“Be my guest,” I said, and stepped aside.
Donovan and Boyle stormed across the lawn and stopped in front of us. Before they could say a word, Kylie went on the attack.
“What the hell do you two clowns think you’re doing?” she said. “Back off. This is a crime scene.”
One of them was tall, over six feet, with dark hair and a pretty-boy face. The other was shorter, with thin lips and a buzz cut—not nearly as pretty. I still didn’t know who was who.
“Our crime scene,” Buzz Cut said. “I’m Boyle, that’s Donovan. We’ve been running the Hazmat case.”
“From what I hear, you’ve been running it into the ground. Effective an hour ago, it’s ours.”
“Says who?”
“My boss, Captain Delia Cates, her boss, Police Commissioner Richard Harries, and his boss, the mayor.”
“This is bullshit,” Boyle said. “Why the hell were we pulled off?”
“You weren’t pulled off,” Kylie said. “The case was reassigned to NYPD Red. I’m MacDonald, that’s Jordan, and you’ve been assigned to our task force.”
“We work for you?” Donovan asked.
“You have a problem with that, Detective Donovan?” Kylie said.
“You’re damn right I do.”
“In that case, send everything you’ve got on the Hazmat Killer to our office. We’ll take it from there.”
“The hell you will. Nobody at Red gave a rat’s ass about the first three victims, but now that Muriel Sykes is involved, the mayor jumps in and moves the case to the top of the dog pile. What’s your job? Get as much dirt on Parker-Steele as possible so he can sandbag Sykes’s campaign?”
“This isn’t about politics,” Kylie said. “It’s about finding a serial killer.”
“What the hell do you think we’ve been doing for the past four months?”
“Funny, that’s what the mayor said. ‘What the hell have those two cops been doing for the past four months?’ If you don’t like his decision, file a grievance with the department.”
Donovan looked at his partner. Clearly they didn’t want to be second string, but they had zero leverage, and Kylie knew it. Then he looked at me as though maybe I could talk some sense into Kylie. I didn’t blink.
“Make up your mind, boys,” she said. “You on board?”
“Hey, if they don’t want it,” Casey said, “me and Bell would be happy to—”
“Back off,” Donovan said. “It’s been our case since day one, and we’re not being squeezed out because of some political bullshit. We’re staying.”
“You can start by getting the files over to us at the One Nine in twenty minutes,” Kylie said, handing him her card. “I’ll be sure to tell the mayor how cooperative you’ve been.”
My two puppies looked as if someone had just taken their favorite squeeze toy. “Does that mean you won’t be needing us?” Bell said.
“You guys were a big help, and we appreciate it,” I said.
“But these guys are in, and we’re out,” Bell said.
I nodded. Kylie, who always likes to get in the last word, offered up two.
“For now.”
Chapter 13
“Did you get all the nasty out of your system?” I asked Kylie after the two teams went their separate ways.
“I always have a reserve tank,” she said.
“It sucks to have to trade off two gung ho cops for two with brooms up their asses,” I said.
“Zach, we could have kept all four of them,” Kylie said. “A case like this, we have a blank check. Hell, we could pull together a task force of fifty people and spend all our time bogged down in our own bureaucracy. The only thing this case really needs is you and me doing what we do best. I asked Donovan and Boyle to stick around because they have a serious learning curve. But as soon as we get up to speed, I will tap back into my tank of nasty and tell them to go play in traffic.”
We spent another hour at the crime scene. Chuck Dryden’s people were still combing the area, and except for the shopping cart, nothing new turned up. We drove back to the office.
There’s no Red precinct. Like a lot of elite units, we’re housed in an existing precinct—in our case, the 19th on East 67th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues. The One Nine is home to more than two hundred uniforms and dozens of detectives, but it’s still big enough for Red to set up shop on the third floor, away from the day-to-day madness that goes on downstairs.
But we still have to walk through the tumult on our way upstairs. And you can’t get anywhere without being seen by Bob McGrath, the desk sergeant.
