James Patterson - Tick Tock

"How did the call come in?" I said to a tall, elfish-looking young uniform working the crime scene log.

"By pay phone," the kid said.

"Amazing," I said.

"That someone called it in?" the young cop said.

"That someone actually found a working pay phone in Manhattan."

The jokes were long gone by the time Emily and I stumbled over to a yellow crime scene marker down by the water's edge. It was next to a paint can. Beside the can, a burly uniform cop was squatting on the rocks, smoking a cigarette. His dazed, despondent expression couldn't have been more disturbing.

This wasn't going to be pretty, I thought as I finally walked up to the can.

I didn't want to look down. I didn't want to add another nightmare to my list. I'd seen too many already.

But it was my job.

I looked down.

I was rocked to my center. All rationality abandoned me for the moment. The mind doesn't register such things easily.

Inside the can was Paulina's head. Her face was turned skyward, her eyes open. She looked up at me almost pleadingly. She looked like she was buried underground or like she'd been trying to climb through a ship's porthole and had gotten stuck.

Some very sick son of a bitch had somehow rammed the girl's decapitated head into the can.

Emily came over and put her hand on my shoulder.

"We need to get this guy, Emily," I said after a silent minute.

Emily suddenly whipped out her iPhone.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

She furiously pressed and rubbed at the screen, oblivious of me.

"I knew it. This is it! Joel David Rifkin. Parts of his first victim were found in the East River! It says it right here. The woman's head had been cut off very neatly and stuffed into an empty paint can."

"Who was Rifkin again?" I said.

"A serial killer in the nineties from Long Island," Emily said. "He was convicted of murdering nine prostitutes. He beat them with something heavy and then strangled them and mutilated their bodies. Some say it was closer to twenty victims. Apt is onto another New York killer."

A shadow passed over us. I looked up. It was the Roosevelt Island tram. We both watched the red cable car as it sailed precariously though the air out over the darkening water.

"Maybe there was some odd bond between Berger and Apt," I said, thinking out loud. "Like a cult sort of thing. Apt seems programmed. Berger had him completely brainwashed."

"Maybe that's a good thing," Emily said as we started for the car. "Maybe when Apt finds out Berger's dead, he'll snap out of it. Come to his senses."

"We can only hope," I said, failing to shake Paulina's face from my memory.

Late Sunday afternoon found me on the back deck of my not-so-palatial Breezy Point vacation house. Boogie boards and blown-up flotation devices of every description were scattered around me while from the sun-bleached railing flew about as many beach towels as there were flags at the UN.

I was back in my element, my green zone.

Home Chaotic Beach Home.

In my atrociously ugly neon green surfing shorts, I sent my bare feet upward toward the bright blue sky as I lay back in my zero-gravity beach chair. I even had a half-full can of Tecate securely holstered in the drink holder. The only downside, I guess, were the bright red crime scene photos that stared up at me from the open murder folder in my lap.

I stared back, forcing myself to examine again the remains of Paulina Dulcine. The Medical Examiner's Office had said that the poor woman's teeth had been pulled out with a pair of pliers. From Emily's notes I knew Joel David Rifkin had committed the same savagery on his first victim in the early nineties. I tossed the file onto the picnic table beside me and let out a breath. Carl Apt was nothing if not a stickler for details.

As if I weren't depressed enough, one of my Major Case Task Force buddies had just texted me the latest rumor that Chief McGinnis wanted a personal who-what-when-where-how-and-why session with me and Emily about the murder of Paulina Dulcine. Another carpet call. Sounded fun, not to mention productive. I couldn't wait.

I'd just finished my beer and was having a staring contest with a shady-looking seagull perched on my rusty rain gutter when my phone rang.

I smiled as I looked at the number. It was from me, apparently. Someone inside the house behind me was playing a joke at my expense.

"Detective Bennett, NYPD. Who is this? Who's wasting my time?" I barked in my best tough cop voice.

"Yes, uh, hello, Detective," said Eddie in a low, badly disguised voice. "I'd like to report a crime."

I'd specifically told them I had to work and to leave Daddy alone, but the natives were getting restless. And who could blame them? I hadn't been around much for the past week.

I was about to hang up, when I spotted something on the picnic table beside me, and I suddenly had a better idea.

"Well, you've called the right place, sir," I said as I quietly stood, lifting the Super Soaker water gun from the table before I trotted down the deck steps. "Name the felony, please."

"Well, it's a kidnapping," Eddie said as I quickly came around the side of the house.

I stopped at the hose bib and loaded the gun with water before I hopped over the railing onto the front porch.

"Kidnapping? Well," I said as I peeked through the screen door at the backs of Eddie and a cracking-up Trent at the phone in the kitchen. "That's a serious crime. What's the victim's name?"

"Pants," Eddie said, not missing a beat. "John Pants."

Trent guffawed as he punched Eddie's leg. I had to stifle my own laugh as well. Eddie was a funny kid. Maeve and I always said we should have made Eddie's middle name Murphy. They definitely seemed to be in much higher spirits since that Flaherty kid had been put back on his leash.

"Mr. Pants. I see," I said as I silently opened the front screen door. "Now, what relation is he to you?"

"Well, he's my father, actually," Eddie said. "We haven't seen him in a few days. It's really not like him. Well, actually it kind of is. We seriously think he might be a workaholic."

"You're in luck, sir. I think I know the location of Mr. Pants," I whispered as I took aim from the kitchen doorway.

"Where's that?" Eddie said.

At the last second, Trent, who had been bent over, laughing, stood up straight, his head tilted slightly like a deer at a cracked twig.

"RIGHT BEHIND YOU!" I yelled as loudly as I could.

Eddie dropped the phone as Trent screamed. Before they could breathe again, I let them have it.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Am I getting you jokers wet?" I said, dousing them with the Super Soaker's twin barrels.

Trent got the worst of it, by far. He looked like I'd poured a bucket of water over his head by the time he squirmed away, screaming.

"What in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph?" Mary Catherine said as she came running from upstairs.

"They started it this time, I swear," I said as I hid the water gun behind my back.

After I swamped out the kitchen, I decided to put death on hold and give Mary a break, so I took the kids down to the beach.

There must have been a storm coming or one out at sea, because the water was particularly choppy. Some of the blue-gray Atlantic waves were as high as five feet. Tall enough for some pale surfers to be out there among the shore fishermen's lines.

There were at least a dozen cops and firemen and phone guys hanging ten Queens-style. New York City was the last place most people would think of as a place to surf, but you could pull it off, once you figured out how to fit the board on the A train.

I sat on the shore, watching the little guys goof in the shallows, shoveling for sand crabs with their heels the way I'd shown them. I remembered being a kid doing the same thing with all my cousins.