Red Alert

by James Patterson

  We played the game and identified ourselves. He rang up.

  “No problem, Doctor,” he said after a brief dialogue. Then he turned to us. “He’s with a patient. I’ll let you know when you can go up.”

  “And what’s your name, asshole?” Kylie asked.

  “Eddy. With a y in case you’re adding me to your Christmas card list. Now cool your jets outside. We have a no-loitering-in-the-lobby policy.”

  By the time he waved us in ten minutes later, Kylie was seething. “I’ll be back for that punk-ass prick,” she said as we rode up in the elevator.

  “Calm down,” I said. “Remember the deal. I do the talking.”

  I rang the bell, and Langford cracked the door open.

  “Hate to bother you again, Doctor,” I said, “but it would speed up our investigation if you came down to the station and helped us out with a few more questions.”

  “Could we do this another time?” he said. “I’m with a patient.”

  “We can wait downstairs,” I said. “What time would work for you?”

  “I have an impossible schedule,” he said. “Plus I’m traveling this weekend. How about next Tuesday?”

  “How about now?” Kylie said, shoving her way in front of me. “If that doesn’t work for your schedule, how about five minutes from now?”

  “Excuse me, Detective,” he said, bristling, “but I’ve already told you everything I know about Aubrey Davenport.”

  “No you haven’t. Take a ride with us, and I’ll prove it.”

  The doorman had pressed all Kylie’s buttons, and she was unleashing her anger on Langford. I tried to get the situation back under control.

  “Dr. Langford, I’m sorry if we sound overly aggressive,” I said. “It’s just that some new evidence has come to light, and it would help if we could share it with you. Are you sure you can’t spare twenty minutes?”

  “No. If you’ve got new evidence, send me an email. I’ll get to it when I can.”

  “How about if we just put it on YouTube?” Kylie said.

  We had an ace in the hole, and Kylie was pissed enough to turn our cards faceup. If Langford was our murderer, he’d have known about the video. And now he knew that we knew. I was pretty sure he’d slam the door in our faces. But I was wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been under a lot of pressure. I very much want to help you catch Aubrey’s killer. I’ll go with you. Come in.”

  He opened the door, and we entered his waiting room. “I have a patient in my office. I can’t just leave her there. We’re in the middle of a hypnotherapy session.”

  “Does that actually work?” I said.

  “Oh, goodness, yes. It’s highly effective at helping people change behaviors like smoking or nail-biting. Also, a trained therapist can help people explore painful feelings and memories they may be hiding from their conscious mind. My patient is in a hypnotic state. Give me a few minutes to bring her out of it.”

  He stepped into his inner office.

  “I don’t get it,” Kylie said. “Why is he suddenly being so cooperative?”

  “Maybe it’s because you threatened to ruin his career by going public with the video. Nice way to let me do the talking, MacDonald.”

  “And now you’re bent out of shape because I got him to agree to come in for questioning? A hundred bucks says he cracks when we show him the video. Call Selma Kaplan. I want her behind the glass when he gives it up.”

  The inner door opened. “Detectives, please step in,” Langford said.

  We walked in. I didn’t see the woman in the chair by the door until we were on the opposite side of the room. She was attractive, in her midthirties, sitting quietly with her purse on her lap.

  “This is Karen,” Langford said. “She had a horrific childhood. She was raped repeatedly by her mother’s boyfriend, Lucas, and Mom did nothing to stop it. She was powerless then, but she’s much stronger now. Aren’t you, Karen?”

  The woman nodded.

  “Now that your mother and that evil Lucas are back in your life, what are you going to do if they try to hurt you?” Langford asked.

  “Kill them,” Karen said, taking a gun from her purse and pointing it at me and Kylie.

  The shrink flashed us a devilish smile. “Oh, she will,” he said. “I’m an expert at suggestion therapy. If you so much as move from where you’re standing now, Karen will shoot you dead. Isn’t that right, Karen?”

  “That’s right. I’ll shoot them dead.”

