Текст книги "The Devil's Garden"

Автор книги: Richard Montanari

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

FORTY-FOUR

“Des.”

Lucien stood on the corner, his blinding white smile a beacon in the steamy dusk of a Kingston summer night. His two skinny chums – a pair of funny bwois who never brought luck or favor – poked him in the ribs.

Jealous, she thought. Who wouldn’t be? She was a princess.

Inside, butterflies took to the breeze. From somewhere came the sound of Peter Tosh’s “Glass House”.

“Des.”

Detective Desiree Powell opened her eyes. It was not Lucien. It was Marco Fontova. If her chest had not been on fire, if it did not feel as if someone had deposited a grand piano on her ribs, and then weighted that down with anvils, and then had the entire New York Rangers team work out on it, she might have laughed. She passed out again, but could not find Lucien.

Gone.

SHE DRIFTED BACK. It took a while to find a sound within her. “How long have I been out?” she asked. Her voice sounded like someone else’s, like an old scratchy recording from the Twenties.

Fontova looked at his watch. His face betrayed his fear, his concern for her. It was sweet. “I don’t know.”

“Why did you look at your watch if you don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Am I bleeding out?”

Fontova shook his head. “No.”

There was someone standing behind Fontova, a blond female paramedic, too young and pretty to be in this line of work. As Powell struggled to sit up, the young EMT told her to stay down, but it wasn’t going to happen. Fontova helped Desiree into a sitting position. With a great deal of pain she leaned against the wall. The room began to spin and, for a moment, she felt the nausea creep. She took a moment, waited it out. She then reached behind her. Something was wrong. “Where’re my cuffs?”

Fontova looked away, then back. He was never good at telling her bad news. “I think they were taken,” he said. “Your badge too.”

“Motherfucker.”

Fontova raised an eyebrow. “I think that might be two dollars.”

“Mother is not a swear word.”

“I think it’s the intent, though.”

The sickness came over her in a foul rush. Powell choked back the bile. She glanced to her left, saw the Kevlar vest they had taken off her. It was ripped and dented. “Jesus.”

“You okay?” Fontova asked.

Powell just glared at him.

“Okay. Well. There’s something you should see.”

“Where?”

Fontova pointed at the steps. Powell looked up. “That might take a while. Like maybe a week.”

“Hang on,” Fontova said. He stood up, took the stairs two at a time, probably in an attempt to show off to the pretty blond paramedic. When he returned a few minutes later, he held his cellphone in front of him. Powell glanced at the screen. There, in living color – mostly red – was a dead male body, slumped in a closet. It looked like his face had been carved by a meat slicer.

“Jesus Christ.”

“The bedroom looks like a slaughterhouse.”

Powell looked more closely at the small screen. The DOA could have been anyone. “Is it Michael Roman?”

Fontova shook his head, held up an evidence bag. In it was an oversized leather wallet, connected to a chain. “His name was Nikolai Udenko.”

“Did you run him?”

Fontova nodded. “Small timer. Did a stretch at Rikers for assault. No wants or warrants.”

“Then why is he dead in this pretty house?”

Fontova had no answer.

“Ma’am?”

Powell glanced over at the paramedic. She hated being called ma’am, but this kid looked twenty-four, and Powell figured it was the right term. “Yeah?”

“I should really take a look at those ribs.”

TEN MINUTES LATER, while an EMT team wrapped her damaged – probably broken – ribs, Powell tried to put it all together.

Since she’d gotten the assignment, she was certain she had the starting point of this case. She believed it was the point where all homicide investigations began, that being with the murder itself. Elementary this, no?

No. Not always.

“We got a call from the 105,” Fontova said, sitting at the dining-room table, looking the other way while Desiree Powell – wearing just her bra on top – got swaddled in Ace bandages. “It seems that a uniformed officer talked to a man up there at one of the pay-and-play motels along Hampstead. They’d gotten a call of two men fighting in the parking lot.”

“What about it?” All three words hurt. Powell winced. The paramedic helped her slip her blouse back on.

“The officer said the guy did not have any ID on him, but identified himself as a Queens prosecutor.”

“A prosecutor?”

