NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,46
later TARU called back to say Jamie—or at least his cell phone—was on the move.
Koprowski raced into the building to get eyes on his subject. By then, the elevator operator had taken Jamie to the basement, and he was on the run.
TARU tracked him as easily as air traffic control watches a jumbo jet cross the country. As soon as Jamie stopped moving, Benny Diaz gave us the address on West Forty-Eighth, and by the time Kylie and I got there, we had a printout of every tenant in the building.
The list was alphabetical. We stopped at B. Brockway, Harris and Anna.
Kylie waited in the car while I checked with the doorman.
“Yes, Officer,” he said. “Mr. Gibbs went upstairs to see Mr. Brockway about five minutes ago. Shall I ring up?”
“Don’t ring, and don’t say a word to him when he comes down,” I said. “I’ll take it from here.”
Ten minutes later Jamie came down, and I ushered him into the back seat of our car. He had every right to resist, but he didn’t. He was scared, confused, and so shocked to see us that he followed orders without a whimper.
Kylie drove north on Central Park West, then turned onto the Eighty-Sixth Street transverse. About halfway to the East Side, she did something very few motorists crossing the park ever do.
She turned into the parking lot of the Central Park Police Precinct and pulled into a space. The lot was filled with cop cars, and uniformed officers were walking in and out of the landmark nineteenth-century station house like extras on a movie set.
Jamie had probably figured we’d drive him back to his apartment or maybe take him into the Nineteenth Precinct to interview him. But this strange place threw him into a tailspin—which was exactly why we’d picked it.
He panicked. “Where are we? What the hell is going on?”
Kylie and I both turned around in our seats, and for the first time since we picked him up, I broke the silence.
“That’s precisely what I was going to ask, Jamie. What the hell is going on?”
“Harris Brockway called me. I went to talk to him. Is there anything wrong with that?”
“Everything is wrong with that,” Kylie said. “What is Harris Brockway going to do if it turns out you’re next on the kidnapper’s list?”
He gawked at us. “I don’t understand.”
“You told the kidnapper that you couldn’t afford to pay the ransom and that your mother wasn’t responding to your calls to save Erin and the baby. By now he could be thinking, I kidnapped the wrong person. Veronica hates the daughter-in-law. Maybe I’ll do better if I grab the son.”
“That’s insane.”
“Everything that has gone down in the past forty-eight hours has been insane,” Kylie said. “Have you counted the number of cops who are watching you? Do you think they’re all there to monitor your phone calls? You’re a target, and our job is to protect you.”
“I didn’t ask for protection.”
“Jamie, this is New York City,” I said. “If there’s a bomb scare at the bus terminal, we don’t wait for a phone call from Penn Station or LaGuardia to ramp up security. From the minute Erin Easton was abducted, everyone connected to her was in danger, and you are at the top of that list. Now, what did Brockway want?”
“Nothing.”
“He didn’t call you from a burner phone to talk about nothing.”
“He wants me to go on TV.”
“To what end?”
“I don’t know. He’s a network guy. I guess he figures people will watch.”
“And how will that help Erin?” I said. “In fact, you might say something that pisses the kidnapper off. Don’t you think it might backfire?”
“I don’t know what to think. Am I under arrest?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then we’re done here. Open the door.”
“We’ll drive you home,” Kylie said.
“No! Just let me out.”
I got out of the car and opened the rear door.
“Stop fucking protecting me,” he said, getting out. “Nobody’s going to kidnap me. And if they do, at least I’ll get to be with Erin.”
Without looking back, he crossed the parking lot and, shoulders slumped, trudged west along the transverse.
He looked like a beaten man—his world turned upside down, his mother abandoning him, the network sharks exploiting him.
Kylie and I were still in his corner. He just didn’t know it.
CHAPTER 42
TWO HOURS LATER, after a hot shower and a mani-pedi, Kylie put on a pair of cropped white jeans, a navy off-the-shoulder top, and her favorite Tory Burch wedges. From the back seat of her Uber, she took