Red Alert, Page 3

  We followed East Loop Road to the underdeveloped southern tip of the island, where there was a cluster of vehicles from various city agencies. One of them, an NYPD generator truck, lit up a gray stone hulk that looked like an abandoned medieval castle waiting for the wrecking ball.

  “Good morning, Detectives,” a familiar voice called out.

  It was a few minutes after midnight, so technically it was morning. And nobody is more technical than our favorite anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive crime scene investigator, Chuck Dryden.

  “It’s my first homicide in 10044,” he said, walking toward us.

  I smiled as I imagined him racing home after work to color in another section of his Zip Code Murder Map.

  “What do you know about autoerotic asphyxia?” he asked.

  “As much as I know about Russian roulette,” Kylie said. “It’s a game you can win a hundred times, but you can only lose once. Who’s our victim?”

  “Caucasian female, thirty-eight years old. Driver’s license in her purse ID’s her as Aubrey Davenport.”

  That explained the Red connection. Davenport was a documentarian whose films focused on social justice: the impact of oil spills, wrongful medical deaths, gun violence in America—the kind of polarizing journalism that gets some people to write their congressman and others to send her hate mail.

  We made our way over the rocky ground to where she was lying facedown on a blanket. She was naked except for a pair of panties around her ankles. Her back was covered with welts, and she’d been trussed with several lengths of blue fabric, one end knotted around her neck, the other attached to her ankles. I’ve seen hundreds of dead bodies, but I was unnerved by the grotesqueness of this one.

  “Was she sexually assaulted?” Kylie asked.

  “No evidence of penetration,” Dryden said. “No sign of a struggle. She cooperated with whoever tied her up. She was as much a volunteer as a victim.”

  “You telling me she signed on for this?” I said. “Whiplashes and all?”

  Dryden shook his head. “You have much to learn about sexually deviant behavior, grasshopper.”

  “All I know is what I heard from the missionaries. Feel free to enlighten me, sensei.”

  He cracked a smile, which for Chuck Dryden is the equivalent of a standing ovation. “AEA is for the most part a male sport—often people you’d never suspect. Family men, respected pillars of the community who get off by cheating death. They tie ropes around their neck and genitals, attach the other end to a pipe or a doorknob, and then masturbate, slowly lowering their bodies to cut off the oxygen to their brain, which I’m told gives them the best orgasm they’ve ever experienced…although sometimes it’s also their last.

  “Most of the recorded deaths are people who do it solo, but this woman didn’t want to take chances. She had a spotter, most likely a man. His role was to tie her up and to help her if anything went wrong. Her biggest mistake was trusting him. Look at this knot.”

  He pointed to a loop in the middle of the sash. “It’s supposed to be a slipknot, a fail-safe that she can pull at any time to set herself free. But he tied it so that instead of releasing, it tightened.”

  “A good lawyer will say it could have been an accident,” Kylie said. “Not everyone has a merit badge in autoerotic knots.”

  “And that’s exactly what the killer would like us to think,” Dryden said. “But look at these ligature marks around her neck. If she had control over her oxygen flow, they would be on a downward angle toward her legs. But these are going in the opposite direction, and they’re deep, which to me indicates he was standing over her, and pulling up hard. I’d like to see a lawyer talk his way out of that.”

  “What about the scratches on her throat?” I asked.

  “Self-inflicted. She realized what the killer was doing, but it was too late. She didn’t have the strength to put up a fight. Bottom line: Aubrey Davenport did not die because of kinky sex gone wrong. She was murdered.”

  “Thanks, Chuck,” I said. “I’m looking forward to hearing you say those exact words in front of a jury. Who found the body?”

  “A couple of fourteen-year-old boys with a twelve-pack who were planning a memorable evening and got more than they bargained for. They called it in at 9:36. Time of death is anywhere in the eight-hour window prior to that.”

  “What else was in her purse besides her ID?”

  “Cash, credit cards, cell phone, a parking stub from a garage in Brooklyn time-stamped 4:52 p.m., and a SIG Sauer P238, which she unfortunately didn’t get to fire.”

