Shakespeare waved his hand back and forth, parallel to the floor, cutting off the speculation. “This isn’t a time for pointing fingers. We think he and his lawyers pulled a switch at the hotel they stopped at. The officers tailing him would have had no way to know. Even we would have fallen for it.”
“Do we know where Cooper is now?” asked Kowalski.
“No clue,” said Trace. “We’ve contacted his lawyers, asking for an interview, but they’ve said they don’t know where he is, as he’s a free man, but will happily pass on the message if they hear from him.”
“Yeah, right!” said Kowalski, the disdain clear in his voice. “They know damned well where he is.”
“Probably,” said Shakespeare, “but like they said, Cooper is a free man just like all of us, and is entitled to his privacy. We need to find him, and find out where he was last night, before he kills again. If the past is any indication, we could have less than forty-eight hours before he strikes again. We had seven deaths last time, I don’t want a repeat of that.”
“Should we let the press know?”
Shakespeare looked at Walker. “I’m debating that. We could create mass panic, but anybody paying attention to the news is going to already know about last night’s murder, and you already know the press has made the connection.”
“What about contacting all the recent widows?” asked Curtis.
“Every day about a hundred and fifty people die in this city. We’d need to open up a call center to notify all of the surviving wives. Also, how far back do you go? Last time we had a vic who was widowed six months before. My math is shit, but I’m willing to bet that we’re talking ten thousand or more potentials.”
“Yeah, stupid idea, sorry,” mumbled Curtis.
“Hey, there are no stupid ideas. Keep ’em coming. You never know when you may hit on something.” He turned to Trace. “Get yourself over to the hotel, see what you can find out about the switch. Check for new guests, assumed names, you know the drill.” Trace nodded, jotting in her notepad. “McKay and Clement, since we don’t know where Cooper is right now, I’m taking you off surveillance and switching you to reinterviewing the neighbors and family of our previous vics. Get some rack time first just in case you need to switch off with our comedy duo. Walker and Curtis, same deal, you’re off surveillance. Concentrate on Cooper’s side of things. Once we pick him up again, we’ll get you back on surveillance. The rest of you, keep working on your assignments. I’m going to the lab to see what Vinny, Frank and MJ have for us after I interview our drunk.”
He slapped his hands together.
“Let’s go put that bastard away for good.”
The room broke as Shakespeare pushed himself up, tucked in his shirt tails, then looked at his watch.
Less than forty hours before he could kill again.
“Did u hear the news?”
Carl Gray shook his head as he typed.
“No. What news?”
His computer beeped with the reply.
“He killed again!”
Gray froze as he processed this new information, several more beeps chiming as the others joined the chat. A final beep and all seven were online, the desperate text message sent out only moments before by Stephen Russell.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He didn’t know what to say.
“Details!” It was Allan Fisk.
“None. It just hit news a few mins ago. Let’s get together 2nite 2 discuss.”
A string of ‘agreed’s streamed across his screen when the doorbell rang.
“Someone’s at door, c u tonight,” he hastily typed, then stood up from his computer. The doorbell rang again and he felt a flash of anger. “I’m coming!” he growled. He looked through the peephole and his eyes shot open in surprise.
“What are you doing here?” he asked with a smile, opening the door.
He was answered with a hand held up to his face, holding a small bottle. A finger pressed on the top, and a fine mist sprayed. He instantly felt dizzy, then dropped to the floor, the only sensation a slight pain in his elbow as it shattered the glass table that sat near the door, the vase of flowers it contained crashing beside him.
FOUR
Shakespeare looked through the glass and found Roger Nickel, their drunk occupant of the Cooper residence, passed out on the table of Interrogation Room #2. He opened the door quietly, stepped inside, then slammed it shut.
Nickel jumped, his eyes wide open, his head spinning as if trying to find the source of the ungodly sound that had woken him. Instead he found Shakespeare, frowning down at him.
“What the hell was that?”
“Your wakeup call.” Shakespeare sat at the table across from Nickel. “And it’s your only one.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you get one chance to answer my questions. Cooperate, and you might just walk out of here. Don’t, and I charge you with criminal trespass, assaulting an officer, and whatever else I can think of.”
“Assaulting an officer? I don’t remember that.”
Shakespeare leaned forward. “Just how drunk were you last night?”
Nickel shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Mighty drunk if you don’t remember the assault.”
Nickel paled slightly.
Good, he’s getting scared.
Nickel jumped from his chair and dove toward the garbage can near the door, burying his head inside and spewing his guts into the wire basket, moments later its contents oozing through the tiny openings between the metal.
Shakespeare stood up, shaking his head.
“Just fuckin’ lovely.”
He opened the door and stepped outside. The uniform that had been monitoring Nickel until Shakespeare’s arrival still stood at the door. “Get maintenance to come cleanup that room, and move him to Interrogation One.”
The officer nodded, flipping open his cellphone.
Shakespeare saw Trace trotting to the elevators. “You still here?”
“Sorry, Shakes, just had to make a personal call. Won’t happen again.”
