“And that was before you offered him your gun and encouraged him to blow his brains out on the spot.”
“I did do that, didn’t I?” she said, laughing. “That might have been a little reckless.”
“Why did he call?”
“To thank me for saving his life.”
“I hope you can see the irony in that,” I said.
“Stop analyzing everything. The important thing is he opened the door to a possible dialogue. Speaking of which, how’d it go with Cheryl when you got home last night?”
“Fantastic. She welcomed me home like I was Richard the Lionheart returning from the Crusades.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Keep your mind on your driving, or you’re going to miss your exit,” I said.
She got off at Grand Street, and we headed west until we got to Hudson Hospital, an imposing steel and glass complex straddling the border between Chinatown and Little Italy.
We got in an elevator in the lobby and took it two floors down to the security operations room, where we met up with Jenny Betancourt, Wanda Torres, and Frank Cavallaro, the head of Hudson’s security team.
They were sitting in front of a bank of monitors much more elaborate than the setup Gregg Hutchings had at Mercy Hospital.
“They made their first move this morning,” Torres said.
“We have it queued up for you,” Cavallaro said. “Watch this screen over here.”
The camera covered a section of the third floor, which was in the final stages of being renovated. Per Howard Sykes’s plan, the 3-D mammography machines were being “temporarily” stored there, where they were off-limits to staff and patients.
“Keep your eye on this guy in the green shirt,” Torres said, pointing at a wide shot of a man who was spreading compound on drywall, getting it prepped for the painters. “He seems to have more than a passing interest in mammogram technology.”
The man put down his tools, casually sauntered over toward the high-tech equipment, and took out his cell phone.
“He’s not dialing out for pizza, is he?” Kylie said. “Can you get a close-up of his phone?”
“Are you kidding?” Torres said. “This thing can zoom tight enough to read the tattoo on a fly’s ass and correct the spelling.”
“Jesus, Wanda,” her partner said. She looked at us and shook her head. “Did I mention that she flunked out of finishing school?”
The tech at the console grinned, tightened the shot, and froze on the Sheetrock finisher’s right hand. There was a tiny red square at the bottom of his cell phone screen.
“He’s not dialing out for anything,” Torres said. “He’s videotaping and giving a running commentary.”
Less than a minute later, he was finished. He tapped on the screen, waited, and then put the phone back in his pocket.
“He just sent them a video of the target,” Betancourt said, “and you can figure that he also shot surveillance footage of every inch they have to cover to get in and out of the hospital.”
“These guys are fast,” Kylie said. “Twenty-four hours after we get the word out, and they’ve already managed to plant someone on-site.”
“You’d think, but no,” Cavallaro said. “The drywall crew started two weeks ago. That man’s been here every day since then.”
“They couldn’t have known that far back that there’d be anything there worth stealing,” I said. “Maybe they recruited him after we set up the sting. Do you know anything about him?”
Cavallaro nodded. “None of these hard hats get access to this building until we get a profile on them from the construction company, and we’ve fact-checked it. This guy’s name is Dave Magby. Thirty years old, joined the army after high school, pulled two tours in Iraq, married, one kid, no criminal record.”
“Another law-abiding citizen,” Kylie said. “Just like Lynn Lyon.”
“ESU just changed shifts,” Betancourt said. “You’ve got a fresh team to keep you company all night. We’ll see you guys in the morning.”
They left, and Kylie and I sat down in front of the monitors.
“The good news is they took the bait,” she said. “They’ll be here. All we have to do is wait for them to show up.”
CHAPTER 61
We waited. At eleven o’clock Cheryl called to see how I was doing.
“I miss you,” I said.
“I miss you too. How’s the stakeout going?”
“Lousy. You ever throw a party and nobody comes?”
“Relax. The night is young. You still have another eight hours for them to show up.”
They didn’t. At six a.m. I got a text from Chuck Dryden letting us know that he had an updated report on the Leo Bassett murder. An hour later, Betancourt and Torres relieved us, and Kylie and I headed uptown to the crime lab.
Chuck’s face lit up as soon as Kylie and I walked through the door. I knew from experience that it had nothing to do with me.
“My apologies for intruding on your Saturday,” he said, “but I know how important this case is to you.”
“Is it Saturday already?” Kylie said. “Time flies when you’re staring at a wall of monitors for twelve hours. What have you got for us, Chuck?”
He walked us over to a table that was covered with crime-scene photos.
“First, I can confirm that Jeremy Nevins stabbed Leo Bassett,” he said, pointing to the knife-riddled corpse of the jewelry mogul. “The evidence is all there. Nevins’s fingerprints on the murder weapon, the angle of the wounds, and the blood spatters from the victim leave no room for doubt.”
“That’s pretty much what you told us Thursday night,” I said.
He held up a finger to correct me. “It’s what I surmised Thursday night, Detective. At this point, I’m prepared to testify to it.”
“Well, that definitely makes my Saturday. What else?”
“Mr. Nevins’s death was caused by a single bullet fired from the .357 Magnum that Max Bassett turned over at the scene. Again, no question.”
No question. Classic Cut And Dryden. “So you’re batting two for two,” I said.
