Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 6

On the upside, I get to be with her, work with her, eat with her, laugh with her, argue with her, and occasionally I get to bail her out of a jam or be a shoulder for her to lean on. It’s like being married, only without the sex, the in-laws, or the mortgage.

Kylie had summed it all up yesterday morning: You’re not just my partner, Zach. You’re my rock. You’re my best friend .

I was her best friend. And she was definitely mine. That was the good part. The downside was that when you’re in close quarters with someone for hours on end it’s impossible to escape her private life. Even when you’re trying hard to avoid it.

I knew Cheryl’s cousin Shane would be calling Kylie, and I was hoping it would be when we were off duty or at least when we were in the office, so I could walk out of the room.

No such luck. We were on the Sixty-Fifth Street transverse on our way back to the precinct. Kylie was driving when her phone rang. She checked the caller ID, shrugged, plugged in an earbud, and took the call.

“This is Detective MacDonald. Who’s this?” A beat, then: “Oh, Cheryl warned me you might call.” She laughed. The “warned me” bit must have gone over well with him. “I didn’t recognize the phone number,” she said. “Where’s area code 832?”

Houston. He just moved from there .

“How do you like New York?” she asked.

I picked up my phone and started scrolling through my e-mails. I hadn’t wanted to be around when Shane called, but now that I was a captive audience, the best I could do was shift my body to look like I wasn’t interested while my ears homed in on every word.

“No, really, you’re not interrupting anything,” she said. “My partner and I are just driving back to the office. Oh, right … of course you know him—Zach. He had dinner at your place a few nights ago. He says you’re a pretty decent cook.”

She looked over at me to see if I’d react to hearing my name, but I was tapping away furiously, a man hell-bent on responding to an e-mail.

The call didn’t last more than a few minutes, but I recognized the dance. It was that giddy first-time meet-and-greet before there was any drama, any craziness, any baggage.

I remembered back when I was in Shane’s shoes. It was my first day at the academy. I was sizing up the other recruits when the door opened, and Kylie MacDonald breezed in—blond, tan, with the face of an angel and the body of a sinner.

Heads turned. Conversations stopped. Testosterone surged.

“Excuse me while I go introduce myself to my new partner,” one guy said, heading straight toward her. Half a dozen others followed. Not me. I decided that this girl knew she was a magnet, and she’d flirt with the herd but wonder about the guy who showed no interest.

It was my first bit of profiling as a wannabe cop, and I was spot-on. A week later she came up to me after class and introduced herself.

And that’s where Mr. Shane Talbot was right now—that first conversation, the banter light and playful, the possibilities endless.

Laugh it up , I thought as she cracked up at something he said. If sparks fly, and their relationship goes somewhere, so be it . The irony of it all was that I’d be the one who got the credit for suggesting that the two of them should meet.

Kylie hung up the phone and, still smiling, exited the transverse at Fifth Avenue and headed for the precinct a few blocks away.

She didn’t look over at me to tell me who’d called.

And I, of course, didn’t ask.

CHAPTER 38

DANNY CORCORAN WAS waiting for us back at the station. He looked like he hadn’t slept since we’d assigned him to work with Detectives Moss and Devereaux on the phonyambulance home invasions.

“We could use some good news,” Kylie said.

“The governor, the mayor, and the PC all think you’re the lead dogs on this investigation,” Corcoran said, “and so far they have no idea that you haven’t done jackshit.”

“Anything else?”

“For one thing, I’m cleaning up on overtime. Also, we might have found a connection between the two cases, but we have nothing solid as of yet.”

“Walk us through it.”

“The MO is identical for both robberies, so we’ve been looking for the nexus between them,” Corcoran said. “Find a common thread, and we might be able to tie it to the perps.

“We started with the two buildings, one on the East Side, one on the West. Different owners, different management companies, different staff. No connection. Then we looked at who from the outside was getting inside—exterminators, window washers, dog walkers, cable guys—but there’s no overlap. In fact, with these two old ladies, not many people gain entry at all. The staff intercepts all deliveries, and they’re happy to do it because the families take good care of them, not just at Christmas but all year round.”

“How about the nurses?” I asked.

“Same thing,” Corcoran said. “They come from two different agencies that aren’t connected to each other. Neither woman has worked for the other one’s agency, they’ve never worked together, don’t live in the same neighborhood, weren’t born in the same country, and don’t go to the same church.”

“Get to the part where you may have found a connection.”

“You know the old saying ‘Follow the money’?” Corcoran said. “These private agencies are staffed with people who are trained to vet the nurses, interface with the clients, plus do a whole bunch of other crap related to the day-to-day operation. What the agencies hate doing is medical billing, so most of them farm it out. The accounts for both of our victims are handled by the same company: ZSK Medical Billing on East Seventy-Ninth Street.”

“What does ZSK know about Mrs. Lowenthal and Aunt Bunny?” Kylie said.

“I can’t answer that just yet, but I can tell you what they know in general. They handle the billing for twenty-six different nursing agencies, so they have records for tens of thousands of clients. They know which ones are covered by insurance, because those companies cover part of the bill and the clients are only responsible for the balance. But in some cases, the clients pay it all out of pocket, and let me tell you, those pockets have to be deep. Bunny Ogden’s family is shelling out over a quarter of a million dollars a year for nurses, and Mrs. Lowenthal has more medical issues, so her family pays even more.”

“You think someone at the billing company is targeting the obviously wealthy victims?” I asked.

“Look, Zach,” Danny said, “these guys didn’t come racing up to random buildings and ask the doormen who’s old, rich, and sick. They knew exactly where to hit, and they made off with a fortune both times. That takes planning. That takes insider information. And right now, ZSK feels like their most likely source.”

“How many people work at ZSK?”

“A hundred and forty-three. I got that from the COO, but that’s all I’m going to get without a court order. He won’t give me a list of the employees’ names or tell me which ones have access to the client database unless I get a subpoena. And he definitely won’t tell me what information they have on the two victims without written consent from the families that pay the freight.”

“It sounds promising,” Kylie said. “What about the bogus ambulances?”

“It’s probably the same ambulance. None have been reported missing, but it’s not hard to get your hands on one that’s been retired. We think they dress it up with a new name and a new logo each time they go on a run. We could alert doormen in the city to look out for NYCC Senior Care and Morningside Medical, but they’re more likely to just slap on another decal.”