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“She definitely made up for it this time around.”

“All of it behind her boyfriend’s back. Benoit had no idea she was going to pull this. In his last few messages he was looking for her frantically. And you were right. They’re plotting out a movie. We found the script for this scene in her purse. It had two endings.”

“One where she gets away, and one where she dies tragically?” Cates said.

“No. One where she gets away, and one where she gets caught by NYPD Red, and she stands up to us, protecting her man.”

“With Tammy Wynette on the sound track?” Cates said.

“She even uses my name and Zach’s in the script,” Kylie said, unfolding one of the pages we found in Lexi’s purse. “Her character is called Pandemonia Passionata. I’ll give you some of the dialogue.”

DETECTIVE JORDAN

Where is your partner? What does he have planned?

PANDEMONIA

Save your breath, pretty boy. You’ll get nothing out of me.

DETECTIVE MACDONALD

You have no idea how much trouble you’re in.

PANDEMONIA

And you have no idea how much trouble you’re in.

“That’s the way she saw this going down?” Cates said. “We either catch her, or she gets away? Did she ever write the ending the way it happened?”

Kylie shook her head. “No. She was blissfully delusional to the very end.”

“We need the rest of the script,” Cates said. “Do you have any idea where it is?”

“It may be in her computer, but she has an out-of-state license and all her last known addresses in New York are dead ends,” I said. “But we do have something. Remember Cheryl Robinson predicted that Benoit is about to do something big-much bigger than the previous murders? Listen to this.”

I pushed the message retrieval button on Lexi’s cell phone.

“Lexi, it’s me. Things are turning to shit. I’m outside Mickey’s building, and the cops showed up. I’m pretty sure they’re going to pick up Mickey. I got forty-five thousand dollars’ worth of C4 in my bag, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop them. That’s all. Oh yeah, one more thing. Where the fuck are you?”

“Forty-five thousand?” Cates said. “That’s a lot of C4.”

“It’s enough to call in Homeland and anybody else we need to help us track him down,” I said.

“I don’t want to track him. I want to be three steps ahead of him.”

“Zach and I have a list of all the events happening connected to Hollywood on the Hudson. But they’re spread all over town-hotels, theaters, restaurants, private parties. I don’t think we can find enough bomb-sniffing dogs to handle it all.”

“Can Benoit do this on his own?” Cates said. “It’s one thing to rig a Molotov cocktail, but that’s a lot of plastic for him to be handling without his resident bomb guy. We’ve got Peltz in custody. We can hold him for seventy-two hours.”

“That might slow him down, but I don’t know if it will stop him,” I said. “Benoit is smart. He had to figure we’d be paying a visit to a bomb expert who just got out of prison. That’s why he didn’t leave the explosives at Peltz’s place. More likely he used Peltz to score the fireworks and give him a short course in how to use them. C4 is not all that complicated.”

“Well, if Peltz taught Benoit how to use that plastic, then Peltz would have to know what the targets are,” Cates said. “Get back to the station as soon as you can wrap it up here and put the fear of God into Mr. Peltz.”

“Are we still waiting for his PO to show up?” Kylie asked.

“That’s the rule, isn’t it?” Cates said. “Don’t question the parolee without his parole officer present.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kylie said. “That’s the rule.”

“And you of all people ought to know, Detective MacDonald…some rules are meant to be broken.”

Chapter 64

It was a half hour before shift change when we finally got back to the station house, and a steady stream of people were either coming, going, or waiting to speak to the desk sergeant.

The One Nine is one of the busiest precincts in the city, and it takes an old pro like Bob McGrath to man the front desk.

When we got there, he was dealing with two women in their early twenties-one of them an amazingly beautiful Latina. Four more civilians were stacked up in a holding pattern.

Kylie and I went to the front of the line.

“Sorry to interrupt, Sarge,” I said, “but Captain Cates sent a patrol car to pick up this guy Mickey Peltz in Queens. Did they?”

“Yeah, Detective, hold on, I got his intake sheet here somewhere,” McGrath said. “Either of you two guys habla espanol?

“I can habla un poco,” Kylie said.

“No good,” McGrath said. “All cops can habla un poco. This lady here is from Colombia. She speaks zero English, and her friend speaks no Spanish.”

“I’m not really her friend,” the woman said. “She was staying in the apartment next door, and I just brought her here. I was only trying to be a Good Samaritan. Somebody stole her passport and-”

“Lady, stop,” McGrath said. “I got the English part down. Give me two seconds to rustle up a cop who speaks Spanish.”

“Can I get through, Sergeant?”

It was the Pepsi deliveryman pushing a dolly stacked high with cases of soda for the vending machines.

“Your truck better not be blocking any of my squad cars out there, Vernon,” McGrath said as he waved him through with one hand.

“And your cops better not be putting any more slugs in my soda machine,” the Pepsi man said, laughing.

McGrath turned the wave into a single finger and used the other hand to rummage through the pile of paper on top of his desk, looking for the one on Peltz.

“Excuse me, but I have to pick up my son from school in a half hour,” the Good Samaritan lady said.

“I understand, ma’am,” McGrath said. Looking over his shoulder, he yelled, “Donna, did you give a shout out for Rodriguez or Morales? I still need a Spanish translator over here.”

A civilian in the glass-walled office behind him rolled her chair to the door so she could yell back. “They’re both busy, Sarge!”

“I’m not buying it,” McGrath said, still digging through the mountain of paper. “They’re on a meal break. Call them back, and this time make sure you tell them what this young lady looks like.”

I was getting annoyed by all the interruptions, and one look at my partner let me know she was even more aggravated than I was. I could see her clenching her jaw, which helped keep her mouth shut.

McGrath caught the frustration. “Sorry, guys, Peltz has been here awhile. His paperwork got buried.”

He kept looking while a small parade of people left the station, pushing their way through the swinging half gate that separates the front desk from the waiting area-three cops carrying oversized duffel bags; Victor, the delivery guy from Gerri’s Diner; a priest; and a battle-weary older man in a rumpled blue suit who had poor man’s lawyer written all over him.

McGrath’s head bobbed up and down eyeballing everyone who entered or exited. Finally, he yanked a single blue sheet of paper from the pile. “Peltz, comma, Mickey,” he said triumphantly. There was a yellow Post-it note stuck to the top. He squinted at it. “And his PO called at one-oh-five. He’s still tied up in court. Asked you guys to hold off till he gets here.”

“Not a chance,” Kylie said, taking the blue sheet. “Not after what went down this morning. Where’s Peltz?”

“Yo, Sarge. ?Donde esta la hermosa mujer?

It was Officer Morales, his dark eyes already zeroing in on the beautiful Colombian woman. He tightened his abs and puffed out his chest, all hot to translate.

Officer Rodriguez was right behind him. “Sarge, he’s Puerto Rican. They don’t even speak real Spanish down there. My father was from Colombia. I’ll talk to her.”