  “Prints?”

  “This place is too rocky for me to come up with any usable fingerprints, but I do have three very telling footprints.”

  “Can you get a cast? A shoe size?”

  “They’re not the kind of feet that wear shoes.” Dryden smiled. He enjoyed leading us up to the mountaintop, especially when he was the one who discovered the mountain.

  He shined his flashlight on three equidistant circles in the dust a few yards away from the body.

  “There was a tripod there,” he said. “Whoever killed her filmed it.”

  CHAPTER 6

  It’s gotten easier for people to get away with murder in New York City.

  While the brass at One P P are quick to promote the fact that homicides in our city are at historic lows, there’s one statistic they don’t like to talk about. In four out of every ten cases, the killer isn’t caught.

  Other cities with the same problem can blame it on the rise of drug and gang homicides. When drug dealers or gangbangers start killing, the neighborhood goes blind. No witnesses usually means no arrests.

  But New York has a singular reason for our less-than-stellar batting average.

  9/11.

  When the towers fell, Ground Zero became the emotional focal point of our national tragedy. But for NYPD, it was the biggest crime scene in the city’s history. That morning, 2,749 men, women, and children were murdered, and every homicide demanded our full attention—one victim at a time.

  The task of bringing closure to thousands of families fell squarely on the shoulders of our most seasoned detectives. It was physically and emotionally draining police work, and within two years of the attacks, three thousand of our best investigators pulled their pins. They retired, and an additional eight hundred detectives were reassigned to the new counterterrorism unit.

  That left a hole that has never been filled. To this day there are precinct detectives working everything from petty larceny to major felonies who have hundreds of unsolved crimes on their plates. They catch new cases faster than they can clear the old, and there’s no one available to share the load.

  That kind of clearance rate won’t cut it at Red. So when we need backup, we get it. At 1:45, while Kylie and I were still combing the grounds of the Renwick Smallpox Hospital, I got a call from Danny Corcoran, a detective second grade working out of Manhattan North.

  I knew Danny from the One Nine. He’s smart, thorough, and gifted with a wicked sense of humor.

  “Zach,” he said, “I heard you need some grunt work on a homicide, and I just got the good news that I’m your designated grunt.”

  I gave him a quick overview and told him to secure Aubrey Davenport’s apartment and office, in Manhattan, and her car, which was in a garage in Brooklyn.

  “And I need a next of kin,” I said. “Kylie and I will do the notification.”

  “I’m on it,” he said. “By the by, I’m breaking in a new partner. Tommy Fischer.”

  “And?”

  “He’s got his pluses and his minuses.”

  “What are the minuses?” I asked.

  “Lactose intolerant. On the plus side, he’s a great kisser.”

  I hung up, laughing. I realized it was the first time I’d laughed since I followed the mayor into The Pierre six hours earlier, and it was a welcome release. Kylie and I were looking at two very ugly cases, and it felt good to know that I could count on Danny Corcoran to break th
e tension along the way.

  He called back twenty minutes later.

  “Your vic has an older sister, Claudia Davenport Moretti. She works in the financial aid office at Barnard College. Her husband, Nick Moretti, is an air traffic controller out of La Guardia. Two kids. No record, no drama. From what I can tell, they’re as normal as bumps on a gherkin.”

  He gave me an address on West 74th Street in Manhattan.

  Ten minutes later, Kylie and I were back in the car on our way to break the bad news. She drove. I curled up against the passenger door, closed my eyes, and drifted off to the hum of our tires on steel bridge plates.

  My cell woke me up. It was Cheryl.

  Dr. Cheryl Robinson is the forensic psychologist attached to Red. Despite her predominantly Irish roots, she inherited the smoldering Latina looks of her Puerto Rican grandmother. When we met four years ago, Cheryl was married, so for me she was just another coworker who happened to be magnetically desirable, mind-numbingly beautiful, and totally unavailable.

