I’d seen hot crime scenes before, but this was way over the top. Then I realized it must have been part of the NYPD Counter-Terror Unit’s new surge tactic, which I’d heard about but hadn’t yet seen. At the first hint of a threat, as many as two hundred cops would be sent in to blanket an area with an overwhelming shock-and-awe presence.
Maybe Daly was right, I thought for a moment. The lights and cops and chaos, the adrenaline rush stiffening my spine. What I was seeing was definitely reminding me of the disaster scenes I once worked.
It was impressive, all right. As I badged my way past the Emergency Service Unit guys on the sidewalk, I blinked warily at the cut-down M16s they were strapping on. Those had been issued after 9/11, but I still couldn’t get used to them, and I probably never would. If we could just go back to the good old days when only the drug dealers had assault rifles, I thought.
The inside of Polo’s flagship store looked satanically plush, especially to a guy who did most of his shopping at Old Navy and the Children’s Place. A sandy-haired man at the top of the mahogany staircase came forward to meet me – Terry Lavery, a very competent Nineteenth Precinct detective. I was glad to see somebody who I knew I could get along with, and who was smart, to boot.
“What do you think of the army out there, Mikey?” he said. “I haven’t seen this much NYPD blue since the DC convention.”
I snapped my fingers, like a lightbulb in my head had just gone on.
“So that’s why I want to get naked and slide down this banister,” I said. “Hey, right off, I just want to let you know that it wasn’t my idea to come tromping on your turf. I actually called in for a personal today. But the PC insisted. He wants me out of the way, so I can’t be questioned about that debacle up in Harlem last night.”
“Sure, sure,” Lavery said, rolling his eyes. “Just tell the Commish I said hi, next time you meet him for lunch at Elaine’s.”
With the ritual chop-busting out of the way, Lavery flipped opened his notepad.
“Here’s what we got so far,” he said. “Victim’s name is Kyle Devens. He was forty-six, gay, lived in Brooklyn, been working here eleven years. There was one witness to the actual incident, another clerk. He managed to whisper about a dozen words to us, then he went catatonic, so we don’t have a description of the shooter yet.”
“Near as we can put it all together, he walked in here before noon, pulled out a semiautomatic pistol, pumped a full clip into our boy, then walked back out.”
“That’s it?” I said. “No robbery, no struggle, nothing else?”
“If he was trying to hold the place up, he really botched it, because absolutely nothing’s missing. If there’s another reason, we don’t know it.”
“Did Devens have a boyfriend?” I said. Despite the antiterror response, we had to treat this as a regular murder until we knew otherwise.
“The manager said he lived with a guy a couple of years ago, but it didn’t work out, so he moved back in with his mother. We’re still trying to contact her. But there didn’t seem to be anything in the wind like a lovers’ quarrel, and he got along with his coworkers. No priors or indications that he might have hung out with bad guys.”
My lousy luck was holding. It was already clear that this wasn’t going to be an easy case.
My gaze moved to the scattered cuff links in a crime scene cop’s camera FlashPack, sparkling like ornaments on the expensive rug – except that mixed in with them were several fat.45-caliber brass shell casings.
The Crime Scene Unit tech, an old friend named John Cleary, caught me eyeing them. “Don’t get your hopes up, Mike,” he said. “We already dusted them. No prints. And if that’s not good enough news, no exit wounds, from a.45 at point-blank range. I’m not the ME, but my guess is that means hollow points.”
More good news, all right. Not just a murderous psycho, but one who was locked and loaded with especially lethal ammo.
Kyle Devens’s body was still lying on the fancy rug, too. He’d fallen in such a way that he was reflected in the ten-foot-high corner try-on mirror – a composition of blood, death, and broken glass, multiplied by three. I stared down at the gaping wounds in his chest.
“Yeah, when you’re up against unarmed tie salesmen, everyone knows it’s all about stopping power.”
But almost more unsettling than the degree of violence was the shooter’s meticulousness. Not only had he been quick and efficient, he’d used gloves when he loaded his gun.
I thought of the 21 Club killing and I started to get the vague, uneasy hunch that we were dealing with the same man.
There was nothing vague about my feeling that this was going to be one heck of a long day. That settled down on me like a soggy raincoat.
Chapter 16
A minor commotion at the store’s ground-floor entrance signaled the arrival of the medical examiner. I got out of his way and put in a call to Midtown South to find out if any more information had come to light about the other assaults that Commissioner Daly had mentioned.
The detective who’d caught the case was a newly promoted woman named Beth Peters, whom I’d never met before.
“The girl in the subway says somebody shoved her. She wasn’t paying attention, so she didn’t see who. But a dozen witnesses saw a man standing right beside her. One elderly lady swears he bumped her deliberately with his hip, and several others think he might have.”
“Description of the guy?” I said.
“Not anything like you’d think. A businessman, very well groomed, wearing a quote unquote ‘gorgeous’ tailored gray suit. White male, around thirty. Black hair, six two, two hundred pounds. In other words, a metrosexual sociopath. Very twenty-first-century, right?”
Detective Peters was crisp, clear, and sardonic. I decided I was going to get along fine with her.
“Just right, unfortunately,” I said. “Anything on video, like which direction he headed?”
“We collected surveillance tapes from Macy’s and a few other places around Herald Square. The witnesses are viewing them as we speak, but I’m not holding my breath. Thirty-fourth and Seventh at morning rush, it looks like outside Yankee Stadium after a play-off game.”
A possible correspondence ticked in my brain – between a man who was beautifully dressed and groomed, and the ultra-high-fashion men’s store where I was standing. Was there some kind of upper-class angle?
“At least we’ll have your witnesses to ID this maniac once we catch him,” I said. “Thanks, Beth. Let’s keep each other posted.”
When I finished the call, I granted myself a sixty-second time-out to take a leak. The manager’s men’s room, though small, was almost as luxurious as the rest of the store. And it didn’t smell like puke. I gave it four stars.
I took the opportunity to phone back home.
“I’m really sorry,” I told Mary Catherine when she answered. “You know I wanted to take today off to give you a hand, but there’s this wacko – or maybe wackos – running around and… anyway, suffice it to say, I’m not going to be home for a while.”
“I’m doing fine, Mike. Truth is, I’m glad to get you out from underneath me feet,” she said.
I wasn’t sure that was a compliment, but I was damn sure that the lass was a trouper.
“Thanks a million, Mary,” I said. “I’ll check in again when I get a chance.”
“Wait, someone here wants to talk to you,” she said.
“Daddy?” It was Chrissy, my youngest. Her “sore froath,” as she called it, actually sounded a little better. Thank God for small mercies.
“Daddy, please tell Ricky to stop bothering me,” she said. “It’s my turn to watch TV.”
Yet another bonus to being a widower, I thought. Oh, the joys of teleparenting.