Jake tried not to wear his suspicion on his face. “Where to?”
“Lily Dale. It’s a spiritualist community in Western New York, an hour south of Buffalo. Find a woman named Abby Fay. She’s the most powerful psychic I know. She’ll tell you what those creatures are.”
“Why do I need a psychic more powerful than you?”
“Because I can’t help you. She can. She’s also helped a lot of police with unsolved murders and kidnappings. Leave Edgar here. That’s why you brought him, isn’t it?”
Jake nodded.
“Have a safe trip.”
Jake bought coffee and a bagel at the coffee shop down the block, then entered his building and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. When he opened the door to his suite, he was not surprised to see Carrie sitting at her desk, but he turned rigid at the sight of two men in suits sitting in the chairs against the wall. One had blond hair, the other none. Carrie looked even paler than usual. The men rose as Jake closed the door.
That didn’t take long.
“Detective Storm,” the blond-haired man said, showing Jake his gold shield.
“I had a toy named Sergeant Storm when I was a kid,” Jake said.
“I’m not a sergeant. I’m a detective.”
“That’s okay. He was an astronaut.”
Storm gestured to his partner. “This is Verila.”
Jake nodded to them. “What can I do for you?”
“You can come downtown with us,” Verila said.
“Farther downtown than this?”
“One PP,” Storm said.
One Police Plaza: the Puzzle Palace. “What’s this all about?”
“Lieutenant Geoghegan wants to see you,” Verila said.
“Oh, does he?” Jake knew Theodore Geoghegan. The gruff lieutenant had questioned him after he had crashed his Chevy Malibu into the barricade outside One PP after being chased by Katrina’s zonbie hit men. Geoghegan was Major Crimes. Something told Jake that Madigan was already reaching deep. But how did they know to come to me? And why would Madigan want to involve the police? “Then why didn’t he come here?”
“Because he’s Lieutenant Geoghegan,” Storm said as if that explained everything.
Jake held up the paper bag in his hand. “I was just about to enjoy my breakfast.”
“Enjoy it in our car,” Verila said. “We’ll try to avoid the potholes.”
“You know, fellas, I run a business. I don’t really feel like leaving that business just on Teddy’s say-so. Why don’t you give me a little something to go on here so I know this little jaunt is worth my while?”
Storm gave him a patronizing smile. “The lieutenant will fill you in.”
Jake turned to Carrie. “Hold down the fort.”
The day had gotten off to a great start.
CHAPTER
6
Jake did not remember the last time he had seen One Police Plaza in daylight, but it sure looked different than it did when he had seen it last at night, with his car flipped upside down against a cement barricade and its windows shot out. Geoghegan and a uniformed PO had pulled him out of the wreckage, and Geoghegan had been one of three men to interview him about the incident that night. Gary Brown, Jake’s old partner in the Street Narcotics Apprehension Program, and a suit from Homeland Security had been the other two.
Gary had died the very next day, his body riddled with cancer. It had been a peculiar death, having occurred on the street next to a department issue SUV outside the apartment building of his partner, Frank Beck, who had died of a cocaine overdose at almost the same time. Jake learned the two crooked cops had been murdered by the vodou bokor Katrina. He felt sorry for Gary, who had invited a world of trouble into his life.
Walking through the halls of police power, escorted by Storm and Verila, Jake now felt isolated. He had once belonged to this brotherhood and had partners and friends and backup. Now what did he have? A dwarf assistant, a pet raven, and a psychic lady friend. Maybe Martin had been right when he had accused him of belonging nowhere.
Entering the Major Crimes Unit bull pen, he scanned the faces of the half dozen detectives working the phones. The gold shields who worked MCU dressed a little better, carried themselves a little straighter than precinct detectives. They had to, working in the Puzzle Palace, with bosses around every corner. Some of these well-dressed detectives glanced at him now. Jake didn’t know any of them, but he sensed their disapproval. What the hell was going on?
Verila knocked on Geoghegan’s door, and a gruff voice answered, “Come in.” The detective opened the door, and Geoghegan looked up from his desk. Seeing Jake, he took off his reading glasses and rose. The burly lieutenant had put on weight since Jake’s encounter with him six months earlier. “Thanks for coming, Helman.”
“It’s not like I had a choice.” Jake glanced at Storm and Verila. “You boys run along now and let the grown-ups talk. You’ve done your errand for the morning.”
Storm’s face scrunched up and Verila tugged him away.
“What can I do for you now that I’m here, Lieutenant?”
Geoghegan avoided his eye. “Let’s do this in an interview room.”
Wonderful. “Whatever you say.”
Jake followed Geoghegan through the bull pen into an interview room. “Just like old times.”
Geoghegan eased into a metal chair at the table, and Jake sat opposite him. The hefty lieutenant took out a yellow notepad and a pen, each bearing the NYPD logo.
Jake looked around the room. “No camera?”
“Not at this stage,” Geoghegan said with a thin smile.
Jake folded his arms. “Okay, the suspense is killing me. What’s on your mind?”
“A few things have happened since our last conversation. For one, your partner disappeared.”
He’s playing games. “Edgar was my ex-partner.”
