In the Shadow of Gotham - By Stefanie Pintoff Page 0,110
each kept our own counsel as we headed south on Amsterdam Avenue to 112th Street. My own mind filled with disparate images that, though once unconnected, now came together in rapid succession and assumed larger significance. The purple bruise he had suffered when I first met him. Our half glimpse of him in the Bowery, when we had convinced ourselves we were mistaken. His restlessness. His lies. His profuse sweating. These individual images, one by one, linked together until they formed a picture and I saw him whole.
He had the means: he’d been trusted with ready access to everything at the research center, from files and financials to Fromley himself. He had also been in a unique position to monitor and hamper our progress, even as he pretended to help us. And he had the motive: enormous debts resulting from an addiction to drugs or cards, I had not yet determined which. While his connection to Sarah Wingate remained unclear, the rest of it made perfect sense. And the image in my mind was confirmed by the name next to the doorbell at 508 West 112th Street.
Horace G. Wood.
CHAPTER 29
“You must have suspected him, the moment I told you about the Golden Dragon. You thought you saw him outside Nicky’s that first day, remember?” I made the comment in a bland enough tone, but I had to admit I was curious. I had met Horace just five days ago, but Alistair had worked with him for seven years. How could he have been so blind?
But of course, it was precisely because he had known Horace that he missed seeing it. We never scrutinize the familiar in the same way we do the unknown.
Alistair seemed to have retreated into a private world of his own. His face was wan, etched with lines of worry. He commented only that “the address confirms it.”
My heartbeat accelerated as we approached the door of Horace’s apartment.
“We don’t know that he has her,” I said, “but it makes sense that he does.” I rapped sharply on the door. “She was working at his desk this morning when she discovered the connection between the stolen funds and the amounts owed to the Golden Dragon. She may even have asked Horace about it.” I rapped again, and this time when no one answered, I pulled a thin metal file out of my pocket.
Alistair raised an eyebrow. “My understanding of the Fourth Amendment and police procedure may be rusty, but don’t you need a warrant for that?”
I shook my head. “It’s okay.” I applied more pressure to the pin tumbler lock. “If we were breaking in to look for evidence only, you would be correct. But when someone’s life is at risk, as Isabella’s is, then we’re completely justified.”
I didn’t tell Alistair, but for Isabella, I’d break through this door even if the law didn’t sanction it.
The pin stack lifted and the lock turned. “Got it.” I gave Alistair a grim nod and he followed me inside.
“Isabella? Horace?” I called out their names, but there was no answer.
Horace’s apartment was a railroad flat, which meant one room connected to the next like the cars in a train. We passed first through the room he used as an office or living area, then the kitchen, and finally entered his bedroom. The place was messy and strewn with papers, but I noted nothing out of the ordinary.
“I’ll search his front rooms; you try the ones here in back,” I said. While I had little hope we would find Isabella here, surely something in the apartment would lead us to wherever he had taken her.
I was searching through a mass of papers covering one corner of the living room when a crashing sound startled me. I returned to the back of the apartment, where Alistair stood in the midst of shattered glass and broken bottles. He had apparently ripped Horace’s medicine cabinet right off the wall and thrown it onto the adjoining bedroom floor, smashing it to bits.
His explanation seemed wrenched from somewhere deep within. “I’ve known him for years, given him every opportunity. I loaned him money. And look how he repays me.” Alistair’s throat was choked with emotion. “He has betrayed me personally and committed unforgivable crimes.”
His anger spent, he sank onto the bed and dropped his head into his hands.
After a moment, he looked up, and I was struck by the despair in his eyes. “You can’t believe he would harm Isabella. He knows her.”