Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 6

“We did seven runs in all, some by car, some by plane. Then Bainbridge says he needs us to bring twenty keys to Baltimore. It’s a half-a-million-dollar payload, and he’ll pay us fifty grand for a two-hundred-mile drive. The three of us are giddy like little kids, because this is all we need to finally get out of the hole. We decide to make a weekend out of it. Drop the coke, collect the cash for Bainbridge, then celebrate with hard-shell crabs and enough beer to float a battleship.”

I looked at Kylie. We both knew what was coming next.

“The handoff is in the parking lot of a renovated warehouse in a decent part of town. Three dudes pull up in an Escalade. One gets out and shows us the money, five hundred grand. We give him the coke, and the other two get out of the car, both with AK-47s. One says, ‘Live or die. Either way, we get the money.’ We vote live.”

“Do you think Bainbridge set you up?”

“Doesn’t matter. We can’t go to the cops, and we owe him half a million. We spend the weekend in Baltimore anyway, and that’s where we hatch the plan for the home invasions.”

“Your targets weren’t random,” Kylie said. “How did you know who to hit?”

“Diggs has a kid brother, Tyreese. He works nights cleaning offices at a company that does the billing for a bunch of nursing agencies in the city. Ty is mentally challenged, but he’s a whiz with computers. We tell him what we need, and he shows up the next morning with a printout. He has no idea what he’s doing. He just wants to make his big brother happy.”

“And what about Bainbridge?” she said.

He stiffened. “What about him?”

“What’s his real name? You help us land a drug dealer, and I’m sure the DA will be willing to knock some time off your sentence.”

“Detective, you don’t need me to give up his name. You can go to my log and come up with the accident victim I picked up on Bainbridge Avenue. But that won’t do you any good. You need me to testify, and if I do, it doesn’t matter if the DA sends me to prison for only a day and a half, I’ll never get out alive.”

He was right. All we could do was tell Narcotics the story and let them figure out what to do about Bainbridge. Kylie and I had bigger problems to deal with. And at the top of that list was Chief of Detectives Harlan Doyle.

CHAPTER 73

MAYBE IT WAS the gardenias that helped us crack the code of Bobby Dodd’s diaries. Or maybe it was the moon earrings. Or the birthday gift. It didn’t matter. Cheryl found them all.

It was Wednesday morning and Cheryl, Kylie, and I were back in our war room still trying to deconstruct Dodd’s ramblings of his imagined life with Erin.

“Zach, Kylie, listen to this,” Cheryl said. “It’s dated June third of this year. ’Erin and I met in our secret place. Her hair was pulled up under the hat, and the shades covered her eyes, but she still looked beautiful, and she smelled all summery, like gardenias.

“‘She said she was sorry she couldn’t be with me on her birthday tomorrow but she’s got plans with Jamie. I said I understood, and I was happy enough to have her to myself the day before.

“‘She was wearing tiny gold crescent earrings, and I said that the moons on her ears went real good with the stars in her eyes. She laughed and said I was sweet. Then we talked about our plans to be together. I can’t wait.

“‘Before she left I gave her the birthday present I bought her. A little metal case she can keep in her purse to carry her credit cards and maybe a picture of me (ha-ha). The design on the outside has these cool silver-and-black Japanese fans. The note I wrote said, With love from your biggest fan . She said she simply adored it. And I said I simply adored her.

“‘She asked me when my birthday is and I told her that it was on March thirteenth, and she said she was sorry she missed it but next year she was going to buy me something special. I told her not to worry, that I’d get my real present on June ninth.’

“What do you think?” Cheryl asked.

“He kidnapped her on June ninth,” Kylie said. “No surprise that he was obsessed with it on June third.”

“I mean what do you think about the gardenias and the stars in her eyes and the moons on her ears?”

Kylie shrugged. “I think some love letters should come with barf bags.”

“Zach, help me out here.”

“Cheryl, I’m not sure where you’re going with this,” I said. “Clearly you didn’t flag it because you hoped I could be half as romantic. What do you see that we’re missing?”

“Details, Detective. Details. There are some very specific facts in this diary entry that we can check.”

“‘Erin and I met in our secret place’?” Kylie said. “How is that specific?”

“It’s not, but we may be able to find out if Erin smelled like gardenias, wore gold crescent-moon earrings, and brought home a Japanese-fan-motif credit card holder on June third.”

“So what if Dodd managed to get a few details right?” Kylie said. “No surprise. He’s been stalking her for years. Somewhere along the way he smelled her perfume. He saw her with those earrings.”

“What about the gift, the credit card holder he says he gave her?” Cheryl said.

“She may have one. That doesn’t mean she got it from him.”

Cheryl stood up and went to the whiteboard. “If that’s the case, we’ll put the diary entry here,” she said, pointing to the rants side of the board. “But if some of the little nuances hold up under scrutiny … ” She tapped the reality side of the board.

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘hold up under scrutiny,’ ” Kylie said.

“Erin’s security chief used to be NYPD. He’d know what’s real.”

“Careful, Doc. If you show McMaster a diary entry about Bobby and Erin meeting in a secret place and planning to run away together, he’s never going to say it happened. He doesn’t work for the cops anymore. His allegiance is to her.”

“Good advice,” she said. “Luckily, I’m not a cop. I’m a psychologist, and one of my main concerns is Erin’s well-being.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Cheryl smiled. “You know that. I know that. But McMaster doesn’t. Ask him to stop by. I want to pick his brain.”

CHAPTER 74

MCMASTER SHOT CHERYL’S theories full of holes.

“Gucci’s ‘Gorgeous Gardenia’ is one of the perfumes she pimps on her show,” he said. “All her fans know that. As for the earrings, she wore them on the cover of People magazine about a year ago. Not everyone will remember that, but a man like Dodd would. It’s chapter one in the basic stalker handbook.”

“What about the gift?” Cheryl asked. “If she has it, we could dust it for prints and—”

“Dr. Robinson,” McMaster said, “do you know how many gifts Erin gets every week? From men, from women, from kids. She has a separate closet to store them all. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them come through the U.S. mail. So if I dig through the closet and find the case with the Japanese fans, and you find Dodd’s prints on it, what does that prove? He bought it, put it in an envelope, and dropped it in a mailbox.”

Cheryl frowned. “Thanks. I guess that’s why I’m a shrink and not a cop.”

“No problem,” McMaster said. “I appreciate that it’s your job to analyze all these wacko fairy tales in Dodd’s diaries.” He turned to me and Kylie. “But you guys are cops. Why are you wasting your time on this crap?”

“You were a cop too, Declan,” Kylie said. “You of all people should know that it can take longer to wrap up a case than it does to solve it. And the chief of Ds doesn’t think we’re wasting our time. He wants to know if the man who kidnapped Erin Easton worked alone. Zach and I think he did, but Chief Doyle doesn’t want us to think . He wants us to find out .”