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It was a morning for firsts.
My first landing at LaGuardia Airport, my first escort from a 737 while the other passengers were ordered to remain seated, my first hustling through a terminal by security police, my first ride in a siren-screaming police cruiser through gray Manhattan rain.
And I, Detective Carson Ryder of the Mobile, Alabama, Police Department, had accomplished them all in the past twenty-three minutes.
“No one’s gonna tell me what this is about?” I asked my driver, a Sergeant Koslowski by the nameplate. We skidded sideways through an intersection. Koslowski spun the wheel, goosed the gas, and we straightened out two inches from tagging a taxi. The hack driver gave us a bored glance and I wondered what it took to scare a New York cabbie.
“No one told me nothin’,” Koslowski growled. “So how can I tell you somethin’?” The growl fit; he looked like a bulldog in a blue uniform.
“What were you told, exactly?” I asked.
“Pick up your ass at the airport and deliver it to an address in the Village. There, now you know as much as me.”
Two hours ago I had been at my desk in Mobile, drinking coffee and waiting for my detective partner, Harry Nautilus, to arrive. My supervisor, Lieutenant Tom Mason, had called me into his office and closed the door. His phone was beside the cradle, thrown down instead of hung up.
“You’re on a new case, Carson. You got to be on a plane to New York City in twenty minutes. Your ticket’s waiting. The plane too, probably.”
“What the hell? I can’t just up and –”
“There’s a cruiser waiting outside. Move it.”
Koslowski did the sideways skid again, setting us on to a slender street. He jammed the brakes in front of a three-story brick warehouse. We threaded past four radio cars with light bars flashing, a Forensics van and what I took to be a command van. There was also an SUV from the Medical Examiner’s office. Whatever had gone down, the full cast and crew was present and accounted for.
I saw a portly man shambling our way, his black hat tucked low and his gray raincoat rippling in the wind. Mr Raincoat opened my door and I stepped out.
The guy looked in his late fifties, with a round face as morose as a bloodhound. His nose was large and beaklike. His eyes sagged above, bagged below, and probably looked sad even when a woman said Yes. Unlike everyone else, he seemed in no hurry. He offered his hand. “My name is Sheldon Waltz, NYPD. Friendlier folks call me Shelly, which I invite you to do. How was your flight?”
The warmth and sincerity in his voice made me drop pleasantries in favor of the truth. “I hate jets, Shelly. I’d have preferred being shot here by cannon.” I paused. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”
He sighed and patted my back. Even his pats seemed doleful. “Actually, I was hoping you might tell me.”
The warehouse reeked of stale water and fresh rat droppings. We walked a plank floor toward a service elevator. A print tech dusted the paint-peeling wall for latents. I thought the tech was shooting me curious side-eyed glances, but realized he was studying Waltz. Also eyeing Waltz was a young guy in a Technical Services jacket who sat cross-legged on the floor with a small video monitor in his lap. He looked ready to spring into action, just as soon as someone told him what the action was.
To the right the corridor opened into a side room, the light coming from a bank of ancient fluorescents, bulbs sizzling and giving a jittery quality to the scene. I saw three detectives inside, the Alpha dick spotlighted by a sharp bark as the others bobbed their heads. Alpha was a woman, early thirties, with an ovoid face, slender lips, dark hair pulled straight back and held with a rubber band. Efficient and aerodynamic. Her rust-colored, no-frills business suit had a gold badge hanging from the jacket pocket. Her eyes flashed with intelligence and she looked as hard and fit as a dancer.
The woman’s eyes found me and glared, like I’d spit in her soup and run away laughing. I flicked a genial wave. Alpha showed me her back and her puppets followed suit. I heard one of the men’s voices mutter the word yokel.
“Who’s that woman, Shelly?” I asked as we stepped into the elevator, a cage with a floor. Waltz thumbed the button and we jolted upward.
“It doesn’t matter right now.”
The elevator clattered to a stop and we stepped into a maze of semi-finished sheetrock walls dividing a large room. Waltz said, “The building’s being turned into lofts. The construction foreman stopped in at six a.m. to leave instructions for the workers, found the victim. The foreman’s an older guy with angina. The sight had him grabbing at his chest. The med types didn’t want him to add to the body count, so they sent him to a nearby ER.” Waltz nodded to a second doorway. “The victim’s back here.”
I followed Waltz to a framed-in space I suspected would be a complete unit when finished, fifty feet long, twenty wide. At the end of the space a pair of sawbucks carried a sheet of plywood. Atop the wood was a blanketed shape I knew was a human body. I shivered, then realized the air conditioning was cranked to meat-locker level.
“The cold’s helping stabilize the body,” Waltz said, seeing my puzzlement.
“Until what?”
“Until you got here.”
