Richard Montanari - The Devil_s Garden

“Hang on,” Fontova said. He stood up, took the stairs two at a time, probably in an attempt to show off to the pretty blond paramedic. When he returned a few minutes later, he held his cellphone in front of him. Powell glanced at the screen. There, in living color – mostly red – was a dead male body, slumped in a closet. It looked like his face had been carved by a meat slicer.

“Jesus Christ.”

“The bedroom looks like a slaughterhouse.”

Powell looked more closely at the small screen. The DOA could have been anyone. “Is it Michael Roman?”

Fontova shook his head, held up an evidence bag. In it was an oversized leather wallet, connected to a chain. “His name was Nikolai Udenko.”

“Did you run him?”

Fontova nodded. “Small timer. Did a stretch at Rikers for assault. No wants or warrants.”

“Then why is he dead in this pretty house?”

Fontova had no answer.

“Ma’am?”

Powell glanced over at the paramedic. She hated being called ma’am, but this kid looked twenty-four, and Powell figured it was the right term. “Yeah?”

“I should really take a look at those ribs.”

Ten minutes later, while an EMT team wrapped her damaged – probably broken – ribs, Powell tried to put it all together.

Since she’d gotten the assignment, she was certain she had the starting point of this case. She believed it was the point where all homicide investigations began, that being with the murder itself. Elementary this, no?

No. Not always.

“We got a call from the 105,” Fontova said, sitting at the dining-room table, looking the other way while Desiree Powell – wearing just her bra on top – got swaddled in Ace bandages. “It seems that a uniformed officer talked to a man up there at one of the pay-and-play motels along Hampstead. They’d gotten a call of two men fighting in the parking lot.”

“What about it?” All three words hurt. Powell winced. The paramedic helped her slip her blouse back on.

“The officer said the guy did not have any ID on him, but identified himself as a Queens prosecutor.”

“A prosecutor?”

Fontova nodded. “The guy said his name was Michael Roman.”

“Okay.”

“They checked him out, let him slide. But the officer said they pulled around the back of the motel and watched the guy drive away. He was driving a 1999 Ford Contour.”

“He run the plate?”

Fontova looked at his notes. “Yeah. It comes back to a company called Brooklyn Stars.”

“What the hell is that, a Roller Derby Team?”

“Small car dealership in Greenpoint. Probably a chop shop. I checked it out. Guess who owns the place?”

Powell would have thrown up her hands if it wouldn’t have sent her into paroxysms of agony. “I am in a world of hurt. Don’t make me guess.”

“Nikolai Udenko.”

“Our friendly neighborhood DOA?”

“The same.”

Powell glanced out the window. Her chest was aflame. But that didn’t stop the wheels from turning.

“So let me get this straight. We’ve got a torture homicide up in the 114, the victim a shady lawyer tied to ADA Michael Roman – a man who I might add was spotted this afternoon on Hampstead Avenue, driving a car that belonged to a man we just found sliced and diced in the aforementioned Mr Roman’s lovely suburban house.”

“Yep.”

“A house inside which I talked to his rabbit-eyed wife before taking three -”

“Four.”

“Four slugs to the vest.” Powell shifted her weight in the chair. For some reason, learning about the fourth shot made her ribs even worse. “And now the wife and daughters are gone.”

“In the wind.”

Powell thought it might take a calculator to add all this up. “Some fuckery this.”

“That’s exactly what I was gonna say, but I gave that word in all its forms up for Lent.”

Fontova held up a second evidence bag, this one containing what looked to Powell like a. 25 semi-auto.

“That was my ticket to heaven?” Powell asked.

“Yep.”

“That bitty thing? I’m almost embarrassed.” The truth was, a. 25 could drop you just like a. 38, depending on the load. Powell thanked the Lord it was only a twenty-five. At the range at which she had been shot, the vest might not have saved her if it had been anything bigger.

“I called in the serial number,” Fontova said. “And it turns out this here belly gun is registered to none other than one Abigail Reed Roman, RN, thirty-one, of Eden Falls, New York.”

Powell just looked at her partner. “Now, you’re just a handbook of police procedure aren’t you?”

“Tell the world, chica.”

“Well I may not know much, but I’m sure of one thing,” Powell said, struggling to her feet.

“What’s that?”

“I know she didn’t pull the trigger.”

As the shooting team headed up to Eden Falls, Powell got on her cellphone to Lieutenant John Testa, the commanding officer of the Queens Homicide Squad. Testa was a supple sixty, with a full head of silver hair and burnished little gray eyes that could make you confess to something you never did. He had an unrequited thing for Desiree, and therefore she could usually wrap him around her finger. After assuring her supervisor that she was fine (she was not), and pleading with him to not pull her in (she hated begging), she told him the facts as they knew them. Except in detail about how her chest felt like she had been kicked for a forty-nine-yard field gold and it hurt to even hold the cellphone. Testa caved, let her stay on the street.

As promised, five minutes later, he issued an arrest warrant for Michael Roman.

Michael drove two miles under the speed limit, coming to a full stop at stop signs and red lights. He was usually a careful driver, especially with the girls in the car, but today there were more reasons to be cautious. He did not know if there were wants and warrants on him yet. He had to be where he was going, but he had to get there.

The horror of what he had found inside his house roiled within him. The place where his children played, where he had thought his family was protected, was shrouded in blood. Right now a madman had his wife and one of his children. And that madman could be anywhere in the city.

He had gotten on Henry Hudson Parkway heading south, frantically scanning both the side and rear-view mirrors, trying to see if Aleks was following him. For the first few miles, he concentrated on looking for Abby’s car. He saw no champagne-colored Acuras. Then it occurred to him that Aleks might have had his own car, a car unknown to Michael. He had not been able to see the length of the driveway.

He called Abby’s brother Wallace, first at his office, then at his house in Westchester. Wallace said he had not spoken to Abby since the birthday party, and Michael did not sense that Wallace was under any kind of duress. Wallace Reed could negotiate multimillion dollar contracts with foreign investors, but when it came to confrontations he was not the coolest egg in the dozen. Michael doubted he would have even been able to talk if a psychopath was holding him hostage.

Michael then called Abby’s parents house in Pound Ridge. He got Charles Reed’s answering service and, after identifying himself to the satisfaction of the efficient young woman on the phone, was told that the Reeds were currently on a plane between Alexandria, Egypt and Madrid. They were not expected back for another ten days.

The security around the gated community in which Abby’s parents lived was tighter than Quantico, and Michael doubted that Abby and her captor would have been able to bluff their way past.

Still, Michael did not know what kind of network this madman had in place, how many bolt-holes he might have around the city, the county, the country.