My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I reached in to remove it but the thick material of my gloves got in the way. As I withdrew it, my fingers fumbled and the cell dropped on the floor and skidded across the room.
When I picked it up, I saw that I had missed the return call from Spindlis. His number had been captured, though, so I flipped the cell open to reply.
“Tim? It’s Alex. I apologize for the hour, but I think we really need to sit down together. It’s rather urgent.”
I could barely make out his answer.
“You’re breaking up,” I said. “Give me a minute.”
I walked a few feet to the north side of the lobby, around the spiraling black staircase, and planted myself against one of the windows. I held the phone to one ear and plugged my finger in the other so I could hear him.
“Of course I’ll tell you everything that’s happened,” I said. My skin crawled just talking to him, as though I didn’t really know him at all, despite ten years as colleagues working for Battaglia. The cheap rumors rattled around my head as I thought about how much to tell him.
“Yes, this is much clearer. We didn’t mean to set you off about Kendall Reid. Mike only wanted to talk to him about our case, not yours. The murder and the-well-possible prostitution ring.”
My normally laid-back and spineless colleague was agitated about our drop-by interview yesterday of his perp. He wanted to unload his annoyance on me and the least I could do was listen.
I stared out the window at the breathtaking view of the Hudson River that stretched for miles to the north.
“We got a lot of good stuff in the last twenty-four hours, Tim. Lieutenant Peterson thinks we should all meet and put our heads together. That we might be able to solve some of this.”
I was so absorbed in the tongue-lashing that Spindlis felt it necessary to deliver that I was oblivious to my surroundings.
“If you don’t want to come up here to the station house today, I understand. We can be in your office first thing tomorrow,” I said. “Yes, Tim. I promise we won’t question Kendall Reid again unless you’re there.”
I flipped the phone closed and smiled to myself. We won’t question Reid unless we find him clearing the dirty linens in the Jumel Mansion. Or sitting in his car alongside the Harlem River, in the Bronx, watching how the cops handle Anita’s tragic fall.
I didn’t know there was anyone else in the water tower until I felt the icy metal rim of a gun bore against the skin behind my right ear.
My body seized with fear as I tried to turn my head to see my attacker, but he gripped the back of my neck firmly with his left hand.
“Stay calm, Alexandra. Stay calm and don’t move a muscle. Don’t even shiver.”
I tried to place the familiar voice but too many terrifying thoughts were racing through my brain.
“Now you’re going to listen to me carefully, ’cause you know what they say, don’t you?”
It was Rowdy Kitts, the detective assigned to bodyguard the mayor. The detective whose perjured testimony had cost my victim her case several years ago. The detective who’d been among the first people on the beach the morning the Golden Voyage hit the rocks.
“Panic kills, Alexandra. First thing they teach you at the academy. Stay really still,” Kitts said to me, whispering in my ear. “Don’t you forget that panic kills.”
FORTY-NINE
“The first thing we’re going to do is lock this door,” Kitts said, pushing me to the entrance of the great tower so that he could secure the bolt from the inside.
“Chapman and Wallace are-”
“Right down at the bridge. I heard that. I was in the basement, just hanging out with the water rats, when you so rudely decided to make yourself at home here. But they’ve got their hands full at the moment, what with the blood, the bits and pieces of brain matter they’re going to find.”
My stomach churned at the thought of what Kitts had done to Anita Paz.
“All we need is a few minutes to get you taken care of so I can be on my way.”
“What do you mean-?”
“Just have to get you up these stairs,” he said, nudging me toward the twisting staircase with his gun. “We’ll create a little diversion. If you’re half as smart as Chapman thinks you are, you won’t get hurt.”
I was replaying the words that Mike had used to explain the deaths of the victims who’d washed ashore. He and Stu Carella were the ones who said that panic kills.
“I’ll walk out of here with you, Rowdy. We’ll walk out together and you can just leave me in Mercer’s car and take off.”
“Damn, I wish it were that easy, Alex. Get you outside and if I put a gag over your mouth, it won’t look quite right to folks we pass along the way in the park. And if I don’t gag you, you might just scream. Then Chapman would jump for you like he always does, like his pants are on fire.”
“I won’t scream. I promise you.”
“Just climb, Alex.”
His strong, lean body pressed against mine as he tried to move me forward. He was dressed in ski clothes, his slicked-back hair revealing his sharp features-steely gray eyes, a pointed nose with a few ridges that made it appear it had been broken once or twice, and thin lips that drew tight into a menacing grimace when I didn’t comply with his orders. He was likely the figure I’d seen running from the Jumel Mansion half an hour ago.
“The guys will come back and find the door locked and call emergency services to break it open.”
“It’ll take an awfully long time to get a response from ESU just to come to the water tower. There won’t be any reason to think you’re here.”
The sight of the gun in the hands of someone as vicious as Rowdy Kitts, someone who despised me so intensely, terrified me. He was just as liable to shoot if Mike or Mercer interrupted his plans to get away. He was only likely to keep me alive as long as I might be viable to him as a hostage or a bargaining chip.
“That reminds me, Alex. Take off those gloves.” When I did, he grabbed them and tossed them across the room. “Sounded to me like Chapman was anxious to get rid of you. Open your phone for me.”
I did exactly as he said.
“Show me the screen. Good. Now bring up Mike’s number and text him. I’m watching. Just text like I say. ‘Rangers here. Taking me to the Three-three to get warm.’ ”
Rowdy Kitts dictated and I typed. He gave me no chance to insert any other message into the phone.
“Hit Send. Now give me your cell. By the time Chapman finishes what he’s doing and reads this, he’ll think the park rangers got you out of his hair and locked up this tower. Buys us a little time together.”
Then he let go of the phone, and I heard it clanging against the basement steps, echoing throughout the chamber as it bounced off one of them along the way and hit bottom. “So sorry, Alex. It just sort of slipped.”