Some Gave All (16 page)

He shrugged. “Then I’ll try to blur in, examine where his body was burned, and blur out.”

Tess looked at J.T., who moved his shoulders with an air of resignation. She cocked her head at Vincent and smiled faintly. “Why do I get the impression that this isn’t really a discussion? You’re going to go no matter what we say.”

“Yes.” He turned to J.T. “See what else you can get on Tiptree. Howison mentioned him with his last dying breath. We need to find out what we can. And, Tess, can’t you get Wilson a new partner? We need Cat on this and she’s hamstrung because he’s looking over her shoulder.”

Tess made a growling sound. “My first and only new hire as Captain.”

“Yeah, what’s he got on you?” J.T. teased her.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “It was just like a foreign-exchange program, only with police officers. I did it for the goodwill.”

J.T. clacked his keyboard. “No good deed goes unpunished, Tess.”

“While you’re working on that, I’m going to look into the Thornton Foundation,” Tess said. “Off the books. It’s just like having two jobs rolled into one.” She flashed them an artificially happy smile.

“I think it’s time to pay another visit to Mr. Riley,” Vincent said. “I’ll go to his place after the warehouse.”

“Poor old guy.” J.T. clucked his teeth. “He’s probably a wreck.”

Tess said, “We should also go by the psych hospital and talk to Aliyah. Still no word on the social worker, Julia Hogan. I’m betting she’s dead.”

“This is a nasty business,” J.T. declared. He slipped on a pair of gloves and picked up the military ID. “And as for
this.
It reminds me of when the government used to give the Native Americans blankets permeated with smallpox. They had no immunity and it wiped out entire tribes. So if there’s a scare-factor pathogen on here, it was engineered to hurt anyone they thought was a threat.”

“If you can find a way to give me immunity, I’d appreciate it.” Vincent pulled some tissues out of a box on J.T.’s desk and dabbed his forehead.

“Still feeling it?” Tess asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Vincent replied. “But you know what they say: ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway.’”

I just hope I can.

S
ILVERADO
A
CADEMY OF
D
ESIGN

H
eather was proud of herself as she straightened the pie-crust collar of an emerald-green silk blouse she had made herself and pushed through the revolving door with a smile on her face, not revealing that her heart was thudding in her chest as she scanned everywhere for Walker. Cat and Vincent had been stuck in a sewer, and J.T. and Tess had been kidnapped. Those were the reasons they hadn’t called her. Good reasons. What was Walker’s excuse?

Behind the receptionist’s glass desk, Elaine Tugong was wearing a scarlet baby-doll kimono top and flared black crepe pants. She had on very shiny eyeliner and wet-look scarlet lipstick that matched her top perfectly, but truthfully and not in a catty way? She looked dated. Being one of the receptionists at Silverado was a plum student work-study job because they got to meet all the visiting designers, who were always on the prowl for new talent. That was why the magazines held contests like New Looks. But if Elaine was going to catch their eye in a good way, she needed to put an accent on
new.

Elaine was texting; she gave Heather a little wave without pausing. Heather was just a student, hence, inconsequential. Today on Heather’s schedule was History of Design followed by Silks. As she headed for the lecture hall she caught sight of Mr. Summers, who owned Silverado. Now
there
was someone who knew how to put a look together: perfectly cut black wool trousers, Italian loafers and no socks, and a white shirt that had to be custom-made, accented with simple onyx cufflinks. His hair was white, trimmed short, and he had black eyebrows.

“Good morning, Mr. Summers,” she sang out, giving him a wave.

“Heather, isn’t it?” he said, and smiled at her. “Green is your friend.”

Buoyed by the encounter, she walked into the lecture hall for HoD and Georja and Tyna, two of the girls in her class, bounded up to her. Everyone was changing the way they spelled their names to set themselves apart. Georja had told Heather she should change her name to something new, too, because “Heather” was boring.

“Did you hear?” Tyna trilled. “Walker had an argument with Mr. Summers and walked out! He’s not working here anymore.”

