Michelle Wilber bit into a hot cheese puff. She waved a hand in front of her mouth and did a little involuntary cool-off dance. She glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. In a couple of hours, when the open bar had done its work, no one would be noticing much of anything, but there was something about the first half hour or so of an office party that made everyone stiffen up and act all formal.
The DJ was playing “Three Times a Lady,” and Michelle half-expected to look out on the floor and see a bunch of teenagers slow-dancing in pastel tuxedoes and dresses.
“You looking for the mirror ball?”
She turned to find her colleague Rose standing next to her, eating from a little plate of toothpick-pierced hors d’oeuvres.
Michelle smiled. “I know—I keep thinking about my high school prom.”
Rose shrugged. “At least the place is swanky.” It was true: The company had bartered some future discounts to get this party space, a ballroom on lower Fifth Avenue. It looked especially nice now, with all the holiday wreaths and twinkling Christmas lights. The catering was on the skimpy side, though: small plates, baskets of crudités, cheese platters…
Rose glanced anxiously around the room. Michelle knew that she was wondering if it would be okay to light up. Her friend’s gravelly voice was the result of a habit that had begun in the sixth grade.
“Where’s your beau?” Rose asked.
Michelle frowned. “He had to work.” She didn’t want to discuss it. She was already going to miss out on Christmas Eve and Day with Jack; now he had bailed out on this party and didn’t seem to quite get how disappointed she was.
Rose made a face. “My cousin married a cop. They’re never around when you need them.” She laughed a throaty laugh.
Michelle liked her. She remembered one office party when Rose had ended up doing a limbo dance in her stocking feet at the end of the night, her dress plastered with everybody’s name tags.
“Oops, there’s my hubby,” Rose announced. She set down her plate and rushed off toward the front door.
Michelle felt a twinge of loneliness. Just about everybody else had a date tonight. She would have enjoyed introducing Jack around. People always seemed to get a kick out of meeting a real detective. NYPD Blue. A waitress came by with a tray of something deep-fried. The poor girl was speckled with acne, and her tux jacket looked about six inches too long. “You’re doing a great job,” Michelle said, just to be nice.
The room was filling up now, and she was just considering whether she wanted to try to make it through the crowd around the bar when she had a sudden jolt of recognition. Over by the front door, handing his briefcase to the coat check girl: Steve McCleod, a sales rep for one of the biggest catering companies in town. Even across this big room, his rugged good looks were apparent. She had shared some drinks with him at the holiday party two years ago. They had a lot in common, being in the same business, and he was her age, and funny in a self-deprecating way. He was married, but it soon became evident that the union was not happy. Michelle had felt a powerful attraction to the man, and he had—by the end of the party—gone so far as to say that he felt it, too. She had been single, but neither of them had been willing to act on their feelings at the time…
She flushed at the memory, and looked away. She took out her cell phone. It was early, still—not even dark outside. She considered calling Jack, but she knew that he was on an important trip and wouldn’t want to be bothered.
“GIN-AND-TONIC?”
She turned to find Steve McCleod at her shoulder, looking quizzically at her drink.
“Vodka,” she answered, hoping she wasn’t blushing. She had spent much of the past hour in this balcony above the ballroom, trying to keep the man in sight so she wouldn’t accidentally bump into him.
“How have you been?” he asked. He had one of those interesting faces that—roughened by early skin problems—somehow seemed more attractive in middle age. He was taller than Jack, with broader shoulders.
Michelle shrugged. “Pretty good. You?”
The music was loud, the latest raucous dance hit. Steve leaned in closer. “I was wondering if you were going to be here.”
Now she was definitely blushing. “How’s it going with your wife?” she said, wanting to put herself back on firmer ground.
He stared down at the dance floor, which was crowded now that the alcohol was kicking in. “We’re legally separated. The divorce’ll be final in a couple of months.”
She could see the pain in his face. “I’m sorry. How are you holding up?”
He sighed. “I’m doing the best I can.” He glanced back at the dance floor and winced. Then he turned to her. “Listen—how about if we go into the other room where it’s quiet and we can talk?”
CHAPTER twenty-seven
IT WASN’T UNTIL THE fifth photograph that Jack began to realize the significance of what he had found.
HE AND HIS COLLEAGUES had split up to search the house. The place could not have been more different than he had expected. It was the home of someone so severely orderly that even Jack Leightner was troubled by the rigidity of it all. It was a country cabin completely devoid of homey touches: no throw rugs, no knick-knacks, not a single picture on the walls. Everything that could be sorted by size or shape or color was laid out just so, including the pots and pans in the kitchen, the cans in the kitchen cupboards, even the stacked wood by the fireplace. Order, efficiency, cleanliness. The lone bookshelf held a Bible, several auto repair manuals, a number of books on woodworking, and a collection of volumes of military history.
The only exception to this fanatical neatness? In a small spare room at the back of the house, Jack found a small amount of clothing, sized about right for a ten-year-old boy. Some more comic books, a small TV, and a video game controller. No signs of forced captivity. It was not really a child’s room, though: no pictures on the walls, an almost empty closet, very little accumulated stuff. It was a guest room, Jack decided, and the boy had probably not stayed long. Unfortunately, there was no ID lying around.
