Cheryl’s cell rang. “It’s probably my parents wishing me a happy New Year,” she said. “We played phone tag all day yesterday. I kept missing them. I’ll be right there.”
There were three bathrooms, and Cheryl and I had experimented with shower gymnastics in every one of them. I headed for our favorite.
I dimmed the lights, dialed up some slow jazz, stepped into the green granite-tiled double shower, and turned on the water. It was heaven.
Despite the fact that my job keeps me in daily contact with New York City’s wealthiest citizens, rarely do I get to live like one. I lost myself in the pulsating rhythms of the six perfect-pressure showerheads, closed my eyes, and thought about the dark-haired, caramel-skinned, drop-dead beautiful, kick-ass smart Latina I was rapidly falling in love with.
I’d met Cheryl Robinson four years ago. She was an NYPD psychologist, and I was a candidate for the department’s most elite unit. It took her three hours to evaluate me. I, on the other hand, needed only three seconds to evaluate her. I’d never seen a cop or a shrink this desirable, and if it weren’t for that gold band on her left hand, and the fact that she stood between me and the best job in the department, I would have thrown myself at her feet.
I got the job, and six months ago, shortly after her wedding ring came off forever, I got Cheryl. I’d only been in love once before. Eleven years ago I had a torrid twenty-eight-day affair with a fellow recruit at the police academy: Kylie MacDonald. But she dumped me and went back to her old boyfriend. A year after that, she married him.
Ten years later, the Department of Let’s-See-If-We-Can-Drive-Zach-Jordan-Crazy decided to test my emotional resilience and put Kylie back in my life. Not as my girlfriend, but as my partner in crime solving. And for the past six months, Kylie and I have been inseparable—except for the part where she goes home to her husband, Spence Harrington, every night.
Fifteen minutes into my bathroom reverie, Cheryl still hadn’t made an appearance, and I was starting to shrivel up in more ways than one.
I toweled off, put on a thick white terry robe, and went back to the master bedroom.
She was still on the phone.
“Be strong,” she said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell her to feel better and give her my love.”
She hung up. “Zach, I’m sorry. Family emergency.”
“Is your mother sick?” I asked.
“No. It’s Fred’s mother.”
Fred? Fred was Cheryl’s ex-husband. “That was Fred who called?”
She nodded. “He’s devastated.”
“I thought Fred was out of the picture.”
“He is. But his mother is dying. I told you I was planning to drive up to Bedford next weekend for Mildred’s birthday. It looks like she’s not going to make it till then. I’m going to run into the office, wrap up a few things, and catch a train up to Northern Westchester Hospital as soon as I can.”
She got out of bed and threw on a robe. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I’m going to shower, and it’s going to be short and solo.” She headed for the bathroom. “Oh, I almost forgot. Your cell rang while I was on the phone with Fred. I saw it was Kylie, so I picked up and told her you’d call right back.”
Kylie wanted me, which meant work. Fred wanted Cheryl, which meant I would have something to obsess about all day besides work.
I called Kylie. “Happy New Year,” I said.
“Not for everybody,” she said. “We have a headless body in Riverside Park.”
Decapitations were standard fare for Mexican drug cartels, but rare in New York—even rarer for our unit. “Are you sure it’s for Red?” I asked.
“The body is wearing a chauffeur’s uniform,” Kylie said, “and there’s a big-ass black limo in the parking lot. License plate ALDEN 2. Which means this homicide is about as Red as you can get. Where are you?”
I told her, and she said she’d pick me up outside the hotel in ten minutes.
My New Year’s euphoria was officially over.
Chapter 2
Not too many New Yorkers know it, but Riverside Park was conceived by the same guy who designed Central Park. And while it’s not Frederick Law Olmsted’s most famous work, the four-mile strip that hugs the Hudson River from 72nd to 158th Streets is the most spectacular stretch of natural beauty and recreational possibilities in the city.
Kylie took the Henry Hudson Parkway north, swung around under the George Washington Bridge, and headed back south on the parkway until we spotted the 151st Street entrance to Riverside Park.
