Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 6

Kylie shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Oh, it worked great. We’ve been on the case less than two hours, and you’ve managed to get a network executive’s wife complaining about how we’re handling it.”

“I’d love to stick around and do couples therapy with you,” Danny said, “but I’ve got work to do in the ballroom.” He gestured toward Mrs. Brockway. “Can I release the hounds?”

“Do it,” Kylie said.

He walked down the hall and lifted the tape, and a short, trim woman in her midforties strode toward us.

“How dare you?” she boomed while she was still twenty feet away.

“Ma’am, there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding,” Kylie said. It was about as close as she was going to get to the words I’m sorry .

“You bet there’s been a misunderstanding,” the woman said. “Starting with the fact that you don’t even know who I am.”

“Yes, I do. When I spoke to your husband—”

“You can stop right there. Forget that my last name is Brockway. I’ve been Erin Easton’s manager and publicist for fourteen years. I’m married to the head of programming at ZTV, but that’s none of your concern. Erin is my client. I came up with the idea for the Everything Erin show, I sold it to the network, and I’m one of the executive producers. So if you’re telling people that this horrific kidnapping is scripted, you’re accusing me of a crime.”

“Not accusing. Investigating . It’s my job. And when a high-profile celebrity who is a master at manipulating the media suddenly goes missing, my instincts go on point and I have to ask: Is this another one of her Hollywood publicity stunts?”

“The wedding is the publicity stunt, you moron! Erin is famous. She earns millions. Do you think I would be stupid enough to fake a kidnapping so she could be more famous and make more money? I know your name, Detective, and if you don’t treat this as the crime it is, I’ll call the police commissioner and have him assign someone who will.”

“And I know your name,” Kylie said, “so if it turns out that this is a hoax, I’ll know who to come looking for.”

“Bitch,” Brockway said and stormed off.

“I’m not keeping score,” I said, “but if I were, I would say that right now it’s Mrs. Brockway, one; Detective MacDonald, zero.”

“She called me a bitch and a moron,” Kylie said. “Believe me, Zach, it’s far from over. I’m going to—” Her phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. “It’s Cates.” She took the call. “Yes, Captain.” She listened for a solid twenty seconds, and I watched as her face morphed from pissed to positive. “Let’s go,” she said as soon as she hung up. “We caught a break. They found the box truck.”

CHAPTER 11

WE CALLED MCMASTER, met him in the lobby, and the three of us got in Kylie’s car.

“Cates got a call from the Manhattan North duty captain,” she said, pulling out and heading east on Thirty-Fourth. “Patrol spotted a white box truck with Asian lettering on the door. It’s sitting in the Fairway parking lot at a Hundred and Thirty-Second Street and Twelfth Avenue.”

“If we’re going to Twelfth Avenue,” McMaster said, “why are you headed east?”

“I’m stopping at the precinct to change. This dress is way too low-cut for me to be taken seriously as a crime fighter. When I was interviewing Jamie Gibbs, he barely looked me in the eye. Anyway, patrol found the truck, they ran the plate, and it came back to a VW Jetta registered to an address in Pelham Bay in the Bronx.”

“Son of a bitch stole the plates,” McMaster said like he was teaching a criminology class to a bunch of rookies at the academy. Like Kylie, he was a micromanager, and I wondered how often they’d butted heads when they worked together.

“Right, sir,” Kylie said, a touch of annoyance in her tone. “The plates were stolen, so they ran the VIN on the truck, and it came back to a Korean food-distribution company that had left it parked out at Hunts Point. A detective called them. It’s Sunday, so they didn’t even know it was missing.”

“Damn,” McMaster said, “this guy covers all the bases.”

“License-plate readers got multiple hits on the truck traveling from Hunts Point to Manhattan,” Kylie said. “He went off the grid about four thirty and resurfaced about two and a half hours later on Tenth Avenue a few blocks from the Manhattan Center. Then they tracked him up the West Side Highway to Harlem. Cates wants Chuck Dryden to cover both scenes, so he’s on his way up there to check out the truck, and she’s pulled in a dozen cops to canvass the neighborhood for witnesses.”

Kylie parked in front of the Nineteenth Precinct, ran upstairs, ditched the glamour-girl dress and heels, and came back wearing pants, a T-shirt, a jacket, and flats. On anyone else it might look mannish. On her, it looked fantastic.

She got behind the wheel. “ Now we’re headed west,” she said just in case McMaster had any doubt which one of them was in command.

Fairway Market is a New York success story. It started out as a small produce store on the West Side back in the 1930s and has expanded to a chain of upscale supermarkets that caters to millions across the tristate area.

Their store in Harlem is in a sketchy neighborhood, but there’s plenty of secure parking, so it’s a magnet for high-end shoppers looking for specialty foods and quality produce.

And because the store was open till eleven p.m., the busy lot was a good place to dump a stolen truck.

Chuck Dryden was waiting. “You people certainly have me running around tonight,” he said.

“You can thank us for the overtime later,” Kylie said. “What have you got?”

He walked us to the rear of the box truck. The road case was in the back. “Blood in the case, blood on the floor,” Dryden said. “I just got here, so it will take me a while to see if it matches up with the bloody chip we found in the dressing room. But you love to leap to conclusions, Detective MacDonald, so feel free to make assumptions at will.”

“So what you’re saying, Dr. Dryden, is that you’re ninety-nine percent sure it’s Erin’s blood,” Kylie said.

Dryden laughed and looked away. He loved it when she toyed with him.

“How about prints, hair, DNA?” she said.

“In due time, Detective. However, there are traces of pink glitter in the case. And if you recall, she was wearing a shimmering pink top in the video.”

“So now you’re a hundred percent sure that this is the vehicle the kidnapper used,” Kylie said.

“Not yet, but clearly you are.”

“Chuck, you’re killing me here. How long do I have to wait before I get something conclusive?”

“Several hours before I can give you anything definitive,” Dryden said. “While you’re waiting, why don’t you talk to that uniformed officer, the one standing next to that squad car?”

“What’s he got?” Kylie asked.

For the second time that night Dryden gave her that I-know-more-than-you grin. “He’s got an eyewitness in the back seat.”

CHAPTER 12

I SIGNALED FOR the officer to step away from the car so we could talk. He introduced himself.

“Mike Koulermos with the Two Six. Your witness is Venetia Jones.” He handed me her New York State ID card. “She’s a pross. Been at it for years. Knows the game. Never gives us a hard time when we round them up. Her pimp is a weasel named Edgy Randolph, but he won’t show his face while we’re here.”

“What did she see?” I asked.

“That’s the thing,” Koulermos said. “She won’t tell me. I was canvassing the area and asked her if she saw anybody get out of that white truck. She said yes. I said, ‘What did you see?’ and she says, ‘Opportunity.’ Whatever she knows, she’s saving it for someone with clout.”