Across the hall, another small room had been made into a sparse woodworking shop: a few saws, calipers, and wrenches; a shelf of glass jars filled with nails and screws, several old power tools. Enough space to build a coffee table or a bookshelf—or a homemade coffin.
He found the photo album in Sperry’s bedroom. This room looked somewhat more lived in, but again, the sparseness gave Jack the sense that the man had not lived here long. The bed, a bureau, and an armchair were the only significant pieces of furniture. He knew from long experience that the most efficient way to toss a bureau was to work from the bottom up, so that you didn’t have to keep closing drawers to get to the next one. The first drawer held rows of socks, folded neatly and arranged by color. The second, stacks of age-stained T-shirts, neatly pressed. Even the boxer shorts in the third drawer had been ironed, and they were also organized by color.
The top drawer held some small change (sorted, of course, by denomination), and a little leather photo album. Jack hoped that it might contain information about the boy, but as soon as he opened it he saw that the black-and-white snapshots were too old; they were turning brown, and bore the soft focus of a cheap camera. He flipped through. Four young girls smiling shyly at the camera; hair pulled back in ponytails, they wore buttoned sweaters and pleated skirts. A little gang of adolescent boys gathered around a boy aiming what looked like a BB
gun; they wore short-sleeve shirts and boxy trousers with the cuffs rolled. A group of choirboys smiling awkwardly, gathered around a plump, friendly-faced priest. An older photo, slightly more sepia: a handsome crew-cut man leading a pony while a pretty blond woman reached up to support the little boy on its back.
The time looked to be somewhere in the forties or fifties, but the photos could have been taken anywhere. Then Jack flipped to the next page. Another group of wholesome-looking boys, sitting along the barrel of a cannon. His heart sped up—there, in the background, barely visible, yet unmistakable: the head and upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty. He flipped to the next page and stopped still: a row of big, dignified wood-framed houses. Jack recognized the one on the right: Just days ago he had examined a dead security guard in its basement. The next photo showed a proud young man with a row of ribbons across the chest of his Army uniform. Jack turned back to the photo of the man leading the pony—he couldn’t be sure, but they looked the same. Next page: a group of uniformed, helmeted soldiers standing at attention in a quadrangle.
A group of adults in clown costumes and kids in face paint playing on a lawn, with one of Governors Island’s big brick barracks in the background. A boy, maybe eleven years old, with large ears that stuck out from his crew-cut head, leaning against the seat of a spiffy rocketlike bicycle while the man who had led the pony looked on, smiling. Jack held up the album: There was something familiar about the boy’s narrow face. An image jumped to mind: a hawk-faced older man staring down at him from the deck of a boat.
CHAPTER twenty-eight
A POLICE FUNERAL WAS always a big event, with hundreds of cops lined up to show support. The fact that many of them would be total strangers to the deceased was not important, Jack mused, as he sat near the rear of the church during the service for Tommy Balfa. (If you were dead, you were dead, and it didn’t matter who the hell showed up.) No, the funerals were for the living, to make the families proud, and most of all to make the other cops feel better about the risks they took every day. (If you had to take a bullet, you were damned well gonna go out a hero.) That’s what all the hoopla was for: The flag-draped coffin, the flags and trumpets, the dress uniforms with the yellow piping on the pants, and the huge floral bouquets, one of them in the shape of the deceased’s badge.
Such events were usually required only a couple of times a year, but there was a definite weariness on the faces of this afternoon’s crowd. After the towers came down, too many funerals in one short season. Still, the Department couldn’t stint. The mayor and the com-mish made the obligatory speeches, going on and on about Tommy Balfa’s unfailing service and heroism. It was true: Balfa had died honorably, in the line of duty, but Jack sat thinking about the man’s deceptions, about a gray plastic bag filled with cash. But who would want to see a hero tarnished? He glanced around, wondering if Balfa’s mystery redhead would have the nerve to show, but she didn’t seem to be in the crowd.
Outside, after, the Pipes and Drums corps of the Emerald Society played “Amazing Grace” as the coffin was loaded into the hearse. The music affected Jack in a way that all the speeches couldn’t; he felt himself getting choked up, and he said a quick prayer for Tommy Balfa, even though he wasn’t much of a believer. Ranks of cops saluted, their hands encased in white dress gloves. Two officers supported the grieving widow, a thin, frosty-looking bleached blonde.
Jack waited to say anything to her until after the interment, when the mourners adjourned to a catering hall. However, the wife spoke first. She was talking to a couple of Seven-six detectives over by the bar, and one of them nodded toward Jack, who was sitting uncomfortably at a cocktail table in the corner. The woman came toward him, clutching her pocketbook with both hands. She seemed brittle, and Jack sensed an anger under her grief. Not surprising—the Job had taken her spouse. He wished he could have reported that he had caught her husband’s killer, but the trip up to New Hampshire had not provided any clues about Sperry’s current whereabouts.
