Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(8)

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 the 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.