“And finally, the necklace I found in Mr. Nevins’s backpack matched the one reported stolen from Elena Travers.”
“Does it have Nevins’s prints on it?” I said.
“Excellent question. I was about to get to that. Interestingly enough, it has no prints.”
“None?”
He didn’t respond. Chuck doesn’t answer stupid questions by repeating something he’s previously stated.
“Sorry,” I said. “I know you said none, but shouldn’t the necklace at least have Elena’s prints on it?”
“Not if Nevins wiped the necklace clean, which seems like the kind of thing any criminal of average intelligence would do.”
I disagreed. Why would Nevins wipe off his prints if he was trying to sell the necklace to Bassett? It didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t worth debating with Chuck.
A glimmer of an idea popped into my head, and I closed my eyes, trying to track my thoughts. Kylie and Dryden both knew me well enough not to say a word.
“Doc,” I said slowly, my eyes still shut, “when you say the necklace was wiped clean, are you talking about the kind of clean you get when you take a diamond ring to a jeweler to be steamed and polished?”
“Oh no,” Dryden said. “In that regard, the necklace is filthy. Precious stones are a magnet for grease, which is why women are told not to put on their jewelry until after they’ve applied makeup and perfume. Several of the emeralds in this piece have lost their brilliance. They’ve been dulled by skin oils. But that fact notwithstanding, there are no prints.”
My eyes snapped open. “Get me the crime scene photos of Elena Travers.”
He shuffled through the pile on the table till he found several of the actress lying dead on a New York sidewalk, her white gown soaked in blood, deep gouges on her skin where the necklace had been ripped from her chest.
“Look at this,” I sai
d, tapping on one of the photos. I tapped two more. “And this, and this. Now how about you put that eight-million-dollar necklace back under your microscope.”
“Oh my,” Dryden said, catching on.
“Son of a bitch,” Kylie said, right behind him. “Chuck, if Zach is right, we can nail Max Bassett.”
“Oh my,” Chuck repeated. “I know what you’re looking for, and I can tell you the answer right now. You’re not going to find it.”
“No evidence at all?” I said.
“Not a shred,” he said. “And I will testify to that as well.”
“Thanks, but I don’t know how well lack of evidence will hold up in court.”
“Even so, Detective Jordan, my hat is off to you. Brilliant reasoning. I only wish I had figured it out myself. Bravo, sir.”
His face lit up again. Only this time he was smiling at me.
CHAPTER 62
“Sinatra was right,” Kylie said. “Saturday night is the loneliest night of the week.”
“Then you’re in luck,” I said. “Another hour and twenty-seven minutes, and it will be Sunday morning.”
We were back in the bowels of Hudson Hospital, scanning the monitors, looking for—no, make that hoping for—trouble. It was the second night of the stakeout. More important, it was the twenty-ninth night of my let’s-try-living-together-for-thirty-days experiment with Cheryl, and once again we were spending the evening living apart.
“Guys, heads up.” It was Frank Cavallaro. There was so much going on in the giant medical complex that we needed an insider to flag anything out of the ordinary. Frank teamed up with us while his second-in-command covered the day shift.
“Station fourteen, camera thirty-three,” he said, pointing at the screen.
A sixteen-foot box truck had backed into the loading dock. It was pure white except for the words Med Waste Evac painted in red on the side.
“What’s the issue?” I asked. “Don’t you recognize them?”
“They’re our regular biohazard removal service,” Cavallaro said, “but it’s only ten thirty. They’re not supposed to show up till three a.m., when there’s a minimal amount of patients roaming around. It skeeves people out to see a big container with the words Infectious Waste rolling down the halls.”
I keyed my radio. “All units, this is Triage One. Code orange at station fourteen. Fourteen, he’s not due till three a.m. Find out his story.”
We turned the sound up on the monitor and watched as the guard at the loading dock, a decorated ESU sergeant, approached the driver’s side of the truck, clipboard in hand.
“You fellas in a hurry to get home?” he said. “You’re about four hours early.”
“One of our trucks is out of commission,” the driver said, “so they’ve got us covering two routes. And don’t worry about us getting home early. Four hours from now we’ll be working in Brooklyn.”
“Wave them through, fourteen,” I said.
The guard shrugged. “No skin off my nose,” he said. “Go do what you’ve got to do.” He walked back to his booth at the loading dock and picked up a newspaper.
The driver and three other men got out of the truck. They were all wearing hooded white Tyvek jumpsuits, chemical gloves, and gas masks. They dropped the hydraulic tailgate, opened the rear doors, climbed up inside, and wheeled out a large metal bin that also had Med Waste Evac signage on it.
“They’re bogus,” Cavallaro said. “First of all, they’re overdressed. This is a hospital, not Chernobyl. Second, all they need is a couple of hundred-and-fifty-gallon plastic hampers. I wonder who they stole that shipping container from. It’s big enough to hold four refrigerators…or a 3-D mammogram machine.”
The four men moved quickly through the corridors, navigating their way past several elevator banks until they got to the one they knew would take them exactly where they wanted to go.