Heather jerked, her cheeks as hot as if Georja had slapped her. Mr. Summers was totally in with everyone in New York fashion, and she couldn’t imagine
anyone
with an ounce of ambition having an argument with him. That had to be why Walker hadn’t gotten in touch. But it still didn’t explain why he’d left the apartment without a single word
before
that argument.

“What did they argue about?” she managed to ask.

“The door was closed. All I heard was ‘record,’” Georja said.

As in criminal record?
Heather thought, astounded. No, that couldn’t be right. And anyway, they did background checks before they hired people, right? She’d had a background check for all three of her events coordinator jobs.

“Wow, so, okay,” Heather said. “Gosh. Has anyone talked to Walker? Is he okay?”

“No clue,” Georja replied, and Tyna lifted a brow.

“I kind of thought you two had gotten together,” Tyna said. “Didn’t work out, huh?”

Humiliated, Heather tried to put on an enigmatic smile. She had a feeling she looked like she had indigestion. But Tyna had a point. They
had
gotten together.

Before she could respond, the two turned and headed for the lecture hall. They caught sight of a guy they all knew—Jimm—and hurried up to him. Heather heard Walker’s name and whipped out her phone.

We did get together
, she told herself.
That gives me certain privileges.

She texted him:
Walker? At SAD. U quit????

The message was delivered. She waited to see if he read it. Everyone was walking into the lecture hall for the class but she loitered, getting a drink of water from the fountain, checking her lipstick in the hope that Walker would respond before class started. Canada Browne, her HoD teacher, had a zero-tolerance rule for texting. Get caught even once and she’d throw you out of class. History of Design was a required course to receive the coveted design certificate.

The message remained unread.

Then Heather’s irritation plummeted into the deep-freeze of worry. What if something had happened to him?

You’re thinking like a cop’s sister
, she told herself.
It’s not like every single person you know gets murdered or something.
But it
was
true that her sister’s boyfriend was a beast who had killed one of Heather’s own boyfriends to keep him from killing Heather. And that her mother had been murdered, and probably her father too.

I’m allowed to think the worst
, she thought petulantly.

Then she went into her History of Design class and didn’t hear a single word about the evolution of the bathing suit.

* * *

Meanwhile, back at the precinct… or the seventh circle of hell, as Cat now liked to call it:

“The keyboard goddess has smiled on me,” Sky informed her. He took a hefty gulp of wheatgrass juice like it was champagne. “I found no unusual activity for Julia Hogan
until
four days ago, when a transaction she began at an ATM in Brooklyn was never completed.”

Cat’s heart skipped a beat. The chase was on. “Tell me you’ve found out the location and subpoenaed the footage.” She crossed her fingers that the footage did not contain a beast attack. She would have to intercept it. The jury was still out regarding whether Sky’s arrival in the 125th was just an escape from a sexual harassment suit.

“I have ordered the footage.” He pressed his hands together and inclined his head. “I shall seek enlightenment.” He was making fun of himself a little. Cat warmed a bit.

Maybe he wasn’t so bad.

“And may I say that if you would stop eating sugar, you wouldn’t wrinkle. It’s called White Death for a reason.”

“Wrinkle?” she repeated.

“Oh, it’s very faint,” he assured her. “Only someone who would really scrutinize you would notice.”

Like you? Like Vincent?
Cat rarely took the time to be insecure about her looks. She had more important things to worry about. But this answered the basic question: Sky
was
bad.

“And you should try a colonic. Lemon and ginger. A great detox.”

Cat wasn’t sure what a colonic was. But it had the word “colon” in it so she figured that she had a good idea what it entailed. No pun intended.

She cleared her throat. “Okay, let me know when the footage gets sent over. I’m going to run down some leads. We can meet up later. How about we debrief over lunch?”

He hesitated. “You don’t mean in the precinct dining room. What they serve in there is
not
food.”

“When have you had time to eat there?” she asked skeptically.

“I had breakfast there this morning.” He made a face. “Or what they’re calling breakfast. I can feel my bowels shutting down.”

“Well, we could eat someplace else. You worship Shiva, right? So, Indian food?”

“I don’t
worship
Shiva,” he began. “How about I pick out a restaurant and introduce you to food that will extend your life, not send you to an early grave.”