Shakespeare chuckled. “Don’t worry about it, we all have lives. Let me know what you find out.”
“Will do.” She motioned with her chin at Nickel as he was half carried, half dragged from the room by the officer. “What’s up with him?”
“He redecorated the floor with last night’s beer and pizza.”
Trace tossed her head back, laughing. “You don’t have much luck with vomit, do you?”
He thought back to their last case and shook his head. “At least this time I didn’t get any on me.”
The elevator chimed. “There’s always next time!” said Trace as she disappeared into the elevator.
Shakespeare decided to let Nickel stew in his own fumes for a while longer, and instead headed for the stairs. His health kick hadn’t been going on for long, and most people probably wouldn’t classify it as such. But for him, taking the stairs was a huge step, and this new initiative had lasted several weeks now. It had made zero difference on the scale, but he had found he was getting less winded as each week passed.
His hand pressed on the bar to open the door to the stairs when his EKG results flashed in front of him. Should I? He questioned everything now. Every twinge. Every exertion. The heart’s a muscle. Exercise it. He pushed on the bar and stepped into the stairwell. Taking the steps slowly, deliberately controlling his breathing, and hopefully his heart rate, he began the six flights down to ground level. Down was easy, at least much easier than up, but he found his knees bothering him, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d let gravity take over and he’d almost be in a controlled rush down the stairs that threatened to turn into disaster if he didn’t grab the railing and deliberately slow himself.
This is friggin’ ridiculous.
He stopped after a few flights and gently bent his knees. A decade of abuse. What do you expect? It was actually decades of abuse. He had never been slim. He carried most
of his weight in his torso, his arms and legs almost normal. His face of course was puffy with the weight, but unlike some overweight men who seemed to be fat all over, he wasn’t. Take a photo of his hand and put it up against anyone else’s, you’d never know its owner had a weight problem—there were no puffy fingers or knuckles to be found.
It had been decades of a little extra weight. Ten or twenty in high school. Enough to make him shy, but nothing to be humiliated about in later life when looking at high school yearbooks. Another ten in his twenties, another in his thirties. But when he hit his mid-forties, the diabetes had kicked in, and he had ballooned. Thirty pounds in one year. No matter what he tried, he kept gaining. He had to admit to himself he hadn’t tried that hard, having never been an exerciser, but the diabetes had shaken him—not into straightening himself out, but into a deep depression that he was just now clawing himself out from under.
Thanks in no small part to Louise.
The door opened beside him and he nodded to the officer then continued down the stairs.
Should I cancel dinner tonight with Aynslee?
He paused before the ground level door and sucked in a few breaths. It wasn’t as bad a wheeze as when he started, but his thighs were barking. He opened the door, stepped into the main reception area, and headed toward the parking lot.
No, I’ll play it by ear.
In the past he had dreaded any type of dinner, usually preferring to hole-up at his apartment, eating something ordered in or microwaved. Except for breakfast. No good breakfast could be delivered, and he didn’t have the time or patience to make his own, so breakfast out was his daily routine.
Which was how he had met his Louise.
Who knew breakfast was the most important meal of the day?
But tonight would be the first time in a long time that he would be going out with Louise, with another person. It wasn’t a double date, he assumed Aynslee was coming alone, and he thought of her more as a daughter than anything else, and he had the sense she was desperate for a father figure in her life to make proud. He’d have to ask her one day about her parents, but he hated to pry. That was his day job, to pry information from people who didn’t want to share; in his personal life, he preferred the information to be volunteered, and if it wasn’t, he didn’t want to go hunting for it.
All he did know was that Kai wasn’t her real last name, that was her mother’s. He didn’t know what her father’s last name was, but from her features, she appeared to be a Polynesian-Caucasian mix. Stunning, needless to say.
She did make him feel quite a bit younger when she was around, paying attention to him. But he maintained the fatherly countenance when with her, which suited him just fine, and her as well; anything else would have been simply embarrassing, unintended, and undeserved. With no children of his own, he had formed a bond with Aynslee that could only be explained by what they had been through together, and the holes in both their hearts that needed to be filled. She had found a willing receptacle for her need, and he had been more than happy to have that emptiness filled.
Yes, Louise’s son had filled some of that void, but he was a teenage boy who would never really look at him as his father. Louise was keeping their lives separate in case things didn’t work out. Not separate in that they avoided being affectionate around him, but in that they both had separate places, and Louise always slept at her apartment. They had their share of “private time”, more than he had had in years. I’m getting more now than I ever have. He would feel pathetic about it if he hadn’t compartmentalized that part of his life off into some dark corner where unfulfilled dreams go to die. He’d long resigned himself to never having six-pack abs, a million bucks, or an active sex life. But Louise had dragged that dream out of that dark corner, and he considered himself blessed for it.
One out of three ain’t bad.
Though he guessed the six-pack abs or million bucks would have given him the third item.
He chuckled out loud.
He climbed into his mint condition 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Seville, pre-inherited from his Dad, and let the engine purr for a few moments as his thoughts drifted to his folks.