  “Mom,” Langford said, pointing at Kylie, “you’ve hurt your daughter enough, but now she has a newfound strength.” Now he pointed his finger at me. “As for you, Lucas, don’t even think about trying any of your old tricks.”

  He opened the door. “Good-bye,” he said, and shut the door behind him.

  My eyes scanned the room, stopping briefly on the flying elephant, who, according to Dr. Langford, symbolized the power of belief, and then they came to rest on the woman blocking the door.

  Karen didn’t blink. She stared straight ahead at the two of us, gun in hand, finger on the trigger.

  CHAPTER 63

  I’ve made some tough calls in my eleven-plus years as a cop. But I was face-to-face with the most excruciatingly difficult decision I’d ever had to make.

  I wondered if Dr. Langford had any idea of the ethical, moral, and legal dilemma he had left me and Kylie in. Probably not. Most civilians don’t have a clue about police protocol.

  My partner and I were twelve feet away from a woman who had a deadly weapon pointed at us. But she wasn’t a criminal. She was an average citizen who had been transformed into a killing machine by a man who got inside her head and rewired her brain.

  By all accounts she was an innocent victim. You might think that two veteran police officers would do everything they could to help her out of this untenable situation. Most people would expect us to talk to her calmly until we could convince her to turn over the gun.

  But that’s not what we were trained to do. Our official response in a situation like this was clear-cut: Shoot her dead.

  It’s Police Academy 101. If a suspect points a gun, or reaches for a gun in a way that indicates they’re going to shoot, police are authorized to fire. There’s no debate. We are supposed to aim directly at the suspect’s center mass and shoot to kill.

  The aftermath of shooting this woman would be horrendous. People would scream police brutality and argue that a person would never do something under hypnosis that went against their personal code of ethics. Did I have any idea whether Karen’s personal code would allow her to shoot a rapist and an abusive mother in cold blood? No. And I didn’t care.

  There was only one question on my mind. Could we kill her before she killed us?

  I locked eyeballs with Kylie, and then I slowly let my gaze drift to the rug about four feet from Karen’s left. Then I shifted and zeroed in on the corresponding spot four feet from Karen’s right. The message was simple: Kylie would dive to the left, and I’d dive to the right. We’d roll, draw, and fire.

  The odds were that Karen had no experience with guns, which meant that even if she pulled the trigger, she would do what most amateurs do and shoot the first round high while we were on the ground. She’d never have time to get off a second shot.

  Kylie nodded. She understood the plan.

  I angled my body to the right and shifted my weight to my left foot. Then I put three fingers to my face and counted down by tapping on my cheek. One…Two…

  “Karen, I am so proud of you,” Kylie said.

  My head snapped in her direction, but she didn’t look at me. She was focused on Karen.

  “What?” Karen mewed.

  “I’m proud,” Kylie said. “Proud of you.”

  “For what?”

  “For standing up,” Kylie said. “All these years I stood by and did nothing. I’m sorry, Karen. I wanted to help you…”

  “You did?”

  “Of course I did. I’m your mother,”
Kylie said, taking a step toward Karen. “But now you’re doing for yourself what I couldn’t do for you. You’re strong now, Karen. Nobody will ever hurt you again.”

  Kylie took another step forward. “I’m so very sorry,” she said. “You’re my daughter.” Another step. “I only want the best for you.” Then another.

  It was insanity. The two women were squared off at point-blank range. “I love you,” Kylie said, spreading her arms, begging her daughter’s forgiveness.

  Karen stood up. “Oh, Mama,” she whimpered, tears rolling down her cheeks. She reached out for an embrace that was probably decades overdue. Without hesitation, Kylie went from loving mom to deadly commando, delivering a furious knife-hand strike to Karen’s wrist.

  Bone snapped, Karen yowled, the gun exploded, and glass shattered. Elephant down. The bullet hit Dumbo right between his eager-to-please baby-blue eyes. A fitting metaphor for Karen’s sad existence.

  “I’m sorry, kiddo,” Kylie said, wrapping her arms around Karen and lowering her to the floor. “It was either this or blow your brains out. Mommy had to make a choice.”

