by Harker Moore
“Nah, our boy Rozelli’s more interested in current events lately. A real news junkie. That right, Roz?”
Rozelli shook his head, laughing. He’d suffered through this routine before. At first he’d been stupid enough to take the bait. Lamely justifying his interest. Telling them she had better sources than they did. But he learned fast to keep his mouth shut, and take it like a man.
“Hey, Talbot, better watch out,” Vince called over his shoulder. “Your partner’s IQ is gonna top yours. With all this information goin’ inside his brain.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Talbot smiled, distracted for a moment from the data on the screen.
“Shh, guys, you disturbing our boy’s concentration here.” Vince wasn’t going to let it rest.
Several other detectives had walked over, gathered around the television. Vince’s ribbing usually drew a crowd.
The show’s lead-in brought a round of snickers. When Zoe Kahn’s image burst onto the screen, a flurry of catcalls and whistles erupted.
“I learned early, if you want something you have to go after it.” Zoe’s opening words. “You can’t sit around and wait for life to come to you.”
“Yeah, and we all know what Kahn wants.” Dietz got in a punch.
“Sometimes getting what you want requires risks. And if what you want also happens to be what others want, stretches to include some common good, you have to be willing to take even greater risks.”
The camera moved in for a close-up.
“This Monday, I took such a risk. For Helena Grady, Ana Phelps, Sarah Laraby, Leslie Siebrig, Solange Mansour, Robin Olsen, and Erica Talise. For all the women in New York.” She paused, her features subtly realigning themselves. “My risk paid off.” The camera held her face. “New Jack has sent me a message.”
Rozelli was on his feet. The Operations Room fell silent, except for the scraping of Talbot’s chair as he stood.
“This morning, I received a package.” The camera finally left her face. Zoomed in on a box resting on a desk. The cover was off. Tissue concealed what lay beneath.
Zoe’s hand came into the picture, slowly releasing the tissue. It rustled as she parted its folds. The camera’s eye went deep, locking on the contents.
“I suppose I am to take this as a warning.” Zoe’s disembodied voice was slow and discrete.
It was just a paper doll. Like the kind children made. A leg cut out from one magazine. An arm from another. Bits and scraps glued together to make a whole form. But this doll wasn’t like any design a child would craft. Rather it was created from a vision of madness. And the muse who had inspired the handiwork was easily recognizable. Zoe Kahn’s head sat atop the puzzle-pieced body. A track of small silver staples followed a thin black line drawn down the doll’s torso. Red ink had been added to make you remember the blood.
Then the moment was broken by movement, of Sakura parting the detectives who’d gathered round the televison, like Moses parting the waters. The lieutenant had obviously been watching a bit of television himself. His eyes found Rozelli’s. And though the actual words would have been out of character, the detective read loud and clear in Sakura’s steely silence, Bring in the bitch. Now.
“Rozelli!” Zoe was shouting with all the air in her lungs, thoroughly enjoying her anger. “You’re going to pay for this, Rozelli! Big time.”
She gave one last scowl for the benefit of the surveillance camera and let go the bars, walking to sit on the holding cell’s narrow metal bench. It was hard to hold on to outrage when what she felt like doing was laughing. Throwing her into the cooler! Was Sakura losing his mind? Didn’t he have a clue as to how this was going to play?
She took a few minutes to consider tomorrow’s lead-in. This reporter harassed by NYPD goon squad. It was too good. Her glance went back to the camera. She blew a kiss to whoever was watching. Now if only her sources could get her a copy of that tape. There was little chance of that, though it really didn’t matter. Allen, bless his producer’s little black heart, had commandeered a cameraman at the studio to get the footage of her arrest, or whatever the hell it was. She didn’t think those words had actually been used. Going downtown with your little package. That’s what Johnny had said. She was sure she remembered it right, because then she’d said to him that it wasn’t the only little package around. And the other detective—Walt, wasn’t it?—had laughed, and that had wiped the smirk off Johnny’s face. As if he were going to be the only one having fun in all of this.
Speaking of fun, it was getting boring in this hole. How long was this game going to take? She hadn’t even had her phone call.
She had walked up to the bars again, about to resume her shouting, when James Sakura appeared. The look on his face took the air out of her lungs. He stopped not two feet away and stood staring at her, as always so much taller than expected, his height exaggerated by his thinness. He seemed so damn grim that for once she had to work at not being intimidated, reminding herself that the hint of cruelty she had always detected in his mouth was also what she found most attractive.
“What am I doing here?” She spoke first, determined to seize the initiative.
“You’re being held on a possible obstruction-of-justice charge.” The tone in which he made this ridiculous statement really teed her off.
“Obstruction of justice? That’s . . .”
“. . . causing or inducing the alteration or concealment of any object,” he cut through her protest, “thereby impairing such object’s integrity or availability for use in a criminal proceeding.”
“What criminal proceeding?” She shot back, unfazed now. “You don’t even have a suspect.”
“We could have one, Ms. Kahn, if your grandstanding hasn’t destroyed any fingerprints, or other physical evidence.”