There was a plastic runner on the floor, a path to walk without disturbing evidence. I saw a snip of hair beside the runner, a slender brown comma. Beside it was a tuft of white. I crouched, pursing my lips and puffing at the debris. The result floated in the air. “Several colors of hair,” I said. “Strange.”
Waltz turned. “Come on, Detective. We don’t have much time. Forensics will deal with the minutiae.”
The runner was slick and we walked with the care of men on ice. When we reached the form Waltz grabbed an edge of the white blanket. I took a deep breath and nodded, Go. Waltz pulled back the cover. I saw a woman’s body, headless. No, my mind suddenly screamed, the head was there. It had been jammed into a slashing cut made in the abdomen. The head, its eyes wide, stared at me from the belly. The scene was horrific and utterly incongruous.
Then I realized: I knew the face in the belly.
I gasped. My knees buckled and the room veered sideways. Waltz grabbed beneath my arm. I closed my eyes. Long seconds passed before they opened again.
“You know her, right?” Waltz looked at my face. “Take your time.”
I waited until the room stopped spinning. Found the breath to rasp out words. “Her name is Dr Evangeline Prowse. She’s the director of the Alabama Institute of Aberrational Behavior. It’s where some of the country’s strangest killers are kept, walking nightmares.”
“I know of the Institute. You’re sure it’s her?”
I nodded and strode to an open window to suck in air, hoping to stop the spinning in my head. Waltz appeared with a paper cup of water. He steered me to a chair.
“Better?” he asked as I gulped water.
“Getting there,” I lied.
“How well did you know her?”
“She consulted on several cases for the Mobile police. We enjoyed one another’s company. I guess you could say we were the kind of friends who always promise to see one another more, but can’t find the time.”
We’d never find the time. I’d never speak to Vangie again, an incredible loss.
“When did you last see Dr Prowse?” Waltz asked.
“Two months ago. I was in the Montgomery area and stopped by. We shared a sandwich in her office, spent a half hour talking. That was all.”
There was more to it than that. Much more. But only five people in the world knew that particular secret. Evangeline Prowse had been one of them.
“Did she mention anything about coming to New York?”
“Vangie grew up in Queens, lived in the city until her early thirties. Coming here was a regular event, no big deal.”
“How about a professional angle? You and Dr Prowse weren’t working together? A case?”
“Not for a couple years.”
“You’re sure? Nothing?”
“Shelly, why the hell am I here? Why not a co-worker or a –”
He blew out an exasperated breath. “There’s a bit of a mystery going on. Follow me.”
I accompanied Waltz back down the elevator to where the other detectives were waiting. The sleek Alpha lady was leaning against the wall with studied nonchalance, legs crossed at the ankles, cellphone nudging a high cheekbone. “I dunno what the Southern guy’s supposed to do. I’m waiting for him to pull the magnifying glass from his pocket, ask if there’s any footprints he can follow …”
She hung up and tapped her watch with a crisp pink talon. “I’ve got places to be, Waltz. And given that goddamn convention, I expect you do, too. Let’s open and close this little play right now.”
Waltz pursed his lips and whistled. The young guy in the Technical Services jacket appeared, cradling the battery-driven video playback unit as if it was an infant. His nameplate read J. Cargyle. The kid held the unit at chest level. Waltz tapped Play. Everyone gathered close.
A shiver of electrons and my heart climbed to my throat: Vangie’s face in close-up, a white wall at her back. The camera’s tiny microphone distorted background sounds into a rumbling sludge. She was holding the camera close and her hands were shaking, her face moving within the frame. Vangie looked worn, her brown eyes circled with shadow.
“If you have found this recording, I ask that you contact Carson Ryder of the Mobile Police Department.”
I startled at my name, but kept my eyes on the screen.
“I have worked with dozens of specialists in the profiling and apprehension of the homicidally deranged. Detective Ryder is the best I know at understanding these people, a dark gift, but agift nonetheless. I am currently doing things that make little sense. But I needed a serious –”
A sudden thump, a noise like a growl. Vangie’s eyes widened and the camera spun. I saw the edge of a mirror, a seam of wall and ceiling. The thump and growl repeated. The screen showed a flash of palm and fingers, then went dark.
“It’s almost over,” Waltz said. “She put the camera in something. Her purse, probably.”
“What does it mean? Where was it –”
“Wait.” Waltz pointed back at the screen. As if adding a post script, Vangie lifted the still-recording camera from her purse and aimed it at her face. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
She said, “Carson, I’m so sorry.”
TWO (#ulink_5bfd9f51-1625-53c9-88e0-9383b408ae1e)
“Do you know what she’s talking about, Detective?” Alpha Lady said, arms crossed high on her chest. “Outside of you being hotsie-totsie with the loonies?”