  I retrieved the gun, which had fallen from Karen’s limp hand. Then I called for backup and paramedics. “We have a white female, midthirties, in need of a doc to set a broken bone and a shrink to bring her out of a hypnotic state.”

  It’s not a call Dispatch gets every day. “What kind of state did you say she was in, Detective?”

  “Hypnotic. Like a medically induced trance. Call Dr. Cheryl Robinson at the One Nine. She may be able to help. My partner and I are leaving the scene in pursuit of a murder suspect, Dr. Morris Langford. White, male, midforties, reddish hair.”

  I dropped to the floor. Kylie had tucked a pillow under Karen’s head and was about to cuff the dazed woman’s ankle to the coffee table.

  “Gosh, you’re the best mom ever,” I said.

  “Sorry I couldn’t shoot her, Lucas, but the paperwork’s a bitch.”

  She took Langford’s gun from my hand. “Now let’s find Dr. Strangelove and give him his gun back,” she said as we raced out the door.

  “Maybe I better take it,” I said.

  “Thanks, but I’d rather hang on to it,” she said, tucking the gun into her waistband. “There’s a good chance I may use it on Eddy with a y.”

  CHAPTER 64

  She didn’t use the gun, but as soon as we got to the lobby, Kylie slammed the doorman against a wall. “Where did he go, you dickless bastard?” she screamed.

  “Who?” he said.

  Wrong answer. She jammed her forearm into his windpipe and drove a knee into his groin. He doubled over, gagging, fighting for air, but he was no match for a trained cop whose adrenaline was firing on all cylinders after a near-death experience.

  I looked left and then right, hoping nobody was watching a high-profile detective use excessive force on a civilian whose only crime was that he was a flaming asshole.

  “Where did he go?” Kylie repeated as soon as Eddy caught his breath.

  “Cab,” the doorman squeaked. “Yellow…boxy cab…Nissan.”

  “Where is he going?” She dug hard into the pressure point on the webbing of his hand over his thumb.

  He dropped to the floor, sniveling. “They drove south. That’s all I know. I swear. Please stop. I’m sorry.”

  She cuffed him to a brass handrail just as the first squad car came to a screeching stop on West End Avenue.

  “Officers,” Kylie yelled, “make sure the lady in 7G gets immediate medical attention, then arrest this piece of shit for obstruction of justice. Take him down to Central Booking and make sure his paperwork gets the full bureaucratic monty. With any luck, he’ll get lost in the Tombs for a week.”

  It was a bogus charge. But by the time Eddy got untangled from the city’s clogged justice system, he’d never mouth off to another cop again. Hell hath no fury. We raced to the car and headed south.

  “Call Natty,” Kylie said, her spleen vented, her full attention on tracking down the fugitive psychiatrist.

  Natalie Brown is a sultry-voiced singer with a progressive rock band. She has luxurious ringlets of red hair down to her shoulders and a kick-ass body down to her toes. But sexy and talented doesn’t always pay the rent, so by day she works for the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

  If a detective wants to know where a certain cabbie was at a certain time, the TLC can track down that information. But not right away. That’s because they’re also busy tracking down lost briefcases, cell phones, and umbrellas for the six hundred thousand passengers who hail cabs every day. Natty Brown is our go-to person when Kylie and I need answers in a New York minute.

  “Hey, Red,” I said as soon as she picked up. “Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald. This is a screaming emergency.”

  “It always is,” she said. “Hit me.”

  “A yellow cab, probably a Nissan, picked up a single white male on West End Avenue near the corner of Eighty-Fourth Street about five minutes ago. Passenger is a murder suspect on the run.”

  “Gimme a minute,” she said, and I could hear the clacking of her nails on a keyboard. “Guys, I’ve got great news.”

  “What is it?” I said, raising the volume on the speaker.

  “The band is going to be on the cover of Prog magazine in October.”

  “My cab, Natty! My cab!”

  “Relax, Zach. I was just making small talk while I was waiting for the board to light up. Here we go. I’ve got two possibles. No, wait, this one is a Prius. I got your Nissan. License number is 8Y47. The driver’s name is—”

  “I don’t care what his name is. Just tell me where he is.”

