Читать книгу Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 4-6: Blood Brother, In the Blood, Little Girls Lost - J. Kerley A. - Страница 13

New York’s Finest are close-lipped about a woman found with her abdomen sliced open in a vacant SoHo property. Perhaps the gruesome crime scene explains the look on the face of renowned Detective Sheldon Waltz, here conferring with an unnamed colleague …

At the housekeeper’s request – “Chew so famous!” – I autographed the article and took my breakfast tray inside. Naked on the bed with plate in one hand, fork in the other, I displaced the bad-dream bilge in my stomach with overcooked eggs and undercooked bacon and yearned for cheese grits with andouille. I showered for fifteen minutes, wishing I were at home on Dauphin Island, a hundred yards from the Gulf of Mexico, cool at this time of year, invigorating.

I dressed and walked to the cop shop, finding it kin to every station house in the civilized world: agitated bodies and loud voices, the smell of burnt coffee and all-nighter sweat, phones ringing, jammed-together desks piled with files. Waltz was in a glass-windowed office along the far wall. When I entered his office, he held up a copy of the New York Watcher turned to our photo.

“Must not have been any celebrity malfunctions overnight. You take a better picture than me. Have a seat.”

I sat. Waltz fixed me with a despondent gaze. “The techs are at their wits’ end, Detective. The hair you noticed on the floor at the scenes? It’s from hundreds of people. Men’s hair, women’s, different races. Plus dozens of fiber types, all mixed together.”

“What?”

“They did some tests, figure the killer collected hair from barber shops and beauty salons, fibers from anything. It’s an evidentiary nightmare.”

“Jeez, Shelly, even if you found something in the room that ID’d the guy …”

“The evidence would be polluted,” Waltz finished. “No sane DA would bring it to trial. It’s brilliant. How many madmen could figure out a ploy like this?”

I know one who could, I thought. But to everyone’s good fortune, my brother was in the fortress called the Alabama Institute for Aberrational Behavior, locked up tight and forever.

Waltz pushed aside files on his desk to make a place for his elbows and flicked a paper at me, Office of the Medical Examiner on the letterhead.

“The prelims on the autopsies. Both were done last night and side-by-side. Folger and I pushed it through.”

I grimaced at the bullet-pointed information. “The womb was taken?”

“Basically, the victims received amateur hysterectomies. I attended the post mortem. The pathologist told me it was like an angry monkey hacking away with a knife. When all that was over, the head was pushed into the wound.”

The picture that came to my mind was so ugly I shut it off.

“Jesus. Forensics find anything useful?”

“We’re screwed by the hairs and fibers on the scene. But we did ID the victim. Dora Anderson, thirty-six years of age. She works for the realtor. She went there to meet a prospective buyer.”

“Alone? At night?”

“It’s a fairly upscale neighborhood. The guy must have presented himself benignly on the phone. She felt safe in his presence, obviously.”

A man who could tear another person apart and still present a perfectly normal appearance and demeanor was a total psychopath, a human chameleon. I shivered involuntarily and tossed the prelim on Shelly’s desk. It felt greasy in my hands, like the vileness of the murder had tainted the paper.

“You realize our perp hates women, right? More than anything?”

He nodded. “By removing the womb, he castrated her. I’ve seen my share of gender kills, though nothing quite that extreme.”

“Shelly, you’ve got a real nightmare brewing out there.”

Waltz’s phone rang. He grabbed it up. I turned my eyes away and pretended not to listen but, like everyone in the world, cops especially, kept an ear tuned to his voice.

“I’m in the middle of a … She’s in town? The Chief wants me specifically? No, I can do it. I’ve got to do it, right? Listen, we have a guy here, a specialist in, uh, people with bad intentions. OK to bring him along? Good. We’re heading there now.”

He hung up. “I know you heard that, Detective. I’d be disappointed if you hadn’t.”

“I take it we’re going somewhere?”

“There’s a political convention in a week or so, women from around the country, leadership types. I’m supposed to vet the threats, determine which are hot air, which are truly dangerous.”

“Threats?”

“The keynote speaker is Cynthia Pelham.”

“Holy shit,” I whispered. Cynthia Pelham had been on the American political scene for over twenty-five years. Her saga started at age twenty-three, when the county sweet-potato queen with two years of junior college married a fifty-eight-year-old senator from Georgia.

