by Leslie Glass
Tracking Time
Leslie Glass
When a young doctor goes for his daily run in New York City 's Central Park and doesn't come back, NYPD detective April Woo is convinced that he's still alive. Trusting her usually solid instincts, she goes outside her jurisdiction and orders a massive search using the city's best K-9 tracking unit. But it isn't until a witness in the case is brutally murdered that April's hunch is taken seriously – by her superiors, by the mayor and by the already frenzied press. Only now, it just might be too late to beat the clock and stop an out-of-control killer on the most bizarre and disturbing crime spree the city has ever seen.
Leslie Glass
Tracking Time
The sixth book in the April Woo series, 2000
For Peter
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The inspiration for Tracking Time came from many sources. The impact of the recent spate of children killers has affected every community in America. As in no other time in our history, children and adolescents have become a source of suspicion, a threat to the nation from inside the family itself. Tracking Time is a story about the devastating effects of parents losing touch with the inner lives and needs of their children.
I am grateful to Detective Al Sheppard, formerly of Major Case Squad, NYPD, for his input and insights, to Precinct Commander Captain James O'Neill for hosting me as Commander for a Day at the Central Park Precinct, to Commissioner Howard Safir and the Police Foundation for all the good they do for New York City. Thanks also to Thomas Shelby, dog trainer to my own dogs, Peanut and Rocky, and a SAR officer in the Rock-land County Sheriffs Department, who taught me so much about dogs and tracking that I had to write about it. Any errors about tracking, police procedure, and New York City geography are mine alone.
In the Time series, I try to present a realistic portrayal of the life of a psychoanalyst a hundred years after the birth of psychoanalysis, at a time when psychoanalytic theory is the basis for all interactive therapy in the mental field, has radically impacted the way we think in every area of our society, and yet is no longer considered relevant to psychiatric training and is not taught in most medical schools. My appreciation this year goes to the Psychoanalytic Institutes around the country, who are encouraging their members to widen their outreach with programs to help a broader population of parents, children, and schools address the climate of aggression, alienation, and violence that's having such a deadly effect on young people today.
Greatest thanks to Dr. Peter Dunn, medical director of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute Treatment Center, who has been a wonderful teacher and guide in my research for this book and who read every draft. Any errors in psychopathology are his alone.
Thanks to Louise Burke, Nancy Yost, Audrey LaFehr, and all the good people at Dutton and NAL, who work so hard to edit, produce, and sell the books.
Last, each of us on this earth is on a perilous hero's journey. My special kudos this year go to Alex and Lindsey, Jonathan and Tom.
Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
– Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
One
Just before twilight on a balmy September New York evening, Dr. Maslow Atkins set out for a jog in Central Park and never came back. He calculated that he had just the right amount of time to run south along the path closest to Central Park West to Fifty-ninth Street and back. Dr. Atkins was a man of regular habits. He timed himself on each outing, knew his speeds and his muscles. And the denizens who claimed the park as their own knew them, too.
Like many compulsive runners, Maslow felt edgy when deprived of his exercise. That day he'd watched a silvery morning turn to angry afternoon thunderstorms, and he'd been preoccupied by the threat of possibly having to run in the rain. The nagging irritation caused the slightest dulling of his senses and, unthinking, the young psychiatrist made a blunder in his work.
Maslow Atkins, M.D., five foot six inches tall, slender build, strong features muted only slightly by the perpetual beginnings of a beard, straight medium-brown hair just long enough on top to occasionally break free of its crest and fall forward to tickle his brow. Not large or classically handsome, Maslow was most notable for his eyes, which were, in turn, light brown, dark brown, and green, depending on his mood and the color of his shirt. His eyes were the most arresting aspect of his person, piercingly sharp in all his humors.
At thirty-two Maslow was a man not quite finished.
