“Yeah, Mike, Beth Peters here. Sorry to wake you, but we just got word. A fashion photographer, shot dead on a sidewalk in Hell’s Kitchen. Looks like you-know-who.”
“I’m just waiting for my chance to send you-know-who to you-know-where in a handbasket,” I said grimly. “Any witnesses?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “But one of the uniforms said he actually wrote some kind of a message. I didn’t quite catch that part. You want me over there, or? -”
“No, you mind the store,” I said. “I’m closer. Give me an address.”
After talking to Beth, I called Chief McGinnis, hoping I’d get the chance to wake him up to deliver the latest happy news. Unfortunately I had to settle for his voice mail.
Unbelievable, I thought, putting away my phone. The shooter seemed to be speeding up, shortening the interval between kills – giving us less time to figure things out. That was the last thing we needed now.
“Don’t tell me you have to go back in,” Mary Catherine said, still camped out in the chair opposite mine.
“This city never sleeps and apparently neither does its latest psychopath.” I heaved myself to my feet and rooted around the darkened room until I lucked onto my keys, then opened the lockbox in the closet to get my Glock.
“Are you going to be all right?” I asked her. It was a pretty stupid question. What was I going to do if she said no?
“We’re fine,” she said. “You be careful.”
“Believe me, if I get near this guy, I won’t give him a chance to hurt me.”
“Driving, too,” Mary Catherine said. “I’m concerned. You look like you just crawled out of a crypt.”
“Gee, thanks for the compliment,” I said. “If it’s any consolation, I feel even worse.”
I proved it immediately by walking smack into my front door, before I remembered I had to open it first.
But in the elevator down, I started looking on the bright side. At least this time, the guy had the decency to murder somebody on the West Side, so I didn’t have far to drive.
Chapter 52
The crime scene techs were still stringing yellow ribbon when I arrived at the murder site on 38th Street.
“Nice work,” I said to one of them. “Tape’s looking sharp. How’d you score a new roll?” A little hamming it up for the waiting cops and techs is pretty much expected from the arriving homicide detective, and, as loopy as I felt, I was more than happy to oblige.
“You gotta know the right people,” a burly guy with a mustache growled back. “This way, Detective.” He lifted the waist-high plastic ribbon to make it easier for me to limbo underneath.
“I mean, this is what I call a crime scene,” I said. “Garbage in the street? Check. Lifeless citizen? Check? -”
“Wiseass detective? Check,” Cathy Calvin called from behind the barricade.
“Backstabbing reporters, present and accounted for,” I continued, without looking at her.
An Amtrak on its way to anywhere but Hell’s Kitchen gave a tap of its horn as it rumbled beneath the sidewalk train bridge we were standing on. I had a sudden impulse to vault off the bridge onto its top. I’d always dreamt of riding the rails.
“Even moody, cine noir sound effects,” I said, giving the techs a satisfied nod. “You know how much money a Hollywood studio would have to spend for this kind of authenticity? You guys have really outdone yourselves. I honestly couldn’t have asked for better.”
On the way over, I’d learned from Beth Peters that the victim was a heavy in the fashion industry. I’d started to wonder if this situation had parallels to the Gianni Versace murder – if the Teacher was some twerp on the outskirts of the rich and famous, who’d decided to reach out and grab his fifteen minutes of fame the hard way.
The hard way for other people.
I squatted down and looked at the corpse. Then I jumped up and stumbled backward, suddenly and totally wide awake.
“4U Mike, YFA!” was written across the victim’s forehead in Magic Marker.
As I looked up and down the shadowed street, I realized that my hands were trembling. They wanted to draw my Glock and kill that son of a bitch. I clenched them into fists in order to still them. My gaze turned back to the young man lying on the sidewalk. I cringed at the sight of his blood-drenched crotch.
I cursed myself for provoking the Teacher, but then I stopped beating myself up. He would have killed again anyway. He was just using a cheap, ugly pretext to cast blame on me.
I’d wait until I came face-to-face with him. Then I’d turn loose my rage.
Chapter 53
When I got back to my building, even my doorman Ralph knew better than to mess with me. It must have been the stark expression on my face.
Upstairs, I made sure all the locks on the doors and windows were secured before I found my bedroom.
It was going to require smelling salts to wake me come morning, but I did not care. I was not going to brush my teeth. I barely had the energy to take off my shoes. I was going to fall into my bed and sleep until someone wrenched me out of it with great physical force.
I had just pulled my beloved body pillow to my chest when I heard the giggling. It was coming from the other side of the bed.
No, I prayed. Please, Lord. No.
The pillow was tugged out of my grip. A wide-awake Shawna lay there staring at me with a beaming smile.
“Sweetie, this isn’t your bed,” I pleaded softly. “This isn’t even the bathtub. Do you want a pony, Shawna? Daddy will get you a whole herd of ponies if you let him have some rest.”
She shook her head, immediately getting into the spirit of this new game. I felt like weeping. I was doomed, and I knew it. The problem with the youngest kids in a big family is that by the time you’ve gotten to them, you realize it’s actually easier to do things for them than to sit around and agonizingly wait for them to do things for themselves. They instinctively know this. They sense the emptiness in threats the way an ATF dog can detect explosives. Resistance is futile. You are theirs.
As this was going through my mind, I heard more giggling, then felt the movement of something small climbing into the bottom of my bed. I didn’t even have to look to know that Chrissy was getting into the act. She and Shawna were as thick as thieves.
Next, tiny hands separated the largest and second largest toes of my right foot.
“Toe pit sensitivity training,” my daughters screamed in glee as they wriggled their fingers between my toes.
I couldn’t take any more, and I sat up to tell them they had to go back to their own beds. But I stopped when I saw the undiluted delight radiating off them. What the heck. At least they weren’t puking.
Besides, how could you argue with a light beam and an angel?
“All right, I’ll show you some sensitivity training,” I mock-threatened.
Their happy shrieks threatened to shatter the light fixture as I tried the Vulcan nerve pinch on both of them simultaneously.
A few minutes later, after an elaborate ritual of arranging stuffed animals and squish pillows, I managed to tuck in my daughters next to me.
“Tell us a story, Daddy,” Chrissy said as I collapsed again.
“Okay, honey,” I said with my eyes closed. “Once upon a time, there was a poor old detective who lived in a shoe.”
Chapter 54
“Bennett? You there?!”
I lunged up from the mattress, hand groping for my service weapon, as a shrill voice drilled a hole in my right eardrum. Then I realized with bewilderment that I was in my own bedroom filled with morning sunlight, not some murky, death-harboring alley of nightmare. My cell phone, folded open, was resting on my pillow beside where my head had been. One of my kids must have answered it and helpfully stuck it next to sleeping daddy’s ear.
“Yeah?” I said, lifting it with an unsteady hand.