Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 6

“Wait in there,” he said.

We stepped in and the door clicked shut. I heard the elevator head back down.

It was well after midnight, but the lights were on, soft music was playing, and the smell of fresh-brewed coffee was in the air. About fifteen feet from the door, a meeting was in progress behind a glass wall. Two men and two women were seated at a table facing a cork wall where six photos, each one of a beautiful woman, were hanging. There was an animated discussion going on, accompanied by head-nodding and some laughter, and finally one of the men pulled a photo from the wall and turned it facedown on the table.

“Another grueling late night at the model agency,” Kylie said.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” a voice said. A dark-haired woman in her early thirties walked toward us. “I’m Adriana Stevens, one of Ms. Gibbs’s assistants.”

We introduced ourselves and gave her our cards.

“We knew somebody from the police would be coming, but we didn’t know when,” Stevens said.

“I realize it’s late,” I said, “but clearly we didn’t wake anybody up.”

“Oh, it’s not late. It’s Monday morning in Europe, and Veronica is on a videoconference call.” She glanced down at her iPad. “How much time do you think you’ll need with her?”

“We don’t know,” Kylie said. “You understand this is a police investigation into the disappearance of her daughter-in-law.”

Stevens put a finger to her lips. “Oh God, please don’t say that.”

“Don’t say what?”

“Daughter-in-law,” Stevens whispered. “Veronica would go ballistic if she ever heard you refer to that woman as family.”

“When can we talk to Mrs. Gibbs?” I said.

“Her calendar is jammed until morning.”

“Excuse me? Doesn’t she sleep?”

“Not like normal people. She has this remarkable body clock. She naps for a few hours, and she’s fine. That’s why she has three assistants. We work in shifts.” She glanced at her iPad again. “Veronica grabbed about three hours of sleep this afternoon from four to seven, which means she’ll be good to go till noon. I can squeeze you in before her breakfast meeting at seven a.m.”

“Ms. Stevens,” Kylie said, “a woman’s life is in danger. We’re not here to be squeezed in. Squeeze somebody else out. Now.”

“Okay, don’t shoot the messenger. I’ll tell her. Give me a minute.”

As soon as she walked off, Kylie turned to me. “Did you catch that? She napped through her son’s wedding.”

I nodded. That Veronica Gibbs was a piss-poor mother didn’t surprise me. What I was still trying to get past was how she could run a global enterprise on only a few hours of sleep a day.

We watched the meeting on the other side of the glass wall while we waited. One by one, three more pictures were removed from the photo array. There were only two models left, one black, one white.

We never got to see the winner. Veronica Gibbs came marching down the corridor behind her assistant. She was in her midsixties, with perfect hair, the tall, lean, angular body of a model, and the purposeful, angry stride of a pissed-off corporate CEO.

“I have no idea where she is,” Veronica called out as she approached, “and I don’t give a flying fuck.”

She stopped in front of us and held up the cards we’d just given her assistant. “If you have any more questions, Detective Jordan, Detective MacDonald, you can call my attorney. Adriana will give you the number.”

The protocol at NYPD Red is that rich-and-famous assholes get treated differently from regular assholes. Essentially that meant the interview was over before it started.

“Just one quick question,” Kylie said. “Have you ever seen this man?” She held up her phone with the picture that Venetia Jones had taken of Dodd on the screen.

“Never,” Gibbs said. “Is he the one who kidnapped her? You can tell him for me that I’m not going to pay him a nickel.”

“Did he contact you?” I asked.

“This guy? No! How would he even get my number? My son, Jamie, called me. He wants me to help him buy back the slut I told him not to get involved with in the first place. Not happening.”

She turned and started to walk away.

“Mrs. Gibbs,” Kylie called after her.

Gibbs stopped, turned back, and walked toward us. Slowly. A white tigress, her body elegant, her eyes filled with hatred. “I didn’t take her,” she said. “I didn’t pay anyone to take her. I don’t know the man who took her, and I have no idea where she is. The only thing I do know is that I hope to God she never comes back. Goodbye.”

She turned and walked away again. This time we didn’t try to stop her.

CHAPTER 17

WELCOME TO YOUR home away from home,” Dodd said as he opened the bedroom door. “It’s small, but it’s cozy.”

He actually smiled. It was pathetic how proud he was.

It was the ugliest room Erin had ever seen. Every inch of the walls and the ceiling were covered with grayish-brown panels. Soundproofing.

The bed was small with no headboard or footboard, but there were clean sheets and, hopefully, no bedbugs. There was no other furniture—just some boxes filled with clothes.

“I can’t afford Saks Fifth Avenue,” he said, “but I hope you like what I picked out for you.”

She hated it. All of it. No-name jeans, vomit-green shorts, underwear that came in packs of three, a bunch of hideous T-shirts, two sweat suits, and a pair of sneakers that were one size too big.

“Bathroom’s over here,” he said.

There was no door. Just a sink, a shower, a toilet, and a shopping bag from the Dollar Store filled with shampoo, toothpaste, tampons, and other cheap crap. The lighting was so harsh that she looked like a corpse in the mirror.

“This is where you live,” Dodd said. “If I’m in the house, you can sit in the living room or the kitchen with me, but when I’m out, you’re in here, and you’ve got a full-time babysitter. I call her Octomom.”

He looked up, and Erin followed his gaze to the dome camera on the ceiling.

“That one is obvious,” he said. “The others are not. She’s got eight pairs of eyes throughout the house, and she broadcasts everything she sees to my phone or my iPad, so don’t think about doing anything stupid. Okay?”

“I won’t,” she said.

That was the first thing Ari had taught her: Be compliant .

Erin was twenty-two years old when People magazine put her on the cover and proclaimed her the most desirable woman in the world. A week later, two men grabbed her in the parking lot of a shopping mall in LA and tried to drag her into their van.

They would have succeeded, too, if not for an off-duty cop, a woman who heard Erin’s screams and was able to stop the abduction before it happened.

The next day her father hired a bodyguard. Erin had had security people for years, but most of them had been glorified bouncers, musclemen who could wipe the floor with anyone who harassed her, but this one was different. Ari Loeb was a multilingual, combat-trained commando who had served in the Mista’arvim, the elite counterterrorism unit of the Israel Defense Forces.

Early on, Ari had warned her that she was a prime target for another would-be kidnapper.

“I’m not worried,” she said. “You’ll stop them.”

“Yes, but I can’t stop a bullet. Let me teach you what to do and what not to do if you’re ever held hostage and I’m not there. How do you feel about going back to the mall where they tried to grab you?”

“Fine, if I’m with you.”

As soon as they got in the car Erin started asking questions. “Did you ever kill anyone?”

“No talking,” he said.

She sulked. “It’s a fifteen-minute drive. What am I supposed to do?”