Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(51)

Captain Fennessy and his crew were on the tarmac, waiting for us, and once again I was reminded that the rich really do live differently.

I spent the next eighteen hours flying back to the woman I love, and the twelve hours after that reconnecting with her. First physically, then emotionally. After a good night’s sleep, we gave physically another shot.

At 7:00 a.m. Cheryl and I walked to the precinct. It was mid-May, one of those perfect spring days in New York when Central Park looks like it was Photoshopped by the man upstairs, and most New Yorkers on their way to work have full-blown smiles on their faces.

And then I was back to reality: Captain Cates’s office. Kylie and I had identified the prime suspect in the Silver Bullet bombing case. Now came the tough part: catching him.

“Did you release Sura’s picture to the press?” I asked.

Whenever there’s a citywide manhunt, the brass debates whether or not to enlist the public’s help by releasing a photo of the suspect to the media. Most of the time we don’t. The standard reasoning is, Why let the perp know that we’re onto him?

“Absolutely not,” Cates said. But this time the logic was different. Cates spelled it out for us.

“Sura is Guatemalan. His mama could pick him out of a crowd, but if you flash a picture of a dark-skinned, dark-haired mad bomber on a TV screen for five seconds, you know what’s going to happen.”

“Chinese waiter syndrome,” I said. “They all look alike.”

Every year, thousands of witnesses identify the wrong person—especially when the felon and the witness are of different races. In a city with four million white people it was smarter to circulate Sura’s picture to trained police officers.

“Next order of business,” Cates said. “A hundred thousand dollars of the DA’s money flew off into the sunset last week. Would you like to know how many times he’s called me since you left for Thailand?”

“No, Captain, but did you tell the DA that we have two suspects?”

“Yes, and he doesn’t give a shit about suspects. Nor is he interested in the fact that Detectives Corcoran and Fischer have been tailing them. All he wants to hear is that he’s getting his money back. Where are you on finding it?”

“We’re meeting with Corcoran and Fischer as soon as we’re done here.”

“In that case, we’re done. Go—and don’t come back empty-handed.”

Danny Corcoran and Tommy Fischer were parked outside the precinct. “We’ve been tailing Troy Marschand and Dylan Freemont since Friday,” Danny said as soon as we got in the car.

“Who’s watching them now?” Kylie said.

Danny pulled out. “These boys don’t need watching at this hour. They sleep in till around noon.”

“Don’t they work?”

“Marschand, if he’s still employed, is the assistant to a dead woman. Not very demanding on his time. Freemont is an actor-slash-waiter. We followed him to a burger joint on Second Avenue on Saturday. He went inside, came out fifteen minutes later, and hailed a cab. We checked with the manager. She told us he quit. Came in to pick up his money.”

“You think he landed an acting job?”

“More likely he’s found a new career as a blackmailer. The two of them have been dining at some of New York’s finer restaurants, and they spent yesterday shopping on Madison Avenue. Paying cash.”

“The tips must be good at that burger joint,” Kylie said. “So now what?”

“You remember Jerry Brainard, the dispatcher who worked the new mobile command center? Jerry knows drones. We showed him the chopper video of the one that scooped up the ransom money, and he ID’d it as a DJI Phantom 3.”

“Get a court order for their credit card records,” Kylie said. “See if they bought one.”

“We did. Nothing came up, but that doesn’t prove anything. There are third-party sellers all over the lot. Or they could have bought a used one. Jerry checked with the FAA. You’re supposed to register these things with the Feds, but there’s nothing under either of their names.”

“We can get a warrant to search their apartment for a drone with a grappling hook dangling from the bottom,” I said.

“The hook was homemade. I doubt if they’d leave it on. But even if we found a drone on their kitchen table, the ADA said she couldn’t make a case that they committed the crime. We were about to give up on the drone connection and wait for them to hit another victim, but Jerry texted me last night, said he had an idea, and asked if we could meet him at the fire academy on Randall’s Island.”

“What’s he doing out there?” Kylie asked.

“Teaching cops to fly drones,” Fischer said.

Kylie’s eyes lit up. “Now you’re talking.”

Fifteen minutes later, we rolled up to a huge training facility where the streets are lined with buildings that are set on fire regularly. There was a bombed-out city bus with mannequin arms and legs sticking out of the charred remains, and there were more plastic bodies—civilians and fallen firefighters—lying in the street.

Jerry Brainard was waiting for us in front of a row of mock storefronts. “I’m really sorry to drag you all the way out here, guys. There’s almost no place in the city where you can legally fly, so the FDNY lets us use their space.”