He was a fully licensed psychiatrist, but not yet a father, not married, and not even fully certified to practice his chosen subspecialty of psychoanalysis. Throughout the years of his training he had kept his head down and worked hard. Coming and going from his building every morning in his suits and ties, and every evening in his running clothes, with the water bottle hanging on his hip, he looked like one of the thousands of affluent people of his age who flocked to New York City from all over the country and the world to build a career, to make a name for themselves, and probably not go home again.
He could have been a banker, a doctor, a lawyer, an advertising executive, a money manager. In any case, he had the appearance of a serious professional on the rise. In fact, Maslow was a thoughtful person eager to do some good in life. And he was not from somewhere else. He was a New Yorker, born and bred just across the park on the East Side. Park Avenue, to be exact. He'd been a city brat and thought he knew all the angles. As a doctor, his guiding principle was the physician's oath: First, do no harm. And his personal rules about his own conduct were so strict that he would not take a drink even in a social situation lest it make him stupid or spin him out of control.
All through the moody afternoon, he'd brooded about his patient Allegra. Her name was lovely and light. The word conjured quicksilver in his mind. In music, Allegro meant fast. In Italian, happy. In Spanish, Alegria meant joy. Allegra, the petite raven-haired young woman of twenty, should have been as spirited and confident as she was beautiful. But she was not spirited and joyful. She was very troubled. Maslow felt an unusually deep connection with her and didn't know why. Sometimes he thought she was copying his mannerisms. Her smile and the way she expressed things were oddly familiar. So were some of the stories she told, familiar even though she had not come from here. The way she crossed her legs and pursed her lips when she was angry were particularly disturbing to him. But most disturbing of all was the fact that sometimes she starved herself and sometimes she cut her own flesh.
In their session that day Allegra had told Maslow that in the first moments after she went to work on herself with a razor and watched the blood bubble up out of the cuts on her belly, she felt bliss. Then, nonchalantly, she'd lifted her blouse for him and showed the scars. The sight of so many even rows of red notches scored across her slender torso had made him queasier than anything he'd seen in medical school. She was his charge, his patient, and he was not working quickly enough to stop her. He was particularly chilled by the fact that whole rows of the red seams on her belly were recent, occurring without his knowledge after she'd started seeing him. A few were brand-new. The idea that she hurt herself after sessions with him disturbed him deeply.
That day after showing off her scars, she'd expressed confusion about sometimes caring about her father despite the horrific things he'd done to her. Maslow remarked that children loved their parents no matter what they did. She'd become enraged at him and had left his office in tears. Ever since, he'd been in a panic about what she might do to herself.
He was still worrying about it at seven o'clock when he returned home from work. He lived in a huge sixty-year-old co-op that took up a whole block on Central Park West.
"Some evening, huh, Doc." The heavyset evening doorman called Ben stood under the canopy, watching him approach.
"Sure is," Maslow agreed.
Ben stepped forward to open the heavy glass door for him.
"Thanks." Maslow waved, then crossed the cavernous lobby, newly decorated in mauve and cream. The elevator took him to the fifth floor, where his one-bedroom apartment faced the side street. Hurrying now, he peeled off his clothes, grabbed socks, Nike Airs, shorts, T-shirt from a shelf in the closet and pulled them on. In the kitchen he filled his water bottle from the tap and put into his fanny pack a couple of granola bars, his apartment keys, his cell phone, and the slender canister of pepper spray that looked like a pen. He didn't take his wallet. He didn't need money to run, and he certainly did not consider the problems of identification should something happen to him. He was a New Yorker and thought nothing could possibly happen to him. He was in and out of his apartment in less than six minutes.
In the lobby, Ben opened the front door for him again and scanned the sky. "I don't know," he said, shaking his head. "Watch out for that rain. They say there's more to come."
"Not tonight," Maslow replied confidently. He picked up his feet and trotted across the street toward the park, his heart lifting at the prospect of an activity that always eased his distress.
Twilight was his favorite time of day in the park, and voices on the other side of the wall indicated he was not alone. Then, just before he entered the park, he saw his patient.