“Thanks for the wheels, Sarge,” Kylie said.
“Anytime, Detective,” McGrath said. “Hang on a sec. I’ve got something else for you.”
He reached under his desk and pulled out a cardboard file box. “This was just delivered. It’s your Hazmat files.”
I picked it up. It weighed next to nothing.
“Is that all?” I said. “Just the one?”
“That’s what they gave me. That’s what I signed for,” he said. “Want to see the paperwork?”
“No, Sarge, it’s just that we expected more.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. Some cases we get ten, twenty boxes, and the detectives start moaning that they’ll never get through it all. This load’s a lot lighter. I thought you’d be happy.”
“You know how it is with detectives,” I said. “We’re never happy.”
I carried the box to our office, and Kylie opened it.
“This is four months’ worth of investigation?” she said. “There are only four folders. Alex Kang, Sebastian Catt, Antoine Tinsdale, and Donald Li.”
“I recognize the first three names. They’re victims,” I said. “Who’s Li?”
Kylie flipped through his file. “He has a master’s in social work. He’s a detective working gangs in Chinatown. Donovan and Boyle asked him to come up with a profile of the killer.”
“Is he a shrink?” I asked.
She took another look. “It doesn’t say ‘Dr.’ Li, so I doubt it.”
I pulled the Li file from the box.
“I know a real doctor,” I said, “and she’s a damn good profiler. I think I’ll drop by Cheryl’s office and ask her to take a look at this guy’s notes. I’ll be back in a few.”
“I thought she was in Boston,” Kylie said as I headed for the door.
“Just for the weekend. She flew back on the early morning shuttle.”
“So then you haven’t seen her since when—Friday?”
“Thursday afternoon.”
“In that case, I doubt if you’ll be back in a few. But don’t take too long. Election Day is a week from tomorrow.”
Chapter 14
God bless Fred Robinson.
For eleven years he was married to a beautiful, intelligent, self-assured woman. Then he dumped her for someone younger, dumber, and needier.
His loss, my gain.
I met Cheryl four years ago, when I was hoping to get into Red. She was the shrink assigned to probe my brain to make sure I was a good fit.
I was nervous as hell, and she knew it.
She smiled. “Don’t worry, Detective Jordan. I won’t bite.”
And I wouldn’t mind if you did, Dr. Moist Red Lips, Inviting Brown Eyes, and Smooth Caramel Skin Framed by Tumbling Waves of Thick Jet-Black Hair. I was only twenty-nine, but I was ready to cross sleeping with a hot Latina psychologist off my bucket list.
A few years later, Cheryl told me she was 90 percent Irish, but thanks to her Puerto Rican grandmother, she looks about as Irish as J.Lo. But back then she was still sporting her wedding ring, and I figured hitting on a married woman during a job interview would be a bad career move.
We chatted about my background, both personal and professional, and then she popped a loaded question: “Do you think rich, powerful people deserve a better class of service from the police?”
“Absolutely not,” I said, which sounds like th
e exact wrong answer to give when you’re trying to get into the superelite squad created to serve the rich and famous.
She didn’t react. All she said was, “Can you elaborate?”
“The rich don’t deserve any better police protection than the homeless. What they do deserve, especially when they’re the victims of a crime, is a cop who is sensitive to their needs, not one who resents them because they’re rich or spoiled or egomaniacal.”
“You come from a working-class background, Detective Jordan. What makes you confident you know how to deal with someone like Donald Trump?”
“My mother was a makeup artist—movies, TV, fashion shoots. She dealt with them all—the divas, the prima donnas, the rock stars, each one more entitled than the last. She taught me how to handle them.”
“How?”
“‘Don’t try to change them,’ she used to say. ‘Remember that deep down inside they’re as insecure as the rest of us. And the room is never big enough for two narcissists, so check your own ego at the door.’”
“You had a smart mom,” Cheryl said. “It sounds like she got along with everybody.”