The parking lot was empty except for a dozen assorted police vehicles and one shiny black limo that looked as out of place as a debutante at a biker rally.
We spotted the one guy we were looking for: Chuck Dryden. Chuck is a brilliant criminalist with all the charisma of a wet bath mat. He’d been dubbed Cut And Dryden because he was all business, no small talk. His emotional content ranged from ho to hum, but I’d discovered that there was one defibrillator that could jump-start his dispassionate heart. Like a lot of men before him, he was totally smitten with Kylie. So as soon as we saw him, my partner took the reins.
“We’re in luck, Zach. It’s our favorite CSI. Happy New Year, Chuck,” Kylie said, tantalizingly putting on a pair of latex gloves as if she had something in mind other than preventing the contamination of a crime scene.
He looked down, muttered a quiet “Same to you,” and immediately went into his observations. “The victim appears to be Peter Chevalier, age fifty-five, from Cité Soleil, Haiti. American citizen since 1988, resides on East 81st Street.”
“Appears to be?” Kylie asked.
“There was a wallet in the victim’s pocket,” Dryden said. “Normally the head shot on his license would help me get a positive ID, but as you can see, this man’s head is nowhere in sight.”
He peeled back the tarp that covered the body, gave us ten seconds to take in the mutilation, and then discreetly covered it back up.
“As the vanity license plates would suggest, the vehicle is registered to Alden Investments, which is owned by Hunter Hutchinson Alden Jr. There’s no evidence of a struggle inside the car. Judging by this pool of blood, Mr. Chevalier was standing outside when he was decapitated.”
“Time of death?” I asked.
“Somewhere between 7:52 and 8:11 last night.”
“How the hell did you come up with such a narrow window?” I said.
Dryden almost smiled. “It was well below freezing last night,” he said. “Even colder here at the river’s edge than in the rest of the city, so I can’t give you a definitive time frame till I get him to the lab and run a thorough check on blood pooling, stomach contents, rigor—the usual indicators. However, we retrieved a cell phone from the ground under the driver’s side door, and it appears that the victim was composing a text to Mr. Alden when the killer came up behind him.”
He held it up so we could read it.
Cant find Tripp. Do you want me to
“The text is unfinished and unsent, so I can’t tell exactly when he wrote it,” Dryden said. “But then there’s a flood of incoming texts, all from Alden, all basically saying ‘Call me—where the hell are you?’ Since all of Alden’s previous texts were answered promptly, a logical conclusion would be that the time of death was somewhere between Mr. Chevalier’s last reply, at 7:52, and Mr. Alden’s text that followed at 8:11.”
“Cause of death?” Kylie asked.
“Excellent question, Detective,” Dryden said. “Many cops would hesitate to ask what killed a headless man, and they’d be wrong. There are no bullet wounds or puncture marks on the body, but there is a fresh bruise on his lower back consistent with the classic knee strike delivered in conjunction with a garrote attack. However, since his head was removed with a rope saw, which is quite messy, I can’t find any visible ligature marks in the field, so a garrote is only an educated guess. It’s also possible that he was strangled with the rope saw, and then the killer kept cutting. Either way, decapit
ation was postmortem.”
“I’m a city girl,” Kylie said. “What in the world is a rope saw?”
We knew that Dryden had a treasure trove of weaponry in his cerebrum, and we’d always suspected that he might have quite a few of them in his basement.
“A rope saw is a jagged-toothed carbon steel chain attached to two handles. It affords the user all the benefits of a chain saw without the noise.”
“Thank you, Chuck,” Kylie said. “You are, as usual, incredibly thorough.”
He nodded. “I’ll call you from the lab once I have further findings. And needless to say, if you come across la tête de Monsieur Chevalier, make sure you send it my way.”
“Sure thing,” Kylie said. She waited till we were twenty feet away before she whispered out of the side of her mouth, “He probably needs it to complete his collection.”
