Burn (Michael Bennett 7) (10 page)

“When he woke the next morning, he said he had blacked out after partying with some old friends, and that they must have put something in his drink. He had some really great excuses, couldn’t stop apologizing. He cried. So I let him stay.”

She started crying then.

“After that—after he bloodied my face and my clothes—I let him stay. Imagine? He started hitting me pretty regularly then. I’m supposed to be this fashion guru, and I was so stupid.”

CHAPTER
24

ARTURO STOOD IMMEDIATELY AND
gently held the woman’s elbow.

“No, Holly. It’s OK. Don’t do that. We’re here, OK? We’re going to help you now. This man tricked you. It could have happened to anyone. Don’t blame yourself. He’s in the wrong, not you.”

She sniffled, composed herself.

“Eventually, about a month later, I just woke up one morning and realized how crazy my life had become, and I threw him out. The super is a good friend of mine, and he and a couple of guys who work here came up and backed me up when I told Roger to get his stuff and get out.

“That very next night when I came home from work, I saw him through the glass of the front door, sitting in one of the lobby windows, holding a bulging laundry bag and a butcher knife. I ran back and got into my cab and called the cops, but he was gone by the time they showed up. He took everything. My jewelry, my computer, a bunch of my financial records.”

“When was this?” I said.

“About a month and a half ago,” she said. “I reported it to the precinct, canceled all my credit cards, changed the locks. I thought it was over until he started leaving all these anonymous threats on my social media page. He told me how he’s been following me, waiting for the right moment. Biding his time. ‘You can’t just throw me away,’ he said.

“He started calling my cell and landline in the middle of the night. Sometimes both at the same time. He’s even called and harassed some of my coworkers, people I introduced him to. The things he says.”

She shook her head rapidly.

“It’s like a nightmare. I’ve been to court three times, but I still can’t get a restraining order because I don’t even know his real name.”

“Holly,” I said. “Do you have any time at work that you could take off? Maybe two weeks or so?”

“No,” she said. “We’re swamped with a new client, a celebrity fragrance that’s just getting ramped up. Why?”

“This guy seems pretty impulsive and obsessed. If you took a trip, if he noticed you weren’t around for a consistent stretch, it might take the thrill out of it for him, and he might move on.”

“But I can’t. I just told you,” Holly said as she started crying again.

While Arturo continued to comfort her, I took a cell phone photograph of the suspect and sent it to the local precinct captain’s e-mail address. Then I made an actual phone call to the precinct captain to fast-track the case.

He told me he’d let the shift commanders know what was up and gave me the desk number for Holly to call instead of 911 in case she spotted this wacko. I wrote the precinct number on the back of my card along with my cell phone.

“Holly, listen to me, OK?” I said. “I don’t care if it’s day or night. I live pretty close by downtown. You see Roger, you call the precinct, then you call me, and we’ll come running right away, OK? You have friends close by now. You don’t have to face this alone.”

Holly nodded. She finally looked relieved.

“Thank you so much for coming by and taking my situation seriously, Detectives,” she told us as she led us back out into the hallway.

CHAPTER
25

FOR THE NEXT HALF
hour, we drove around the Morningside Park area, looking for Roger.

“Good work comforting that lady up there, Arturo. She was pretty shook up. You’re good with people,” I said as we circled the block.

“Poor lady,” Arturo said, shaking his head. “Least I could do. Imagine some fruitcake stalking you like that?”

“This guy is more than just a nut,” I said. “A lot of stalking cases are just bluff by spurned jerks, but Holly’s account is definitely concerning.”

“How can you tell the difference?”

“The fact that this Roger guy seems to have some psychiatric issues, that he’s a physically abusive substance abuser, and that Holly had been intimate with him are some very serious red flags when it comes to the potential for violence.”

I suddenly stopped the car as we were sweeping around Holly’s block for the second time. I took a pair of binoculars that I keep in the glove compartment and pointed them into Morningside Park.

“What’s up?”

I handed Arturo the glasses.

“Female on the bench off to the right by the playground,” I said.

“The white girl with the glasses?” Arturo said, focusing in.

