Gladyss of the Hunt (25 page)

“I'm so sorry, Mr. Duffy,” I said as delicately as I could. “We would've notified you ourselves but since you live in Jersey . . .”

Over the phone I heard convulsive gasps, the sort of primal cries you imagine someone would make when their heart is ripped out of their chest. After a few minutes of groaning, he regained a modicum of composure.

“How did it happen?”

“I'm sorry, sir, I don't know. The lead detective and his team are out investigating.”

“What's his name?”

“Farrell, Detective Sergeant Bernie Farrell,” I said. Then I asked, “Do you work in the city? I'll have him call you and arrange to come see you.”

“Was she raped?”

“We don't have any details yet, sir. We're waiting for the medical examiner's report.”

“Did she suffer? I mean, she had a low tolerance for pain. She would cry over a paper cut.”

“I'm sure it was quick,” I heard myself saying.

“What the hell am I going to tell our boy?” He started weeping again. I waited a bit before asking, “Should I tell Detective Farrell to come out to your house in New Jersey?”

“No, I work in Times Square.” He gave me the address. “I stayed home today because…”

“Do you have any idea why your wife was in Manhattan?” I asked softly, since I could hardly ask if she was a drug-addicted hooker.

“We both work in the city and commute.”

“So she didn't come home last night?”

“Yeah, but that happens sometimes,” he said. “There's a sofa in her office. But she always calls if she's not coming home, so I knew something was wrong.”

“Where exactly did she work?”

“The Condé Nast Building on Times Square—she works for a law firm, Shades, Holts and Pierce.”

“A law firm?” I said surprised.

“Yeah, they do corporate work.”

“What did she do there?”

“She's a senior paralegal. She's been there for twelve years.”

“Mr. Duffy, could you give me the phone number of her office, so we can speak to whoever saw her last?”

He gave me a name, work address, and phone number with an extension.

“When is the soonest the detective can call me?” he asked.

I assured him that Detective Farrell would call him back as soon as he returned. Mr. Duffy took my name and number and said he'd call again if he could think of anything that might be helpful. I repeated my condolences and hung up, then tried not to think of the unbelievable anguish the poor man had to be experiencing.

“Remember when Alex asked why any blonde hooker would turn a trick after the Commissioner issued a warning of a serial murderer.”

“Go on,” he said, rolling his hand impatiently.

“Caty might be our first non-hooker.”

“No way.”

“Not according to her husband.”

He smiled and in a mocking tone, he said, “I got news for you. Some hookers are married.”

“She's got a kid.”

“If all the prostitutes who had kids joined the PTA they could rename it the PPTA.”

“Her husband says she's been working for the past twelve years as a paralegal in a corporate law firm in midtown.”

“Did you get her work number?” He was testing me more than asking me.

“Yeah, and her supervisor's name,” I said holding up the info. “Should I call her?”

“What do you think this is, Domino's Pizza? We have to put on our coats, go out and interview her.”

“Can't we give Caty the benefit of the doubt that maybe she's not a prostitute?”

“I'm not being sexist,” he said. “Serial killers usually have a strict victim profile. If she was simply abducted off the street then we are seriously fucked, 'cause it means the killer is suddenly fishing from a much wider victim pool.”

Then he asked me to call “my friend” Miriam Williams to see if she had returned to the States yet. I got her assistant Bryce, who said that she'd be back in town in four days.

When I checked my voicemail, I found my optometrist had left a message reminding me that my eye surgery was coming up that Friday—which was also the last day of my homicide assignment. I also needed to come in on Thursday to get my eyes measured before the procedure. I called back to confirm and the receptionist told me I should arrange for someone to pick me up after the surgery and take me home, because I wouldn't be able to see straight for a while.

I spent the rest of the morning filling out a backlog of forms and reports dealing with the last two homicides. At one o'clock Bernie stopped at my desk and announced that we were going to lunch.

I grabbed my jacket and he took me to a nearby diner that was probably a real find twenty-five years earlier, when cops first started going there. Since then it had evidently degenerated into a health code nightmare. We each grabbed pathogenic plastic trays and slid them along a steamed-up glass case, conjuring up scary parochial school lunches of years gone by. Throwing all nutritional wisdom to the wind, Bernie selected a high-carb pasta dish. I moved down the line to the refrigerated area, where I selected a severely wilted arugula salad.

“Hi Glad!”

I looked up to see O'Ryan standing before me in uniform. He looked more handsome each time I saw him.

“Eddie!” It was actually nice seeing him. Since I'd started seeing Noel, I realized that simply having sex was not nearly as easy as it sounded. Pornography and even TV shows made hooking up sound so effortless, but finding someone you could feel comfortable with—and trust—took a lot of work and sheer luck.

O'Ryan gave me a warm hug followed by a surprising peck on the cheek. It made me think he had to be with some new lover.

“Who's this?” Bernie said, suddenly showing up with his tray of baked ziti.

“Eddie O'Ryan,” I said “This is Detective Bernie Farrell.”

“How's it going there?” Bernie asked without making eye contact.

“Yeah,” Eddie replied, absently staring at a wall. An awkward pause followed, as is common in the cop world when a female is
present.

“I guess I'll see you later then,” Eddie finally said before leaving.

Bernie led us to a booth that had just opened in the rear. Sitting down he said, “Sorry if I seemed a little grumpy back at the precinct.”