“I was careful how I handled that . . . thing,” she countered. “And I notice that you didn’t say anything about specific intent while you were quoting me from the statute. I had no intent of keeping any evidence from you, and putting that thing on national television is the opposite of concealment.”
The line of his mouth changed. It wasn’t a smile. More a nonverbal touché. Perhaps she had surprised him by knowing the law. Had he actually bought into the bimbo bit? She had always given him the credit of granting her intelligence.
“Are you going to let me out of here now?” she spoke again. “You have no grounds to charge me, and I’m sure the network is sending an attorney.”
“I am going to let you out, Ms. Kahn.” He was all control. “But I hope I’ve made my point.”
“Which is what, exactly? That you’re a closet fascist?” Maybe he’d like that little turn of phrase.
“That you’re on dangerous ground here, and I don’t just mean legally.”
“Why, Lieutenant Sakura, I didn’t know you cared.”
That kind of flippancy was a real mistake. His expression hardened. “I do care, Ms. Kahn,” he said. “And this isn’t the game that you seem to think it is.”
And just that quickly it hit her. How much it all meant to him. How much it all hurt. He didn’t see himself as the hero of the piece. He was not on her side of the glass at all.
“I’ll have one of my officers let you out,” he was saying now. “I assume you’ll be willing to answer a few questions before you leave.” He had begun walking away.
“Lieutenant . . . ,” she called him back. “I really do want to help. . . . Catch this freak, I mean. Do you think it was him? That he sent me the package? . . . I won’t quote you.”
She saw him hesitating, and felt as if she’d passed some test when he turned back to answer. But he took the pleasure away.
“I don’t know if it was the killer or not, Ms. Kahn. Some of us don’t work from a script.”
Even this late in the day, the Operations Room was a noisy hive of conversation and constantly ringing phones. Tables and desks had been warrened together as more and more officers were detailed to the burgeoning investigation, and the fic
tion of eight-hour shifts continued to blur with the ever-increasing load of paper and legwork.
Willie had hung around till lunchtime, leaving for her office and her afternoon block of patients. Now she’d come back to continue speaking with as many task force members as she could. Trading theories and information. Soaking up the buzz on all the excitement she had missed this afternoon, having returned only after Kahn had been released and the supposed killer’s communication sent off to the lab. She had seen some Polaroids that had been taken of the object, but was reserving further judgment until she’d had a chance to get a better look from the videotape of Kahn’s show that the network was sending over. But a “paper doll,” even a grotesque one, was not the sort of response she’d expected from this killer. The method in this monster’s madness was complex, but its expression was literally visceral. The rearrangement of organs was an ordered butchery whose essential meaning she had yet to grasp.
Preliminary tests on Franks’s impounded van had found no traces of blood, but plenty of evidence that the vehicle had been used to move drugs. According to Franks, who was cooperating as part of some deal with the District Attorney’s office, Lancaster had been instrumental in getting product past the safeguards at the clubs in exchange for his own personal pipeline. So the Shaman now had drug charges to deal with in addition to the assault on Nicole Hansen. He and Franks had each made bail, but she felt fairly confident that both would soon be off the streets for a while.
Until that time the task force would keep as much surveillance on the deejay as was possible, but she did not think that she had been wrong about Randy Lancaster. The self-styled “Shaman” was basically your low-rent sociopath preying on the vulnerabilities of young women. His violent impulses, exacerbated by drug use, could erupt to endanger his sexual partners, but she did not believe he was made of the stuff of a serial killer.
She glanced at her watch, feeling suddenly exhausted. She had been standing with a knot of officers, half-listening as Walt Talbot gave a rundown on the programs he’d set up for cross-checking data. Now she excused herself and, shouldering her purse, went over to where Michael was working alone at a desk. “I just realized how tired I am,” she said to him. “You thinking of going home?”
“Not yet.” He glanced up from the screen. “But you go ahead. Pick up something for us to eat.”
“You sick of Chinese?”
“Chinese is fine. Get some ribs.”
She pulled over a chair and sat watching his hands moving smoothly on the keyboard. She had no real evidence that the marked improvement in his mood had any more to do with his ex-wife than the deterioration that had preceded it. But she would have taken a bet on both. Whether it was calculated or not, Margot could still get to him. That he had seemed happier these last couple weeks was good. That his well-being could be materially dependent on the whims of his ex-wife was something that got to her.
He looked up. “I thought you were leaving.”
“I decided to sit for a minute.”
He shook his head, looking at her with those deep blue eyes, an expression she found unreadable. “Let’s go,” he said, and smiled. “I can finish this tomorrow.”
“You sure?”
He nodded, started shutting down the computer.
“Sergeant Darius. . . .” A clerk was calling from a desk across the room. “There’s a call for you. Line five.”
Michael reached for the phone. Punched in the button. “Darius,” he said.
She sat idly, watching his profile as he stared ahead. He listened, silent, for what seemed like minutes.
“Where was she was going . . . exactly?” he spoke into the phone at last. She could sense the effort to keep his voice neutral.
He picked up a pen and scribbled notes. “No,” he said, “it’s better if you stay put and work with the authorities here. Call me at this number if you hear anything.” He was out of the chair and reaching for his jacket as he rattled off the number of his cell.
