Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(67)

“You did?”

“Of course I did. I’m your mother,” Kylie said, taking a step toward Karen. “But now you’re doing for yourself what I couldn’t do for you. You’re strong now, Karen. Nobody will ever hurt you again.”

Kylie took another step forward. “I’m so very sorry,” she said. “You’re my daughter.” Another step. “I only want the best for you.” Then another.

It was insanity. The two women were squared off at point-blank range. “I love you,” Kylie said, spreading her arms, begging her daughter’s forgiveness.

Karen stood up. “Oh, Mama,” she whimpered, tears rolling down her cheeks. She reached out for an embrace that was probably decades overdue. Without hesitation, Kylie went from loving mom to deadly commando, delivering a furious knife-hand strike to Karen’s wrist.

Bone snapped, Karen yowled, the gun exploded, and glass shattered. Elephant down. The bullet hit Dumbo right between his eager-to-please baby-blue eyes. A fitting metaphor for Karen’s sad existence.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Kylie said, wrapping her arms around Karen and lowering her to the floor. “It was either this or blow your brains out. Mommy had to make a choice.”

I retrieved the gun, which had fallen from Karen’s limp hand. Then I called for backup and paramedics. “We have a white female, midthirties, in need of a doc to set a broken bone and a shrink to bring her out of a hypnotic state.”

It’s not a call Dispatch gets every day. “What kind of state did you say she was in, Detective?”

“Hypnotic. Like a medically induced trance. Call Dr. Cheryl Robinson at the One Nine. She may be able to help. My partner and I are leaving the scene in pursuit of a murder suspect, Dr. Morris Langford. White, male, midforties, reddish hair.”

I dropped to the floor. Kylie had tucked a pillow under Karen’s head and was about to cuff the dazed woman’s ankle to the coffee table.

“Gosh, you’re the best mom ever,” I said.

“Sorry I couldn’t shoot her, Lucas, but the paperwork’s a bitch.”

She took Langford’s gun from my hand. “Now let’s find Dr. Strangelove and give him his gun back,” she said as we raced out the door.

“Maybe I better take it,” I said.

“Thanks, but I’d rather hang on to it,” she said, tucking the gun into her waistband. “There’s a good chance I may use it on Eddy with a y.”





CHAPTER 64



She didn’t use the gun, but as soon as we got to the lobby, Kylie slammed the doorman against a wall. “Where did he go, you dickless bastard?” she screamed.

“Who?” he said.

Wrong answer. She jammed her forearm into his windpipe and drove a knee into his groin. He doubled over, gagging, fighting for air, but he was no match for a trained cop whose adrenaline was firing on all cylinders after a near-death experience.

I looked left and then right, hoping nobody was watching a high-profile detective use excessive force on a civilian whose only crime was that he was a flaming asshole.

“Where did he go?” Kylie repeated as soon as Eddy caught his breath.

“Cab,” the doorman squeaked. “Yellow…boxy cab…Nissan.”

“Where is he going?” She dug hard into the pressure point on the webbing of his hand over his thumb.

He dropped to the floor, sniveling. “They drove south. That’s all I know. I swear. Please stop. I’m sorry.”

She cuffed him to a brass handrail just as the first squad car came to a screeching stop on West End Avenue.

“Officers,” Kylie yelled, “make sure the lady in 7G gets immediate medical attention, then arrest this piece of shit for obstruction of justice. Take him down to Central Booking and make sure his paperwork gets the full bureaucratic monty. With any luck, he’ll get lost in the Tombs for a week.”

It was a bogus charge. But by the time Eddy got untangled from the city’s clogged justice system, he’d never mouth off to another cop again. Hell hath no fury. We raced to the car and headed south.

“Call Natty,” Kylie said, her spleen vented, her full attention on tracking down the fugitive psychiatrist.

Natalie Brown is a sultry-voiced singer with a progressive rock band. She has luxurious ringlets of red hair down to her shoulders and a kick-ass body down to her toes. But sexy and talented doesn’t always pay the rent, so by day she works for the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

If a detective wants to know where a certain cabbie was at a certain time, the TLC can track down that information. But not right away. That’s because they’re also busy tracking down lost briefcases, cell phones, and umbrellas for the six hundred thousand passengers who hail cabs every day. Natty Brown is our go-to person when Kylie and I need answers in a New York minute.

“Hey, Red,” I said as soon as she picked up. “Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald. This is a screaming emergency.”

“It always is,” she said. “Hit me.”

“A yellow cab, probably a Nissan, picked up a single white male on West End Avenue near the corner of Eighty-Fourth Street about five minutes ago. Passenger is a murder suspect on the run.”

“Gimme a minute,” she said, and I could hear the clacking of her nails on a keyboard. “Guys, I’ve got great news.”