Fontova nodded. “The guy said his name was Michael Roman.”

“Okay.”

“They checked him out, let him slide. But the officer said they pulled around the back of the motel and watched the guy drive away. He was driving a 1999 Ford Contour.”

“He run the plate?”

Fontova looked at his notes. “Yeah. It comes back to a company called Brooklyn Stars.”

“What the hell is that, a Roller Derby Team?”

“Small car dealership in Greenpoint. Probably a chop shop. I checked it out. Guess who owns the place?”

Powell would have thrown up her hands if it wouldn’t have sent her into paroxysms of agony. “I am in a world of hurt. Don’t make me guess.”

“Nikolai Udenko.”

“Our friendly neighborhood DOA?”

“The same.”

Powell glanced out the window. Her chest was aflame. But that didn’t stop the wheels from turning.

“So let me get this straight. We’ve got a torture homicide up in the 114, the victim a shady lawyer tied to ADA Michael Roman – a man who I might add was spotted this afternoon on Hampstead Avenue, driving a car that belonged to a man we just found sliced and diced in the aforementioned Mr Roman’s lovely suburban house.”

“Yep.”

“A house inside which I talked to his rabbit-eyed wife before taking three –”

“Four.”

“Four slugs to the vest.” Powell shifted her weight in the chair. For some reason, learning about the fourth shot made her ribs even worse. “And now the wife and daughters are gone.”

“In the wind.”

Powell thought it might take a calculator to add all this up. “Some fuckery this.”

“That’s exactly what I was gonna say, but I gave that word in all its forms up for Lent.”

Fontova held up a second evidence bag, this one containing what looked to Powell like a .25 semi-auto.

“That was my ticket to heaven?” Powell asked.

“Yep.”

“That bitty thing? I’m almost embarrassed.” The truth was, a .25 could drop you just like a .38, depending on the load. Powell thanked the Lord it was only a twenty-five. At the range at which she had been shot, the vest might not have saved her if it had been anything bigger.

“I called in the serial number,” Fontova said. “And it turns out this here belly gun is registered to none other than one Abigail Reed Roman, RN, thirty-one, of Eden Falls, New York.”

Powell just looked at her partner. “Now, you’re just a handbook of police procedure aren’t you?”

“Tell the world, chica.”

“Well I may not know much, but I’m sure of one thing,” Powell said, struggling to her feet.

“What’s that?”

“I know she didn’t pull the trigger.”

AS THE SHOOTING TEAM headed up to Eden Falls, Powell got on her cellphone to Lieutenant John Testa, the commanding officer of the Queens Homicide Squad. Testa was a supple sixty, with a full head of silver hair and burnished little gray eyes that could make you confess to something you never did. He had an unrequited thing for Desiree, and therefore she could usually wrap him around her finger. After assuring her supervisor that she was fine (she was not), and pleading with him to not pull her in (she hated begging), she told him the facts as they knew them. Except in detail about how her chest felt like she had been kicked for a forty-nine-yard field gold and it hurt to even hold the cellphone. Testa caved, let her stay on the street.

As promised, five minutes later, he issued an arrest warrant for Michael Roman.

FORTY-FIVE

Michael drove two miles under the speed limit, coming to a full stop at stop signs and red lights. He was usually a careful driver, especially with the girls in the car, but today there were more reasons to be cautious. He did not know if there were wants and warrants on him yet. He had to be where he was going, but he had to get there.

The horror of what he had found inside his house roiled within him. The place where his children played, where he had thought his family was protected, was shrouded in blood. Right now a madman had his wife and one of his children. And that madman could be anywhere in the city.

He had gotten on Henry Hudson Parkway heading south, frantically scanning both the side and rear-view mirrors, trying to see if Aleks was following him. For the first few miles, he concentrated on looking for Abby’s car. He saw no champagne-colored Acuras. Then it occurred to him that Aleks might have had his own car, a car unknown to Michael. He had not been able to see the length of the driveway.

He called Abby’s brother Wallace, first at his office, then at his house in Westchester. Wallace said he had not spoken to Abby since the birthday party, and Michael did not sense that Wallace was under any kind of duress. Wallace Reed could negotiate multimillion dollar contracts with foreign investors, but when it came to confrontations he was not the coolest egg in the dozen. Michael doubted he would have even been able to talk if a psychopath was holding him hostage.