  Then she suddenly became an unmarried coworker, and I wasted no time trying to see if my fantasies could become a reality. Much to my amazement, they have. She’s the first woman I’ve fallen in love with since Kylie, and I wake up every day hoping I don’t torpedo my good fortune.

  This was the fifth time she’d called me since the bomb went off at The Pierre. I picked up the phone.

  “Don’t you stalkers ever go to sleep?” I said.

  “I was asleep,” she said, “but I woke up, turned on the news, and they keep rerunning videos of the explosion. Zach, you could have been killed.”

  “But I wasn’t. I’m fine. Just exhausted. Kylie and I are still out on the road.”

  “Call it a night, but don’t go back to your apartment. Come over here. I need to give you a hug.”

  “We picked up a second case. We’re on the way to notify the victim’s family. Can I get a rain check on the hug?”

  “You’re in luck. My rain checks come with dinner and a sleepover. You interested?”

  “I said I was exhausted, not dead. Tonight. I’ll be there.”

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you,” I said. I could have whispered it back, but I didn’t. I wanted to make sure Kylie heard me.

  CHAPTER 7

  They say New York is the city that never sleeps. But at a quarter to three on a moonlit Tuesday morning in May, the stretch of Central Park West that we were driving on was crapped out like a cat on a porch swing.

  Another hour or so, and things would start to stir: the predawn joggers, the early morning sanitation crews, and those age-old, break-of-day stalwarts, the New York Times delivery trucks, dropping off bundles of last night’s bad tidings to every doorman along this strip of overpriced real estate.

  Kylie and I also had some bad news to deliver. Only we couldn’t leave it with the doorman and move on. We had to wake up a family in the middle of the night and change their lives forever. It’s the suckiest part of our job, and it never gets easier.

  Aubrey Davenport’s sister, Claudia, and her brother-in-law, Nick Moretti, lived on the eighth floor of a prewar, redbrick building on a tree-lined street between Broadway and West End Avenue.

  We had the doorman ring up first. It wouldn’t soften the blow for the Morettis, but it gave them a few minutes to brace themselves. By the time Kylie and I got to their door and showed them our badges, they were expecting the worst. We were there to confirm it.

  “Is it Aubrey?” Nick Moretti asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Kylie said. “Her body was found on Roosevelt Island. She was murdered. We are both very sorry for your loss.”

  Claudia was wearing a lavender robe. Nick had thrown on a pair of jeans and a Jets sweatshirt. She fell into his arms and began sobbing into his chest. Holding her tight, he eased her onto a sofa, and they sat down.

  We stood.

  It took five minutes before either of them looked up. Finally, Nick asked the inevitable. “Do you know who did it?”

  “Not yet, sir,” Kylie said. “But we will.”

  Claudia leaned over and whispered something in her husband’s ear.

  He shook his head. “Don’t go there, Claudia.”

  “How could I not go there?” she said, pulling away and turning to me. “I warned her. Over and over and over. I was the pushy big sister—the voice of doom—but I was right, and now she’s dead.”

  The people who are closest to the victim are the ones who can help us most in the investigation, but usually they are too numb to answer questions immediately, so we try to schedule an interview as soon as they get past the initial shock. But Claudia Moretti seemed to have answers that couldn’t wait.

  “You warned her about what?” I asked.

  “Janek. I said, ‘Get a restraining order. Get a gun. He’ll kill you.’”

  “Tell us about Janek.”

  “Janek Hoffmann, her cameraman. Her protégé. She hired him out of film school. He was a kid—maybe twenty-two—and she was thirty-eight. She said he was talented, but who knows? She was sleeping with him.”

  “But what made you tell your sister to get a gun?” Kylie asked, trying to get Claudia back on track. “Why did you think Janek was going to kill her?”

  “They fought all the time. One minute they’d be like two lovebirds, and the next minute they were like cats and dogs. He was unpredictable. And scary. The man has a terrible temper.”