“She’s directly opposite Holly’s building, and she’s got a camera with a telephoto lens.”

“Birdwatcher?” Arturo said.

“She’s watching something,” I said, pulling over. “This Roger guy is quite the ladies’ man, right? Well, maybe he got himself a new friend to keep an eye on Holly. Let’s go see what she has to say.”

Only having been in it a few times, I had almost forgotten how nice a park Morningside is. Built by Frederick Law Olmsted, the famous nineteenth-century landscape architect who designed Central Park and Prospect Park, it had meandering walkways and grand stone staircases and even an elaborate waterfall beside one of its pathside ponds.

Too bad I wasn’t there to sightsee.

“Hey there,” I said, showing the woman on the bench my shield as I approached. The pale woman stood up, quickly stuffing the camera into a bag and gathering her things. But before she could take off, Arturo was already coming up the opposite side, blocking her way along the curving tree-lined path.

“What do you want?” the woman said. “I’m not doing anything.”

It was hard to tell how old she was. Besides the granny glasses, she had studs in her pierced cheeks, a men’s vintage-shop gray raincoat and badly dyed black hair peeking out from under a ragged tweed cap. She’d been pretty once, probably not too long ago. Now she looked as hard as the old concrete she probably slept on every night.

“Sit back down,” I told her.

“What is this about?” she said as I sat down next to her and took out my binoculars and pointed them at Holly’s building. I knew it. She had a straight shot to the front door.

“This is about him,” I said, showing her Roger’s picture on my phone. I stared at her face as I showed it and caught a brief flicker of recognition.

“Hey, Mike, watch her,” Arturo called out as the young woman thrust her hands into her bag.

I waved him off. She wasn’t going for a weapon, I knew. She was just busy thumbing the Delete button on her camera. It was a Sony, a three-or-four-hundred-dollar digital SLR. Which made little sense, considering she was homeless. Probably stolen by Roger, I thought. I let her thumb away at it.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Piss off,” she said.

I looked at her glassy eyes. It looked like she was on something.

She didn’t say anything as I went into her tattered backpack and took out a wallet. She had a Connecticut driver’s license. Rachel Wecht. I couldn’t believe she was only twenty-one. Thanks, drugs. Thanks, broken families. I was also right. She had been pretty once.

“Listen, Rachel,” Arturo said. “This guy Roger, or whatever his name is, who’s got you doing this, he’s really not as exciting as you think he is. In fact, he’s trouble. Like you’ll-end-up-dead kind of trouble. We have a warrant out for his arrest.”

“We could lock you up right now for aiding and abetting a known criminal,” I said. “But I’m going to go on the assumption that he lied to you, OK? I’m going to cut you some slack. If you tell me where he is.”

She sneered at me as she took off her tattered cap and spun it on her finger.

“As if I knew what the hell you’re even talking about,” she said.

“This lady you’re watching. She was Roger’s old girlfriend,” Arturo said. “What do you think happens to you when he gets sick of you?”

She rolled her eyes and shrugged before she stood up and shouldered her pack.

“I’m leaving,” she said with a dreamy smile.

I let her walk. She’d called my bluff. There was nothing to hold her on. Not yet, at least. If anything, I was even more concerned about Holly now. Roger was recruiting people to help him stalk her.

“This Roger really is a ladies’ man, huh?” Arturo said as we watched her leave. “Maybe that’s what I’m doing wrong. I need to drop my nice-guy routine and act more like I just escaped from the nuthatch.”

PART TWO

ONE OF OUR OWN

CHAPTER
26

THAT EVENING AFTER WORK,
instead of heading straight home, I did something pretty out there. Something fairly nuts even for me. Which was saying something.

I drove up into the Bronx near Yankee Stadium and made a purchase. Two purchases, actually. I hid them under my coat as I made my grand entrance that night around seven p.m. into the Bennett family abode.

“Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages. I have an announcement. A neenie-neenie-nouncement!” I bellowed, quoting Chrissy, as I barged my way through the front hall into the living room.