“Still, that’s some coincidence. You get chased over the Brooklyn Bridge by machine gun—toting drug dealers when Hopkins is serving on the Black Magic Task Force, and two days later he goes MIA, never to be heard from again.”
“I don’t know anything about his disappearance. I gave a full statement to Missing Persons.”
“I know. I read the file. I just thought maybe you remembered something you forgot back then. Some little detail gnawing at your insides.”
“I’m afraid not. Can I go now?”
“Now it’s my turn to ‘fear not.’”
“You mean you’re going to get down to the real reason you hauled me down here now that you think you’ve got me off balance?”
“I keep forgetting you’re an old hand at this. Except that you used to sit on this end of the table.”
“From where I’m sitting now, it really doesn’t matter. Stop wasting my time, or I’m walking out of here.”
“Still a wiseass. Still a tough guy.”
“And I still don’t suffer fools gladly. Your meter’s running.”
“Working on any big cases at the moment, Sam Spade?”
“They’re all big to a little guy like me.”
“Yeah, sure. Show some humility now. Switch up your dance moves. It won’t do you any good. I’m an old hand at this, too.”
“Are we going to cross swords in a pissing contest, or are you all warmed up now?”
Geoghegan sat back. “Mayor Madigan’s wife hired you to do some lifting for her.”
Damn. He had hoped there was no connection between Marla and this dog and pony show. “Confidential.”
“I’m not asking you if she hired you. I’m telling you she did. And now the lady is missing.”
Jake’s heart skipped a beat. Had Marla fled Madigan, or had something happened to her? “I’m listening.”
“How about you start talking instead? We can trade information.”
“What happened to Marla?”
“Oh, you’re on a first name basis?”
“What makes you think she hired me?”
“Because when she
disappeared she left her cell phone behind. Your number’s in there, and you left two messages on her voice mail.”
Jake tried to maintain a passive expression. “She wanted me to dig up some dirt for her. When did she go missing?”
“Last night. She snuck out of Gracie Mansion and never came home.”
“Then it hasn’t been twenty-four hours . . .”
“When a high-ticket politico’s wife disappears, we like to get a jump on the case.”
“Especially when your boys were responsible for keeping an eye on her. You don’t want to piss off the mayor or anything.”
“Do you want to piss off the mayor?”
No, I want to kill him. “I never met the man.”
“He’s rushing back to the city now from some retreat. What did Mrs. Madigan want you to find on him?”
“She wants me to prove he’s cheating on her so she can get out of their marriage without him making her life miserable.” The truth will set you free.
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? A straight answer. Why would Madigan penalize his wife just because she’d lost that loving feeling?”
“You’ll have to ask her. Or him. All I know is he had her locked up for psychiatric evaluation when she tried to leave him once before, and he’s threatened to do it again.”
“You buy that?”
And a lot more. “Lock, stock, and smoking barrel.”
“Proof?”
“Just her word. But I bet some official legwork will find more than enough evidence to back up her story.”
“She’s known to be a little high-strung.”
“Her husband is an ogre.” And a murderer.
“Did you get what she wanted?”
Decision time. But the decision was easy to make: if Jake planned to take down Reichard and Madigan as Laurel had suggested, he needed to do it from behind the scenes, which meant keeping what he’d witnessed to himself. “Not yet.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me? I guess your meter’s running, too.”
Jake ignored the shot. “What’s her security detail say?”
“She got out of Gracie Mansion without them knowing it.”
“Some security.”
“Look who’s talking. Carmen Rodriguez hired you to find her grandson last year and got dead instead. Come to think of it, Kira Thorn disappeared while you were head of security for the Tower, didn’t she? Your clients have a way of disappearing. Maybe you’re some kind of whacked-out serial killer, like the Cipher.”
A low blow. Geoghegan knew that the Cipher had murdered Sheryl. He also knew the Cipher had been murdered by an unknown vigilante. “Actually, Kira disappeared after I resigned from the company, and given the way the feds moved in on Tower International, I’d say it’s a safe bet she’s living overseas under an alias. You have been checking up on me, haven’t you, Theodore?”
Geoghegan spread his hands apart. “Guilty as charged. You fascinate me, Helman. And every good detective loves a good mystery.”
Who says you’re good? Geoghegan struck Jake as nothing more than an ambitious paper pusher. “It doesn’t make sense that she ran away from home and left her children behind.”
“Those kids are in boarding school.”
“See? You know more about her than I do. It also doesn’t make sense that she didn’t take her cell phone with her.”
“What are you suggesting, that she was kidnapped out of Gracie Mansion?”
Jake let the question hang in the air between them.
Geoghegan picked up the slack. “How about this: she’s the one cheating on Myron, and she’s in a love nest right now.”
Jake shrugged. “Who am I to disagree with a good detective like you? Let me know how it all turns out.”
“I gather this interview is over?”
“Unless you have anything else to ask me.”
Geoghegan’s chair squeaked beneath him. “Okay, let’s give it a shot. Where were you last night?”
Jake felt his body turning numb. Why the hell hadn’t he seen that coming? “Working.”
Geoghegan tapped his pen on his notepad. “Do tell.”
