"I've always been crazy about you, you know that."
At six one, Tor was an inch shorter than Rick and had almost as sturdy a build. Fourteen years older, however, Tor now had to fight in earnest the spreading abdomen of middle age, affluence, and complacency. And where Rick had the mixed blood of African, American Indian, and Caucasian, Tor was pure Nordic, with an ample head of hair more flaxen than silver and eyes as blue as the Vikings of his ancestry. Tor's second wife had been the daughter of an Arabian princess, and when the two couples had gone out together, people were always confused because the two blonds were married to the two people of color and not each other.
"If I'd married you, we'd still be together."
Merrill considered the declaration with a twinkle. Tor was marching out onto a limb that couldn't hold him. "Which time?"
"Any time. How about this time?' '
"Well, maybe later this week after you've dumped this one."
"Oh, you know." He looked surprised.
"Darling, you're an open book." Merrill laughed and took a bite of the "fried 'nanas" with the drop-dead crunchy coconut. "I don't know how you get away with it. Let's go home."
Tor finished his last bite and looked up. "Okay, okay. Time for bed?"
Merrill nodded and pushed back her wicker chair. At 12:38 A.M. on a cold January night, the stylish restaurant was not yet empty. There were still a few people drinking exotically flavored coffees at the bar and finishing their desserts at their tables. Suddenly she was sorry that Tor was always so solicitous of his driver, sending him home every time the man complained about the weather. Earlier, it had been no big deal to walk a block from the theater to the restaurant. Late at night though, when every street comer was a deceptive snow-covered slush pit that sucked the unwary into a frigid ankle-deep lake and it wasn't always so easy to get a cab, she didn't relish the possibility of having to walk home. Merrill grabbed her fur-lined black suede coat off the chair beside her, draping it over her arm as she headed for the dazzling stainless-steel kitchen to say good-night to Jon the chef. Then she shrugged on the coat, waved at Patrice, who was busy at a table, and went out the front door where Tor had preceded her some minutes before to get a cab.
Liberty's had a tiny garden in front with a step up to the street and a gate on the sidewalk level. The dwarf fir trees in planters surrounding the space were crusted with snow and still wore their Christmas lights. Merrill closed the two doors of the restaurant and stepped out into the garden. Tor and another person were standing close together, as if in deep conversation. Merrill hesitated. Something was odd about them. She heard the sound of car wheels slapping through the slush just slightly above them on the street, but not the sound of voices. The other person drew closer to Tor as if to embrace him. He had his broad back to Merrill, and she couldn't see what was happening. Suddenly, without a sound, Tor slumped to the wet pavement. Merrill lurched forward, crying his name "Tor—!"
Almost instantly she was at the place where he had fallen. "What happened? My God, what is that thing? What are you doing? Not you! No! Tor, Tor—?" Merrill's voice became frantic as the shiny thing she'd seen disappeared into a coat sleeve, and Tor tried to raise himself from where he'd fallen, facedown on the freezing cement.
Merrill lunged forward to help, but a black-gloved hand grabbed her arm and prevented her from sinking to her knees. She became hysterical at Tor's desperate struggle and the hideous noise that erupted from his mouth as he tried to speak, tried to breathe, and failed at both.
"What are you doing? Let go. Tor—Tor—?"
Suddenly Merrill felt a little dizzy from the wine. She was further confused by the powerful fingers digging into her arm that wouldn't let go. Tears stung her eyes as terror for him—not herself—overcame her. She formed the word help in her head, but all that came out of her mouth was a whimper. "You?"
She couldn't get to Tor, couldn't help him. "Don't— please!" Two powerful hands held her arms so tightly the throb in her biceps felt like screams.
"Tor!"
He'd stopped moving. "Oh, God, what did you do to him?" Panicked, Merrill finally wrenched her head around toward the restaurant door and started to scream.
Her body jerked against the vise that gripped her arm. "Let go, please." The coat she hadn't had time to button flew open.
"Stupid bitch! Can't you see it's too late now."
One hand released her arm. Merrill thought she was finally being freed. Then she saw the shiny thing again, felt a pressure on her neck, heard her assailant grunt the way tennis champions did when they leaned into a 110-mile-an-hour serve. "Uh."
"Oh, God, no!" In that grunt, Merrill heard something give in her neck. The grip on her arm loosened and was gone. Blood bubbled out of her throat like a fountain. She put her hand up to stop it. "Oh God." Her mouth filled with blood. She staggered, unable to breathe.
The gate to the street opened and closed. Her vision blurring, Merrill Liberty saw Tor's killer melt out into the street. She turned to the restaurant door, but couldn't stand up. She collapsed on the body of her friend. Her head lolled on Tor's shoulder, her blood soaked his back. Her eyes were wide open in horror. By the time the restaurant door opened and Patrice came running out, Merrill could no longer tell anyone anything.
2
The autumn that NYPD Detective April Woo made sergeant a winter sky socked in over Manhattan on the first day of November and stayed there, relentlessly frigid and unforgiving to the Light-sensitive—all through the holiday season. It had rained the four days preceding Thanksgiving, then hailed on the parade. It snowed three times before Christmas, thawed, then froze again half a dozen times in the days before New Year's. As the old year wound down in bone-chilling cold, so did crime in New York.
New Year's Day came on Wednesday. By the first weekend in January the celebrating came to a dreary halt as Manhattan's tourist season ended and thousands of visitors returned to their homes around the world, leaving the city looking tired and empty. Residents of New York were staying off the streets, holed up inside and waiting for a break in the winter misery.
On Thanksgiving, April Woo had not been on duty in the 20th Precinct on Eighty-second Street and Columbus Avenue for the Thanksgiving Day parade. She'd made sergeant ten days before and was reassigned twenty-seven blocks south to a supervisory position in the detective squad of Midtown North. When April reported for duty at 8 a.m. on her first day, there had been a lot of activity going on, but not one of the six detectives working the phones at that time had looked up and said, "Hi, how are ya," given her a high five, or done any of the friendly guy things they usually did when a new fellow came in. The thing they did when she arrived new to the job was pointedly ignore her.
Five five, 116 pounds slender. Perfect oval face and almond eyes, rosebud lips, swan neck. As usual, April had been wearing her own personal cop uniform of navy slacks and navy blazer, and that first day, a thick red turtleneck for warmth and good luck. Only the 9mm strapped to her waist gave her away as a cop. That and the fact that there were no earrings in her ears, no jade ring on her finger, no gold necklace around her neck, and she was wearing no makeup except for the barest frosting of Gingembre dore on her lips. The lack of these items cost her quite a bit because she valued her femininity as much as her job. She enjoyed her jewelry, craved her makeup, and felt both ugly and stupid without them.
Midtown North was a bigger and more important house than the Two-O, but the detective squad rooms were all broken up and gave the effect of looking smaller. As April had stood there on her first day taking in the empty holding cell and the backs of her colleagues in her new home, the guy with the big office and an actual name plaque on his door, LT. HERNANDO IRIARTE, frowned and wiggled a finger at her.