“Almost everybody, except for this one guy she argued with constantly.”
Everyone loves show business gossip, and I knew I had her. “You don’t have to tell me his name,” she said, “but I’m dying of curiosity. Who was it?”
“My father.”
I got the job.
Cheryl and I became friends early on, and then, when her marriage started to head south, I became the only friend she wanted to confide in. Two weeks after her divorce, we became friends with benefits. And the benefits have been fantastic.
The door to Cheryl’s office was open, and I walked in. As soon as she saw me, she bounded from behind her desk, wrapped her arms around me, and kissed me hard. “God, I’m happy to see you,” she said, pressing her body against mine.
And just like that, I went limp in some places, not so limp in others.
Cheryl and I had been together only a few months, and I wasn’t ready for this passionate a reunion. But my body kicked into autopilot, and my hips started doing small circular motions against hers.
“Exactly how happy are you to see me?” I said, kicking the door shut and maneuvering her toward the inviting baby-blue sofa that came in handy whenever she had to work around the clock.
“You’re crazy,” she said, pushing back but not pulling away.
“Crazy? Lousy diagnosis, Doc. Try horny.” I started unbuttoning her blouse.
I thought she’d stop me, but she began kissing, groping. “Lock the door,” she whispered.
I let her go, turned, and reached for the lock. And then someone on the other side kicked the door. Not knocked. Kicked. Hard.
“Just a minute!” I yelled, and waited for Cheryl to scramble back to her desk and button up.
I opened the door. It was Matt Smith.
“Zach, how are you, mate?” he said. “I didn’t know you’d be here, or I’d have brought you a coffee.”
A true New Yorker would have said kaw-fee, but Matt is a British import, so it came out kah-fee.
He had a Starbucks cup in each hand, which was why he’d kicked at the door instead of just opening it and walking in.
“I thought you could use a bit of a bracer,” Matt said, setting one on Cheryl’s desk. “Soy latte with an extra shot of espresso—right?”
Her eyes lit up. “Thank you, Matt. You didn’t have to do that.”
“My pleasure. And thank you for that book. I read it over the weekend. Quite the eye-opener. I have a few questions, but they can wait. You two look busy. Zach, I heard you’re on the Hazmat case. I ran a trace on the latest video he posted and came up empty, but I hope you’ll still be needing a tech-head.”
Matt is an übergeek who could probably hack the Pentagon if we asked him. He’s smart, analytical, and fun to work with. Hands down, he’s our best IT guy. There’s only one small problem. He doesn’t look like a nerd. In fact, he looks more like David Beckham than Bill Gates, and right now that was annoying the hell out of me.
“Oh, I’ll definitely be calling you,” I said.
“Super,” he said, and broke into a wide, perfect smile that totally contradicted everything I’d ever heard about shoddy British dental practices.
He left the room and started to close the door behind him.
“Leave it open,” Cheryl said. “Zach and I could use a little air in here.”
“I guess this means we’re not going to pick up where we left off?” I said as soon as Smith was out of earshot.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said, “but now that I’ve had a minute to think, I remembered that this is a police station.”
“So? It’s not like we were going to commit a crime.”
“Get a grip, cowboy,” she said. “We’ll finish this after hours, and I promise you it will be worth the wait.”
I had no doubt that it would.
Like I said, God bless Fred Robinson.
Chapter 15
The furniture in Cheryl’s office was too well designed and too comfortable to be department issue. She had decorated at her own expense, picking fabrics and colors that struck a nice balance between her professional and feminine sides. Her degrees were on the wall, but there were no personal photos. She was, after all, a shrink.
“Have a seat, Detective,” she said, sitting down behind the glass-topped table that was her desk.
I sat across from her in a guest chair that was covered in peach fabric.
“So, you and Kylie picked up the Hazmat case,” she said, all business.
“His latest victim is Evelyn Parker-Steele,” I said.
“I know. I saw the video. That poor woman. How can I help?”