“They tell me you were with him when it happened.”
He stood quickly. “Yes, ma’am. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
He steeled himself for questions about the deadly scene on the boat, but the woman just stared. There were questions Jack wanted to ask, too, about her husband’s behavior in the past couple of months, but this was obviously not the time. The silence grew awkward.
He cleared his throat. “I barely knew your husband, but we went out for dinner the night before. He told me how much he loved you. And I know that he would have done anything to help your daughter.”
The woman’s gaze went weird. “What are you talking about?”
Jack frowned and lowered his voice. “He told me about her condition. I’m very sorry.”
The woman backed away a couple of steps, and turned toward the crowd, as if seeking some help or explanation. She turned back to Jack, voice shrill. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Jack stared at her. “No, ma’am. He said she—”
The woman cut him off. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Tommy and I never had any kids.”
CHAPTER twenty-nine
IT MADE NO SENSE.
Balfa had sounded fairly convincing, with all the details about stages of the disease and European cures, but the heart of the lie was so flimsy that it was sure to be discovered in short order. (And it would hardly take a detective to do so.) Was Balfa crazy? Or did he subconsciously feel guilty, and want to get caught? Sitting behind a desk in the Seven-six precinct house the next morning, Jack shook his head. The man had already been caught. And even the most inept street punk could have come up with a more durable story.
Several phones rang at once and Jack glanced up. The normally calm squad room had been transformed. A cop had been shot, and now the place was crackling: More desks had been moved in, new phone lines installed, extra detectives brought in from other houses. The G.I. Killer Task Force, the brass were calling it. Every uniform in the city had been issued a photocopy of Robert Sperry. His mug had been plastered on lampposts and bus stops all over town. Most likely it was only a matter of hours before a cab driver or bodega owner called in a good tip, hoping for the $10,000 CopShot reward.
Despite all of the publicity and manpower, though, the team was working against one significant drawback: Sperry’s loner status. Even the most violent, hardened drug dealer was part of an extensive social network of customers, suppliers, coworkers, girlfriends, and rivals, all of whom might have some financial or personal motivation to snitch. But Sperry was a stranger to the city, and even on his home turf he had kept to himself. FBI agents had interviewed the man’s New Hampshire neighbors and come up with surprisingly little info. The killer had lived there for only a few months, no one knew where he had come from, and he kept fiercely to himself. The neighbors had reported seeing a boy with him in the last few weeks, a kid who matched the picture of the victim in the floating box, but nobody knew who the child was or where he had come from. There was no indication of kidnapping or coercion. The boy had looked glum, but he had been walking about freely and alone when someone had spotted him on the road near Sperry’s house.
Jack had spent some somber time thinking about the kid since receiving those reports, but this morning his mind was fixed on Sperry’s latest victim. He listened idly as a detective at the next desk phoned an informant, fishing for news of the killer—and then he froze as a new thought occurred to him. Tommy Balfa’s flimsy lie made no sense unless the man was only hoping to buy a little more time for himself. Unless he had been planning to skip town.
Sure enough—it took Jack just minutes to verify his hunch. After a couple of calls, Balfa’s name popped up in a passenger list at Newark airport. A 2:07 P.M. flight on the day he had been killed, one ticket to Mexico City, purchased a full three weeks before Jack discovered what his temporary partner was up to. Balfa had been planning to run for a while, and it was only a phenomenal double stroke of bad luck that had put the kibosh on his
plan. Jack was not much of a believer in a universe in which everything happened for a good reason, but this series of events—the man getting caught and killed within twenty-four hours of his planned escape to enjoy his ill-gotten gains—seemed almost like a Biblical judgment.
He pictured the look on Balfa’s face when they had driven out to the marina, when the detective had asked if he had thought things over. The bastard was just trying to find out if he’d still be able to bolt.
Which raised the question of why he had not simply taken off the night before.
Jack sat for a minute, sipping a lukewarm cup of coffee, considering the options. Maybe the man had been reluctant to leave his wife. Or his mistress. No, that didn’t seem likely—he could always send for either one later…Jack thought of the money he had seen in the gray bag. It had seemed like a lot at the time, but it couldn’t have been more than ten or twenty large. Not enough to compensate for leaving a good job and a home behind. But maybe there had been other payments…What if Balfa had been foolish enough to bank the money, or greedy enough to invest it? He would need to go back during business hours and withdraw the funds…
His cell phone snapped him out of his reverie. Sergeant Tanney.
“How’s it going with the Balfa thing?”
For a second, the question unnerved him, as if the sergeant had been reading his mind, but he dropped the thought. Tanney wanted the murder solved; that was all. Every officer on the force was crazy eager to catch a cop-killer, and the pressure from Downtown to wrap things up was intense, but Tanney was extra fired up. He had a special interest in covering his ass for all of the ways in which he had minimized the initial investigations.
At this point, though, the sergeant reminded Jack of his main priority: catching a live killer, not worrying about Balfa’s shenanigans before he got shot.
The Graving Dock Page 15