  Nick jumped in. “Temper, my ass,” he said. “It was straight-up ’roid rage. He was always juiced up. One time they were at a restaurant, and Janek got pissed at the waiter, so he smashed him in the face with one of those oversized pepper mills. Sent the guy to the hospital with a broken jaw.”

  “Did he ever hit Aubrey?”

  “Plenty,” Nick said.

  “Did she call the police?” Kylie asked.

  “Aubrey wasn’t the type to do anything like that,” Claudia said. “She always needed to solve things her own way, in her own time. She fired him a couple of times, but she always took him back. I could never understand why.”

  “Jesus, Claudia. Take the blinders off. That muscle-bound dick was always belting her around. She kept coming back for more because that was a turn-on for Aubrey. She was a total sex—”

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Claudia screamed.

  Nick reached out to put his arms around her. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  She shoved him aside. “She’s dead. Stop judging her!” Claudia shrieked, and ran out of the room in tears.

  Nick took a few steps after her, stopped, and then turned to us. “I’ll be back,” he said. “Don’t go.”

  We didn’t move. With or without his invitation, we had no intention of going anywhere.

  CHAPTER 8

  Claudia didn’t hold back her anguish. The crying that was coming from behind a closed door escalated to a full-blown wail as she tried to come to grips with the news of her sister’s murder. Before long, her voice was joined by a younger, more piercing one, and Nick, whose patience and compassion had broken down rapidly, yelled out, “You happy? Now you woke the fucking baby.”

  It took fifteen minutes before things settled down and Nick emerged from one of the bedrooms.

  “Sorry about the ruckus,” he said. “Claudia never could deal with her sister’s issues. She’s from the if-you-pretend-the-problem-isn’t-there-it-will-eventually-go-away school of denial.”

  “But she told us that she warned Aubrey about Janek Hoffmann,” I reminded him. “That doesn’t sound like she was pretending the problem wasn’t there.”

  He shook his head. “You’re missing the point. Janek wasn’t the problem. I’m not saying he didn’t kill her. Maybe he did. But it could also have been any one of a thousand other guys. The real problem was Aubrey. She was one of those women—they used to call them nymphomaniacs. I think the politically correct term these days is sex addict. But with Aubrey…”

  I thought he was groping for
words, but he wasn’t. He’d clammed up.

  “You want something to drink?” he asked. “Water? Or I could make coffee.”

  “Nick,” I said, “we’re investigating a murder here. Finish what you were going to say.”

  He plopped into a cushy armchair and immediately stood up again. “You guys have to sit down. I can’t talk if you’re going to stand there hovering over me like a couple of dark clouds.”

  Kylie and I sat on the sofa. Nick reclaimed his spot in the chair.

  “Aubrey was a sex addict, but she wasn’t like one of those party girls who really likes screwing. It was different for her.”

  “Different,” Kylie repeated. Her body shifted on the sofa, and she turned toward him. “How so?”

  She asked the question offhandedly, but I recognized the tone. Kylie is a hunter, a puma lying in wait for the gazelle.

  Nick sat back in his chair. “She only got off if the guy was dishing out physical pain or putting her through abject humiliation.”

  “That’s very helpful,” Kylie said. “And your wife has trouble dealing with that fact?”

  “Dealing? I don’t know if Claudia even has a clue.”

  “Then how do you know so much about your sister-in-law’s sexual preferences?” Kylie asked, her fierce green eyes locking into his limp brown-eyed gaze.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Nick said, holding up his hands. “Back off, lady.”

  “I’m not a lady. I’m a homicide detective, and if I even smell that you’re holding out on me, I will slap a pair of cuffs on you and haul you in for obstructing justice.”

  Nick looked at me for help.

  “She’ll do it,” I said. “And I’ll back her up. Answer the question: how do you know what your wife’s sister got off on?”

  He looked at me like I’d just handed him a shovel and told him to start digging his own grave.

  “This is between us, okay? If Claudia ever knew…”

  “If it’s not directly related to our investigation, then it’s our secret,” Kylie said. “We don’t tell your wife, and we don’t even put it in our report.”