Michael then called Abby’s parents house in Pound Ridge. He got Charles Reed’s answering service and, after identifying himself to the satisfaction of the efficient young woman on the phone, was told that the Reeds were currently on a plane between Alexandria, Egypt and Madrid. They were not expected back for another ten days.

The security around the gated community in which Abby’s parents lived was tighter than Quantico, and Michael doubted that Abby and her captor would have been able to bluff their way past.

Still, Michael did not know what kind of network this madman had in place, how many bolt-holes he might have around the city, the county, the country.

Michael knew that Desiree Powell was one of the best detectives in Queens Homicide and, for her to have had probable cause to enter the house, given all the surrounding circumstances of the case as it sat – combined with the facts that no one would be able to contact Michael and Abby Roman, not at the office, not at the clinic – it would not be long before they put two and two together.

There was only one reason Powell had showed up in Eden Falls, and that was because she had made the connection between Michael and Viktor Harkov.

They stopped at the red light on Northern Boulevard at 82nd Street. The sun was warm, the sky was gemstone blue, and people walked with a spring in their step. It was all too surreal. It had never been darker in Michael’s heart.

Since leaving Eden Falls Charlotte had not said a word. She was sitting in the passenger seat, her hands folded in her lap, looking out the window. Michael had no idea what had happened in his house, had no idea what Charlotte had seen. It appeared that she had not been crying. That was the only positive thing.

As they waited for the light to turn green, Charlotte turned slightly in her seat, scanned the messy back seat. She looked at Michael.

“Whose car is this, Daddy?”

Her tiny voice roused Michael from his black reverie. “Uh, it belongs to a friend of mine.”

“Which one?”

“You’ve never met him, honey. It’s somebody I work with.”

Charlotte wrinkled her nose.

“What’s wrong?” Michael asked.

“It smells funny.”

She was right. Michael had smelled it the moment he had dumped Omar in the park. The man had soiled himself.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to see another a friend of mine. A friend of ours.”

Charlotte didn’t ask who the friend was this time. Emily would have, but not Charlotte. Once Charlotte sensed a pattern developing, she tried to find a way around it. “Are Mommy and Em going to be there?”

Michael looked over at his daughter. The open window had blown her hair into her eyes. He reached over, smoothed his daughter’s hair. “No, baby. We’re going to meet up with them later.”

Michael went silent for a few moments, organizing his thoughts. He knew he had to ask. The possibilities were eating him from the inside. “That man back at the house,” he began, not knowing how he was going to broach the subject. “The tall man. Was he nice?”

Charlotte just shrugged.

“He didn’t . . . hurt you or Emily or Mommy did he?”

Charlotte hesitated for a moment, and Michael’s heart began to sink. Then, “No.”

There were a million more questions, but there was no way to ask them without scaring Charlotte even further. He would have to get the answers on his own.

As they drove down 94th Street Michael rehearsed what he would say to Dennis McCaffrey, his boss. He had placed a call to the office and found, as expected, that McCaffrey was still there. Michael visualized pulling into the back lot, leading Charlotte down the sidewalk. She had never been to his office. What a first visit this would be.

When they turned onto Roosevelt Avenue, they pulled directly behind a NYPD sector car, lights flashing. The entire street was blocked.

Michael looked past the police car. Ahead was a fender bender, probably a little worse. Two cars sat at right angles to each other. A second police car sat in front of the scene. A patrol officer was directing cars around it.

As they approached the officer who was diverting traffic, Michael pulled his cap down low, put on a pair of gradient lens sunglasses that were sitting on the back seat. The shades were a woman’s style, and looked far too feminine, but this was New York. Michael chanced a glance, peering over the top of the frames. The police officer on the street was only ten feet away now, looking straight at him. Was he made? Would the cop draw his weapon, command Michael to get out of the car and lay down on the pavement?