She jumped up from the bench and came over. "Hi."
"Hello, Allegra." He wanted to say no more. He wanted to slip by, but she wouldn't let him pass.
"I want to tell you something."
"Why don't you tell me in session tomorrow," he said gently.
"Fine," she replied angrily. "Whatever." Angry again, she took off down Central Park West.
He stopped for a moment to catch his breath and compose himself. Immediately to his left was the playground. To his right was Eighty-first Street. He crossed and entered the park, heading downtown. That evening it had an eerie quality, almost as if he were entering a land of remote rain forests and steamy, sun-basted jungles. At Seventy-ninth Street the canopies of huge old oaks arched over the sidewalk, high above the man-made arbor, which itself was densely covered with wisteria. Rain droplets clung to the leaves and glittered like diamonds in the last of the daylight that filtered through the layers of branches. The air was moist and smelled of earth. Maslow inhaled deeply, willing calm into his soul. He worked with very sick people in the hospital. There, staff was around him, and he knew how to protect himself. With patients in private practice it was different, and he didn't always know the right thing to do. He felt he'd handled this wrong and was glad that he would be able to consult with his supervisor in an hour to talk about Allegra, to get perspective and advice.
The sidewalk split. He took the route to the east and moved deeper into the park, heading toward the bridle path where he liked to run. The ground would be wet, but there wouldn't be any horses this late.
A high-pitched scream of surprise and pain stopped Maslow mid-stride. The cry came out of nowhere and was over in a second. Maslow spun around, searching for the source. He hadn't even picked up his pace yet. The bridle path was ahead of him just out of sight. Behind him, he could hear cars splashing through the puddles as they headed across the park to the East Side. He knew he was up at the very northern tip of the rowboat lake, but it was still deep summer and the fully leafed trees hid the view on the other side of the railing that served as a barrier between the safe, paved path and the swampy slope that led down to the water's edge. In other seasons the lake and a footbridge were visible in the distance, appearing unexpectedly, like some magical place in a fairy story. Today nothing could be seen through the mist.
The cry came again, this time a sustained wail.
Maslow leaned over the split-rail fence and peered into the curtain of dripping leaves. "Where are you? What's happened?"
"Someone's down here! She fell." An excited voice came from below him.
Maslow pushed some dripping branches aside. The fallen tree that spanned a small ravine in a clearing came into view. Long ago the log had been stripped of its bark and deeply carved with designs like a totem pole. Maslow had seen kids sitting on it many times and guessed that whoever had fallen had fallen from there.
For many people the first rules of New York City were, don't make eye contact with strangers and don't stop for anything. But Maslow was trained to move toward pain, not away from it. He climbed over the railing, pushed through the bushes, and stepped into the clearing. Down in the crevice beneath the carved log bridge he saw blue-jeaned legs skewed awkwardly from the body attached to them. The face was pressed down into the wet grass, but he had a chilling feeling that the crumpled body was Allegra's.
"I think she's dead," screamed the voice, now identifiable as male and filled with adrenaline.
"Hold on, I'm coming. Don't touch her, I'm coming," he cried. He scrambled over the carved log, lost his footing, and half-slid, half-plunged down the hill. The man at the bottom reached down to help him up, but the arm that snaked around his neck was surprisingly strong. It jerked him back. He staggered and lost his balance. He couldn't reach his mace or his cell phone, couldn't land a good kick to the person behind him. He panicked and started yelling, then the rock hit his head and he went down. After that, he didn't feel the branch hitting him, or the feet kicking him, or that he was lifted up, slung over someone's back, and hauled away like a large piece of garbage.
On Park Avenue, Central Park West, and in Long Island City, three sets of parents didn't know where their kids were.
Two
At a quarter past eight, Detective Sergeant April Woo sat in the front seat of her unmarked gray Buick, irritably tapping her fingers on the dashboard. She noticed the light draining away, the sky deepening with the dark. The color right now would have been her absolute favorite blue if the rain hadn't left a slight fog clinging to the earth, muting the brightness.
