“Well, good morning, Sleeping Beauty. Your prince has been waiting.”
He rested the tip of the stun baton on the chair between Spence’s open legs. “I’m taking the tape off your mouth,” he said. “If you yell, your voice will go up about twelve octaves.”
Spence nodded, then winced as Gabe yanked hard to remove the tape. “Who are you?” he whispered.
“I’m The Chameleon,” Gabriel said.
Spence stared at him in disbelief. “I don’t…I don’t understand. That’s the name of my new show. The Chameleon is my new character.”
“The one you stole from me,” Gabriel said. “I submitted that idea to you two years ago. I’m The Chameleon.”
The man was insane, and Spence shook his head, trying to process the information. “Okay,” he said. “You’re The Chameleon. I’m screening a pilot tonight. The central character is a private detective-a master of disguise. He’s also called The Chameleon. It’s a coincidence. I never stole-”
“I don’t care if you changed him to a detective or a bus driver or an astronaut,” Gabriel said, the anger raising his voice. “It’s still my idea. I sent it to you. I trusted you.”
“I believe you,” Spence said. “The thing is, people send me ideas every day, but I can’t read them. Most TV producers never read unsolicited pitches unless they come from an agent we work with.”
“Most TV producers lie through their teeth,” Gabriel said.
“I swear I’m telling you the truth,” Spence said. “The Chameleon is an idea that I had four years ago. I’ve been developing it ever since, and I finally-what are you doing?”
The Chameleon reached into his backpack. “Look what we have here,” he said. “And you thought the cattle prod was bad? This little movie of mine is just full of surprises, isn’t it?”
Spence screamed. “Help! Somebody! Help!”
Gabriel’s fist connected with Spence’s nose, and the screams were replaced by the sound of cartilage crunching and snapping. He pulled Spence’s head back and violently wrapped the duct tape around his mouth three times.
“You not only took my idea,” Gabriel said, holding up the object of Spence’s terror. “You took my life. And now, guess what, pretty boy? It’s payback time.”
Chapter 69
There are three dozen dogs in NYPD’s Emergency Services K-9 Unit. Half of them work narcotics, the other half are bomb sniffers. A few have been cross-trained to find cadavers. Even in a city the size of New York, on any given day, eighteen bomb-sniffing dogs would be more than enough.
But this was not any given day.
I called Sergeant Kyle Warren, the K-9 coordinator for all of NYPD. He’s only thirty-two years old, but he’s been training dogs since he was ten. I laid out the problem, and all he said was “I’m on it.”
Two hours later, Warren called back. He had recruited dogs from the state police in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and from as far north as the Ulster County Sheriff’s Department. By 5:00 p.m., our K-9 contingent was up to thirty-two.
Kylie and I were at the precinct, sticking pushpins into a map of the city that was tacked to a corkboard wall. Since we didn’t have enough dogs to cover every possible target, we had to decide which of them warranted a canine handler to be stationed there full-time, and which could be swept and then have the dog sent on to the next venue.
“I think Spence is right,” Kylie said. “The meatpacking district has to be the prime target. It’s where most of your A-listers are going to be. We should have at least half a dozen bomb-sniffing dogs working this area.”
“Knowing those A-listers,” I said, “I’ll bet we’d hit the jackpot if we sent in a couple of narco dogs as well.”
Kylie’s cell rang. Except it wasn’t her usual ringtone.
“Has my husband lost his mind?” she said. “It’s a Skype call from Spence. Does he really think I have nothing better to do than video-chat?”
“Consider yourself lucky,” I said. “He only calls me in the middle of the night.”
She held up her iPhone and connected to Skype.
“Oh my God. Zach…”
I looked over her shoulder. There on the iPhone screen was Spence, bound, gagged, and sitting totally naked in a chair.
“Spence…” was all Kylie could get out.
And then Gabriel Benoit stepped into the picture.
“Hello, Detective MacDonald. And there’s your sidekick, Detective Jordan, right behind you. I don’t know if you found my apartment yet,” Benoit said, “but I found yours.”
“What do you want?” Kylie said.
“I want you to suffer the same way you made me suffer. Do you know who that woman was that you killed this morning?”
“She was a cold-blooded murderer,” Kylie said. “She opened fire on a bunch of defenseless people.”
“Lexi was as innocent as a child,” Benoit said. “If she killed anyone, it’s because they deserved it.”
“What do you want?” Kylie repeated.
“Do you know how painful it is to lose someone you love?” Benoit asked.
Kylie didn’t answer.
“You’re about to find out,” he taunted.
He held up a fat block of C4 to the camera. There was a digital timer taped to it with one black wire and one white wire, both connected to a detonator buried deep in the plastic.
“You have thirty minutes,” Benoit said. “And then I will have taken from you, the same way you have taken from me.”
He pushed a button. The digital timer flashed 29:59 and began to count down the seconds. When it got to 29:55, he removed it from view, and once again we were looking at Kylie’s living room. Five seconds later, he hung up.
The screen went dark, but the last image I had seen would forever be burned onto my brain. Spence Harrington, naked, totally helpless, taped to a chair in his own apartment, alone and afraid, waiting to die.
Chapter 70
Kylie bolted.
I grabbed a radio and was right behind her, taking the stairs two at a time.
“I need a PPV!” she yelled at Sergeant McGrath as she careened into the front desk and pushed aside a civilian. “Two-one-seven in progress.”
McGrath didn’t hesitate. If there was any bad blood from the earlier meeting, it was forgotten. A Two-one-seven was an assault with intent to kill, and Kylie was clearly a cop on a mission.
“Sixty-four Forty-two,” he said. “Chevy Caprice out front. Fastest PPV we got. Keys are in it.”
Kylie flew out the door and raced for the Chevy. She opened the front door, and I grabbed her by the arm.
“We should call the bomb squad,” I said.
She shoved me off.
“No. By the time they suit up, mobilize, find my apartment, and decide the safest way to defuse the bomb, Spence will be dead. It’s either me,” she said, “or you and me. Are you in or out?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She jumped into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“In!” I yelled, throwing myself into the passenger side as she peeled out and blasted through the red light on Lexington, light bars flashing, siren screaming.
“We should call for backup,” I said.
“Not until we get there and we can assess the situation,” she said, swinging onto Fifth. “We can’t take a chance on having some gung ho rookie showing up and deciding to play hero.”
“You think it’s any better to send a gung ho wife to play hero?”
“Dammit, Zach, I’ve got twenty-eight minutes,” she said. “I know where Spence is and how to get there, and I don’t have time to brief a backup unit and get them up to speed.”
Kylie made a hard right onto Central Park South, the ritzy stretch of 59th Street that runs from Grand Army Plaza at Fifth Avenue to Columbus Circle at Eighth. The street was lined with dozens of horse-drawn hansom cabs waiting to take willing tourists on a twenty-minute trot through the park for fifty bucks plus tip. Kylie leaned on the siren, then hopped the double yellow line into the eastbound lane, where there was a lot less traffic.