Michael had spent so much time on the other side of things, garnering so little sympathy for the criminals and their mindset, that –

The cop held up his hand. Stepping in front of the car, nearly at the hood. Michael glanced in the rear-view mirror. There was no one behind him. If he slipped the transmission into reverse, floored it, he could back up the twenty or so feet needed to get away. They could get a few blocks, get out, and take the subway.

The cop was just a few feet away now.

Michael eased the gearshift into reverse, trying not to make it obvious. The cop still had his hand up. Michael was just about to put his foot on the gas when a vehicle turned the corner and drove up behind him, a dark SUV. He was blocked in.

The cop eased up to Michael’s window, twirling his finger in a circular motion, indicating to Michael that he should roll down his window. Michael thought of the illegal handgun under the seat, the blood in the trunk of the car. He heard the next few seconds unfold in his mind.

Can I see your license and registration, please?

I’m sorry. I don’t have them with me.

You have no identification with you?

No, sir.

Is this your car, sir?

No.

Please step out.

“Good afternoon,” the officer said. He was in his late forties, a veteran patrol officer. Michael knew a lot of men who were on the job more than twenty-five years, men who never took the test, men who were not consumed by advancement. They were savvier in many ways then half the detectives out there.

“Good afternoon.”

The cop looked at Michael, at Charlotte, at the back seat. Cops of this experience could take in an entire scene in seconds. “You know your front license plate is about to fall off. It’s hanging on by one screw.”

Michael felt a cool wave pass over him. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“That plate falls off, someone picks it up, they could use it for all manner of nefarious purposes.”

“I understand.”

The officer held him in his cop stare for a few more seconds – direct, street-hardened, unconvinced. This was his nature. He then looked over at Charlotte. “What’s your name, little darling?”

Charlotte beamed. “Charlotte Johanna Roman.”

The cop smiled, winked at Michael. Michael took a breath, held it. He knew if this cop decided to run the plate, it would not come back registered to anyone named Roman.

“That’s a lot of name for such a little girl,” the officer said.

Charlotte nodded. She loved to say her full name.

The cop gazed up the street. He tapped his hand on the roof of the car. “Get that taken care of right away, sir.”

“I will. Thank you, officer.”

As the cop walked away, Michael rolled up his window, finally exhaling.

The cop spoke into his two-way, stood to the side, held up his hand again, stopping traffic. Twenty feet up the street a concrete truck pulled out of an alley blocking the road. The cop turned his back on Michael, waved the truck along.

When Michael looked again in the rear-view mirror, his blood froze in his veins. The man driving the black SUV behind him was Aleksander Savisaar. Michael’s eyes instinctively went to the passenger. It was Abby.

They had followed him from Eden Falls.

Michael scanned his mirrors. He was blocked. He couldn’t go forward, and he couldn’t back up. Should he tell the police? Should he just jump out of the car and tell the police that the man in the H2 had kidnapped his wife and daughter and was responsible for a number of homicides?

Too much could happened in the blink of an eye. He thought of Viktor Harkov, and Kolya, and Desiree Powell. He thought of the knife. He couldn’t take the chance.

The concrete truck ambled to the curb ahead of him. The cop blew his whistle, waved Michael on. Not knowing what else to do, Michael reached forward, and turned the car off. The cop waved again. When Michael didn’t move the cop looked at him with impatience. He ambled back over.

Michael opened the door, slid out. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the figures in the car behind him. No one moved.

“Something wrong?” the cop asked.

Michael threw his hands up. “Stalled.”

“Try it again.”

Michael gestured to Charlotte. She slid across the front seat, took his hand. “I’m afraid the battery’s dead. I had to jump it just a few minutes ago. It’s not going to start. I’m going to have to push it.”

The cop shook his head. He glanced up the street at the other officer directing traffic. By the time he turned back they were joined by someone.

It was Aleks. He was standing right next to them.

“Need a hand?” Aleks asked.

The cop turned, sized the big man up. For police officers, whenever citizens get out of their vehicles, in the middle of the street, without being asked, it was a red flag. Now this cop had two citizens in the middle of the street. He looked over Aleks’s shoulder, at the woman and the little girl in the driverless SUV. “No,” the cop said. “We’ve got it under control, sir.”