It was Tuesday, a turn-around tour for her. She'd be home in her bed by two and back on the job tomorrow morning at eight. By four tomorrow afternoon, her week of four and two would be over. Thursday and Friday she had off. She was looking forward to spending the time with her boyfriend, Sergeant Mike Sanchez, lately of the Homicide Task Force, and she hoped nothing would come up to alter her plans. Woodrow Wilson Baum-a.k.a. Woody-the preppy-looking detective recently transferred from anticrime, whom she'd chosen to train and to drive her, happened to be her biggest annoyance at the moment. She was trying to get him to think more and drive better, but like many men, Woody was dedicated to resisting anything he didn't want to do. Just now he'd ground the car to a stop without warning at Columbus Avenue and Eighty-fourth Street and dashed into the Cuban restaurant on the corner.
"I'll just run in for a sandwich. How about I get you some buñuelos and a coffee?" Tempted, April didn't protest even though he was lying. She knew perfectly well he was trying to make time with the owner's daughter, Isobel, whom he'd met while chasing a purse snatcher a few weeks ago in Times Square. In fact, Woody had unceremoniously knocked the young woman down. Isobel Leon, twenty-five, slim, well-proportioned, luscious lips, long dark hair, a paralegal, had been in line to buy tickets for Lion King when he'd crashed into her. For Baum, who was a good-looking guy but hadn't had a date in many months, it was a case of love at first smite.
It so happened that Isobel helped out at her father's restaurant at night, hence Baum's sudden interest in Cuban food. If the Columbia Cafe had been in Baum's precinct it would have been designated a "Corruption Prone Location." Cops were not allowed to frequent businesses in the precincts where they worked. As his supervisor, April was extremely cognizant of all department rules. Romance, though frowned upon in crime-related matters, was not exactly at issue here since they were not in prohibited territory. Still, he was lingering and she wanted to get back on the job.
Sergeant April Woo was the second-in-command in the detective squad of Midtown North, the precinct covering the
west side of Manhattan, Forty-second Street to Fifty-ninth Street from the Hudson River to Fifth Avenue. It was a prestigious area encompassing the big office buildings and corporate headquarters on Sixth Avenue, the big hotels on Sixth and Seventh, the theater district and the Times Square area, Hell's Kitchen, Theater Row on West Forty-second Street, and Rockefeller Center. It was not a hot-button area in terms of violent crimes, but there was a fair amount of pickpocket activity and robberies in the stores. This area was one of the great magnets of New York, frequented by all the tourists who came to town. As such, it was a high-visibility precinct, carefully monitored. April was the only woman in the unit, foisted on her Puerto Rican boss as a political favor. The lieutenant disliked La China Famosa and was not so patiently waiting for an opportunity to disgrace and unload her.
Tonight April was sitting in an unmarked unit in her old precinct, the Two-O, acting as a detective supervisor covering the wider area called Manhattan North because a high-profile rape on a yacht anchored at the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin was occupying much of the detective squad from the Two-O as well as her own commanding officer, who'd taken a run uptown to join the party. On the Upper West Side, aside from the rape, there was quiet after the day's rainstorm.
April tuned out the background crackle on the police radio while she waited for Detective Baum to come out of the restaurant with his bribe of the crispy, sugar-dusted, honey-coated buñuelos and Cuban cafe con leche. Briefly, she brooded that she'd become so easy she could be turned for a piece of fried dough. Then she forgave herself because the evening tour had started on an upbeat note. She'd helped an old Chinese woman whose family inadvertently left her behind when they got off the bus. The woman could not speak a word of English. She did not know where she was staying or what the telephone number was. She'd been brought weeping into Midtown North, on Fifty-fourth Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues, and there she had remained convulsed with tears on a folding chair for many hours until the tour changed and April-the only person in the precinct who could speak Chinese and deal with the situation-reunited the family in a New York-style happy ending.
