Color Blind (9 page)

Kate passed a couple of chic new restaurants flanking an old bodega that had somehow survived the area’s gentrification. It was one of the things she liked best about New York, its diversity and tolerance, certainly its bustle, a place built on generosity and greed, on one man’s dreams and so many others’ failures, but mainly, she believed, built on confidence—though the city had grown a bit wary since the 9/11 attack, and Kate could not help but look up at the city’s icons—the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty—and worry.

Now she peered down Eighth Avenue and realized this was exactly where she had been on that day that seemed so long ago and yet like yesterday, the day her proud and supposedly impervious city had become a war zone.

Kate had been visiting an elementary school for the foundation when the first tower was struck and had remained in the street with hundreds of others and watched, dazed, as the burning monoliths morphed into gray funnels of smoke and disappeared on that cloudless, painfully beautiful morning.

But it was the sound, the collective gasp and cry that had gone up and out from the crowd that she most remembered; it had chilled her then, as it did now when she looked down the avenue and surveyed the buildings and sky at the city’s southern tip where the towers should have been.

For weeks afterward Kate could not pass the fire stations with their makeshift shrines to missing heroes and bouquets of flowers without crying.

But New York had survived. And so would she.

Was it awful to compare her personal loss to the loss of thousands?

Probably.

But for Kate, the idea of loss had rarely been abstract, had started early with her mother’s death, and again when she’d tended to her father’s cancer. Not that she had wanted to be there for the tough guy who had taken out his rage on her. But he was, after all, her father, and she had made her peace with those demons, and so she moved back into the Astoria row house those last awful months, made the meals he could barely eat, changed the bedpans, doled out the painkillers and finally administered the injections to the once fierce tyrant, now unrecognizable, diminished by illness. Who’d have believed he had once been so terrifying?

The Sixth Precinct was only a block away.

Kate pictured the cop cars angle-parked along the street before she saw them, the large double doors she had passed through for the first time just after Elena had died.

And now that Richard had died, she would do it again.

M
anhattan’s chief of Homicide Special Task Force, Floyd Brown, Jr., leaned back in his ergonomically correct chair, one of the perks he’d received with his new position.

Kate stared at the slightly off-kilter Sierra Club calendar on the bulletin board above Brown’s desk beside gruesome crime scene photos of the two butchered Bronx women, and wondered if there had been ones from Richard’s crime scene up there with them, if Brown had removed them before she arrived.

For the second time Brown asked, “You absolutely sure, McKinnon?” He continued to call her by her maiden name, which she had insisted upon when they’d last worked together.

Kate glanced at the clock on the wall, the second hand ticking off fractions of the rest of her life, and was transported back thirty years—a similar clock, round, simple, utilitarian, on the wall of a sterile room, and her mother, her beautiful mother, in a hospital bed, looking so frail.

“What’s wrong with her?” she had asked her father as they made their way down the hospital corridor, passing patients who roamed the hallways looking more lost than sick.

“Your mother’s…afflicted.” It was all he said, jaw clenching, knuckles going white around the small bouquet of flowers he carried, which he’d left on the table beside her mother’s bed, not bothering to ask for a vase or pitcher, something to put them in. For weeks afterward Kate wondered about those flowers, if anyone, a nurse, an orderly, had rescued them.

Kate balanced on the edge of the bed, the whole time praying that everything would be okay, though knowing, deep inside, it would not be, that very last time she ever saw her mother.

She stared at that clock counting off the seconds in her head, figuring out how many hours it would be until her twelfth birthday—not quite twenty-four she’d calculated—though there never was a party, not with her father working fourteen-hour shifts at the precinct, and her mother here, which even Kate knew was a special kind of hospital, “for people with problems,” her Aunt Patsy had explained.

Her mother would start a sentence and stop, search for words, ask her young daughter, “Where was I?”

“You were telling me to remember one thing, Mom.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Her mother fiddled nervously with the plastic bracelet on her wrist, and Kate could hear her father talking to a doctor just outside the half-open door—“We’re hoping the treatments will relieve the depression, Mr. McKinnon.”

