“They’re adopted,” she said, surprised he left out the animal attack.
“And how do you know that?”
“He—Roman—told me.”
“And you believe him?”
“. . . Yes.”
“Well, there’s no record of any adoption by Roman Nicolis. At least not in the Tri-State area.”
“The world is a big place, Detective.”
“Oh, you two are so close now you’re defending him.”
It felt right to defend him. “Yes, I am.”
“And this brother, Daniel. How many times have you met him?”
“Once. Today.”
“Don’t you find that strange?”
“Have you met all your co-workers’ siblings?” She didn’t flinch from his hard stare.
“Where did you meet him?” He continued after a moment.
“At the mansion, RockGate.”
“When did you go to RockGate?”
“Last night.”
“With Roman.”
“Yes.” Shit. She realized the trap she walked into.
“What time was that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a watch.”
“Late or early? Day or night?”
“. . . Night.”
“So sometime last night, you and Mr. Nicolis left your apartment and went to his mansion. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“You said you and Roman weren’t together last night.”
“No, Roman said that. I never said anything.”
“Were you in the park last night Miss Walker?”
Don’t look away. “No.”
“How do you explain his jacket and wallet in the park?”
“It’s not my job to explain the personal belongings of another person.”
His lips thinned into an angry line. “So you went to the Nicolis mansion and met The Village Strangler.”
“Yes.” She bit back her relief. They were off the attack in Central Park. “I knew it was him.”
“How?”
“It was the eyes. They . . .” She couldn’t tell them they glowed. They would commit her.
“Yes, Miss Walker? They what?”
“They—they, were my killers’ eyes. Same blue orbs. Same intensity. Once I was close enough to him, I knew.”
“Roman Nicolis has blue eyes.” He tossed a mug shot of Roman onto the table. Flat, one-dimensional eyes seemed to find her.
“Yes.” What the hell was he getting at?
“A lot of people have blue eyes, Miss Walker. What was so special about this Daniel’s baby blues that made you so certain he’s The Village Strangler?”
Stella stopped herself from shifting in the seat and refused to break eye contact with McCabe. “It wasn’t just his eyes. His build, his voice, I knew within minutes of meeting him that he attacked me.”
“So it took you a few minutes to know this?”
She nodded.
“But you got into a car and left RockGate with him and returned to your apartment. Why would you do that if you recognized him within minutes?”
The Roman and Bianca show distracted me.
“Maybe it took longer than a few minutes,” she muttered.
McCabe waited for more. She folded her arms until he gave up and continued.
“Where was Roman while you made this discovery?”
With Bianca. “I don’t know.”
“Why were you at RockGate? Last time I saw you, you two were holed up at your studio apartment. Why the switch?”
“What’s the point of these questions? I told you what you wanted to know. Why are you treating me like I’m a criminal?” Anger seeped into her voice.
“Are you a criminal?” McCabe leaned a bit closer, goading her.
The faces of Jose and Daniel flashed in her mind. Stella curled her hands into her shirt to hide their trembling. “Should I count the man I pushed out of my window?”
McCabe grunted. “That’s being investigated. You were at the park last night.” He didn’t give her a chance to reply. “Whatever happened in the park, you had part in it.” The detective sat back in his chair. “We found a lot of blood all over the place. You and Nicolis appear healthy enough. So we know it’s not either of you, but it’s only a matter of time before we match the blood to someone.”
To a wild animal, go ahead. “Can I leave?”
“No. We still gotta discuss the man you pushed out of your window. So, I suggest you get comfortable ‘cause you ain’t going nowhere.”
Hours later Stella left the precinct. Exhaustion threatened to drag her down. McCabe tried to pry every iota of information out of her. When he didn’t succeed, he took a break and then sent in another detective until she ordered him to arrest her, or release her. His beefy hands fingered his handcuffs. A fine sheen of sweat broke out on her body and she steeled herself, preparing for the worst. In the end, he pushed away from the table and walked away. Freedom felt like sunlight and smelled like garbage-tinged air when she exited the building.
Then she spotted Hector.
“I’m here to take you to your apartment.”
“No, thank you.” She pushed past him.
He followed close behind. “Miss Walker.”
She ignored him and walked faster toward the subway.
“I do claim to be in excellent condition for a man of my years, but I cannot keep up with you. Please stop and listen to an old man,” he wheezed.
Stella stopped her sprint a few feet short of the subway station and waited for him to catch up. Hector leaned against a parking meter. Then jerked away quickly when he realized what he rested on. He whipped a crisp handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and wiped himself down. So pretentious and completely Hector, she had to chuckle.
Recovered, he stepped closer to her. “We understand, Miss Walker . . . Stella, I understand. We were hired to protect you and one of our own tried to kill you.”
“That was pissing on the cake after the icing, Hector.”
“Agreed,” he answered quickly.
“And he’s engaged!” Fury made her voice rise. “And immortal,” she whispered as pedestrians walked past them. “Oh, and let’s not forget what he does for a living, what everyone in this family does for a living.”