Chapter 3
“I had Matt Smith run Peter Chevalier’s name through the system,” Kylie said. “Over the years he’s picked up hundreds of parking violations for Alden Investments, which is no surprise. People who ride in the back of limos would rather pay a fine than walk half a block. Otherwise, he was an upstanding citizen.”
“Upstanding citizens don’t usually have many enemies,” I said. “His boss, on the other hand, is one of the richest, most ruthless bastards on Wall Street.”
“And as good fortune would have it,” Kylie said, “rich, ruthless bastards are our specialty. Let’s go have a chat with Mr. Alden.”
We double-parked on East 81st Street and were about to get out of the car when the weathered-bronze front door opened. Hunter Alden was standing there with another man, who was about to leave.
“Holy shit,” Kylie said. “The short one in the coat is Silas David Blackstone.”
“You know him?”
“Oh yeah—smarmy little bastard. He’s the head of SDB Investigative Services. If you have a legal matter you want done, Silas Blackstone will do it. If it’s illegal, he’ll do it for more money. Let’s find out what he’s doing here.”
We got out of the car. The two men saw us immediately.
“Kylie?” Blackstone said. “Kylie MacDonald?”
He bounded down the steps and let us in the front gate.
“What a pleasant surprise,” Blackstone said. “I’ve been following your career, and you are just burning up a trail at NYPD, aren’t you?”
“This is my partner,” she said, ignoring the question. “Detective Zach Jordan.”
“Silas David Blackstone,” he said. “Jordan, you are one lucky devil. I’d kill to ride around town all day with this woman. Only with me, it would be a much better car.”
He extended his arm, and it was hate at first handshake.
He turned back to Kylie. “How is your husband doing these days? I heard he was ill.”
Smarmy was an understatement. He must have known that Spence was in rehab because he put air quotes around the word ill.
“He’s on the mend, thank you,” Kylie said. She pulled out her shield and held it up. “NYPD. Hunter Alden?”
“That’s me,” Alden said. “Come on up.”
Kylie and I walked up to the doorway with Blackstone right behind. “Detectives Kylie MacDonald and Zach Jordan,” she said. “If you’ve been consulting with Mr. Blackstone, you must know why we’re here.”
“Yes, Peter’s been missing since last night. I was concerned and called Silas.”
“And I picked up the one eight seven on the scanner. I came here to break the bad news to Mr. Alden.”
“How did you pick it up?” I asked. “The victim’s name wasn’t on the air.”
Blackstone’s lips curled, transforming his phony plastic smile into a genuine contemptuous sneer. “Yes, Detective, but there was a description of the car. Not many Maybachs on the road. They start at about four hundred grand. Plus, this one is tricked out with armor plate, bulletproof windows, and a complete—”
“That’s enough, Silas.” It was Alden.
“I just want them to know that’s a million-dollar car they’ve impounded, and we’d appreciate it if they returned it to you sooner rather than later. By the way,” Silas said, turning back to me and Kylie, “it’s pronounced Mybock, not Mayback. I guess your dispatcher is more used to Hondas and Toyotas.”
Alden raised his voice. “Enough, damn it.”
“I was just leaving,” Blackstone said. “Wonderful to see you again, Kylie. Remember, there’s always a job opening for you at SDB.”
He took the first three steps and then turned back to his boss. “You’re in excellent hands, Mr. Alden. These two cops are not just NYPD: they’re with NYPD Red, which is as good as you’re going to get”—he arched his eyebrows and shrugged—“from the public sector.”
Chapter 4
Hunter Alden escorted us into one of those grand foyers that most people see only in movies. I’ve learned enough to know that directly ahead of us was what they call a butterfly staircase. Or as us poor folks say, the curved kind where you can walk upstairs from either side.
I could see by the grain that the floor was wood, but it gleamed like the ebony keys on a piano. Overhead was a crystal chandelier suspended from an intricately carved paneled ceiling. To the left was a pair of ebonized wooden doors inset with silver grillwork and beveled mirrors.
