“You are all caught up,” Virginia assured her, heading for the doorway. “Drive carefully on your way home. See you in the morning.”
“Same to you on the subway.” Sue exchanged her white coat for her winter coat, which was hanging on the back of the door to the hallway. Picking up her mobile phone, purse, and the list of patients whom she needed to contact, she followed Virginia out into the hallway, where they parted ways. Sue was intent to get out of the high-rise garage before the rush of cars coming in for the night shift starting at 7:00. Although most of the employees came by mass transit, enough private vehicles were involved that it could be a minor traffic jam.
The route required taking the pedestrian bridge from the outpatient building to the main building and from there a second pedestrian bridge to the garage. Although a few of the night-shift personnel were arriving, as were some visitors, it was not nearly as busy as it would get between 6:30 and 7:00. Sue found her car where it had been parked that morning by the valet service in the doctors’ section, which was already mostly empty, as was usually the case. As she approached her beloved BMW with its heavily tinted windows, she reached into her coat pocket and fondled the electronic key fob, pressing the door open button in the process. The car responded by turning on its interior as well as outside lights.
Sue opened the driver’s-side door and tossed her purse into the passenger seat before slipping in behind the wheel. As she always did, she hung her ID lanyard on the rearview mirror. She reached for the starter button, but her hand never made it. To her shock and horror, a cloth hood was thrown over her head and pulled down around her shoulders. As she reached up to tear the hood away, an arm came around her throat, yanking her back against the headrest with such force that her back was arched away from the seat. Letting go of the hood, she tried to pull the arm away using both hands while crying out in utter terror. Unfortunately, her voice was muffled due to both the hood and the compression on her neck. In the next instant she felt a stabbing pain in her right thigh.
Gritting her teeth, Sue managed to pull away the arm encircling her head enough to take a breath. But then a second arm came to the aid of the first, dislodging one of her hands and repinning her head back against the headrest, again restricting her airway.
Out of sheer desperation, Sue tried to bite the arm that was around her neck, but her efforts were restricted by the cloth hood. The attacker responded by upping the compression of her neck and increasing the hyperextension of her back. As forcefully as she could, she then tried to dig the nails of both of her hands into the restraining arms, but as she struggled to do so, she suddenly became aware of losing strength. It was as if the muscles in her arms and neck were becoming unresponsive. At first, she thought it might be a kind of fatigue from making a superhuman effort, but it progressed relentlessly. Rapidly her hands lost their grip on the arms encircling her neck. Then, even more frightening, she found herself struggling to breathe.
Marshaling her last ounce of strength, Sue tried once more to cry out, but no sound escaped her lips, and with an agonizing roar in her ears, she lost consciousness...
Chapter 1
Tuesday, December 7, 6:45 a.m.
Without making it obvious, Dr. Jack Stapleton put muscle into the mild hill climb on West Drive in Central Park where it bordered the reservoir. It had given him a bit of satisfaction to overtake and pass a small, tight covey of younger, serious cyclists on their imported road bikes, all of them clad in skintight, fancy duds emblazoned with all sorts of European product endorsements and wearing clip-in, expensive bike shoes. He, of course, was on his relatively new US-made Trek bike that was every bit as fancy as the others, but his dress was far different. He was wearing his usual brown, wide-wale corduroy jacket, blue jeans, and an indigo chambray shirt with a dark green knit tie. Instead of bike shoes he had on Nike kicks. His only concession to the forty-five-degree weather were gloves and a scarf.
As he had done practically every morning since he had arrived in New York City to begin his new life and second medical career as a New York City medical examiner at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, or OCME, Jack was using his bike to commute from his home on the Upper West Side down to the east side of the city. It was a far different mode of transportation than when he’d been a conservative, midwestern ophthalmologist. Back then he drove a Mercedes to his office every day, attired in a glen plaid suit with carefully polished shoes.
The current pacesetter of the group of well-heeled cyclists responded just as Jack envisioned. It would have been demoralizing to have a middle-aged, possibly blue-collar individual pass them, so he stood up and began a chase. There was no way for the cyclist to know that Jack probably rode his bike more often than they did. Nor did they have any idea that Jack also played demanding pickup basketball on a near-daily basis, weather permitting, and was accordingly in tip-top physical shape. The rest of the cyclists followed the lead of the pacesetter, standing up and pumping furiously.
Meanwhile, without making it obvious by remaining sitting, Jack increased his own effort such that his lead slightly increased despite the more obvious efforts of the pursuing bicyclists. Several minutes later, as Jack crested the hill and began his descent, he stopped pedaling and allowed himself to coast, which permitted the clot of pursuers to finally catch and overtake him to regain their sportive dignity.
Under more normal circumstances Jack would have continued the impromptu race all the way to the south end of the park, where he’d exit on his way to work. But on this particular morning, his attention switched from aggravating the “serious” cyclists to musing about the Brooks School that he was passing to his right on Central Park West. It was where his son, JJ, was enrolled in the fifth grade. As if it were yesterday and with understandable chagrin, Jack could remember his disastrous visit there two years earlier, when Laurie, his wife, asked him to go to talk to the school authorities in her stead about their concern that JJ needed to take Adderall for ADHD after JJ had gotten into a few tussles on the playground.
What made Jack an inappropriate substitute for Laurie was that he was absolutely convinced there was nothing atypical with JJ. Combining that reality with his belief in some kind of conspiracy between the pharmaceutical and education industries, both of which seemed in his mind to be overly eager to start kids on what was essentially speed and turning them into nascent druggies. Unfortunately, Jack had made sure that the Brooks School knew exactly how strongly he felt. As a result, he had succeeded in alienating the school authorities, who threated to expel JJ. Ultimately, Jack had agreed — along with Laurie’s insistence — to have JJ at least evaluated by a psychiatrist, who agreed with the diagnosis, but luckily by that time it no longer mattered. The evaluation process had taken long enough that it was apparent to all that JJ was not exhibiting any more playground shenanigans. As a result, the school’s insistence on medication fell by the wayside — that was, until last week, when JJ had had another fight during recess. Suddenly the whole issue had resurfaced, and it was the reason Jack was now on his way to the OCME so early in the morning. The night before, he had been harangued by both Laurie and her mother, Dorothy, who were both championing the use of ADHD medication. Awakening way before the alarm and not wishing to be again subjected to more pressure before rethinking all the pros and the cons of the situation, Jack had decided to leave the apartment before anyone else was awake.