Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 6

Kylie grinned. “So then I was right. You need to vent.”

“Damn right I do. Jamie freaking Gibbs knows how to hide behind that pussycat façade—reformed bad boy gone straight. But he can’t hide his true colors. The man takes no responsibility for coming up short on the security detail. That’s the network’s fault. We offer to talk him through a negotiation with the kidnapper, and he says he doesn’t need any help—he knows what he’s doing. Then the phone call goes south because he loses his shit, so he comes down on me. ‘ What about the black straight-edge Ka-Bar knife? Should I not take that at face value? ’ I wanted to whack him upside the head.”

“Cut him some slack,” Kylie said. “He’s scared shitless because a maniac kidnapped his wife, he doesn’t have the money to rescue her, and his mother, who I’m sure made him as neurotic as he is, won’t lift a finger to bail him out.”

“I get it. Poor Jamie. That’s still no reason to turn on the cops who are busting their humps to help him. And how come you’re suddenly so tolerant and forgiving? You usually get off on letting people know when they’re behaving badly. You weren’t exactly shy about tearing Brockway a new one.”

“There’s a difference. Harris Brockway is an asshole. Jamie Gibbs is damaged goods. And if I had any doubt, our little visit to Cruella de Vil in her fortress in the sky clinched it. Jamie’s mother, who can exist with virtually no sleep, made a conscious decision to nap through his wedding. The last thing that man needed was a female cop yelling at him because he’s not a model victim.”

Kylie’s phone rang. “It’s your girlfriend,” she said, looking at the screen. I figured it was Captain Cates, and Kylie was just trying to be cute, but I was wrong. It was my girlfriend.

Kylie answered. “Hey, Cheryl, what’s going on?” A pause, then: “CJ? No, that ship has sailed—all the way to Hawaii. He’s gone.” Another pause. “Your cousin?” She looked at me and grimaced. “I don’t know, Cheryl, I’ve been fixed up with my share of my friends’ cousins before, and there’s usually a good reason why they’re available. What is this guy like?”

She looked back at me to make sure I was paying attention, and then she hunched over, screwed up her face, and did a damn good imitation of Quasimodo. I smiled and looked away—eyes on the road, ears on Kylie’s end of the phone call.

But she didn’t say a word. Cheryl must have talked for three solid minutes before Kylie said, “He sounds too good to be true. What’s the downside? He can’t be perfect, or he wouldn’t be on the market.”

She listened for a few seconds and then said, “Married to his job? That’s not a deal breaker for me. In fact, it’s a plus. I’m not ready to get serious about—hold on, Cheryl, I’ve got another call coming in.”

She took the second call. This time it really was Captain Cates. I listened as Kylie rattled off a series of “Yes, ma’am”s and then ended the conversation with “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

She flashed the phone and went back to the first call. “Cheryl, I’ve got to go, but what the hell, I’ll give it a shot. I’ll catch up with you later.”

She hung up and turned to me. “Speed it up, Grandma. We may have just caught a break that’s going to make the governor of New York a happy man.”

“What’s going on?”

“Another home invasion, another rich old lady, another ambulance. Same exact MO.”

I hit the gas. “Where?”

“Lincoln Towers on West End.”

“There are like half a dozen buildings in the complex. Which one are we going to?”

“None of them. We’re going back to the precinct. It happened three weeks ago.”

CHAPTER 29

MOST COPS WORK within the boundaries of their precincts. Criminals don’t. So it’s not unusual for detectives from opposite sides of the city to sit down and share information when one of them spots a pattern.

But when those detectives bring a big boss to show-and-tell, it starts to become something of an event.

Kylie, Cates, and I sat on one side of the table. On the opposite side were Detectives Al Devereaux and Paula Moss from the Two Oh and Reuben St. Claire, zone captain for three detective squads in upper Manhattan.

Devereaux kicked it off. “Three weeks ago an ambulance pulls up to a building on West End. The EMTs tell the doorman they got a 911 call, old lady in respiratory distress—Ida Lowenthal. They go upstairs, the private nurse lets them in, the perps zip-tie and gag the two women, then walk off with seventy thou in jewelry plus another fifteen in cash plus six hundred in spending money the family left for the nurse.”

“But they didn’t touch the nurse’s purse or any of her jewelry,” Moss said.

“Our guys hit the jackpot—almost two million in jewelry and fifty thousand in cash,” I said. “They also took the day-to-day money from the nurse, but nothing that was hers personally.”

“They’re either the same pair or they’re working from the same script,” Moss said.

“We ran our nurse’s name through the system,” Kylie said. “Solid citizen, no history, so far nothing to suggest she was involved. What’s the story on yours?”

“Same deal. Clean. But now I’d like to know if these two know each other or work for the same agency.”

“The doorman wrote down the name on the bus—NYCC Senior Care,” Devereaux said. “He thought the CC might mean Catholic Charities, but it’s completely bogus. LPRs got a read on the plates, but they were stolen.”

“Ours was Morningside Medical. Also phony,” I said. “What about surveillance videos?”

“They knew where the cameras were. They had baseball caps on, and they kept their faces down, looking at the gurney. None of the images are usable. The old lady has dementia, so she was no help, and the best the nurse could give us was two males, one white, one Hispanic, about forty, very efficient—they knew what they were after.”

“How about the stolen jewelry?”

“Moss and I have been checking pawnshops plus eBay and a couple of dozen other websites where they might unload it, but so far nothing.”

“We’re looking at the same MO,” Cates said. “The only difference is we’re dealing with a high-profile victim, so we have everyone from One PP to the governor’s mansion looking over our shoulder. It’s going to help a lot that you caught the pattern so fast.”

“You can thank the boss for that,” Moss said.

Reuben St. Claire was more than a boss. He was a leader. Everyone I knew who had worked under his command said he was the kind of guy who inspired you to be a better cop.

“I caught it in a hurry because I spend more damn time on the computer than I do on the streets,” St. Claire said. “And now that the ball is in your court, I drove over to say two things. First is that everything we’ve got—every interview, every witness, every lead—is yours.”

Kylie, Cates, and I knew that St. Claire didn’t have to come across town to pledge his cooperation. He was on a mission. We waited to hear what it was.

He leaned forward. “Second is that yours are not the only shoulders being looked over. Everyone in the Bureau of Second-Guessing will be asking why we didn’t catch the perps before they started ripping off the governor’s blood relatives.

“I know Devereaux and Moss. They’re smart, they’re thorough, and even though they’ve got a stack of open cases, this one hit home for both of them. A burglary when nobody is in the house is one thing, but when two assholes break in, brandish weapons, and rip the wedding ring right off Mrs. Lowenthal’s finger—that gets all our blood boiling. Bottom line is these guys have been busting their asses on this one. So I’m asking a favor. If you do see anything we missed, I’d appreciate a heads-up.”