“Don’t understand it.” Her father didn’t bother to whisper. “What’s she got to be depressed about?”

The doctor’s explanations escaped Kate’s twelve-year-old mind, something about the complication of the psyche, though fragments of his description of her mother’s treatment—“heart rate monitored, anesthetic administered, electric current is fast, seizure lasts approximately twenty seconds, afterward, a headache, then relief…”—were burned into her memory.

The idea of it—that they were electrocuting her mother—terrified and haunted her for years. But she also recalled her mother’s last words, which she’d never forgotten.

“Remember one thing, Katie.”

“Yes, Mama?”

“That…that you can do…anything.” Her mother rested her cold slender fingers on Kate’s arm. “What was I saying, sweetie?”

“That I could do anything.”

“That’s right.
Anything.
But you are the one who will have to do it. No one will take care of you as well as you can take care of yourself, and…”

Kate could see her mother straining to focus, to hold on to the thought.

“And…no one will care about the things you care about as much as you care. Do you understand?”

She had nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure.

“You can do anything, my sweet strong girl.”

Now, as Kate continued to stare at the clock on Brown’s wall, she recalled those words and knew her mother had been right, had seen it proved over and over again. If you wanted something done, you had better do it yourself.

You can do anything, Katie. But you are the one who will have to do it.

“I can do this,” said Kate, focusing on Brown, trying hard to appear in control and unemotional. “You know I can. And I spoke with Tapell about it. She agrees.”

Brown knew about Kate’s public relationship with New York City’s chief of police, a quid pro quo friendship that went all the way back to Kate’s days as an Astoria cop, when Clare Tapell was Kate’s superior.

But did he know the rest? Kate wondered.

Brown drummed his fingers along the edge of his steel desk. “From my point of view it’s not a good idea to work a spouse’s case.”

Kate leveled Brown with a hard stare. “What would you do if your wife was brutally murdered?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Bullshit! You’d hunt the little scumbag down and rip his fucking heart out!”

Brown almost smiled. The language, so incongruous with the perfectly put together uptown lady, had always surprised and amused him. “Well, I guess if my chief is willing to give you consultant status, I don’t exactly have a choice, but”—he sat forward—“you gotta play by the book.”

Kate sat up straighter. “Don’t I always?”

“Spare me,” said Brown. “But you’d better. FBI Manhattan is already coming in on this.”

“So soon?”

Brown averted his eyes, said, “Your husband was a high-profile victim, McKinnon—and if all three murders are related, then we’re looking at a serial and no way the Bureau is not going to come in.”

Kate listened almost too carefully as her brain registered Brown’s words:
Your husband was a high-profile victim.

“Remember Mitch Freeman?”

Kate remembered him all right, good-looking, decent. “FBI shrink. Not a bad guy.”

“Well, he’s in. But it’s not him I’m worried about. It’s the special agent in charge they’re sending in. Guy named Grange, Marty Grange. Not a fun guy.” He gave her a somber look. “I worked with Grange a few years back. He’s a stickler. Doesn’t take any crap and reports everything back to his FBI cronies.”

“Do you think we could somehow use Liz Jacobs as a consultant? She’s going to be in town, and she was very helpful with the Death Artist case.”

“Unlikely. I’m sure Grange knows you two are amigos. Nothing those guys don’t know. And he’ll want to run his own show.”

Kate straightened herself in the chair. “So what’s happened with the cases so far?”

“Not enough,” said Brown. “Your basic door-to-door in the Bronx. No witnesses to either crime.” He paused a second, seemed to be thinking about his next words before he spoke. “Uh, the night watchman at your husband’s building…”He paused again.

“Yes,” said Kate, flat, unemotional. She had to show him she could handle this. “Go on.”

“Night watchman says your husband never signed out—which he would have if he’d left after normal business hours.”

