Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 6

“My career was on life support. And then I found Jamie. He’s not the best-looking man I ever met, or the best in bed, or the best anything, but he had money—or at least I thought he did—so what the hell? I started dating him. Exclusively. Every night. Every weekend. The paparazzi tracked us wherever we went, and it drove Veronica crazy. She knew why I was with her precious little boy, so she began trashing me something fierce, and now she was not only his boss at work, she was trying to run his love life. So he figured out the one thing he could do to show Mommy who’s really in charge— marry the bitch .

“The media loved the feud, and then the Brockways came up with this Wedding of the Century fiasco. Suddenly I was getting talk shows again, and magazine covers, and five-minute pieces on Access Hollywood , and I didn’t want it all to end on June ninth. So yes, I came up with the idea for the kidnapping. But I didn’t do it for the money. I did it to keep my brand from dying. And I swear to God, I never planned to kill Veronica Gibbs.”

“Just Bobby Dodd,” Kylie said.

Erin froze. She’d been so glorified in the media for overpowering her captor that she’d convinced herself she was every bit the heroine they said she was. But in reality she was nothing more than a stone-cold, commando-trained killer.

“I’m going to read you your rights,” Kylie said. Then she paused. I doubted if it was to give Erin a moment to process it all. Knowing Kylie, she was giving Captain Cates enough time to dial up the chief of Ds and let him savor the arrest in real time.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Kylie began.

I tuned out the rest of it as my brain kicked into another gear, and I was able to reflect on the irony of it all.

After years of enjoying fame she’d done nothing to earn, Erin Easton was finally going to be world-famous for something she’d actually done.

CHAPTER 80

IT WAS SURELY the single worst day of Erin Easton’s life, but for Chief of Detectives Harlan Doyle, it was shaping up to be one of the best.

The man and his entire command had been skewered in the press for failing to save Erin. But then Doyle found out that she’d had no desire to be saved, and he was not going to let this humiliating piece of departmental history remain uncorrected. So he did what anyone in his shoes would do when he smelled redemption. He broke out the heavy artillery.

Within minutes of Erin being charged, Doyle and his old buddy Mason Bachner, the deputy commissioner of public information, put together an operation to make sure that the news of her arrest broke big.

And, boy, did it ever.

It started with the perp walk.

Most people think that the suspect’s brief journey from the bowels of the precinct to the confines of a patrol car is a haphazard affair, just a handful of random cops moving their prisoner from one spot to another like so many baggage handlers while the cameras record it for posterity.

Not true. If the perp is high profile enough to generate media frenzy, then the walk has to be a brilliantly choreographed piece of theater.

And nobody put on a better show than Matthew Diamond.

Lieutenant Diamond was one of Doyle’s go-to guys at DCPI Bachner’s office. Cates gave us the heads-up that he was on his way, and we were downstairs when he arrived.

He went straight for the front desk. “Good afternoon, Sergeant McGrath,” he said. “And how has your day been going?”

“Just fine, sir.”

“I’m about to change all that,” Diamond said, the upbeat tone gone. “In less than an hour the cameras will be rolling, and the eyes of the world are going to be on your precinct. My job is to ensure they see exactly what the chief of Ds wants them to see.”

McGrath didn’t have to ask what his job was. “Yes, sir. What can I do to make that happen?”

Diamond started with casting. “I want three of your sharpest officers at the front door, another dozen on the street. And McGrath, we’re not shooting a sequel to the mall-cop movies. I want New York’s Finest, not New York’s fattest.”

McGrath, a large-boned fellow and proud of it, laughed. “Yes, sir.”

A half an hour later, the stage was set. Sixty-Seventh Street from Third to Lex was locked down, the entire block cleared except for the prisoner-transport vehicles. The members of the press were clustered behind barricades with a lean, mean cop stationed every five feet. NYPD choppers circled overhead, and a heavily armed team from the Strategic Response Group patrolled the ground, on the lookout for international terrorists or local nutjobs.

Spielberg might have been able to mount a more elaborate production, but not in thirty minutes.

At 5:45, on the cusp of the evening news cycle, the precinct doors swung open and Erin Easton stepped into the light. I was at one elbow, Kylie at the other. A roar erupted as the media horde screamed her name.

Erin instinctively moved her right arm to wave to the crowd, but her wrists were shackled behind her back. She stopped and stared them down as tape rolled, shutters clicked, and scores of reporters shelled her with questions. Most of them were unintelligible, but the ones I could make out all started with why .

And then she turned and kept walking, eyes straight ahead, lips pursed tight, head held high.

It lasted all of eighteen seconds, but it was a perp walk for the ages, one that would live on not just in pop culture, but in department lore. NYPD Red parading the most famous criminal on the planet in front of a global audience. I could just picture Chief Doyle, who must have watched the live feed at 1PP along with DCPI Bachner, the police commissioner, and the mayor. Doyle would remain stone-faced on the outside, but inside he’d be laughing his ass off.

And he’d only just begun.

I’d driven from the precinct to Central Booking hundreds of times. When you’ve got just a single prisoner, all it takes is one car. But this was Doyle’s big show, and Diamond had ordered up five gleaming black Escalades and eight motorcycle cops from Highway Unit 1 to clear the way.

The Harleys pulled out, and a minute later the rest of us followed. Dozens of TV stations—local, national, and international—filmed the convoy as we made the six-mile run from Sixty-Seventh Street to FDR Drive to Centre Street. It was the best coverage of a copcar caravan since LAPD chased O.J.’s Bronco down the 405.

Kylie and I escorted Erin to the basement of the vast detention complex and handed her over to a corrections officer who searched her and processed her paperwork.

Then we watched as Erin was led toward a cell that held thirty women.

But the guard was only taunting her. A door thunked, and Erin was shoved into a private cell—gray walls, steel toilet, and no escape from the catcalling women directly across from her. As I left, the last thing I heard was “You’re one of us now, bitch.”

And that ended act two.

Kylie and I walked next door to One Police Plaza, where Chief Doyle was about to raise the curtain on act three, a carefully orchestrated press conference.

“Congratulations, Detectives,” he said, shaking our hands. “You finally lived up to the hype.”

He took the stage. His boss, the police commissioner, stood a step behind him and to his right. Kylie and I were positioned to the left.

Doyle leaned into the sea of microphones. “In the course of investigating the kidnapping of Erin Easton and the murder of Veronica Gibbs, the two lead detectives from NYPD Red—Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald—uncovered evidence that Ms. Easton was a coconspirator in her own kidnapping.

“There is incontestable proof of her colluding with her kidnapper, Bobby Dodd—the man who killed Mrs. Gibbs and who was subsequently murdered by Ms. Easton. She has made a statement and has been booked. She will be arraigned tomorrow morning. That’s all I have for now, but I’ll take questions.”