NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,27

extra. She doesn’t get any strangers, except maybe for this one guy. He’s black, in his forties, well dressed. His name is Maurice. That’s all I know. Just Maurice. He comes once a week. He asks for Mrs. Ogden, but my best guess is he’s really there for Lydia.”

“Who’s Lydia?”

“The nurse.”

“Why do you think he’s there for her?”

“I don’t know. She’s pretty good-looking. He usually stays an hour. I figure that gives him plenty of time to case the joint and still get in a little afternoon delight.”

CHAPTER 23

THE NYPD ORG chart reads like alphabet soup, but those of us in the know can tell a lot about the priority of a case by which letters of the alphabet are assigned to work it.

The Ogden case was a low-level robbery that should have been handled by ECT. The Evidence Collection Team is made up of uniformed cops who, as the name implies, gather evidence and go. No analytical skills are required. But when we got to the apartment, we saw that CSU had been dispatched, and Chuck Dryden, our crime scene unit’s most meticulous forensic investigator, was busy at work. He’d changed his shirt and tie since we’d last seen him in Erin Easton’s dressing room, but that didn’t necessarily mean he’d gotten a decent night’s sleep.

“Good morning, Detectives,” Dryden said. “I see that you too have been recruited by the Department of Overkill.”

“Once again, politics triumphs over good judgment,” Kylie said. “What have you found so far?”

“Cat hair. Mrs. Ogden owns an orange tabby, so we may be looking at an inside job.”

Kylie laughed, which I’m sure made Chuck’s day.

A woman in pink scrubs entered the living room. “Officers,” she said. “I’m Lydia Humphries, Mrs. Ogden’s nurse. She’s expecting you.”

“Why don’t you tell us what happened first,” I said.

“It was all so fast,” she said. “Two men dressed like EMTs came to the door—one white, one brown, probably Latino. They said they got a call that Mrs. Ogden was in distress. I didn’t buy it. I was going to call her son, but they pulled a gun. Then they tied us up—both of us. I told them she was ninety-two years old, but they didn’t care.”

“Can she talk to us?” I said.

Lydia grinned. “Can she talk? Mrs. O. has heart problems, which is why I take care of her. But she can talk a blue streak. The hard part is getting her to stop.”

Lydia walked us into a large bedroom that looked like it belonged to Marie Antoinette. A ponderous ivory and gold armoire with two matching dressers lined one wall, cherubs frolicked in the clouds on another, and an ornately carved four-poster canopy bed dominated the center of the room.

Mrs. Ogden was sitting on a tufted love seat facing two windows that had an unobstructed view of Central Park. She stood up when we entered the room and extended a hand. I’d expected a little old lady, but Ogden was big, close to six feet. “I’m Bunny,” she said. “You gonna catch these fuckers?” Her language wasn’t exactly what Miss Manners would call ladylike.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kylie said. “We’ll need a little help from you, but we’ll catch them.”

“Lydia saw their faces, but by the time they got to me, they had put on surgical masks, so all I can tell you is the guy in charge was white, the other was Spanish. Both had brown eyes. The white guy puts a gun to Lydia’s head and tells me I have ten seconds to show him where I keep the money and the jewelry. Hell, I don’t need ten seconds. The safe is in the closet, I say, and I give him the combination.”

“What did they take?” I asked.

“Fifty thousand in cash. I could have lived with that, but then they saw my jewelry, and they got greedy. I said, ‘You take the money, and you’ll probably get away with it, but you touch my family heirlooms, and I will hunt you down.’ The white bastard laughed and says, ‘I’m doing you a favor, lady. You’ll be dead soon enough. I’m going to help your heirlooms find a new family.’ ”

“How much was the jewelry worth?”

“It’s insured for one point eight million dollars. But I don’t want the money. I want my mother’s necklace back, and my grandmother’s ring, and the black pearls my husband gave me for our thirtieth wedding anniversary. That’s why I called my nephew and told him I want the two of you.”

“You asked for