NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,92

I found Jamie. He’s not the best-looking man I ever met, or the best in bed, or the best anything, but he had money—or at least I thought he did—so what the hell? I started dating him. Exclusively. Every night. Every weekend. The paparazzi tracked us wherever we went, and it drove Veronica crazy. She knew why I was with her precious little boy, so she began trashing me something fierce, and now she was not only his boss at work, she was trying to run his love life. So he figured out the one thing he could do to show Mommy who’s really in charge—marry the bitch.

“The media loved the feud, and then the Brockways came up with this Wedding of the Century fiasco. Suddenly I was getting talk shows again, and magazine covers, and five-minute pieces on Access Hollywood, and I didn’t want it all to end on June ninth. So yes, I came up with the idea for the kidnapping. But I didn’t do it for the money. I did it to keep my brand from dying. And I swear to God, I never planned to kill Veronica Gibbs.”

“Just Bobby Dodd,” Kylie said.

Erin froze. She’d been so glorified in the media for overpowering her captor that she’d convinced herself she was every bit the heroine they said she was. But in reality she was nothing more than a stone-cold, commando-trained killer.

“I’m going to read you your rights,” Kylie said. Then she paused. I doubted if it was to give Erin a moment to process it all. Knowing Kylie, she was giving Captain Cates enough time to dial up the chief of Ds and let him savor the arrest in real time.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Kylie began.

I tuned out the rest of it as my brain kicked into another gear, and I was able to reflect on the irony of it all.

After years of enjoying fame she’d done nothing to earn, Erin Easton was finally going to be world-famous for something she’d actually done.

CHAPTER 80

IT WAS SURELY the single worst day of Erin Easton’s life, but for Chief of Detectives Harlan Doyle, it was shaping up to be one of the best.

The man and his entire command had been skewered in the press for failing to save Erin. But then Doyle found out that she’d had no desire to be saved, and he was not going to let this humiliating piece of departmental history remain uncorrected. So he did what anyone in his shoes would do when he smelled redemption. He broke out the heavy artillery.

Within minutes of Erin being charged, Doyle and his old buddy Mason Bachner, the deputy commissioner of public information, put together an operation to make sure that the news of her arrest broke big.

And, boy, did it ever.

It started with the perp walk.

Most people think that the suspect’s brief journey from the bowels of the precinct to the confines of a patrol car is a haphazard affair, just a handful of random cops moving their prisoner from one spot to another like so many baggage handlers while the cameras record it for posterity.

Not true. If the perp is high profile enough to generate media frenzy, then the walk has to be a brilliantly choreographed piece of theater.

And nobody put on a better show than Matthew Diamond.

Lieutenant Diamond was one of Doyle’s go-to guys at DCPI Bachner’s office. Cates gave us the heads-up that he was on his way, and we were downstairs when he arrived.

He went straight for the front desk. “Good afternoon, Sergeant McGrath,” he said. “And how has your day been going?”

“Just fine, sir.”

“I’m about to change all that,” Diamond said, the upbeat tone gone. “In less than an hour the cameras will be rolling, and the eyes of the world are going to be on your precinct. My job is to ensure they see exactly what the chief of Ds wants them to see.”

McGrath didn’t have to ask what his job was. “Yes, sir. What can I do to make that happen?”

Diamond started with casting. “I want three of your sharpest officers at the front door, another dozen on the street. And McGrath, we’re not shooting a sequel to the mall-cop movies. I want New York’s Finest, not New York’s fattest.”

McGrath, a large-boned fellow and proud of it, laughed. “Yes, sir.”

A half an hour later, the stage was set. Sixty-Seventh Street from Third to Lex was locked down, the entire block cleared except for the prisoner-transport vehicles.