by Neal Baer
But what really angered her was that he’d left the weapon in an unsecured place. What if one of his daughters heard the toilet running, tried to fix it, and found the weapon?
Carefully, Claire removed the gun from the lid and slipped it into her purse. She was just replacing the tank lid when Nick’s voice boomed from just outside the bathroom door, stunning her into nearly dropping it.
“You okay?” he called.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” she shouted back, lowering the lid silently onto the tank. She looked in the mirror to make sure she hadn’t dirtied or wet her suit. With everything in place including her poker face, she left the bathroom.
CHAPTER 16
A uniformed police officer in military body armor, AR-15 assault rifle strapped to his shoulder, waved the unmarked Impala through a security checkpoint outside the rear entrance to One Police Plaza’s subterranean garage. Nick drove the car slowly to allow his eyes to adjust to the sudden plunge from sunlight into relative darkness. Focusing intently, he steered the big sedan down two ramps to the lowest level and into an empty space in which the letters MCS were stenciled in bright yellow on the concrete floor. He opened the door and placed the police parking plate on the dashboard as Claire got out of the passenger’s side, forgetting what was in her purse as she yanked it from the center console with so much force that it nearly struck her.
“Whoa!” she cried.
Nick saw the whole thing. “What do you have in there, a bar of gold?”
Claire realized that taking her purse with the gun through metal detectors into police headquarters wasn’t an option. “I wish,” she replied, covering. “It’s a paperweight. In case someone tries to mug me.”
“Next time, try to remember it’s in there or you’re gonna hurt yourself,” Nick said, giving her a wink.
Claire opened her purse, pulled out her wallet and cell phone before shoving the bag under the front seat.
“You can’t leave it there,” said Nick.
“Paperweight’ll set off the metal detectors.” Claire said, holding up her driver’s license and her phone. “These are all I need.”
“We don’t go through the detectors from down here,” Nick reminded her. “And we’re done with this car. All we need is someone who knows the deal to see you driving on the street or me drive it here and we’re both toast.”
“Too bad,” said Claire, grabbing the purse with respect for its heft and closing the car door. The Impala had been helpful for the two days they’d kept it. They didn’t have to rely on subways or cabs to get everywhere, and as every cop knew, the police parking plate carried by all unmarked police cars was a license to park just about anywhere without fear of getting towed.
They passed through the doors into the downstairs elevator bank and made their way up to the MCS squad room, which was strangely empty for late morning. But for the administrative assistant, Wendy, covering the phones, there wasn’t a detective in the place. Even Wilkes was gone.
“Something going on?” Nick asked Wendy.
“Boss is in a meeting upstairs and everyone else is out on jobs, I guess,” Wendy replied.
“Good. That gives us some quiet to make the call,” said Nick, sitting at his desk and firing up his desktop computer.
“Who exactly do you call in Costa Rica?” asked Claire.
“Their version of the FBI is called the OIJ, their Judicial Investigation Police,” he said, pulling up the organization’s Web site and dialing more than the usual amount of numbers on the keypad. “Hope someone there speaks English.”
Twenty minutes later, Nick was scribbling furiously on a notepad. Claire stood over him trying to decipher his handwriting.
“You’re sure about that?” he asked. “Thank you, thank you so much. If there’s anything we can ever do for you here ... You bet we will. Muchas gracias, mi amigo.”
He put the receiver down, glanced toward Wilkes’s office. The inspector had come in a few minutes earlier, barely acknowledging Nick on the phone as he stormed into his lair and closed the door. “Antonio, my new best friend in Costa Rica, is going to e-mail me everything they have,” he told her, not able to hide his excitement as he continued writing.
“Everything he has on what?” asked Claire as she sat in the chair beside his desk.
“Martha Palmer’s murder. It wasn’t the first bone-boiling homicide down there.”
“When did they start?”
“You ready? Seventy-eight.”
“Right after the bones were found out in Canarsie,” Claire said in amazement. “How many victims in Costa Rica?”
Nick looked up from the notepad. “Twenty-two.”
Claire was shocked. “How could we have missed this?”
“We weren’t thinking outside the box. Our box being this country.”
“But the only mention of bone boiling was with regard to Martha Palmer’s murder. Where were the other bodies found?”
Nick clicked through his computer and brought up his departmental e-mail. “Not bodies, bones. Only bones. One homicide every year or two. Sometimes several in one year. The cops were stumped for most of that time because there was no clear pattern connecting the victims. They came from all walks of life, rich and poor, locals and tourists, found on beaches in different parts of the country on both coasts.” Nick looked up at Claire to gauge her response. “And most importantly, Martha Palmer’s murder was the last one with this MO.”
“In 2009,” said Claire, wrapping her head around it. “Four years ago. Was there ever a period that long with no similar killings between then and 1978?”
“No,” Nick replied. “Antonio made a point of telling me that.”
“So the Costa Rican police are going to help us?”
“They already have.”
“I mean, checking their immigration records to see who’s left the country since then and hasn’t come back.”
Nick clicked his mouse and typed again. “That won’t be necessary,” he said.
“Why not?”