“Yes,” said Kate, taking a breath. “That would be standard. He would have left by midday, if…”

Brown nodded, then shifted back to the other cases. “Statements have been taken all around. Bronx landlady of one vic, Martinez is her name, couldn’t give us much. She was pretty shook up. We need a return visit there. Lab’s working overtime too, but nothing so far.” Brown rubbed his hand over his forehead. “Worries me that we’re looking at one of those VW guys.”

Kate knew Brown was referring to the serial killer’s favorite mode of transport, Volkswagen vans. “So you’re thinking he could have come in from Hackensack or Hoboken, stalked, killed, left.”

“Maybe,” said Brown.

“But Midtown seems riskier,” said Kate.

“I agree.” Brown continued rubbing his forehead.

“Headache?”

“These sickos
always
give me a headache.”

Kate rummaged around in her soft leather bag, came up with a silver pillbox and shook a couple of pills into Brown’s waiting palm. “Extra-strength Excedrin.”

He washed them down with a quarter inch of brown sludge from a Styrofoam cup that must have been coffee not long ago. “Thanks,” he said. “It’s a puzzle, I can tell you. No prints. No weapons at the scene.”

“So he brought the weapon, along with those paintings. Which means he’s organized.”

“Seems to be,” said Brown. “Lab’s going over the paintings with a fine-tooth comb.”

“What else?”

“Not a lot, though Tapell’s mobilizing the troops. We’ve got just about every division assisting—Latent, Crime Search, Mobile, General, all the tech services—other than the bomb squad—at our disposal. Scientific is doing workups on blood, seminal fluids—if there are any, though none have appeared, so Sex Crimes isn’t involved—not yet. Saliva ID is doing their thing, but nothing there either.” He let out a sigh. “Our lab’s doing prelims, then everything goes to FBI Manhattan. If they get stuck, they ship everything to Quantico. Of course we’re running the unsub’s MO through VI-CAP and NCIC.”

Kate thought back a moment:
Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and National Crime Information Center.
“The computers find anything?”

“A few things have popped up, but no real match.” He sighed again. “Wish I had more to tell you. You know what time means to a homicide investigation.”

Brown did not need to explain. The rule of thumb was that the longer it took to get to the bottom of a homicide, the less chance you had of solving it.

“Word coming down from Chief of Police Tapell is that officially you are here to consult on the paintings—”

Kate started in her chair, mouth open, about to speak.

“Relax,” said Brown. “I know you, McKinnon, and know you’ll be all over the case. Just thought I’d remind you of your
consultant
status.”

“I can carry a gun, though, can’t I? I’ve still got a permit.”

“Why?” Brown narrowed his eyes. “You looking to shoot someone?”

“I just want to feel safe, able to protect myself.”

Brown looked at Kate, then away. “Tapell appears to want you here, so…”He plucked a couple of case files from the stack on his desk. “Jackets on the first two vics.” He tilted his head at the bloody crime scene photos on the wall behind his desk. “Why don’t you acquaint yourself with the scenes. As I said, we could use a rerun up there.”

“You want me to start in the Bronx?”

“It’s just past your neighborhood, isn’t it?”

“Just a bit,” said Kate. “And where’s…Richard’s file?”

“You ready to look at that?”

“Yes.” Kate hesitated. “No.” She stopped, took a deep breath.
Be calm.
“I want to see the file, but I’d rather not see the crime scene photos.” Another deep breath. “I was there. I don’t need to see them again.”

Work Richard’s case? Maybe Brown was right, that it was madness.

Brown reached over and laid a hand on her arm. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Floyd. I
do
have to do this.” Kate straightened up, all business now. “Where are the paintings? The ones found at the scenes?”

“Our lab’s going over them.”

“I want to see them.”

“Soon as the lab’s done their thing,” said Brown.

“By the way. Do you have a statement from Richard’s associate, Andrew Stokes? I assume someone’s already taken one.”

“In the jacket.” Brown grabbed another folder off his desk, opening it carefully and removing the envelope that Kate knew must contain the crime scene photos, which he slid into the center drawer of his desk before handing her the folder. “Why?”

“I just had a talk with him and I don’t know, but I’d like to keep an eye on him.”

“You were already conducting an interview?”