By thirty, she was making statements contrary to the senator’s positions regarding women’s right to equal pay and maternity leave. She had three-fourths of a law degree, obtained at night, since she’d had to spend her days on the senator’s arm and smiling the sweet-potato smile at cameras.

By thirty-five, she had the degree, but not the senator. Following a high-profile divorce, the senator’s allies, of whom there were many, spread rumors that Cynthia Pelham was – depending on the day and rumormonger – a lesbian, a woman who bedded every man she saw, frigid, a drug addict, a drunkard and, according to the New York Watcher, maybe even an extraterrestrial. Ms Pelham’s friends, of whom there were few at that time, simply said, “She grew up.”

By forty, Pelham was representing a mainly poor congressional district with such concern and passion she was uncontested in the next election. Since she was unmarried, held centrist feminist ideals, and kept her personal life personal, rumors of lesbianism persisted, her denials met with scorn. Websites and blogs sprang up calling for either her vilification or beatification.

By fifty-two, her present age, she had been convinced by grass-roots support and a generous helping of ambition – never denied – to run for President of the United States. Though bitterly divisive among partisans and ideologues, she wielded enough centrist appeal that odds were even money she’d win.

A few nights back I’d seen news from a typical Pelham event in Miami. Three-quarters of the crowd were supporters, the others ranting, waving fists, and carrying signs and posters. One showed a mangy female dog with bloated teats, Pelham’s face in place of the dog head. The caption said, “Time to Put the Bitch to Sleep.”

I said, “How long will Pelham be here, Shelly?”

“She’s coming to coordinate the eastern seaboard campaigns. The lady will be in and out of town all the next week.”

“What about the Secret Service?”

“They’ll accompany Pelham while we vet everything else.”

“‘We’ meaning you?”

“Basic security isn’t my problem, a special team handles the bodyguard routine, checking traffic routes and so forth.” He sighed. “The Chief wants me to explain to Ms Pelham’s handlers how the NYPD will keep snakes from wriggling under her door.”

I nodded my sympathy. Given Pelham’s flashpoint index it would take someone with experience to determine which threats were hot air and which were dangerous. It was nasty work, like dredging sewage with your fingers.

Waltz stood and grabbed his hat. “Like you heard, I bartered you into the mix. Straighten your tie and let’s get running.”

The powwow was at Ms Pelham’s NYC headquarters, a storefront near Cooper Union. There were the usual banners and posters and photos of the candidate. The desks were staffed by earnest-looking folks with phones in one hand, pencils in the other.

We met in a back room with Ronald Banks, a square, bespectacled African-American Secret Service agent in charge of the operation. I took the room to be a place for strategizing, a large map of NYC on the wall, broken down into precincts, voting registrations or projections sticky-taped to the map. There was a round table, a few chairs. Boxes of campaign flyers on the floor.

“She getting many threats?” Waltz asked Banks.

“People love her or hate her. The ones who hate her all seem to have rabies. Good luck, Detective Waltz.”

Our heads turned to a commotion in the work area: Cheers, applause, whistles. Either someone was dispensing free money, or the candidate was visiting. Three minutes later, Cynthia Pelham entered our room, two aides de camp in her slipstream. Somewhere along the road the sweet-potato queen had been replaced by a whirlwind in a pantsuit and sensible shoes. She ran to a corner, cellphone to one ear, finger in the other, talking as loud as if she were alone for miles around.

“Dammit, I don’t care how much money he has, the sonuvabitch is trailing garbage. The day after we take his donation the bastard will be indicted for screwing a goat or something. See if you can piss him off and maybe he’ll give the money to the other side …”

The second she snapped the phone closed it rang again. She listened for a ten-count. “The answers are, respectively, Yes, Yes, No, Hell yes, and the lobster bisque.” She switched the phone off and tossed it to a woman beside her, a petite blonde with quiet eyes and a square jaw who tucked the phone in a fat briefcase I figured doubled as the candidate’s purse.

The sweet-potato queen had turned from a pretty girl into a handsome woman, auburn hair now mixed with gray, her form shaded to the heavier side, skin lined with experience. The eyes that looked piercing on television seemed more curious in real life. She aimed the eyes at Waltz and me, moved to us as if pulled by gravity.

“You gentlemen look official. Am I triple-parked again?”

Waltz did his best to make his sad face smile. It looked like he was fighting a sneeze. “We’re here because a lot of folks don’t like you, Congresswoman. Men especially. At least that’s what I hear on the news.”