He clicked the mouse again. “Because we already know the answer to that.”
He pointed to the screen, and Claire gasped at what was there: a digital image of a New York State driver’s license sporting the photo of a man, in his early sixties, a shock of white hair and a face that appeared to have either not aged or been reshaped by an excellent plastic surgeon.
“Oh, my God.” Claire breathed. “He’s here.”
The name on the license was Victor Andrew Palmer.
“Since 2010,” Nick confirmed. “Moved back after he sold his resort.”
“Moved back?”
“He’s a Brooklyn boy. Born and raised.”
Holy shit. They sat there in silence.
“It can’t be that simple,” Nick said. “I mean, I get that maybe he killed the women up here and down there. But why kill his own wife?”
“Either he couldn’t help himself, or she found out what her husband had been doing all those years and he murdered her to shut her up. Then he comes back here, his impulses overwhelm him, and he picks up where he left off in the seventies—butchering women and boiling their bones.”
“We’ve gotta tell Wilkes,” Nick said, getting up.
Nick and Claire sat on the couch in Wilkes’s office, Savarese in the chair opposite them, the inspector at his desk as they recounted what they’d learned about the murders in Costa Rica and Victor Palmer.
Upon hearing Palmer’s name, Wilkes stood up from his desk and began to pace. It both amused and bothered Nick, for in all the years he’d known Wilkes, he’d never seen his boss, his patron saint, do this before.
“That’s unbelievable,” Savarese said after Nick and Claire finished. “It makes perfect sense, but it’s unbelievable. We know where this lunatic is right now?”
“Palmer got himself a driver’s license when he came back. Address is on Seventy-Eighth. . . .”
“Between Riverside and West End,” said Wilkes, dropping back into his chair. �
��In a big-ass brownstone he bought with the proceeds of selling his resort.”
This statement brought silence to the room until Claire broke the ice. “Inspector, how do you know where Palmer lives?”
“I’ve been there,” he said, putting a hand to his head as if struck by a sudden headache.
“To Palmer’s house?” Nick asked, astonished.
“Commissioner dragged me to a party there about a year and a half ago,” Wilkes replied. “They grew up down the block from each other in Flatbush. Palmer’s tight with Hizzoner the Mayor too. Hell, I talked to the guy for a few minutes at that party. Told him I was planning a vacation; he gave me this whole sales pitch on Costa Rica and that resort he used to own.”
His voice drifted off, and Nick knew what he was thinking. They were about to cause a category five political shit storm with Wilkes in its eye.
“Are you sure about all this?” Wilkes asked, turning to Nick. “Dead sure?”
“Yes, sir,” said Nick. “What do you want us to do?”
Wilkes took a breath and stood up. Nick could see his old boss had returned.
“Not a damn thing until I say so,” he said in the threatening voice Nick knew so well.
“Boss,” Savarese said, “maybe we should get a couple of undercovers to sit on this prick in case he ventures out for another kill.”
“Not a goddamed thing—did you hear me?” Wilkes said, raising his voice. Then, more quietly, he said, “Until I confab with Chief Dolan—which I’ll do tonight—and he gives me the go-ahead, nobody’s gonna do dick.” He looked directly at Nick and Claire. “Which goes double for you two nobodies.”
Nick watched the sun disappear behind the buildings on the far side of Central Park as he and Claire walked up the street to his brownstone. They stopped at the steps and he stared west as the light faded. Claire stood beside him, knowingly.
“Better enjoy this view while I can,” he said.
He hadn’t invited her in and she didn’t feel like he wanted to. “I’m going out to the avenue and find a cab,” she said.
Nick paused, never taking his eyes off the beautiful tableau. “Why don’t you just take my car?” he said.
“We gave it back, remember?” Claire reminded him.
“No, not the police car. I have a car. Actually, right now a friend’s kind of permanently using it because he has a free garage to park it in.”
“Free parking? In this city?” Claire asked.
“His father died last year. He got the condo and the basement parking spot but the Mercedes went to his sister. I had no use for my piece of crap, so he took it off my hands until Jill gets her license,” replied Nick. The sun gone now, he turned to her. “You wouldn’t have to take a cab up here every day to get me, and Peter only drives the thing on weekends. Someone might as well get some use out of it for the insurance money I’m paying.”
“Thanks, but unless your friend Peter lives near me and lets me keep it in his spot, I can’t afford five hundred a month for a garage.”
“You’ll park a block from your building at the Midtown South Precinct, on the sidewalk where the cops who work there leave their personal cars.”
“And not get towed?” she asked.
“I’ll give you a permit to put on the dash and nobody’ll touch it.” Claire felt awkward, and yet his generous offer was a relief. A car would provide them with cheap transportation and eliminate the need for Detective Simms to chauffeur them around on official business. More importantly, it would be a huge help if they needed to attend to any unofficial police business.
“If you think that’ll work,” Claire said by way of thanking him, “I’ll just keep it until we’re done with this case.”
“Sure,” was all Nick said. “Should we get it now?”
“Sure,” Claire said, smiling.
