NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,93
The members of the press were clustered behind barricades with a lean, mean cop stationed every five feet. NYPD choppers circled overhead, and a heavily armed team from the Strategic Response Group patrolled the ground, on the lookout for international terrorists or local nutjobs.
Spielberg might have been able to mount a more elaborate production, but not in thirty minutes.
At 5:45, on the cusp of the evening news cycle, the precinct doors swung open and Erin Easton stepped into the light. I was at one elbow, Kylie at the other. A roar erupted as the media horde screamed her name.
Erin instinctively moved her right arm to wave to the crowd, but her wrists were shackled behind her back. She stopped and stared them down as tape rolled, shutters clicked, and scores of reporters shelled her with questions. Most of them were unintelligible, but the ones I could make out all started with why.
And then she turned and kept walking, eyes straight ahead, lips pursed tight, head held high.
It lasted all of eighteen seconds, but it was a perp walk for the ages, one that would live on not just in pop culture, but in department lore. NYPD Red parading the most famous criminal on the planet in front of a global audience. I could just picture Chief Doyle, who must have watched the live feed at 1PP along with DCPI Bachner, the police commissioner, and the mayor. Doyle would remain stone-faced on the outside, but inside he’d be laughing his ass off.
And he’d only just begun.
I’d driven from the precinct to Central Booking hundreds of times. When you’ve got just a single prisoner, all it takes is one car. But this was Doyle’s big show, and Diamond had ordered up five gleaming black Escalades and eight motorcycle cops from Highway Unit 1 to clear the way.
The Harleys pulled out, and a minute later the rest of us followed. Dozens of TV stations—local, national, and international—filmed the convoy as we made the six-mile run from Sixty-Seventh Street to FDR Drive to Centre Street. It was the best coverage of a copcar caravan since LAPD chased O.J.’s Bronco down the 405.
Kylie and I escorted Erin to the basement of the vast detention complex and handed her over to a corrections officer who searched her and processed her paperwork.
Then we watched as Erin was led toward a cell that held thirty women.
But the guard was only taunting her. A door thunked, and Erin was shoved into a private cell—gray walls, steel toilet, and no escape from the catcalling women directly across from her. As I left, the last thing I heard was “You’re one of us now, bitch.”
And that ended act two.
Kylie and I walked next door to One Police Plaza, where Chief Doyle was about to raise the curtain on act three, a carefully orchestrated press conference.
“Congratulations, Detectives,” he said, shaking our hands. “You finally lived up to the hype.”
He took the stage. His boss, the police commissioner, stood a step behind him and to his right. Kylie and I were positioned to the left.
Doyle leaned into the sea of microphones. “In the course of investigating the kidnapping of Erin Easton and the murder of Veronica Gibbs, the two lead detectives from NYPD Red—Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald—uncovered evidence that Ms. Easton was a coconspirator in her own kidnapping.
“There is incontestable proof of her colluding with her kidnapper, Bobby Dodd—the man who killed Mrs. Gibbs and who was subsequently murdered by Ms. Easton. She has made a statement and has been booked. She will be arraigned tomorrow morning. That’s all I have for now, but I’ll take questions.”
Damn right he would take questions. Starting with the one he’d planted. He pointed to a female reporter in the front row. She stood up.
“Peg O’Ryan, Eyewitness News. Chief Doyle, now that you’ve discovered that this kidnapping was a conspiracy and nothing like what it appeared to be on the surface, can you tell us if anyone else was involved?”
“That’s a good question, Peg.” Doyle hesitated as if he were wrestling with an answer. But knowing the man, I figured he had rehearsed it with her an hour ago. “As you’re aware, this is still an ongoing investigation, so I’m limited in what I can say.” Another pause. “But I will tell you this: we have information that a person or persons at Ms. Easton’s network, ZTV, may have provided money—a million dollars, in fact—to the kidnapper, Bobby Dodd, in exchange for a video of Ms.