The only contrast to the monochromatic tones of black and gray was a glorious Christmas tree that was the seasonal focal point of the room. It towered past the iron-forged balcony railing on the second floor and looked like it would be as at home in the White House as it was here on 81st Street. It was like stepping into the holiday edition of Architectural Digest.
“Sorry about Blackstone,” Alden said as he closed the front door. “He’s a bit of an abrasive little asshole, but he’s good at what he does.”
“And what exactly is that?” Kylie asked.
If there had been a tour of the Alden estate in our future, it was abruptly canceled. Hunter Alden stopped right there in the entryway.
“And what the hell business is that of yours, Detective? My family is in the middle of a devastating tragedy. Peter had been with us for twenty-three years. I’m told you’re the best cops the department has to offer, and you lead off with an irresponsible question that is nothing more than a breach of my privacy.”
Some cops might have apologized, but Kylie was born with a seriously defective “I’m sorry” gene. She came right back at him. “Mr. Alden, that wasn’t my intended opening question, but when I see an ‘abrasive little asshole’ like Blackstone at the home of a murder victim, I want to know what he’s doing here. Now, I’m sorry for your loss, but since we’d both like to know who killed Peter Chevalier, let me start off with a different question.”
“I have a few questions of my own.” He turned away from her and looked squarely at me. “Tell me,” he said, adjusting his voice to the more respectful tone reserved for the guy who plays good cop. “Was it a robbery? I hope he didn’t get killed trying to protect my car. Was he shot? Stabbed?”
“No, sir,” I said. “It appears Mr. Chevalier was choked to death and then decapitated.”
That was something Blackstone couldn’t have told him, and Alden took a step back. “De…I…I don’t know what to say.”
“You can start by telling us about Peter. Did he have any enemies?”
“He had a reputation for being a bit of a skirt chaser. He probably pissed off more than a few husbands and boyfriends in his life.”
“Enough to kill him?”
“Detective, I’m his employer, not his drinking buddy. All I know is what I just told you.”
“Did he ever borrow your car for his own personal use?”
He looked at me like I’d spat in the punch bowl. Clearly he thought I was clueless about the boundaries between upstairs and downstairs. “Absolutely not,” he snapped.
“Then he was working for you when he was murdered. Can you tell us what he was doing all alone in an empty parking lot
off the West Side Highway at that hour of the night?”
Alden repeated the question, a sure tell that he’d rather not answer it. But I’d painted him into a corner. “I have no idea” was not an option.
“Simple explanation,” he said. “Around six thirty last night I got a text from my son, Tripp, saying that his car broke down, so I sent Peter to pick him up.”
“Then Tripp must have been one of the last people to see Peter alive,” Kylie said now that she could smell that Alden was on the defensive.
“No, they never connected,” he said quickly. “Tripp called me late last night and said Peter never found him. He eventually got one of his friends to pick him up and spent the night at the kid’s house.”
“What kind of car does your son drive?” Kylie asked.
“One of those useless hybrids. A Prius. Blue, maybe green—I don’t really remember.”
“There was no car matching that description in the area,” I said.
“Have you been to Riverside Park?” Alden said. “It’s huge. I’m sure it’ll turn up. Is that all, Detectives? I’m rather pressed for time.”
“That’s all we have right now,” I said. “But we’d like to talk to your son.”
“You can’t reach him now. He’s a senior at Barnaby Prep, and the school has a strict no-cell-phones rule. But I’ll be glad to leave him a message.”
He took a cell from his pocket. “I realize Silas didn’t broach the subject with any tact,” he said as he tapped his speed dial, “but I really do need my car back as soon as possible. Can I count on you to expedite—hold on, I got his voice mail. Hello, Tripp. Something happened to Peter last night, and the police are here to discuss it. They have a few questions they’d like to ask you. Call me when you can, and I’ll arrange a meeting with them.”
He hung up. “If you leave me your number, I’ll contact you as soon as I hear from him.”
I gave him my card. “One last question. You said your son first called you about his car problems at six thirty. At that hour, the park was dark, empty, and bitter cold. What was he doing there so late?”
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