Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 6

“You’ll be the first one we call, Reuben,” Cates said.

And if I knew Cates, it would be the only call. Her mission is to track down bad guys, not help 1PP look for scapegoats.

CHAPTER 30

THE PILE OF leads, tips, background information, and reports of Erin sightings on my desk had grown exponentially since we’d been diverted by the ambulance robbery, and as soon as we said goodbye to Captain St. Claire, we assigned Danny Corcoran to work with Detectives Moss and Devereaux and dived back into the Easton case.

One of the best ways to track someone down is by digging into his financials. No matter how spartan Dodd’s lifestyle, he still needed to pay for it. There had to be a trail of money coming in and going out.

“His only reported income is a monthly pension check from the Marine Corps,” Kylie said, reading from a confidential file we’d received from the Violent Felony Squad, the only ones on our team who knew Dodd by name. “The checks were direct-deposited to his account at the USAA bank in Clarksville, Tennessee, until March 2018, when the account was closed, and the checks were redirected.”

“Is that when he moved to New York?” I asked.

“No. Since then, every check has gone directly to the Wounded Warrior Project.”

“He’s giving his entire pension to charity?”

“That’s what it says.”

“Then what is he doing for money?”

“That’s what we have to figure out.”

It took hours, but we found it buried in the thick file Declan McMaster had given us. Dodd had been stalking Erin for years, but in September of 2017, he fell off the grid. He resurfaced six months later.

McMaster, who is as freakishly thorough as Kylie, figured he’d been doing jail time and decided to track down some of Dodd’s cellmates to see what he was planning next.

But he hadn’t been locked up. Immediately after two devastating hurricanes hit the Caribbean in 2017, Dodd had signed on with a U.S.-based construction company that had been hired for the rebuilding effort.

“Are you kidding me?” Kylie said, reading the file. “According to this, Dodd earned as much as twenty grand a week.”

“Twenty … doing what?”

“Helping the rich and famous restore their ravaged mansions to their former glory. He’s a skilled stonemason, and apparently requests for his services came fast and furious. He could name his own price. And he did.”

“Twenty grand a week for six months is half a million dollars,” I said. “And assuming he socked it away in a bank somewhere on the islands, it’s tax-free. No wonder he gave up his pension to help his fellow veterans.”

“And that explains why he has nothing current in his creditrating profile. Whatever he needs he pays for in cash.”

If Dodd had a bank in the U.S., we could stake it out. If he had a go-to ATM or a regular gas station, restaurant, or supermarket where he used his credit card, we could track him. But he had none of those. We’d gone through an exhaustive search, and the only thing we had to show for it was that we were both totally exhausted.

Working a kidnapping case is a race against time, and for us the mission was to find Dodd while Erin was still alive and unharmed. We had the vast resources of the NYPD at our fingertips. All we had to do was pick up the phone and ask, and we could have almost anything we wanted. There was only one thing we couldn’t get: sleep.

“We need caffeine,” Kylie said. “You want some warm brown beverage from the break room or do you want to head over to Starbucks? I’m buying.”

“I never say no to a free triple espresso macchiato,” I said. My cell rang. “I don’t recognize the number,” I said. “It could be Dodd again.”

“Put it on speaker.”

I did. “Hello, this is Detective Jordan.”

“Detective, this is Brock.” A pause. “Harris Brockway, vice president of programming at Zephyr Television.”

“Yes, sir, I know who you are. What can I do for you?”

“Erin’s kidnapper sent us a proof-of-life video.”

“Where are you?” I said. “My partner and I will be right over to pick it up.”

“You don’t have to pick it up. You can see it on ZTV in five minutes. We’re broadcasting it.”

“Sir, you can’t do that!” I said. “It’s a violation of—”

“Don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do. We’ve been told if we don’t air it by eight o’clock tonight, they’ll kill her. It’s seven fifty-five now.”

“Sir, broadcasting that video will jeopardize our—”

“Stop yammerin’, Detective, and turn on your goddamn TV set.”

He hung up.

“Call Bill Harrison,” Kylie said.

Harrison was the assigned ADA for the kidnapping. He knew he was on call 24/7, and he was thrilled to have been handpicked for the biggest case of his career. I dialed his cell, and he answered on the first ring.

“Zach, what’s going on?”

I told him. He only interrupted once, yelling, “They can’t do that,” at the same exact point in the story that I’d exploded at Brockway.

“Bill, he’s giving us five minutes. Do you think we can stop them?”

“Hell no, but let me start making some threatening phone calls,” Harrison said. “Because it damn well better look like we tried.”

CHAPTER 31

CATES LEFT AN hour ago,” I said to Kylie. “If this proof-of-life video goes live before we get our hands on it, the wrath of God is going to rain heavily upon this squad, and she’s going to get the brunt of it.”

“ If? Zach, we’ve got four minutes. At this point, NORAD couldn’t stop it from going live.”

“I know, I know. Just try to find the boss and tell her what’s going down.”

“I’m on it,” she said, cell phone in hand. “And while I’m doing that, why don’t you take Brockway’s suggestion—stop yammering and turn on your goddamn TV set.”

Turning on the TV was easy. There was one right there in the break room. Finding ZTV, the cable channel where Erin Easton was a reality star, was another story. We had a boatload of information about her career, her friends, her enemies, and her private life, but not a single cop had any clue what channel her program aired on. It took another precious three minutes just to come up with the answer.

At least someone in IT had the foresight to make sure that we were hooked up to every cable channel in the city, and by the time I found ZTV, on channel 313, the entire task force was crammed into the break room.

The credits were rolling for the show that had just ended. When they were over, the screen went dark and silent. A few seconds passed, and then it erupted with dramatic music and a spinning graphic that turned into a newspaper with ztv news bulletin on the masthead.

It spun again, and a black-and-white picture of Erin came on the screen with the word abducted plastered across the bottom.

The camera cut away to a newsroom set with Brockway seated at the anchor desk. “Good evening,” he said. “I’m Harris Brockway, vice president of programming here at ZTV. Usually I’m behind the scenes, but as you know, last night at approximately seven thirty, Erin Easton, my dear friend and colleague and a muchadored member of our ZTV family, was abducted.”

Five words popped on at the bottom of the screen: time since erin was abducted. A digital clock appeared next to it. The count was at 1 Day/0 Hours /30 Minutes.

Brockway went on. “She was celebrating the happiest night of her life, and she had just gone into her dressing room, still in her bridal gown.”

The camera cut away to pictures of Erin in her wedding dress.

“Oh, shit,” some cop called out from the back of the room. “This guy is milking the hell out of this.”