Alafair Burke - Angel's Tip

The department would come after him. He needed to cover his bases. He needed to find Hatcher. She was a pain in the butt, and he had no doubt that she’d gotten where she was based on her sex and her looks, but he had to admit that she was smart. She was also reasonable and, in the end, a decent person. He would find a way to turn those characteristics to his advantage.

He took the Forty-second Street turnoff and made his way east to Fifth Avenue, then hung a left on Thirty-eighth. He planned on parking in front of the same hydrant he’d blocked earlier tonight, but some asshole in a Ford Taurus was already there.

Eckels rolled down his window and gestured for the Taurus’s driver to do the same. “Hey buddy, no standing.”

The streetlamp was shining on Eckels’s car, so he could not see inside the Taurus. He honked his horn and signaled again for the driver to roll down his window, this time flashing the department parking permit he kept on his dash.

“Get a move on.”

The driver’s-side door of the Taurus opened, and Eckels saw the back of a man’s head and a tan coat in the dome light.

“Small world, Lieutenant.”

It took Eckels a moment to recognize the man walking toward his car. This was a prime example of Dan Eckels’s unique brand of bad luck. Eight and a half million people in this city. He gives one of them a hard time, and they just happen to recognize him. On top of all his other problems, all he needed was this loser telling people he was a jerk to boot.

The man removed a gloved right hand from his coat pocket. Eckels extended his own hand to return the shake through his open window.

He saw a quick flash of movement in his periphery. “What the fuck?” Trying to pull away from the damp cloth pressed against his face, he reached for his Glock. His seat belt restricted his movement. His coat was buttoned tight around his body. He could not get to his weapon. In fact, he could not feel it at his side.

Maybe he should have listened. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so wedded to the case against Jake Myers. But with the mayor’s office hounding him at every turn, it had been what he’d wanted to believe. He wasn’t the first cop to get a case of tunnel vision. If he’d mentioned those old files the minute they’d caught the Hart case, he wouldn’t have been in this position. All he’d wanted was to protect his job. If he made things right with Hatcher, she’d cover his ass.

He was getting dizzy. Just before passing out, he realized his gun was on Marlene’s nightstand. If he’d been a better cop, he would have realized that coming here would be dangerous.

THE DRIVER of the Taurus opened Dan Eckels’s door and took a quick look up and down Thirty-eighth Street. A couple was crossing Park Avenue, but they didn’t seem to be paying him any attention. He saw no obvious snoopers peering from the windows of the adjacent apartment buildings.

“You’re in no shape to drive, man,” he said, just to be safe. He unbelted Eckels from his seat, reached in and moved his legs to the passenger side, and then pushed his body over in one full shove.

He removed the parking permit from the dash, tossed it into his own car, and locked up the Taurus before taking a seat at the wheel of the Charger.

He had himself an NYPD lieutenant, and he was willing to bet he could trade him for a young blond detective.

“FUCK. MY EYES, MY EYES. Someone please hand me a spear so I might gouge out my eyes. Cover yourselves, people.”

Ellie sprung from what felt like the deepest sleep of her lifetime. She saw light creeping through the living room blinds and her brother standing at her apartment entrance, keys in hand and grin on face.

“Shit. Shit. What time is it?”

“Five forty-five.”

“Damn it. Ninety minutes. I was only going to wait ninety minutes.”

Max Donovan was coming to on the living room floor next to her. He grabbed a corner of the fleece throw Ellie was clutching to her chest, then settled for a blue pillow instead.

“Shit, we fell asleep,” he said.

“Master of the fucking obvious.”

“My brother, Jess,” Ellie said by way of explanation, scrambling to her feet and wrapping herself in the throw.

“Hey.” Max offered Jess his free hand. “Max Donovan. Uh, sorry about the circumstances.”

“You’ll understand if I don’t return the gesture. I really don’t need to think about where that hand’s been at six in the morning.”

“Jesus, Jess.”

Jess dropped a newspaper on the coffee table. “I thought you’d want to see this. Hot off the presses.”

It was a copy of the Daily Post. A glamor shot of Rachel Peck occupied the entire front page.

With no further pleasantries, Max was simultaneously pulling on his pants and pushing buttons on his cell phone.

“Why the fuck haven’t you called me?…You’ve just been sitting there?…Nothing?…Damn it… No, don’t leave. You stay there until we tell you to leave.”

Ellie had pulled on a blue terry-cloth robe by the time Donovan hung up.

“He never got home. Eckels is in the wind.” He was struggling to get his arms into the sleeves of yesterday’s shirt. “We need to get a warrant. I need to call Knight.”

He was fumbling with the buttons of his cell again when Ellie caught sight of the newspaper headline blaring above Rachel Peck’s photograph: “The Barber of Manhattan: A Serial Killer Strikes Again?” On the bottom of the page in smaller print: “Creep Collects Hair as Souvenirs.”

“That Peter sure does work for a class act,” Jess said.

Ellie found herself reading the words again. Then a third time. Then she picked up the paper and rifled through the pages until she found the cover story.

The nagging feeling that she’d had in her gut before she’d fallen asleep was returning. That feeling that they’d been missing something. The facts unstacked into a jumble of individual blocks, floating in random rotations in her mind-flipping, rearranging, and then settling back down into a new and entirely different pattern.

And then the tumblers clicked. Same victims. Same pattern. Same facts. Different man.

“Stop. Hang up, Max. It’s not Eckels. Hang up.”

She was already hitting a button on her own phone. It rang three times before she got an answer.

“Peter, I need you to tell me about George Kittrie.”

THEY WERE INSIDE Kittrie’s apartment within an hour. Three minutes to make the call to the Twenty-third Precinct to post officers outside the building. Fifteen minutes in the cab on the way to the Upper East Side, while Donovan persuaded Judge Capers to authorize a telephonic no-knock warrant. Five minutes to track down the super and his master keys. Another two minutes to figure out that Kittrie had installed an unauthorized security lock that the super could not bypass. Eighteen minutes to call in the old-fashioned battering ram.

Now Ellie, Donovan, and four backup officers were inside the apartment, and Rogan was on the way. She led a protective sweep through the apartment. As she’d expected, it was unoccupied.

“Damn it. He got to Eckels. I just know it. I should have figured this out yesterday. We could’ve stopped him.”

There was no legitimate way that Kittrie could know about the common link between the murders. When she had called him about the three cold cases, she had kept the fact about the hair to herself. And the killer had been so careful to hide his MO that Ellie herself had been unsure of the connection, even after speaking to Robbie’s father and Alice’s sister. Only after seeing Rachel Peck with her own eyes was she certain.

She’d thought through all of the possible leaks, but there were none. Rogan was solid. And even if Knight or Donovan might have been the type to talk, there hadn’t been time. Kittrie had sent Peter to get a quote from her before she told either of them about the cold cases.