“Is your foot hurting?”

“Usually that's what it is, but this time I'm just worried about our guy. I mean, if it is one guy, and if he really is just grabbing any women now, and not even trying to sedate them, just strangling them—not to mention raping them—then we're in serious trouble.”

Bernie snared a forkful of ziti, shoved it into his mouth, and added, “And what the hell did he put on Caty's face, I wonder.”

“Maybe a Santa Claus beard,” I tried to joke, since it still felt cold enough to be Christmas.

I chewed on a couple of rubbery leaves and shriveled stalks before abandoning the wilted bowl of greens. In another moment, Bernie had gobbled down all his pasta and cheese and we were out the door.

As we walked, I was about to remind him that my homicide assignment was set to expire on Friday, when a college-age kid with a clipboard stepped into our path. His wore a visored cap that read GREENPEACE.

As he started talking about saving the planet, Bernie interrupted him, “Sorry son, it's too late for that. Have as much fun as you can, 'cause it's only going to get worse from here.”

“That's simply not true,” the kid replied.

Bernie took out a dollar and said, “I'll give this to you if you don't say another word.”

The kid took the buck.

“Hold on,” I said. I took out a five and donated it. He tried to get me to fill out some form, but Bernie wouldn't stop, so I wished him good luck and caught up.

“I happen to think there's still hope.”

“Sure there is,” Bernie replied. “Everyone's going to finally wise up about global warming. Any day now they'll replace their SUVs with bikes. And politicians will tell the corporate lobbyists who bankroll their campaigns to fuck off, and they'll quit with the partisan bullshit and work together to fix the problems that are killing the planet and
melting the polar caps. And all the pollution that's been building up since the dawn of the Industrial Age will miraculously evaporate.”

When we reached a corner, Bernie looked up at one of the city's latest innovations—a dark blue street sign with illuminated numbers. Rummaging through his pockets for the info sheet, he asked, “So where exactly is Caty Duffy's firm?”

“Three Times Square.”

We walked north toward the coven of glossy new high-rises that now encircled Times Square. Soon we were back in front of the wavy new Reuters Building where we had recently interviewed the one-armed immigrant with the stolen credit card number.

“What the fuck is that?” he asked, pointing at a strange, flat object projecting from the top of the building like the edge of a giant surfboard.

“I think it's some kind of architectural homage to the marquees that once lined the Great White Way.”

Bernie looked at the area as if seeing it for the first time. When a member of the Forty-second Street Security Team passed, he asked him which building was Three Times Square.

Instead of answering, the guard started turning clockwise and rattling off the addresses of each skyscraper in turn, “That's number one, then four, seven, five, and three—”

“The whole point of addresses is to make the location easy to find,” Bernie interrupted. “If you're just going to throw numbers on buildings in no particular order, you're missing the point.”

“Hey, they don't pay
me
to number the damn buildings.” the security guard shot back before walking off.

For a moment I checked out the new Condé Nast Building. It had curvy sides and unusual surfaces that made me wonder if the architect was drunk when he designed it. It rose nearly fifty stories high. Just below a giant hypodermic-like antenna were four black squares paralleling each of the building's sides.

“There's a reason they stopped grouping battleships together after Pearl Harbor,” Bernie muttered.

“What?”

“Putting all these skyscrapers so close together makes them all such easy targets.”

As we crossed over to the northeast corner, I asked Bernie if he
knew the purpose of the four mysterious black squares on the top of the Condé Nast Building.

“Giant fly swatters . . . in case any planes come too close.”

The awning in front of the Condé Nast building looked like the shiny scoop from a monster garbage truck, ready to claw unsuspecting tourists into its lobby, which was funnel-shaped like a giant meat grinder. We entered the bright marble lobby and walked toward the wooden security desk as employees ran their magnetized ID cards over a reader before entering through a turnstile. We showed our badges to the guard on duty, who gave us adhesive labels to put over our shirt pockets and let us through a metal gate.

“The last time I was at this spot,” Bernie said. “It was 1472 Broadway—the Longacre Building. Ten spacious stories filled with waterbugs and Joe Franklin.”

I guessed Franklin was an old-time gangster.

Abruptly Bernie paused as we approached the first bank of elevators. “You didn't happen to catch today's safety color, did you?”

I thought he was kidding. Roughly a month ago, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security had begun issuing threat levels based on a five-color scale. I happened to remember that the most recent warning was amber, but I couldn't remember exactly what degree of menace that color was meant to indicate.

I watched Bernie fumble through his pockets and finally pull out a orange pill container.

“Never in my fucking life did I think twice before entering a building,” he said. “It never even occurred to me that they could collapse. But after digging through layers of rubble, finding fragments of bone and pulped human flesh, it's hard for me to ever see these buildings the same way.”

“How else can you see them?”

“Like giant Cuisinarts just waiting to slice and dice us.”

From the sweat on his brow I could see he wasn't kidding.

“If you want to wait here,” I said. “I can go up and talk to the supervisor. It's safe. I'll come right back down and no one will be any the wiser.” Frankly, I was tired of dealing with him and I knew nothing dangerous would happen in this giant parked spaceship.

“I know I haven't been very patient with you,” he said. “But you're a good partner, Gladyss.”

It was the kindest thing he'd ever said to me. He slipped the pills back in his pocket, patted me on the shoulder, and led the way into the elevator as though walking to his death.