She wasn’t smiling, however, when she saw what Nick had referred to as a car: a 1989 red Jeep Cherokee, battered by years of street parking, that looked more like it belonged in a junkyard than in the spotless basement garage of a luxury condo building.
“Don’t judge the book by the cover,” Nick said, sensing her disdain. “It runs and only has forty-two thousand miles on it.”
“And you let yourself be seen in this?” Claire asked.
“No payments. And in this city nobody gives a shit what anyone drives,” he said. “If this thing was a safety hazard I wouldn’t let you near it. Promise.”
Claire stared him down as she got behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. Good to Nick’s word, the interior was spotless and the engine hummed in a reassuring low roar.
“Thanks. I’m sorry I judged it before giving you a chance,” she said. “Shall I drop you back at your place?”
“Nah, I could use the exercise,” he said. “I’ll walk. That permit is in the glove compartment. Just drive up Fifty-First Street past Third Avenue and find a space as close to Lexington as you can. And pick me up tomorrow at seven. We’ll drive down to headquarters and park behind the building on Madison Street.”
“Okay,” she said, putting the Jeep into gear, pulling out of the spot, and driving up the ramp, watching Nick get smaller in the rearview mirror.
She turned out onto the street and drove the few feet until she had to stop for a red light at the corner. Realizing she hadn’t adjusted her side-view mirrors, she did so, fixing the left one first and then the right. That’s when she spotted Nick walking out of his friend’s condo building and down the street.
He’s going in the wrong direction, she realized. Away from his building, not toward it. Why would he say he was going home if he wasn’t? Especially at night, without his dog Cisco?
An annoyed horn honked behind her, waking her up to the now green traffic light. She circled the block, hitting the gas when she saw Nick getting into a cab on the left side of the street and pulling up beside it on the right. Her window was open as was every window on the cab, allowing her to hear what Nick was saying to the driver.
“Seventy-Ninth and Broadway,” he instructed.
“What for?” shouted Claire.
Nick turned and saw her. “Never mind,” he told the driver, getting out and throwing him two bucks just for stopping. “I got a free ride.”
He closed the door and circled around to the passenger’s side of his Jeep.
“Going uptown?” he asked.
“I hadn’t planned on it,” she said. “What’s at Seventy-Ninth and Broadway?”
“There’s a bar up there I like,” he said.
“Bullshit,” Claire said. “You’re going to sit on Victor Palmer’s place. Despite direct orders from your boss.”
“We can’t wait for him to go to the chief of detectives,” he said.
“He told us he would do it tonight.” Claire worried about the repercussions if Wilkes found out that Nick had disobeyed his order—again.
“And if tonight’s the night Palmer decides to cut up another woman?”
“What did you think you were gonna do by yourself? Tail him? In the dark, without your dog, when you can barely see your foot on the sidewalk?”
“I can see well enough,” he muttered. “And I don’t want another dead girl on my conscience, especially one I could’ve prevented from getting killed.”
“Are you saying that to rope me in to your little plan?” Claire asked, the tension heating up between them.
“Rope you in? You’re the one who roped me into that teaching thing.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad way to make a living, would it? Low pressure, decent money, on top of your pension. Or you could stay on the job and teach on the side.”
“Stop planning my life!” Nick yelled, getting out of the car and storming down the street, against the one-way traffic. Claire threw the Jeep into reverse and backed up beside him.
“It’s not just your life, it’s your girls’ lives,” Claire said.
“You’re not their mother!” Nick exclaimed.
Claire slammed on the
brakes. “No, but you’re their father,” she shouted. “Have you thought about them at all? Because your future affects theirs. So if you don’t want to plan your life after you retire from the police department, then at least plan for them.”
It happened so fast that Claire didn’t know what hit her. In an instant, Nick was in the car, leaning over, pulling her head toward his and kissing her. Claire was startled at first, uncomfortable. And then she realized this is what she’d wanted. She let herself kiss him back, get lost in it. At least a minute passed before she pulled away. Involuntarily. As if an unseen force had grabbed her collar and wouldn’t let go.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” said Nick, thinking he’d crossed the line.
“Don’t apologize,” said Claire. “It just . . . happened.”
“I don’t know why I . . .” Nick stopped, surprised by what had come over him.
“It’s okay,” Claire said. “But maybe we should keep things on a professional level.”
“Right,” Nick replied, opening the car door and getting out.
“You’re not going to do anything stupid tonight, are you?” asked Claire.
“No, I’m not.” He grinned.
Claire was skeptical. “Promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
And he crossed himself. Claire looked at him, framed against the darkening sky streaked with orange and red, thinking how handsome he was. “I’ll call you when I’m here in the morning,” she said.
Nick closed the door. Claire drove away, glancing into the rearview mirror at him, watching her. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing:
Why did I want him and then pull back?
Nick waited until the Jeep turned the corner. He felt embarrassed for kissing her. What had come over him? Still, she had kissed him back. He was sure she’d responded to him.
Or was she just too surprised to stop him?
He didn’t want to think he was a jerk, taking advantage of the situation. When he got home, he knew he had to do something to make himself feel better.
