“No, sir. I brought her bags down, but that was fifteen minutes ago.”
“Call her, please.”
The doorman rang her apartment, waited, then hung up. “No reply, Mr. Barrington.”
Stone went and got Dino. “Get the doorman to give you a key to Vanessa’s apartment.” Dino did so, and they took the elevator to her floor. They stepped into the vestibule outside her door.
“Are you packing?” Dino asked.
“Yes.”
“Then get it out. I don’t like this.”
Stone took out his .380, pumped a round into the chamber, and set the safety.
Dino put the key into the lock and turned it slowly, then nodded to Stone. He pushed open the door, and Stone went in first, with Dino right behind. They cleared the kitchen and the living room, and Dino went toward the bedroom. “In here!” he shouted, and Stone joined him.
Stone found Dino in the bathroom, kneeling over Vanessa. There was blood on the floor.
“She’s done,” Dino said. “This probably happened while we were loading the luggage.”
Dino picked up the house phone.
“Yes, sir?”
“There may be a man or woman coming down the service stairs. Don’t interfere with them, but watch to see where they go and get a license plate, if you can. The police will be here momentarily.”
Stone called 911 and made a standard report, then they went and sat in the living room to wait for the detectives to arrive.
“This is bad,” Dino said. “We’re consistently underestimating these people.”
44
Stone remained in the living room to talk to a detective, while Dino went back to the crime scene to talk to the detective’s senior partner.
“Who went through the door first?” the detective asked.
“I did.”
“By how much?”
“By seconds. The commissioner was right on my heels. It was he who found the body, in the bathroom, while I was clearing this room.”
“Were you armed?”
“We both were.”
“Let me see your license.”
Stone gave it to him, along with his detective first class retirement badge. He cleared his pistol and handed it to the detective.
“You didn’t fire it?” the man asked, sniffing at the barrel.
“No, there was nothing to fire at. The perp must have been headed downstairs.”
“Is there a back elevator?”
“Yes,” Stone said, pointing. “And back stairs, too. Dino called the doorman immediately and asked him to look for anyone departing the building.”
“Does the doorman carry, as a matter of routine?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. Or Dino. He might know. He lives in the building.”
“Where’s the commissioner’s wife?”
“She was waiting downstairs in my car. She may have come upstairs.”
“Well, Mr. Barrington, you look clean for this one.”
Stone glared at him. “I’m always clean. I’m not a criminal, and I won’t be treated as one.”
“That’s right,” Dino said from the doorway behind Stone. “By the way, I’m clean, too.”
“Sorry, Commissioner.” The doorbell rang, and he went to answer it. Dino was right behind him. He came back. “That was the medical examiner. He’s on the job now.”
The senior detective sat down next to Stone. “A few questions,” he said.
“Of course.”
“How would you describe your relationship to Ms. Morgan?”
“We’ve been seeing each other socially, and we have traveled together. We were on the way out of town with the Bacchettis when this happened.”
“Where were you headed?”
“To Teterboro Airport.”
“And from there?”
“I think Dino has probably told you: that’s confidential.”
“Yeah, he mentioned that. He didn’t say why.”
“You heard about Rosie, at the precinct.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s why. The woman who hurt Rosie already made an attempt on my life and Dino’s.”
“The Polish woman?”
“More likely, the Russian woman.”
“Any news on her?”
“No, and there’s not likely to be. She’s clearly a pro, and she’s gone to ground.”
“You think she did this?”
“I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that she did. Still, she wouldn’t be walking the streets. I don’t think she would have been available for this. There’s probably another pro in the picture.”
Dino walked into the room in time to hear this exchange. “We can’t rule her out,” he said. “She has the qualifications, and she’s loose.”
“I can’t deny that,” Stone said.
The ME came in. “Time of death, half an hour ago. Cause of death, a thin needle to the heart, while being strangled.”
“Then it was Anna,” Stone said. “That was the name she gave us. She tried the same thing on Rosie, but failed to get it done.”
“Description?” the detective asked.
“Great question,” Dino said. “She was heavily made up and bewigged,” he said. “I can’t even tell you how tall she stood, but I’m guessing five-eight, on her feet. She was wearing heels at Clarke’s. She wasn’t skinny; she was very well equipped. God knows what she looks like now, or what she’ll look like tomorrow.”
Stone and Dino left the scene with Viv, who had joined them at the apartment while they were talking with the detectives. They took the elevator down.
“Are you going to order a search of the building?”
“No, she probably had the place cased. She’d have taken the elevator to the basement and walked out up the alley to the street and into a cab.”
“Figures,” Viv said. “I didn’t see anybody leave the building when I was sitting in the car.”
“Now what we have to do is decide where to go,” Stone said.
Viv thought about it. “Do you have any reason to believe that Majorov’s people know about your house in Key West?”
“No,” Stone said.
“Then I think we should continue our trip, as if nothing had happened.”
“I’ve got to deal with Vanessa’s body.”
“You can do that on the phone or let Lance deal with it. She’s one of his, after all.”
“Good point,” Stone said.
45
Back in the car, Stone called Faith.
“Yes, sir?”
“Change of plan: move the airplane to Westchester County Airport and file for Palm Beach International. We’ll change our destination en route.”
“Got it.”
Stone called Lance on his private encrypted line.
“Cabot,” he said.
“It’s Stone. What have you heard?”
“Nothing. What are you talking about?”
“Dino, Viv, Vanessa, and I were about to depart for points south. We stopped to pick up Vanessa. Dino and I went up to her place and found her on the bathroom floor, bleeding. The EMTs weren’t able to bring her around. The ME says the technique was the same as used on Rosie.”
“Well, shit,” Lance said.
“Have you located Jack Collins?”
“Nearly, not precisely.”
“Somebody needs to attend to Vanessa’s body.”
“Where is she?”
“City morgue, by now.”
“I’ll deal with it from this end. Are you headed where I think you’re headed?”
“Yes.”
“I think that’s the safest place you can be right now.”
“That’s what we thought.”
“I’ll speak to you later, hopefully with news of Jack.” Lance hung up.
“Lance is on it,” Stone said, hanging up. “He thinks Key West is the right place to be.”
“Where’s your yacht?” Viv asked.
Stone grabbed his phone. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He dialed another number.