“Sounds yummy,” she quipped. But he didn’t realize she was joking. “Just text me the name and I’ll meet you there.”

She took her leave and dialed Tess’s cell phone number. She was going to go back over the six original crime scenes to see if she could find anything that might connect them to the fresh leads J.T. had sent over. Tess didn’t pick up. Cat looked over at her closed office door. Senya Fitzwilliams, Tess’s secretary, was seated at her desk outside. She caught Cat’s eye and said, “Captain Vargas got waylaid on her way here. There’s another demonstration.”

Poor Tess
, Cat thought. She went out the back and then circled around to the front of the building. Since as a detective Cat dressed in street clothes, there was no way for any of the protestors to identify her as a cop unless they spotted her badge. She made no move to conceal as she joined a large mob—there might have been as many as five hundred people completely blocking the street. Police officers on horseback watched carefully; squad cars with blue marbles pinballing in their grates had closed the street completely, and traffic cops were diverting angry motorists. In New York, you had to file for a permit to hold a demonstration. But this looked spontaneous. Men and women were jeering and booing at Tess, who was standing on the steps leading into the precinct flanked by the mayor and the NYPD Chief of Police. Signs read
STOP JACK THE RIPPER
and
VARGAS STEP DOWN
. There were camera crews. People were recording on their smartphones. What a mess.

“We have every faith in Captain Vargas,” the chief was saying into a microphone as Tess gazed calmly at the surging mob. Rarely had Cat been more proud of her. And she was grateful that it was Tess up there and not her. She had no ambitions toward becoming a captain.

She waved at Tess, but she didn’t think Tess saw her. Then she phoned J.T. and said, “There was footage of Julia Hogan at an ATM machine in Brooklyn. From four days ago. Her transaction was never completed. Sky’s going to get the footage.”

“I’m guessing that we’re both thinking beast attack,” J.T. said.

“We are. Tess is stuck here. There’s another demonstration. I’ll go to Karl Tiptree’s apartment myself.”

“With or without Sky?”

“Without,” she said firmly. “I’m not bringing him into this at all.” She grimaced. “Which leaves him on his own if the footage shows up in his inbox while I’m gone. And if there’s evidence of a beast attack…”

“On the bright side, if he is the beast-maker or the operative of same, he already knows what he’s going to see on the footage. He’ll have to lie to you about what’s on it. Since I’ll make sure I get it blind copied to my email address, we’ll catch him lying to you.”

“There is that,” she deadpanned.

“Is Tess okay?”

Cat considered her words. “Tess has always been able to take on whatever’s been thrown at her. I don’t think she’s loving this, but it won’t break her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It is,” he said softly.

He really loves her. I hope this works out for them.

“I’m sure she’s glad you’re here,” she added.

“It’s just… you guys
like
this kind of stuff. All this danger.”

“No, J.T. We like solving cases.” Actually, he had a point. Chasing after perps, preparing for action, even the firefight last night, tragic as it had proven to be, had given her a rush. A detective’s job was both physical and mental. The perfect combination, as far as she was concerned.

They disconnected and she took a squad car to Tiptree’s last known address. Vincent had visited the crime scene after CSU had cleared it and come away with no beast evidence. The 125th had received the workup from the citywide homicide squad. To Cat’s exacting eyes, it had been light on facts. No one had dug deeply into Tiptree’s activities. Maybe someone had told them not to.

Maybe that someone was the beast-maker who had bought serum from Tiptree.

The apartment was empty now and Mrs. Steinmetz, the landlady, accompanied her, unlocking the door herself. Mrs. Steinmetz told her that the police had given her the name of a company that cleaned crime scenes. They had ripped up the carpet and scrubbed the walls with bleach. It had taken four coats of dark green paint to hide the bloodstains, and the floor had been completely ripped out and replaced. But word must have gotten out that someone had been murdered in the apartment, because she was having no luck getting it rented out. In fact, three tenants—the ones directly across the hall and on either side of Mrs. Steinmetz—had given notice. The savagery of the attack had started a panic.

“Please feel free to do all the looking you want,” the woman said, leaving Catherine to it. “I would prefer to stay out here.” She swallowed hard. “I’m sure you understand.”