“The case files on the first three victims are pretty slim. Kylie and I still have to go through them. But there was a fourth file—a profile of the killer. I wanted you to take a look at it.”
I put the file on her desk.
She looked at it, but instead of picking it up, she slipped the lid off the latte and took a small sip. “Who’s the profiler who pulled this together?”
“His name is Donald Li.”
“I don’t know him,” she said.
“I doubt if he’s in your league. He’s a detective with the Chinatown precinct. He has a master’s in social work.”
She slid the file back to my side of the desk. “I’m happy to help, but I’m not going to look at this. Just let me see what you’ve got on the victims, and I’ll give you a fresh take.”
“That’s what I planned to do,” I said. “Maybe I came over a little too soon, but I just wanted to get you in the loop.”
“I think you just wanted to get me on that sofa,” she said, and took another sip.
“Yeah, that too,” I said. “I haven’t seen you in four days, and I needed an excuse to stop by your office. This file was a lame idea. I’d have been better off bringing you coffee. Soy latte with an extra shot of espresso—I didn’t know that was your drug of choice.”
“That’s because when I see you at night, I prefer Chardonnay, but the department frowns on that during the day.”
“And Matt Smith knows what you drink?” I said.
“Yes. He’s in the office next door.”
“So he does coffee runs for you?”
“No. He brought it as a thank-you. I gave him a book on birth order.”
“Why?”
“He has two brothers. One older, one younger—”
“Ah, the old middle child syndrome,” I said. “Poor Matt didn’t get enough attention from his parents, so now he’s looking for love in all the wrong places.”
“For God’s sake, he bought me a coffee. It’s a nice gesture. He’s a nice guy.”
“Yeah, a nice, good-looking single guy. Are you going to tell me that was strictly a thank-you-for-the-book gesture? He wasn’t hitting on you?”
“Maybe he was. I’m recently single, and nobody but C
aptain Cates and Kylie know that you and I are dating. As far as Matt is concerned, I’m fair game. So maybe he was flirting with me. I wasn’t flirting back.”
“Of course not. I was standing right there.”
“Zach, as a woman, I’m flattered at the absolutely insane conclusions you are jumping to, but as a shrink, all I can say is get a grip.”
The latte had cooled down, and she sat there staring at me and sipping from the cup.
“Taste good, does it, luv?” I said, putting on my best English accent.
“Quite,” she said, trying not to smile.
“Did we just have our first fight?”
She thought about it. “Not a biggie, but yes, we did.”
“Good,” I said. “Then I have something to look forward to.”
“You’re looking forward to a bigger fight?” she said.
“No,” I said, picking up my file and heading toward the door. “Makeup sex.”
I didn’t look back, but I could hear the laughter.
Chapter 16
“We’re in deep doo-doo,” Kylie said when I got back to my desk.
“Deeper than when I left ten minutes ago?” I said.
She held up one of the Hazmat files we’d just inherited. “Do you remember whose brilliant idea it was to keep Donovan and Boyle involved in this case?”
“I believe you were dazzled by their scintillating personalities and their—and I quote—‘serious learning curve.’”
“I was dead wrong on both counts.” She dropped the file on the desk. “There’s nothing in here.”
“Define nothing.”
“Most of it is backgrounder stuff. Bios, ME reports, and rap sheets on the victims. We could get more by reading Pete Hamill’s column in the Daily News. Three murders, Zach. These guys investigated three murders and came away with zero leads.”
“Then I guess we’re in luck,” I said. “We’ve got a fourth murder, and they haven’t screwed it up yet. Put those aside, and we’ll start with Evelyn Parker-Steele. That’s the one where we have the learning curve.”
“Are you in La-La Land?” she said. “We’ve got squat. Everything we know we got from a fast-talking politician. And that was before Parker-Steele changed her status from MIA to DOA, and before she outed herself and confessed to murdering her gay lover. As far as I’m concerned, we’re at square one.”
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