“What’s wrong?” she said to him, but he was already moving away. She grabbed her purse and followed, catching up as he was signing out, the keys to a squad car in his hand.
“Who was that on the phone?”
For a moment, as his eyes turned to her, she had the horrible feeling that he had to focus to remember who she was.
“Reese Redmond.” His voice was flat. He was walking even faster now, heading for the elevators. She clutched at his arm to keep up, aware that people were watching.
“Michael . . .” She heard her voice pleading. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
He shook away her hand in a gesture she would want to believe was unconscious. They had reached the elevators as one was going down. He pushed through the crowd, securing the final space. She was still trying to reach him as the doors closed in her face. But she’d looked into his eyes, and she’d heard his words.
The boys . . . His voice had died mid-sentence. Then terrible, wrong, and laced with truth: My wife is missing, he’d said.
Kiss of death.
Friday evening and the traffic was impossible. Darius used the siren. He didn’t care what the rules said. He needed speed. And he wanted the noise to drown the phrase, so relentless now in his head. Kiss of death.
Some part of him understood what he’d just done to Willie, the stupid thing that he’d said. . . . My wife. But that was behind him now, the present all-devouring. Because despite the benign possibilities—that Reese might have misunderstood the time Margot planned to return, or that Margot might have simply neglected to turn on her cell phone—there was another more ominous explanation that his gut had already laid claim to. Something really was wrong.
Because Margot was neither imprecise nor careless. And it spoke to the depth of Redmond’s concern—that after his first call to the gallery in Kingswood to establish that Margot had indeed been there with the boys to pick up the small painting that had been reframed, after his increasingly urgent calls to her friends, to hospital emergency rooms, and finally to Missing Persons—that the man had been desperate enough to contact him.
He was grateful for that. Things might have changed from the days when a women seriously overdue from a shopping trip would not immediately set off official alarm bells, especially with children involved. But there would still be a lag time while authorities went back over the checklist of simple explanations, before engaging a full-scale response. Redmond would have to remain behind to deal with that frustration, fighting his every instinct to go out searching for Margot and the boys himself. Darius had no such constraint.
Kiss of death. The words continued to eat their way through his brain. But now, out of the city, he turned off the siren. Kingswood was not far, less than an hour from Manhattan.
Kiss of death.
Why had he done it? Kissed her like that the last time they’d met? Because it was what they both wanted. That much he knew. That much of the answer was easy.
They had always wanted each other in the physical sense. Part of Margot’s attraction for him was the challenge of proving how much she did want him. She had looked so in control that first day he’d noticed her in class—the gray-green eyes cool and intelligent. An ice maiden despite the flaming hair.
Only she wasn’t ice. And he’d known it. Known that her appraisal had been anything but cool. Known that he wanted her, and was going to get her. Because having Margot Connell in his life had been the first thing he had wanted since that day in high school when he’d come home to find his sister dead. It was in the aftermath of Elena’s murder that he’d had to consider that the blackness he’d always felt reaching out from his dreams was not the exception but a permanence in his life, a poison that would sooner or later bring everything that he loved to ruin.
But he was weak, and some selfish brightness that remained had wanted to believe that things could change. Margot had seemed so practical and assured that he’d convinced himself she would be safe, that her disbelief in anything so intangible as a curse wo
uld give her a kind of immunity.
But it hadn’t. Because Margot loved him, or at least loved what they had in bed. Her need for him was the chink in her armor, the place where the poison could get in. For, of course, he had ruined everything. He could not forget Elena’s murder or his obsession with the evil that had let it happen. His legal studies were unsatisfying. The law too removed. He had not bothered to take the bar, and had been surprised at how well Margot seemed to accept his decision to enter the Police Academy instead. One lawyer was enough in the family, she’d said. She wanted him to be happy.
Life had seemed to work for a while. He had been as happy as he’d ever expected to be. Until he shot Robby Hudson. Killing an unarmed suspect, even one as worthless and violent as Hudson, had been the final blow. He’d learned he could not trust even the instincts he’d once valued. He had proved again what a danger he was to everyone around him. He had jeopardized his best friend’s career, letting Jimmy put his name to a cover-up.
He’d resigned from the Department. And he’d forced Margot out of their marriage. His shame was that he let her believe that he blamed her for leaving as she had. Let her think that he didn’t understand why she might want to keep him away from their children. His guilt was that he didn’t have the courage to let her or their sons go completely. And now they would all pay. May have already paid.
What had been in his mind the other day when he’d kissed her? Or in hers when she’d kissed him back? In that moment he was sure she still loved him, but what had he thought was going to happen next? What had he really expected?
He had come to his exit. He turned off the parkway and headed downtown, following Redmond’s instructions. The lighted narrow streets near the river were crowded with weekend traffic. He drove around, searching for any sign of the Navigator.
He was running out of options when he noticed the small parking garage. It wasn’t that far from the gallery. According to Redmond, Margot had told the nanny she’d be back right after lunch. If she’d been in a hurry, she might not have been willing to wait for a closer spot on the street.