  “Central Park West. He just turned onto the Seventy-Ninth Street transverse.”

  “Seal off the other end,” Kylie said, making a hard left onto 82nd Street.

  I grabbed the radio and barked orders at the dispatcher. “I need all available units to block off the transverse at Seventy-Ninth and Fifth. Officers in pursuit of a murder suspect riding in the back of an eastbound yellow cab, license 8Y47. Suspect is white, male, midforties, and may be armed.”

  “Zach! Zach!” It was Natalie.

  “We can take it from here, Natty,” I said. “Thanks for your—”

  “Don’t hang up,” she said. “This guy has a gun, and you’re sending in the cavalry? You’re putting my driver right in the middle of a shoot-out.”

  “Natalie, these cops are trained. They’re not going to start shooting with innocent bystanders in the line of fire.”

  “And how about the murderer in the back of 8Y47? Is he also trained not to shoot bystanders? Sorry, Zach, but I’m calling the driver and warning him.”

  “Wait: you can call him?”

  “Of course I can. I started to give you his name and cell number, but you weren’t interested.”

  “Change of plans,” I said. “I’m very interested. But if a cop calls him, he’s either going to freak out or he won’t believe me. Does this guy know you?”

  “I’m the hot redhead singer at the TLC. All the drivers know me, honey.”

  “Then tell him to stop his cab where he is, take the keys out of the ignition, and run as far from his passenger as he can. Tell him his life depends on it.”

  “His life and my job,” she said. “Hold on.”

  Kylie ran a red on Central Park West and turned into the transverse. The entire stretch of road through the park is a little over half a mile. About a quarter of a mile into it, the traffic started to back up. And then it came to a dead stop. The roadblock was in place. No cars were getting in or out.

  “Zach, the driver is out of his cab and running in your direction,” Natalie said. “He’s bought all of our albums, so don’t shoot him.”

  Kylie and I jumped out of our car and started running down the roadway, badges on chains around our necks, guns drawn, yelling, “Police! Stay in your vehicles. Get down and stay down,” as we ran. I could see the roof of the boxy yellow cab jutting up about a foot and a half abov
e the passenger cars behind it.

  A man ran toward us. It was the cabdriver. “He have gahn,” the man said in a thick Russian accent.

  “Gone where?” I said.

  “No, no, not gone. He have gahn.” He pointed a finger at me. “Bang. You dead.”

  “He has a gun?”

  “Yes. Small vun. Pistol.”

  “Are you sure?” Kylie asked.

  “Am I sure? The man point gahn at me. He says tell cops I have gahn.” The cabbie threw his hands up in the air. “You don’t believe me? Go see for yourself.”

  CHAPTER 65

  “A beloved therapist with not one but two gahns?” Kylie said as we ran toward the cab. “Clearly there’s more to Dr. Langford than his bio on Wikipedia would lead you to believe.”

  We closed in fast. A hundred yards, fifty, twenty, and then…

  “Don’t come any closer, Detectives.” It was Langford. He was still in the back of the cab, crouched low on the floor. I could see the top of his ginger hair through the window.

  “You’re out of options, Doctor,” Kylie said. “There’s no place you can go.”

  “There are always options, Detective. Sometimes it just boils down to the lesser of two evils.”

  “Your best choice right now is to get out of the cab with your hands held high,” she said.

  “I don’t think so. Not at my age, and certainly not in the state of New York.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “Don’t play me, Detective. You know what I’m talking about. I’m forty-seven, I’m healthy, and there’s no death penalty in New York. Dying is easy. It’s on everyone’s bucket list. But wasting away in a government-sanctioned dungeon until I’m seventy, or eighty, or ninety? Not an option.”

  “Shit,” Kylie whispered to me. “He’d rather die than go to jail. You know what that means?”

  I knew. Suicide by cop. It’s a time-tested way to avoid a long-term prison sentence. Just come out shooting so the cops are forced to shoot back and kill you.

  “Keep him talking,” she said. Then, using the line of backed-up cars for cover, she made her way east toward the roadblock.