At this close range, Michael could see that Aleks was about his age. His eyes were a pale blue; he had a scar on his left cheek. They stood, wordlessly assessing each other. Between them stood the police officer. The armed police officer.

Would Aleks take this chance? Michael wondered. He gripped Charlotte’s hand tightly, eased a step backward.

“I really don’t mind,” Aleks said. As he took a step forward, Michael and Charlotte retreated yet another step, angling themselves behind the police officer.

“Sir, please return to your vehicle,” the officer said. “We can handle this.”

Michael and Charlotte edged toward the curb and the sidewalk. Aleks did not move. Michael saw Aleks’s right hand descend, saw his forefinger touch the hem of his coat. The moment drew out. The officer stiffened, nearing a state of heightened alert. He turned fully to Aleks. “Sir, I’m not going to ask you again. Please get back in your vehicle.”

Aleks put his hands out, palms up, as if to say: Sorry, I was just trying to help.

As Aleks did this, the right side of his coat fell open. Michael – and the police officer – both saw the large knife on Aleks’s hip.

The officer put a hand on his weapon. “Sir, please turn around and put your hands on the car. Do it now!”

Aleks glanced at the gun, at Michael, at the officer. He backed up a foot. The cop spoke into the microphone on his shoulder. A few anxious seconds later he received a reply. Michael knew all the codes. There were other officers on the way.

In this moment Michael and Charlotte stepped onto the sidewalk. Michael glanced at the SUV, at Emily, saw her lift her hands, bunch her sweater at her neck, shiver, as if she was freezing. It was a funny gesture, an inside joke between Michael and his daughter.

When Michael was small, he used to stand for minutes on end in front of the refrigerator, door open, never being able to make up his mind about what he wanted. His mother, ever trying to save a few pennies here and there on electricity, would always say to him: “Would you like me to get you a sweater?”

The routine continued with Michael and Emily, who was the same way Michael was as a child.

But why is she doing that now? Michael wondered.

Before he could think about it further, hell came to the street. It all happened at once. A woman on the sidewalk screamed as the officer unsnapped his holster. Before the cop could clear his weapon, Aleks had the knife off his hip. In a blur he slashed the police officer, the long blade catching the cop on the right side of his neck. Bright red blood fountained high into the blue sky. The officer staggered back against the car, his eyes wide with surprise and horror. Aleks cut him again, this time from shoulder to shoulder. The cop slid to the ground, slicking the car behind him.

For Michael, everything slowed. He heard another woman on the other side of the street start screaming. In the distance he heard car horns blow. Someone, hanging out of one the windows above, yelled “Hey!”

The other officer arrived on the scene, and seemed to take a moment to realize what he was looking at. He started to draw his weapon, but it was too late. Aleks pivoted, and kicked the man just below his jaw, splintering the young officers’ teeth. The officer crashed back into the Ford. As he was falling to the ground, Aleks slashed him with the knife. It opened a large wound in the man’s chest. In seconds his blue shirt was black with blood.

Michael and Charlotte backed quickly away from the scene on the street, working their way through the gathering crowd.

Sirens blared in the near distance. The older officer, now on the pavement, his face and hands covered in blood, raised his weapon and fired at Aleks, but the shot went wide, smashing into the side of his sector car. More screams as Aleks came in low and kicked the weapon from the man’s hand. It skittered beneath a parked car.

Aleks, clearly disoriented, spun in place, the huge knife in front. He backed toward the SUV. On the sidewalks people were running, scattering. Aleks spun 360, looking for Michael in the hysterical crowd. He found him nearly fifty feet away, separated by scores of people.

Aleks and Michael looked at each other. A pair of sector cars were now just a half-block away. They would be on the scene in seconds, weapons drawn.

Aleks jumped back in the SUV. He put it in reverse, floored it, burned white smoke from the tires. He backed up all the way to 94th Street, and spun out, nearly causing an accident. Seconds later the SUV was gone.

Michael turned, continued up the avenue, as quickly as he could without running. Charlotte did her best to keep up. When they got to the alley, he scooped Charlotte into his arms.

They ran down Roosevelt Avenue – Michael all the while waiting to hear footsteps behind him. Moments later they came to the Junction Avenue subway stop, and boarded a train.