“Stella, all of this is not easy to adjust to, please—”
Hector’s lips were moving, but she ceased to hear. “In the past thirty-six hours—according to the rules of human biology—he should be dead.” She choked. “I want to go back in there and tell McCabe everything! But what part of this crazy story would he believe? Would he believe the wild animal chasing us through Central Park and at the house? Or the immortal mercenary and his reincarnated lover? He wouldn’t even believe me about Daniel. It’s like none of you are real!”
“We are real, Stella,” he replied, nervously eyeing the passing crowd.
“No, you’re not. This is all a bad dream that’s out to kill me before I wake.”
“Melodrama doesn’t suit you, Stella.” He chastised using a corner of the handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Would you prefer the truth or a fabrication?”
“Fabricate, please.” A few hours ago, she woke up and truth smacked her in the face. If a lie would get her through this, right now, she’d take it.
“Let us protect you. It’s too dangerous for you to be out here all alone.” He pleaded.
From the corner of her eye, she caught EJ lurking in the shadows of a building. “No, Nicolis Security has done quite enough.” A growing rumble informed of an approaching train. “All of you stay the hell away from me.”
She ran into the subway station. Quick dodges and deflections only an experienced New Yorker could make, landed her on the train with seconds to spare.
Five blocks from her apartment, Stella exited the station. Within a block, she realized she wasn’t alone. She strolled, taking in the sights and sounds of her neighborhood.
And when she closed an
d locked her apartment door behind her, she wasn’t afraid.
CHAPTER TWENTY- SEVEN
The medical examiner, Arthur Mead, stood in the ambulance bay of the city morgue, smoking his tenth cigarette of the day. Quitting time. At four o’clock, he sucked in his last filtered cigarette before signing his notes and logging out of his computer.
“Dr. Mead, the Director is on the phone for you.” His assistant yelled from the doorway.
“Shit.” He crushed the butt beneath his shoe and picked up the phone outside of exam room two. By the time he hung up, he wished he’d never paused for that last cigarette.
“The fucking rich,” he grumbled. So much for getting home early. “Will, get the jumper guy out of the drawers.”
Will rounded the corner stuffing his face. “I thought we were done?”
“We’re not. Put down the damn sandwich before I write your ass up, and get the jumper!”
Will covered up his Subway meatball sub and stuffed it in his pocket. “Who?”
“The header from yesterday.”
“Oh, him.”
Dr. Mead went to the scrub room. He’d finished washing his hands and forearms when Will stuck his head in.
“Uhm, doc. . . . That body’s not here.”
Dr. Mead’s head snapped around “What do you mean? ‘He’s not here?’”
“He is not here. Not in the drawer.”
“Ah Hell! Do not tell me we released the wrong body to some funeral home.”
“I checked the log book and it’s correct.” He tapped the book in his hand. “Everyone that should have gone, has left. We don’t have any extras. We’re just missing one.”
Wet hands dripping on the tile floor, he pushed Will out of the way and walked to the freezers. He snatched the logbook from his assistant and opened the assigned door.
Empty.
Dr. Mead pulled the drawer out, then bent, and took a better look inside.
Empty.
They opened every drawer and matched all the bodies to the logbook. Search completed, Dr. Mead picked up the phone and braced himself for the shit storm.
~~~~~~
From a second floor window, McCabe watched Roman Nicolis exit the precinct. An older man dressed in a gray pinstriped suit waited. He couldn’t see their lips, but by the way Roman passed the man, McCabe doubted they exchanged words. The two entered a black Hummer and merged with the late afternoon traffic.
Automatically, the cop in him scanned the streets searching for anything out of place, while his brain rifled through the case. After lining the details up in his mind, one glaring factor remained clear, Nicolis was hiding something.
“Mercenary.” He gnashed. It was legal, barely. The amount of money his company made was obscene. That he was ex-military only made it worse. A former Marine, McCabe had no respect for those that took Semper Fi and twisted it for monetary gain.
He could’ve gone the mercenary, gun for hire route, after his honorable discharge from the Core, but he chose civil service. Being a cop, saving a life, a community, the nation was a higher calling. Few could survive the life or the sacrifice. Two dead marriages and a son that refused to speak to him, McCabe knew he was a statistic and took pride in his membership in a very large club. A lifer, death on the job was the only way he would retire.
Nicolis had a family. Adopted brothers? Hmmm, who adopted them? The old man in the suit held no resemblance to Nicolis. He could be the adoptive parent.
Tread carefully, his inner voice warned. Instinct is what every good cop relied on and his were never wrong. This may be a can of shit you may not want to kick.
McCabe prided himself on his interrogation techniques, but sitting opposite Roman Nicolis, it was him sweating in the box. Not once did the man speak, move or flinch during hours of interrogation and neither did he ask for an attorney. The bastard’s cold blue eyes targeted him. It wasn’t a stretch imagining Roman at the other end of a sniper rifle. No, he didn’t seem the type for long distance killing. He’d want to look you in the eyes while you died.
“McCabe.” Dotison, a member of the task force called, drawing McCabe’s attention away from the window. “The DNA’s back from the park and it’s a match to the stiffy in the morgue, Daniel Nicolis.”