Because of privacy regulations, none of the surveillance cameras past the loading dock had audio capabilities, but we could visually track their progress every step of the way. Once they got to the third floor, the only thing between them and the mammogram machines was an oversize set of metal double doors with a single hasp and padlock holding them together.
“I could open that lock with a bobby pin,” Cavallaro said. “It’s only there to keep out the nosy staffers who want to see how the renovations are coming along.”
The medical waste quartet didn’t need a bobby pin. They had a bolt cutter. Within seconds they were inside the construction area, had wheeled up to one of the mammogram machines, and had opened the doors of their transport bin. The driver produced a walkie-talkie, removed his gas mask, and started talking.
“Who is he calling?” Kylie said. “Is it possible they have someone else in the—”
Every picture on the wall of monitors flickered, turned to gray-and-white electronic snow, and then blipped out.
“Shit,” Cavallaro yelled. “How the hell did they do that?”
I grabbed my radio. “All units, code red. We’ve lost visual contact. We have four suspects in white jumpsuits. Lock it down. Repeat: lock down all exits.”
I raced out of the security room, Kylie right behind me. Saturday night was no longer lonely.
CHAPTER 63
In an ideal world, we’d have tracked the theft on video just long enough to have conclusive proof of intention that would hold up in court. We hadn’t quite gotten as much as we wanted, but as soon as they cut the power, all bets were off. The cat-and-mouse game was now a manhunt.
I had officers on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, and as Kylie and I raced up the stairs, I gave the order for them to converge on the third.
The first shots rang out just as we got to the lobby. Seconds later, I got the radio report.
“Shots fired, third floor. Suspects split up and are on the run. I’m in pursuit of one headed upstairs. The others went south.”
The lobby was well covered. Kylie and I ran up to the second floor just in time to see a man in a white jumpsuit racing down the hall. We drew our guns, and Kylie yelled, “Police! Freeze! Drop your weapon!”
He didn’t stop, or freeze, but he did drop something. It wasn’t his gun. Kylie and I both dove for cover as the black canister rolled toward us. It exploded in a blinding flash of light, and the earsplitting blast was magnified by the acoustics of the hospital hallway.
Flash grenades aren’t designed to cause permanent injury, but what they lack in destructive power they make up for in their ability to stun anyone who’s on the receiving end. I couldn’t see for at least five seconds, my legs were shaky when I tried to stand, and my ears were ringing. I helped Kylie to her feet, and by the time we both regained our bearings, our target was at the far end of the corridor.
We got there just in time to see him vault a nurses’ station, grab a fire extinguisher off the wall, and race into a room.
We stopped and took positions on either side of the door. “You’ve got nowhere to go,” Kylie yelled, breathing hard. “Come out with your hands up.”
He responded by firing a shot. The bullet didn’t hit anything, but he’d made his point. He wasn’t giving up without a fight. The gunshot was followed by the sound of glass shattering. And then nothing.
Ten seconds into the silence, Kylie dropped low, darted her head inside the room, and pulled back. “He went out the window.”
“It’s a two-story jump,” I said as we entered.
“No, it’s not,” she said, looking down. “The roof to the emergency entrance is directly below us, which is why he made for this room.”
He had smashed the window with the fire extinguisher, but he’d left jagged shards sticking up from the bottom, and the glass was bloodied.
“Looks like he cut himself up pretty good,” Kylie said, picking up the extinguisher. “Maybe it will slow him down.” She knocked out the glass stalagmites protruding from the sill, climbed out, and jumped.
I followed. It was only about eight feet to the ER canopy.
It was a perfect vantage point to scan the area, and I spotted his standout white jumpsuit a block away, just as he ran down the stairs of the Grand Street subway station.
We dropped from our perch onto the top of an EMS truck parked below, scrambled down the hood of the ambulance, and ran toward the station.
Just as we got to the entrance, we heard the train pull in. We raced down the stairs and hurdled the turnstile. About a dozen people had gotten off the train, and we scanned them just in case he tried to double back and blend in with the people who were exiting.
We didn’t see him, and by now everyone who had been waiting for the train was on board. The platform was empty except for a crumpled heap of white Tyvek.
The conductor’s voice bounced off the cavernous walls. “Watch the closing doors.”
I body-blocked one just as it was about to shut, and the two of us squeezed onto the last car of the train.
A woman saw our guns and screamed. “Police,” I yelled as we dug out our shields. “Everybody stay where you are.”
It was a Saturday night crowd, so there were a lot of young people along with the usual melting pot of New Yorkers you find on any given subway ride. Nobody said a word.
“We have to find him before we get to the next station, or we’ll lose him,” Kylie said.
“He tossed the jumpsuit,” I said, “but we don’t even know if he got on the train.”
“Yes, we do,” Kylie said, pointing at the floor.
I bent down to get a closer look. It was small. No bigger than a dime. But it was fresh, and it was red.
Blood.
CHAPTER 64
We slid open the door to the next car and made our way down the aisle until we found another small spatter. We kept walking toward the front of the train.
“Next stop, Broadway-Lafayette,” the automated voice announced.
“We don’t have time to search the whole train before it gets to the next station,” I said.