“No.”
“You have no idea what she’s doing that makes little sense?”
“No idea, Lieutenant.”
“Ms Prowse says, ‘I needed a serious …’ Something interrupts. Serious what?”
“How would I know that? Where was the recording found?”
Waltz said, “The memory card was in an envelope that read Open in Event of Emergency. It stood out, given the circumstances. I immediately had Tech Services play the video. One thing led to another and …”
“And now we’ve got an investigation on hold for hours and an outsider tromping through the scene,” the Lieutenant finished, shaking her head.
Waltz sighed and turned to the woman. “I’ve never heard of a case where the expertise of another detective was referenced by the victim. I thought it best to retain the death tableau and bring that detective here for a look. The ME’s people did their part, and forensic processing slowed but never stopped. If you have a problem with my decision, Lieutenant, I suggest you convey your displeasure to the powers that be.”
Waltz pulled a cellphone from his pocket, dialed a number. He held the phone up for the Lieutenant to take. The room was dead silent. I heard ringing from the phone, then a pickup.
“This is the office of the Chief of Police …”
The Lieutenant turned white.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
She snatched the phone from Waltz’s outstretched palm, snapped it closed, thrust it back at him: A surrender. She turned her anger from Waltz to me, her voice angry and demanding, pushing her frustration my way.
“What was left of her clothes looked like a runner’s garb. Like she went running, got grabbed off the street, brought here. Did she like to run?”
I said, “She ran marathons, even at sixty-three. She was a fitness junkie.”
“She ever run late at night?”
“She ran whenever she found the time, or was stressed. Were there any defensive wounds?”
“How about you shut up and let the Lieutenant ask the questions?” snapped a detective a few years past my age of thirty-four, a hulking monster with a Greco-Roman wrestler’s neck and shoulders. His face was pale and acne-scarred, making his small eyes look like green buttons floating in a bowl of cream of wheat. His hair was neither brown nor blond, but some shade in between, brond, perhaps. I’d heard someone call him Bullard.
Waltz said, “Her forearms are bruised, probably defensive. No tissue is visible beneath her nails. They’re cut close, unfortunately. The Forensics crew will vacuum the floor when we leave, maybe find something important.”
Another interruption from Alpha Lady. “Why did the victim give the big-ass sales job on your behalf? She was sorry about what?”
“I just got here. How would I fucking know?”
“Hey,” snapped Bullard. “Watch your goddamn mouth.” He stood to show me he was taller than me. Wider, too.
Alpha said, “Stay calm, Bubba. I’m trying to get a handle on things. Waltz told me about the box of crazies where she worked, this Institute. Is it possible a former patient might have held a grudge?”
I shook my head. “Couldn’t happen.”
“You psychic as part of your talents?”
“The only way out of the Institute is to stop breathing. They don’t rehabilitate, they analyze.”
Waltz nodded. “He’s right. I know of the Institute.”
I said, “Have you checked Dr Prowse’s whereabouts since she arrived, Lieutenant? Maybe she was targeted by the perp earlier. Maybe as early as at the airport. You might want to –”
She held up her hand. Shot me a fake and indulgent smile. “I’m sure you do fine on your home turf, Detective. But the NYPD actually looks into such things. We’ve done it a few times before.” She turned the fake smile to Waltz. “Take him to lunch, Detective. Show him the Statue of Liberty. Let him buy some postcards. But then it’s time for Mississippi to get its missing policeman back.”
Before I could correct her, she showed me her back and strode away with the sycophants in tow. The little turf war now over, Waltz seemed unperturbed.
“Somewhere in the good Lieutenant’s soliloquy I heard the word lunch. There’s a decent deli a couple blocks away. Give it a shot, Detective Ryder?”
The deli was little more than a long, narrow counter, and a few tables against a wall decorated with faded posters of Sardinia. I was without hunger and fiddled with a salad. Waltz seemed light on appetite as well and nibbled at a chicken sandwich.
I couldn’t quite figure out Waltz’s position in the hierarchy. His rank was detective, the Alpha Lady – named Alice Folger, I’d discovered – was a lieutenant. She was brusque to Waltz, but was obviously afraid to push him too far. Another big question: What gave Waltz the power to slow an investigation for several hours so I could be flown here? That would have taken sledgehammer clout.
I was about to ask when Waltz slid a mostly uneaten sandwich to the side of the table. “Let’s say Dr Prowse felt she was in danger. Why didn’t she ask the NYPD for protection?” He paused. “Unless, of course, she wasn’t in danger. That fits with her taking a midnight run through the neighborhood.”
“What about the recording?”
“We have no idea when it was made. Or why. Are you sure you have no idea why she’d record a testament to your abilities vis-à-vis psychopaths?”