“What?” He snatched the paper from Dotison’s hand. Nearby, a phone slammed.
“Guess who’s missing from the morgue,” another detective said approaching the small circle and whispered “Daniel Nicolis.”
“Damn, this soap opera keeps getting better,” McCabe mumbled. He spotted Lever entering the squad room. Immediately, he noted a difference.
Her hair. It wasn’t wrapped in a severe bun. Today, soft waves framed her angular face making her arrestingly striking.
Lever knocked a folder off her desk and bent over to pick it up.
Shit! She had an ass! And thighs! No baggy and shapeless suit today. The dark jacket skimmed her hips and was fitted to her waist. And her slacks hugged her rear, showing it wasn’t the flat, shapeless slab of flesh he envisioned.
Fuck, she’s wearing lipstick too!
He wasn’t the only one that noticed. All the men in the squad room had stopped in appreciation.
“Hey Lever,” one called to her. She waved, like a fucking debutante and had the nerve to blush when someone gave a slow whistle.
McCabe scanned the room wondering who she had eyes on, or worse, who she’d already done. Forget equality. Shit like this polluted a squad.
“I know what I saw. It’s the same thing they reported in the news!” A few feet away an elderly black woman smacked the paper down on Detective Henry’s desk. “Why else would I travel all the way down here from Rockland County?” She huffed, her lips so tight a crowbar couldn’t pry them apart.
What the hell was this about? McCabe walked a bit closer to Henry’s desk.
To Henry’s credit, he didn’t laugh when he picked up Worldwide Reports. “Ma’am, wha’cha want me to tell yah?” He shrugged and folded his arms across his barrel chest.
McCabe could see the title, Wild Beast Loose in Central Park, but not the picture.
“So you’re not even gonna take a report? Write something down? That thing lives across the street from me.” She demanded.
“Ma’am, you live in Rockland, this is Manhattan. Why would I take a report from a different county? We don’t have jurisdiction. You need to go to your county sheriff and file a report.” Normally a hothead, Henry’s control was admirable.
“I went to them.”
“And?” Henry hedged.
“They didn’t believe me.”
“Take the report, Henry.” McCabe ignored the surprise on his detective’s face. It meant a lot to the woman for her to travel all this way and her tenacity reminded him of his mother. God rest her soul.
“Thank you, Detective. . . .” Smiling, she waited for his last name.
“McCabe, Ma’am.”
She stretched out her hand. Her leathery palm was cool and surprisingly smooth in his hand.
“I’m Mrs. Irma Barker.”
“It’s a pleasure, Ma’am.” Good public relations never hurt.
He met Lever’s scrutiny and everyone else’s. “Glad to see you got your beauty sleep, Lever, while the rest of us worked. Grab the keys. We’re going to the morgue.”
~~~~~~
Lever didn’t ask why they were headed to the Medical Examiner. McCabe’s hostility was palatable, but so was hers.
She dreamed last night. A strange dream that left only lingering fragmented images of her, running, firing her Glock, pain, and blood . . . buckets of it. And a man. The same man that haunted her dreams since puberty. His face remained a mystery, but his body. God, what a fucking body.
She woke up this morning feeling strangely powerful, unlike the drained, listlessness she usually felt. No, she wasn’t suddenly Wonder Woman, but she woke with a smile on her face and a sway in her step. She actually took the time to fix her hair. When she reached for her usual wor
k suits, her hand strayed to the more flattering ones. She didn’t know why and she didn’t question as she dressed and took the time to dab some makeup on.
Her mood lasted as long as it took McCabe to holler her name across the squad room.
“McCabe, don’t think you’re taking over.” John Davies, a detective from another precinct, groused when they walked into the morgue.
Excellent, she wasn’t the only one that hated the bastard. The morgue was located in another police precinct. They had jurisdiction and whatever happened here was their case. So why did McCabe drag them here?
“I’m not, John.” McCabe tried to smile, but his pained grin might have cost him a kidney. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
“We found an orderly unconscious in a closet.” John shrugged. “I’ll send you a copy of the file when we’ve solved the case.”
Lever had never seen these detectives before, and though you couldn’t know everyone, they seemed to know McCabe.
“Awright, awright.” McCabe scratched his days’ growth beard. “Did you watch the video?”
John shook his head. “On our way to.”
“Okay, can we tag along? We’ll stand in the back.” He haggled.
John shook his head again.
“Come on, damn it. This Daniel guy ties directly into my case and he goes missing? Lemme watch the video with you and both our captains can brag how well their departments get along.”
McCabe’s begging worked, but she wished John made McCabe suffer a little longer. Fifteen minutes later, they gathered in front of a nineteen-inch black and white TV watching a VHS tape. Doctor Arthur Mead, his assistant, and a security guard joined them.
“The tape is old, but it still works. If our budget doesn’t get cut, we’re due for an upgrade, but fortunately, this is a relatively new tape.”
The tape wasn’t new enough. At best, parts were hazy, at worst, completely un-viewable.
“We loop it every thirty-six hours,” the security guard answered the question on everyone’s mind.
Eternity (Descendants of Ra: Book 1) Page 20