I’m going to have to take Louise to meet them soon.
He pursed his lips at the thought, sucked in a deep breath, then put the car in gear and roared from the parking lot.
God knows they’ve been waiting long enough.
Detective Amber Trace parked across the street from the Trump International, checked her hair in the mirror, then her makeup. She barely wore any; she found it detracted from the seriousness of her position. Besides, she never was a girly-girl, more tomboyish throughout her life. It had terrified her father for years, when she was pretty sure he thought she was gay, but when he had caught her in bed with her boyfriend when they were seventeen she could tell from the expression on his face that he was both relieved and enraged.
Greg had jumped out the window, naked, as soon as the door had burst open. Her father had tossed his clothes out the window after him, pointed a finger at her, his face red in anger, then, without saying a word, had left the room. The next day he had taken her to the doctor, and she’d been on the pill ever since.
They had never mentioned the incident, the only difference being he never tiptoed around discussions of people’s sexuality since then. It was okay to say Ellen was gay or make jokes that Rosie’s latest was only with her for her money. It was a relief in a way, since the gay and lesbian ‘thing’ was so much front and center nowadays, it was hard to go through life without making at least one comment, and with her father so afraid she was a lesbian, the entire subject had been taboo, not, as she found out, because he was homophobic, but because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
Awwww, Dad!
She loved him. He had been a pain in her teenage ass, but now that she was pushing mid-thirties, she realized everything he had been saying was true, even if it had sounded ridiculous at the time. She had rebelled, like most teens do, Greg being one of those times. She knew her dad was coming home early, she just pretended to forget. She wanted to get caught, to put the entire tomboy confusion to rest once and for all.
Mission accomplished.
Now she was always nagged about men. Are you seeing any one? What are you doing to try to meet someone? Are we ever going to have grandchildren? We’re not getting any younger, you know?
She looked at the ring on her finger.
It was a promise ring, at least that’s what he had called it. They had met in Vegas last year, both of them there with friends. An exchanged glance at Cielo’s, a drink bought, then another, some hot dancing, and they were in her room.
For the entire weekend.
It had been the hottest weekend of her life. They had kept in touch. Facebook, email, phone. It had been tough, since that first time together was his last time in-country for nine months. He had shipped out to Afghanistan. She hadn’t realized he was a soldier at first, not that that would have stopped her from being with him, but she might have kept her heart in check. But once she had noticed the dog tags tossed behind his back at the end of the silver chain looped around his neck, she realized it didn’t matter.
When he had returned from duty they had hooked up several times. Vegas, here, Fort Bragg where he was stationed. A stolen weekend from time to time. Then he shipped out again, just three nights ago. And had given her the ring.
“Look, I don’t want to scare you away by asking you to marry me. I realize it’s too soon. I just want to give you something to let you know how much you mean to me, and to have something to fight for, to stay alive for. Just knowing you’re here, waiting for me, will make it so much easier over there.”
Tears had rolled down her cheeks, and she wasn’t a crier.
She had smiled, kissed him, let him push the ring on her finger, then had made love to him like they would never see each other again.
Her heart ached and she kissed the tiny diamond, its size inconsequential to her, then looked in t
he mirror at her red eyes and tear stained cheeks.
Shit!
She grabbed a McDonald’s napkin from her glove compartment and wiped her face clear, then dabbed her eyes. A deep breath and she was out of the car, striding toward the entrance. She flashed her badge at the doorman.
“Were you working yesterday when the Wayne Cooper limousine stopped here?”
“Who?”
“The murderer. Limousine. Lots of press.”
“Nah, missed that. Heard about it. Quite the circus.” He pointed at another man inside. “Talk to Stan. He was on the door yesterday.”
“Thanks.”
Trace stepped inside and approached Stan who stood beside two carts stacked impossibly high with matching luggage.
Can’t wait to see who these belong to.
“Excuse me, but are you Stan?”
The man turned around, nodding. He was early twenties, scarred terribly from teenage acne, but had a terrific smile, his parents having obviously invested heavily in his mouth, since his face appeared to have been a lost cause. She said a silent prayer of thanks that her teenage years had been blessed with the early discovery of Proactiv.
She flashed her badge. “I’m Detective Trace, Homicide.” His eyebrows shot up as they usually did when she said that final word. She found if she just said ‘NYPD’ it didn’t impress anyone, it didn’t instill the touch of fear she felt necessary to get people to cooperate.
But ‘homicide’?
Not only did people get scared, they were titillated. A murder! Who? Do I know them? Most people innocently involved, especially at the periphery, were willing to cough up everything they knew, especially when they didn’t know what they knew. And she was willing to bet this kid had no clue what he knew.
“I understand you were working the door yesterday afternoon?”
“Y-yes, ma’am.”
Ma’am! Ouch! If you’d seen some of the moves I did on the weekend, you wouldn’t be calling me ma’am.
She stifled a smile, but felt a flush of warmth as her body tingled with the memories.
Redeemer (A Detective Shakespeare Mystery, Book #3) Page 6