“My work is confidential between me and my clients.”
“Oh, you have more than one damsel in distress at a time?”
“I keep busy.”
“Where were you last night?”
“I don’t think I’ll tell you at this stage. It isn’t germane to what we’re discussing.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Geoghegan sat forward. “And confidentiality doesn’t apply to private eyes the way it does to doctors and lawyers.”
Jake rose. “Don’t forget priests.”
“Sit down.” The words came out with the edge Jake suspected Geoghegan reserved for street punks.
Setting his hands on the table, Jake leaned forward. “This is your house. You invited me here. That makes me your guest. Right now, I say that it’s none of your business where I was last night. You want to pull that information out of me to satisfy your own curiosity about what it’s like to be a PI and not have to appease bosses, then arrest me. Otherwise, I’m leaving.”
Geoghegan got to his feet with a grim expression. “You really don’t want to make an enemy out of me.”
Jake stood back from the table. “No, I don’t. But I’ve answered all the questions I intend to. You want more, charge me. We both know you don’t even have enough to hold me for questioning. I’ve told you everything I know about Marla Madigan.”
Geoghegan seethed without speaking, then jerked his head toward the door. “Get out of here.”
As Jake reached for the knob to the steel door, Geoghegan called his name and he turned around.
“Don’t leave town, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’ve always wanted to say that.”
Jake exited the interview room.
As soon as his feet struck the sidewalk outside One PP, Jake whipped out his cell phone and hit autodial.
“Helman Investigations and Security,” Carrie said in her most professional voice. No one who heard her would suspect that tattoos covered most of her body and metal piercings filled in the blanks.
“Carrie, book me a flight to Buffalo. I’ll need a car, too, and five hours on the ground. I’d like to fly back tonight, but if you don’t think I have time, get me a hotel.”
“Any preferences?”
“Nothing in the city. Do a little detective work and get me something in between the airport and someplace called Lily Dale.”
“Right, chief.”
“Leave my itinerary on your desk and take the rest of the day off.”
“I hear that and I like it.”
“You’re on call, though. Keep your cell handy in case I need you.”
“Whatever you say.”
Jake closed his phone and hailed a taxi. His thoughts returned to Marla. If Madigan had confined her to psychiatric observation again, she was already a big concern to him. Most likely, he had confided her distress to Reichard and his alliance, in which case she had become a concern to them. Had they been monitoring her cell phone all along, or had they simply concluded she was somehow responsible for the camouflaged intruder who had literally dropped in on their ritual uninvited?
She was depending on me to help her. She would have called me if she could have. And she wouldn’t have left her cellphone behind.
His gut told him the best thing he could do at the moment was follow Laurel’s lead and see if it yielded any useful information.
Exiting his building’s elevator, Jake crossed the fourth-floor corridor to the front door of his suite and unlocked it. Carrie had turned off the lights on her way out, but sunlight flooded the reception area. Jake entered his code into the alarm pad, then locked the door. His itinerary covered Carrie’s desk: a flight out of JFK in three hours, one night at the Fulbright Inn somewhere called Chadwick Bay, and a return flight first thing in the morning. Carrie had made the correct call: better to be
safe and spend the night in Western New York and make sure he obtained whatever information he could.
Switching on the kitchen light, he opened his office door and froze. A woman sat with her back to him in the chair facing his desk. How the hell had anyone gotten inside his suite with the security system activated? He had even wired the windows with sensors after AK had climbed in from the fire escape six months ago and stabbed him in the eye.
Unless Carrie let her in . . .
“Marla?”
The woman did not react to the sound of his voice, so Jake flipped the switch beside him, and the overhead light came on. The woman had long, sleek black hair and sat as still as a shadow. Even from behind, Jake recognized her, his heart beating faster as his blood chilled.
Not Marla.
The woman rose with elegant poise and turned to face him, her every movement familiar to him. “Hello, Jake.”
He swallowed as his blood rushed to his feet. “Sheryl . . .”
CHAPTER
7
Jake swallowed air, speechless as his dead wife circled the chair. She wore a sleeveless turquoise-colored dress that he had always liked, with knee-high leather boots. Her dark brown eyes captured the morning light and reflected it back at him, her oval face almost gleaming.
Sheryl. His heart ached for her, an open wound he feared would never heal.
She looked him up and down. “You look good. I’m glad to see you’ve been taking care of yourself.”
“You look good, too. Amazing, in fact. Especially for someone who’s been dead a year and a half.”
Sheryl moved closer to him, the heels of her boots making soft clacks on the hardwood floor. “Dead in your world, not mine. And mine is much larger than yours.” She took in the room. “I like your office. Don’t you think it’s time you got a real apartment, too?”
“I can’t afford one on top of the rent I pay for this place.”
“You can manage.”
“Maybe. But I’m comfortable here. It makes things easier.”
“You can’t watch the Tower full-time, just like you can’t guard Afterlife around the clock.” She cast a sideways glance at the open door to Edgar’s caged quarters. “And you can’t babysit Edgar full-time, either.”
Cosmic Forces: Book Three in The Jake Helman Files Series Page 7
