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something Sinatra. Strangers in the Night ?
Exactly what I mean, Coop. There s a lot of people would read a personal
clue into the answer you just gave. Strangers in the night, one-night stands.
Too much sex on the brain. Me? I m going with Elvis. Love Me Tender. What
is& ? of course.
I m sorry, ladies, Trebek feigned dismay at their three wrong questions.
And that brings our Campus Winners Week to an end. The correct answer would
be, What is the Righteous Brothers You ve Lost That Lovin Feeling ?
Mike zapped off the television set, as Mercer sang, Now it s gone, gone,
gone& Can t believe that blue-eyed soul gets all that airtime.
Game plan. I can see we re not going to get treated to any dinner here
tonight. You ve got two mouths to feed at home, Val s waiting for me to take
her to a movie, and the blonde s still got murder on her mind. What
assignments you giving out? Anything I have to do before I get to your office
in the morning?
While you re pining away for Val and me this weekend, you might check out
Bellinger s story. Speak to his wife, confirm the dates they were out of town
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in December, get a feel for what she thought the relationship was between her
husband and his protégée.
I m also going to try to get my hands on anything else Katrina might have
signed. It s curious that Bellinger s gut reaction was that might not have
been her handwriting on the resignation she submitted.
I didn t have to tell Mike what to do in the course of any difficult
investigation, but it helped for us to split the duties between us. He went
on, I ll try to check out these museum documents and see if they help us pin
down exactly where she spent her time between June and December, and why she
would have been in close proximity to the sarcophagus.
I ll copy the personal e-mails tomorrow and take them with me to the
Vineyard. I d like to see what she was telling her friends about her health
and her job, and her decision to go back to South Africa. I reached for the
telephone and got it on the second ring.
Hey, Joe, got anything? It was the detective from the DA s squad who was
going to order the dump of my office phone to see where my old stalker,
Shirley Denzig, had been calling from. I turned my back on Mike and Mercer,
hoping they wouldn t pick up on my recurring problem as they talked with each
other about the weekend.
I listened as Joe told me that because of the holiday, and the fact that the
harassing calls were coming in to a trunk line the central telephone
operations center of the district attorney s office, with hundreds of
individual extensions the phone company might not be able to have results for
me until early next week.
That s fine. I m skipping town tomorrow. Taking some friends and going to
the country.
You won t be alone? he asked. And you promise you won t be in the city?
You ve got my number on the Vineyard. Call if you get any news.
I hung up and walked the guys to the door, just as Jake opened it with his
key. I relieved him of the shopping bag that held whatever he was going to
cook for dinner, and let him greet Mike and Mercer, whom he had not seen in
several weeks.
Plenty of food. I m cooking some fettuccine for the overworked prosecutor
tonight. Any takers?
Gotta run. You booted out for the weekend, too?
For the long haul. I leave on Saturday for the defense secretary s mission
to Australia and Southeast Asia. Nine days.
Mercer and I ll watch out for the little princess. Be good to her tonight.
Maybe she ll tell you about the other body we found today, stuffed in a suit
of armor at the Met. That s got to be the most dangerous place in town.
Jake s head snapped around to make eye contact with me as Mike pulled the
door shut behind him. Is he ?
I stretched my arms around his neck and clucked at his gullibility, kissing
him on the tip of his nose. He s just baiting you. No more bodies. No
progress on Katrina.
I guess he really believes that I was your leak. Maybe I can buy back a bit
of goodwill.
Have you solved the case for us? That would be a good start. I was sorting
through the wine cabinet to find a serious bottle of red to go with our
dinner.
There was a voice mail in my office late today. Must have come in while I
was taping the piece I did for the evening news. Remember the woman who
attached herself to me on Tuesday, while you and Nina were talking?
That good-looking old girl with the silver-rinse hair job?
Ruth Gerst. Museum trustee. She asked if I had any well-connected sources in
the NYPD. She wants to give them some information about Pierre Thibodaux.
17
You ve already missed the cartoons and first feature, Alex. Pull up a chair
and tighten your seat belt. This one s really a bumpy ride. Colin West was a
lieutenant in the detective squad of the First Precinct, an area that covered
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a primarily commercial part of the city Wall Street and a fast-growing
residential community as older buildings were converted into lofts and
apartments. He was a big man, with a broad, handsome face, shaved head, and
terrific mind.
The squad commander himself? To what do I owe this honor? West, one of his
detectives, and a tech guy from our video unit had set up in the small
conference room opposite my office and had a stack of tapes piled up on the
table. One of them was playing on the monitor as I walked in. It was only a
few minutes after 8A.M. Sorry I m late.
You re not. We seized forty-six tapes with the warrant Sarah drafted. We got
down here an hour ago so I could start running through them and pick out the
highlights for you.
How about the weapons?
A regular torture chamber. More than twenty whips, an assortment of things
that look like hairbrushes with metal spikes on them, restraints at the foot
and headboard of the bed, sex toys you can t begin to imagine, and a metal
pulley that s recessed into a panel in the ceiling, with handcuffs attached to
it. All the comforts of home. Black?
West reached into a cardboard carton and pulled out some coffee containers
and doughnuts.
I hear the perp s a lawyer.
Yeah. Kalder. Peter Kalder. Lives in Battery Park.
You lock him up?
Nope. Just knocked on the door, showed him the warrant, waited while he went
into the bathroom to throw up, then cleaned out the joint. Sarah told us to
let him be until you viewed the evidence.
What s the story on the victim?
That s her, handcuffed to the pulley. West pointed at the monitor, which
was frozen on a frame that showed a woman I guessed to be about my age,
anorexically thin, stretched out across a disheveled set of striped sheets on
a king-size bed, her lower face covered with a gag.
Cooperative?
She is now. But it took her a while to get to this point. Met him through a
personal ad in theVillage Voice. No pain, no gain kind of thing. The
relationship started off fine, moved into verbal abuse, then to some mild S
and M. The last few months have been this heavyduty stuff.
More than once?
Our girl kept going back. A perfect target. She d been an incest victim for
most of her adolescence. Low self-esteem, every kind of eating disorder you
can imagine, inability to maintain any stable relationships. Kalder has her
convinced this is what she deserves. You ll find a shrink who can explain it
to you better than I can.
Is she coming down here today?
She s in a better place. Last night she checked herself into a private
clinic in Connecticut. For her addiction.
What to?
West picked up the clicker and forwarded the tape a few inches, then froze it
again when the woman turned onto her side. He s about to come into view,
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