Her name was Angie Hamilton. She was a petite, attractive brunette in her midtwenties, who still looked shaken up as Beth brought her into the office.
“Hi, Angie,” I said. “I’m Detective Bennett. I know this is tough for you right now, but we need to know everything you can tell us about the man who shot Ms. Broussard. You talked to him, right?”
“He asked if Martine Broussard had left yet,” Angie Hamilton said. “He told me they’d just met, and he was bringing her flowers because… because…” She was starting to cry. Beth put an arm around her, murmured sympathetically, and fished a tissue out of her pocket. Angie dried her tears and continued stammering.
“H-he said he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t let her know how he felt. I thought it was so romantic.”
Double score, I thought, catching Beth’s eye. She nodded back. The shooter had asked specifically for Martine Broussard. He had known the victim. Now, for the first time, it was certain that we were looking at a nonrandom shooting. And the odds were greatly increased that this was connected to the other incidents.
We’d caught another break, and it gave us another avenue to run down.
“How did he act, Angie? Did he seem nervous? Cocky?”
“Not cocky,” the desk clerk said. “A little nervous, but sweet… kind of charming, really. That’s what made it even more awful. I told him to go wait on the couch so he wouldn’t miss her when she came out of the elevator. But – but I killed her.” Angie broke into tears again, bending forward with deep wracking sobs.
This time I joined with Beth in putting an arm around her.
“You didn’t do anything wrong at all, Angie,” I said. “You were just trying to be decent. The only one who did wrong is this madman who’s going around shooting innocent people.”
Run For Your Life
Chapter 37
The first cops on the scene had transported the victim’s fellow flight attendants to Midtown North. The Air France women were hysterical – so freaked out, in fact, that the first responding detectives couldn’t get anything but French from them. Being typical cops, their mastery of French began and ended with -Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir. They’d sent for a translator, but nobody had shown up yet.
Fortunately, I wasn’t a completely typical cop.
“Je suis vraiment désolé pour votre amie,” I said to the ladies as I entered the upstairs interview room. “Je suis ici pour trouver le responsible, mais je vais avoir besoin de votre aide.”
Basically, that told them that I needed their help in finding the killer. At least, I thought that’s what I was saying. Years ago, my French had been pretty fair, but I was rusty. Maybe my words had really come out more like “Have you seen my sister’s wolverine?”
Whatever I had said, the gorgeous women jumped up excitedly and converged on me. I’d never engaged in a group hug with five blond French supermodel look-alikes before. Somehow I managed to endure it, thinking about the dean of students at Regis, who’d urged me to take Spanish because it was more practical.
I showed them the photo of the shooter from the surveillance video. One of them, Gabrielle Monchecourt, stared at it with widening eyes, then started jabbering a mile a minute. After getting her to slow way down, I managed to piece together what she was saying.
She thought she’d seen the shooter before! She wasn’t a hundred percent positive, but maybe at a British Airways party in Amsterdam a year ago – where there’d been a lot of pilots from a dozen different airlines.
Another big break! A pilot! And another connection to what I’d been guessing from the first – had never really doubted. Well, maybe for just a second. How about that? My diplomacy and ham-handed attempt at French had actually paid off. Go Regis!
We finally had a lead solid enough to pursue.
I took my cell phone out into the hall and communicated the breaks in the case to Chief McGinnis.
“Nice work, Mike” was the first thing he said, stunning me. The second was almost as surprising – that he was giving me office space at the Police Academy on 20th Street, along with ten detectives to work my leads.
I did some head scratching at the chief’s change of attitude as I drove to my new digs.
Chapter 38
With his arms full of grocery bags, the Teacher had to use his foot to shut the battered door of the Hell’s Kitchen apartment behind him. He placed the bags on the kitchen counter, tossed his guns on top of the fridge, and, without pausing, tied on his apron with a snug bow. He was starving, same as he’d been after yesterday’s work.
Past noon, the pickings were pretty slim at the farmers’ market in the north end of Union Square Park, but he’d managed to find some fresh Belgian endive and porcini mushrooms. He was going to use the porcini as a crust for the finely marbled Kobe fillet he’d scored at Balducci’s on Eighth Avenue.
For a foodie like him, seeing what looked fresh at the market was the only way to decide what to make for dinner.
After crusting the steak, he couldn’t resist a quick peek at the news. He washed his hands, went into the living room, and turned on the television. The first image that appeared showed a hovering helicopter and a million cops. Reporters were running around, interviewing scared-looking people on the street.
He shook his head, inhaling deeply, as he relived the shoot-out with the cops. Even with his training and unerring instincts, he so easily could have died right there and then. It was another sign that what he was doing was the right thing, the only thing. His baptism by fire had actually made him feel even more committed and passionate.
Back in the kitchen, he banged a cast-iron pan onto the Viking range and set the power burner on high. When the pan began to smoke slightly, he added a swirl of olive oil and carefully laid down the crusted Kobe, which gave a loud, satisfying sizzle.
The smoky scent reminded him of the first time he’d met his stepfather, at Peter Luger Steak House out in Brooklyn. It was after his mom and dad had split up, when he was ten years old. He’d gone to live with his mom, and now she’d wanted him to meet her new boyfriend.
His beautiful mother had been a secretary at the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, and her boyfriend turned out to be her boss, Ronald Meyer, a ridiculously wealthy and ridiculously old LBO specialist. The short, frog-faced geriatric had tried very stiffly to be buddy-buddy with him. The Teacher remembered sitting there in Peter Luger’s, staring at the doddering financier who had caused his family to be ripped apart, and being stricken with the almost irresistible impulse to ram his steak knife into the man’s hairy right nostril.
Not long after that, his mother had become Ronald Meyer’s trophy wife, and the Teacher had moved with her into Meyer’s Fifth Avenue apartment. Overnight, like a kid in a fairy tale, he was suddenly setting foot in the strange new worlds of art and opera, country clubs, servants, Europe.
How quickly his initial anger had faded. With what disgusting ease and completeness he’d been lulled into a sheeplike stupor by the luxury of his newly upgraded lifestyle.
But now he realized that the anger had never gone anywhere. It had only grown, festering day after day through all the years since then, waiting to be unleashed.
He flipped the Kobe in the pan and opened a bottle of ‘78 Daumas Gassac that he’d been saving for a special occasion. He poured himself a tall glass and swirled it toward the good light coming in through the west-facing window.
Thinking about his crotchety stepfather, Ronny, made him smile and cringe, both. There were all the things Meyer had bought for him – the clothes and cars, the vacations, the Ivy League education.
But then, the graduation at Princeton. The awkward embrace he’d had to endure. The wretched “I’m so proud of you, son” that had emanated from the ninety-year-old’s liver-colored lips. To this day, his skin crawled at the mere thought of being related to the horrifying, ginger-haired skeleton his mother had used for a meal ticket.