Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 3

“I don’t know,” I said. “He seems a little young for you. I think you and Jeffrey should at least wait till his skin clears up and his braces come off.”

“I’m talking about Madison, and you know it,” she said. “I’d take the class just to look at those gorgeous blue eyes.”

“Oh, you mean the teacher — Madison? He was freaking adorable,” I said. “Definitely the second cutest guy up there on the roof.”

She laughed, and I felt like maybe I’d won that round. But just to be on the safe side, I swiveled my body and edged closer to the passenger side door so she couldn’t punch me again.

We whipped across the 65th Street transverse to the east side and pulled up in front of the One Nine on East 67th five minutes ahead of our deadline.

We were walking up the steps of the precinct when the front door flew open, and Cheryl came racing out.

“Zach,” she said.

“Hey... I thought you were taking the train up to the hospital this morning.”

“I made the mistake of coming in to wrap up some work, and I was bombarded with calls from people who spent the holiday making big plans for the new year and needed to pick my brain on all of them immediately.”

“Aren’t you the shrink who taught me that ‘No’ is a complete sentence?” I asked.

“I did say no to most of them,” Cheryl said, “but Captain Cates needed me for something that couldn’t wait. I called Fred and asked how Mildred was doing, and he said she might only have a few days. Cates only needed me for a few hours, so I stayed. I finally pried myself loose.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your ex-mother-in-law,” Kylie said.

“Thanks,” Cheryl said. “I can’t even think of her as my ex-anything. She’s the mother of my ex-husband, and I really have to see her before she dies. The best thing about my marriage to Fred was the quality time I spent with Mildred.” She gave me a quick hug. “I’ll catch a late train back.”

“I’ll be pulling a long shift, so how about a late dinner,” I said. “We can order in, open a bottle of wine—”

Her cell phone rang, and she grabbed it. “Fred, I’m on my way. I’ll be on the 1:47. Pick me up at the Mount Kisco station.”

I could see she was ready to hang up, but apparently Fred kept talking. Cheryl listened patiently, punctuating the one-sided conversation with the occasional “Mmm hmm,” which is what shrinks say when they’ve heard it all before.

Finally, she jumped in. “Fred, if you keep talking, I’ll miss my train. Good-bye.”

“So, about tonight,” I said as soon as she hung up. “About what time do you think you’ll be—”

“Zach!” she said. “How can you expect me to plan a dinner date now? Fred is a total wreck. He’s already called half a dozen times.”

“Maybe next time he calls you can remind him that he’s no longer married to you,” I snapped.

I regretted it as soon as I said it. In a heartbeat, the calm, compassionate therapist reverted to hot-blooded, quick-tempered Latina.

“Do you hear yourself?” she said, clenching her jaw to keep the anger from exploding into a scream. “His mother is dying. How insensitive can you be?”

“I didn’t mean it to sound so callous,” I said, backpedaling. “It’s just that Fred is engaged. Why is he calling you instead of his fiancée?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but his fiancée left him.”

I hadn’t expected that. “I... I thought she was pregnant.”

“She is,” Cheryl said. “But Fred found out that he isn’t the father, which is why he’s been calling me and not her.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“Not knowing is acceptable. Not thinking isn’t.”

She stormed down the precinct steps just as a black Escalade pulled up. The driver jumped out and opened the back door, and Muriel Sykes, the city’s new mayor, stepped out.

Kylie and I had a history with Sykes. Evelyn Parker-Steele, the murdered wife of the hotel magnate who upgraded Cheryl and me to a palace in the clouds, had also been Muriel Sykes’s campaign manager. At first we had butted heads with Sykes, but once we solved the crime, we became her go-to cops.

“Detectives,” she called out as soon as she spotted us. “Hell of a way to start my second day on the job, but I’m happy to see you two on the case.”

I could see Cheryl halfway up the block trying to flag down a cab on Lexington Avenue. One stopped, and she got in.

Oh good, I thought. Don’t want her to miss the train that’s taking her back to Fred. My brain began to race, and my mind conjured up thoughts of their tearful reunion. Cheryl was a natural-born caregiver, and I knew she’d be there for Fred in his hour of despair, consoling him, comforting him, offering him a shoulder to cry on...

“Zach!”

I snapped out of my self-inflicted misery montage. It was Kylie.

“What?” I said.

“Can we get back to work? The mayor is on her way upstairs.”

“Sorry. I was just thinking...”

“No, Zach. Cheryl’s right. You weren’t thinking. The only thing on your mind was your bruised male ego. You want my advice?”

“I can’t wait. Lay it on me, Dr. Phyllis.”

“Don’t get tangled up in whatever soap opera you’re creating in your head. You’ve already botched things up with Cheryl as it is.”

“Yeah, I guess I really shot myself in the foot.”

“Oh, you’re right about shooting yourself,” she said, grinning. “But you’ve got the wrong body part, Casanova. It definitely wasn’t your foot.”

Kylie and I took the stairs two at a time and made it to the third floor just as the mayor was getting out of the elevator. We followed her into Captain Cates’s office.

Sykes wasted no time. “Where are you on the murder of Hunter Alden’s driver?”

“Alden would like us to believe that Peter Chevalier was a womanizer who was probably murdered by a jealous husband,” I said. “But something else is going on. Alden’s son didn’t show up at school today, and he’s not at home grieving.”

Most politicians have very little understanding of the inner workings of the criminal justice system, but Sykes was a former U.S. attorney. She had prosecuted criminal cases for the federal government for sixteen years. “And you suspect it’s not just another rich kid playing hooky?” she said.

“We have a witness who says she saw Tripp and a friend of his taken into custody by an undercover cop yesterday, hours before Peter was killed,” Kylie said. “But we know for sure the precinct never sent a cop. It sounded to us more like both kids were abducted.”

“How reliable is your witness?”

“To us or to a jury?” I said. “Her name is Fannie Gittleman. She’s at least eighty years old. She’s a bit off the wall, but definitely not delusional. We’re convinced she got it right. Those kids were taken.”

“What does Hunter Alden say?”

“He swears that Tripp is fine. Says he got a text from him last night — after he was supposedly kidnapped. Of course, if Tripp is being held for ransom, the kidnappers would have told Alden to keep the cops out, which is why he’d be lying to us.”

“So then we went to the kid’s school,” I continued. “One of the teachers showed us a text he got from Tripp — also late last night. He bailed out of classes for a couple of days. Said he was going up to Rochester for this film project he’s shooting for his father.”

“The kidnapper could have sent that text so the school wouldn’t report the boy missing,” Sykes said. “Let’s get back to the murder of the driver. Are you anywhere on that?”

“No, but if Tripp Alden was abducted, that might explain why Chevalier was killed and beheaded. One of the scenarios we’ve run is that his head was sent to Alden as a warning — pay the ransom or your son is next.”