Pelham laughed, hearty and deep and bordering on bawdy. Unlike many candidates, she wasn’t afraid laughter would mark her as more human than machine, therefore unfit for high office.

“A lot of ladies don’t like me either. Hell, a lot of people’s pets don’t like me, if I’m to believe my mail.”

“You do seem to seriously set some folks off,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow at my voice, then the eyes went serious. “A lot of politicians get hate mail from people who live under rocks, but mine seems to come from the people beneath the people under the rocks. I showed a few letters to Rich Stanzaro when we were primary opponents. He said, ‘I see some strange shit, Cyn, but no one ever wants to cut my tits off.’”

“Rabies, like I said,” Banks noted to Waltz.

Pelham turned the curious eyes to me. “You’re the first NYPD cop I’ve ever met with a Southern accent.” She raised an eyebrow and grinned. “South Bronx, maybe?”

“I’m with the police department in Mobile, ma’am. I’m consulting on another case and Detective Waltz thought I might have a useful insight or two.”

“Because you’ve done something like this before? Helped guard against the angry people?”

“In a way. Back in Mobile I’m part of a unit that deals with mentally unstable criminals.”

“How unstable?”

“They’d not only cut your tits off, ma’am, they’d bread ‘em and fry ‘em up for supper.”

Eyes widened around us. Even Waltz raised an eyebrow. There was a moment of silence before the congresswoman barked the laugh, slapped my shoulder.

“I’m glad they sent out for Southern cooking, hon. You got some pepper in your gravy.”

Pelham shot us either a peace or victory sign and scurried off to pump up the cheerleader section out front. I stayed quiet as Waltz explained to aides and senior staff how he’d be checking the hate mail and unsavory phone calls, cautioning everyone to stay alert for strange people, incidents, and items in the mail.

The whole trip to and from Pelham’s HQ took under an hour. Cargyle, the young guy from Technical Services, ran across the floor as we returned to the detectives’ room, excitement in his voice and a tape cassette in his hand.

“Dr Prowse’s arrival was caught on security cameras at LaGuardia. I found two sections when she’s on camera. The first is by the baggage carousel, the second is going out the door. She seems normal, picking up her bag, heading out to grab a cab. She talks to a man beside her for a second. Probably small talk with another passenger.”

“Folger and her crew in?” Waltz asked.

“Due back shortly, but I don’t know exactly when.”

“Let’s get a preview.”

Cargyle wheeled a playback system into a conference room. He had a bag of tools and tape and electronic doohickeys slung over his skinny shoulder. His wristwatch had more buttons than my truck’s dashboard. He had not one but two skinny telephones. If Cargyle was like our Tech Services crew in Mobile, he read schematics instead of books.

“You just now find the footage?” I asked him.

“I’ve been at LaGuardia all night. Found one image at three, the other a half hour ago.”

“There all night, here all day? You ever sleep, buddy?”

Waltz said, “Cargyle’s assigned to the precinct, his training phase. I’m making sure he gets the full learning experience.”

“Full and more,” Cargyle grinned. The tape stuttered into action. The quality was better than your standard convenience-store cameras and I figured Homeland Security had a bigger budget than the Gas‘n’Gulp.

“Here’s the first segment,” Cargyle announced. “By the baggage carousel.”

I held my breath as Vangie stepped into the frame, flight bag over her shoulder. She ran to the carousel and snatched her suitcase. She paused, then spoke to a white-shirted man beside her, slender, facing away. The scene lasted all of five seconds.

“That’s snippet number one,” Cargyle said. “The second is a couple of seconds longer, but not much.”

The edited video jumped to the next scene. The camera was positioned above the door, the crowd herding tight for the exit like cattle down a chute.

“Here she comes,” Waltz whispered, picking Vangie from the on-rushing mob while she was still a blur. I leaned close to the screen. It took a second to discern the familiar features, the large eyes, dark and compact hair, rosebud lips. The eyes looked wary and tight with tension as Vangie exited the terminal with the slender man by her side, his head again canted away. At the last moment, he snapped his face toward the camera. His grin was ecstatic, his joy dominating the screen.

My spine turned to ice. I couldn’t choke back a gasp.

“What?” Waltz said. “You know him?”

“I’ve seen him before,” I whispered. “He’s a patient at the Institute. Brilliant and murderous and unpredictable.”

I didn’t add that he was my brother.