Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 3

“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?”

“Tripp is a film nut,” Alden said. “So I hired him to make a surprise video for my father, who is turning seventy in March. I think he decided to go get some footage of the old neighborhood where my father grew up.”

“Exactly where is that?” I asked.

Alden hesitated.

“Think hard,” I said. “If your father is anything like mine, he dragged you there more than once to show you where he lived as a kid.”

His memory came back fast. “You’re right. It’s 530 West 136th Street.”

“That’s in Harlem.”

“I know,” Alden said. “Your rags-to-riches story doesn’t get any better than that. I can’t wait to see the look on my father’s face when he sees this video.”

He opened the front door. “Give me a buzz and let me know the status of my car. It’s not just transportation. It’s my mobile office. I’m lost without it.”

He smiled as he saw us out. He seemed to have bounced back nicely from his family’s devastating tragedy.

Kylie got behind the wheel of our car and gunned it. “What an asshole,” she blurted out. She shot up 81st Street, ran a red light, and hung a hard left on Fifth. “His teenage son texts him for help, the driver he sends is murdered, and he can’t wait for his father to see a home movie?”

The postholiday traffic was light, and I buckled my seat belt when I saw the speedometer creep toward sixty. “It seems like Peter getting his head lopped off was more of an inconvenience than a family crisis,” I said. “And on a completely different subject, would you mind slowing down?”

She didn’t. “And what the hell was that smarmshark Blackstone doing there?”

“You tell me, K-Mac. You’re the one who has a history with him.”

She took one hand off the wheel and flipped me the finger. “No, Zach. You and I have a history. Blackstone is just some dude with a hard-on for me. Nice of him to tell Alden that we’re NYPD Red — that special breed of cop trained to serve and protect the insensitive wealthy.”

“Hey, at least now Alden knows that we’re as good as he’s ever going to get — from the public sector.”

“That pompous ass wouldn’t care if we were NYPD Platinum. He’s not about to cough up anything. He didn’t even want to tell us where his father grew up. Nice move squeezing it out of him.”

“Thanks, but he only gave up what he knows we can find out on our own. His story was full of holes, but I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth when he said that Peter and Tripp never connected. That was the gist of the text Dryden showed us. But I’d still like to make sure.”

She came to a screeching stop at the corner of 72nd and Fifth, jumped out of the car, and moved the sawhorse that was blocking the entrance to Central Park. She ran back to the car, turned it into the park, then got out and put the sawhorse back in place.

“I don’t know why they close the park to cars on a day like this,” she said as we sped west. “There are no joggers, no bikers...”

“Just crazy drivers,” I said. “I gather we’re not going back to the office.”

“You’re starting to get good at this cop stuff, Zach. No, we are definitely not going back to the office.”