Mary Catherine came in from the kitchen, giving me a wink as she wiped her hands on a dish towel. I’d already made her privy to the surprise. I’m by no means the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I was smart enough to know to run something like this by her first.

Seamus appeared behind her with a folded
New York Times
crossword puzzle clutched in his hand.

“And what’s going on here with all this ruckus?” he said.

“I’m sorry, Seamus. You’ll just have to wait until the masses are amassed and everyone is present and accounted for. This is a four-alarm family surprise. Maybe a five-alarmer.”

“Let me guess,” Seamus said excitedly. “You’ve finally checked yourself into Bellevue?”

“Not yet, old-timer,” I said, hefting my surprise. “But you may have a point after you see what I have behind curtain numero uno.”

The kids rushed in. Even the big ones. Earbuds were removed. I definitely had their attention.

“Now, are you ready?” I said.

“Yes!” they yelled.

Well, the little ones, at least, with a beaming Chrissy and Shawna leading the chorus.

“I can’t hear you!” I said. “Are you ready!?”

“Dad, enough, please, would you?” Brian said. “I have a Latin test tomorrow.”

“Well, then, without further ado, I present to you…”

I pulled the coat away like a magician, revealing the hamster cage I was balancing on my forearm.

And the puppy I was holding in my palm.

“AWWWWWWWW!” said everyone.

And I mean everyone. Even most of the boys.

No wonder. In the palm of my hand was the cutest little border collie puppy in the history of the world. He was mostly white, with some almost tigerlike black stripes on his back and a black patch over his left eye.

“A puppy!” the little girls yelled as they hyperventilated and hopped up and down.

“And a hamster!” Chrissy shrieked. “Put them down! Put them down! I need to touch them now!!!!”

“Why, yes. A puppy and a hamster,” I said, continuing to hold them aloft. “The two newest members of Clan Bennett are here. On one condition.”

“Anything, Daddy!” the girls squealed.

“That little hands pitch in to take care of our family’s newest members, especially walks. Dogs need walks with people attached to the other end of the leash.”

“And pooper scoopers,” said Seamus.

“I’ll walk the hamster,” Eddie said.

“You
are
a hamster,” replied Ricky.

“We promise, Daddy,” Shawna said. “Can we touch them now? Can we, please? Please?”

“I suppose,” I said as I finally placed the puppy and the hamster cage on the floor and wisely backed out of the way.

CHAPTER
27

I WAS COMMUTING UP
to Harlem the next morning and had just turned south on Adam Clayton Powell when my phone rang.

“Hi, Detective. This is Doyle. Jimmy Doyle.”

“Hey, Jimmy. What’s up?” I said.

“I just had a phone conversation with Officer Chast’s stepmother down in Florida.”

“Officer Chast’s who?” I said.

“Exactly,” Doyle said. “That’s what I said. Anyway, I got in ten minutes ago, and there were a bunch of messages left here from her, and she’s really worried about Naomi. Apparently she and Naomi are close, they talk three, four nights a week. Been doing it for the last ten years, since Naomi moved up here and became a cop. Anyway, she was waiting for Naomi’s phone call all day yesterday because it was the stepmom’s birthday. But she didn’t call.”

“Have you tried calling Naomi?” I said.

“It just kicks into voice mail. Chast is pretty good about getting back to you day or night, so it’s pretty weird.”

“Where does she live?”

“Central Park West in the hundreds.”

“OK. I’m about two blocks from the office. I’ll pick you up on One Twenty-Fifth and we’ll head over and see what’s going on.”

Chast’s building was at 109th and Central Park West, a block south of the northwest corner of Central Park. It was about twelve stories, red brick trimmed in pale limestone, one of those anonymously beautiful prewar structures that you never get tired of seeing in and around New York.

But when we parked in front of it, I could see that despite its good bones, the building had gone to seed a little. There was some choice graffiti here and there along its base, some broken glass next to a broken pay phone kiosk on the corner. When we reached the door, instead of the doorman that the old building probably once had, there was a buzzer system. First we pressed for Chast in apartment 4H. There was no response after a minute, so we pressed for the super. No dice on that front, either.