the building, and we’ll talk some more to the doorman, but so far nobody’s been much help. A search of the apartment didn’t turn up anything that seemed relevant. No drugs, no names of known felons in Danner’s address book. The techs say there was nothing unusual on his computer: some business correspondence; some downloaded soft-core porn; a stock and bond portfolio worth about a quarter of a million.”
“Soft-core porn?”
“Nothing that’d move you, unless you like to watch bare-breasted women operating jackhammers.” Stack was pretty sure he heard Rica roll her eyes. “There were no messages on his answering machine. Gold cuff links and a gold chain in a dresser drawer in the bedroom, and Danner was wearing a Rolex when he burned. It doesn’t appear the apartment was burglarized, but since we don’t know exactly what Danner might have had in there, we can’t be sure. His lady love, Helen Sampson, is going to look around the place with us today, take an inventory, and see if anything might be missing.”
“Good,” O’Reilly said. “You two keep me posted.” He stood up, signaling the end of the conversation.
“Will do, sir,” Stack told him. He and Rica stood also.
As they stepped into the hall, Stack closed the door behind them.
“What the hell was all that about?” Rica asked beside Stack, as they were walking back toward the squad room. “Does he think we’re just wandering around with our thumbs up our asses?”
“He might,” Stack said, “but what I think it was really about was O’Reilly wishing he were Vandervoort.”
And where, Rica wondered, is that going to take us?
FOUR
June 1997
Vernel Jefferson had screwed his neighbor’s ten-year-old daughter. He’d been arrested twice before for child molestation, never for anything violent done against an adult. Sweating like Niagara there in the dark tenement hall, Rica didn’t think she’d need her gun. Her partner Wily Stanford was at the other end of the hall, knocking on Jefferson’s apartment door so he could arrest him. Jefferson figured to cave like most child molesters and come along quietly, especially since he was in his sixties and only slightly over five feet tall. Rica the rookie cop was breathing hard, nervous, but she figured this was nothing she couldn’t handle.
The tenement hall smelled like a blend of every cooking spice known to man, with an underlying stench of stale urine. There was a single dim overhead lightbulb halfway down the narrow hall. Stanford, at the distant end of the hall, was a barely visible figure despite his six-foot frame.
Rica heard him knock on the door again, louder. “Mr. Jefferson, open up! This is the police!”
There was no way out of the fifth-floor apartment except through Stanford or down the fire escape. Another uniformed cop was waiting down at street level if Jefferson decided to bolt that way. Rica was insurance in the unlikely event the little pervert would somehow manage to get past Stanford.
Another apartment door opened near the middle of the corridor. A dark woman with cornrow hair stuck her head out and peered up and down the hall. When she looked Rica’s way, Rica silently motioned for her to get back inside. The woman nodded, drew back out of sight, and the door closed. Stanford pounded on Jefferson’s door now, impatient. It was damn near the end of the shift.
Rica tightened her perspiring grip on her baton as she watched Stanford hoist his huge foot with its size-twelve shoe and prepare to kick in the door.
At first she thought the explosion was the sound of Stanford’s foot shattering the door, incredibly loud. When she saw Stanford hurled back against the wall, she thought she might have heard a shot. Then she realized the sound she’d heard was the apartment door shattering, but not because Stanford had kicked it in.
Someone inside had kicked it out, and with great force.
“Look out, Rica!” Stanford shouted.
The form that broke from the apartment was massive and moving fast. The guy wasn’t built like Vernel Jefferson. He should have been an NFL linebacker. He came toward Rica head down, legs and arms pumping. She gulped and moved to stand in the center of the hall, wielding her baton, holding her ground.
The man rushing toward her grinned as he flashed beneath the dim lightbulb.
The hell with this, Rica thought, and drew her 9mm handgun from its holster.
“Halt! Police! Halt!” Rica’s command sounded feeble even to her.
But miraculously he did halt. He skidded to a stop about ten feet from her, his face stiff, his bulging eyes fixed on the gun.
Then his grin returned.
“Sheeeeit!” he said. He was wearing a sleeveless gray undershirt to show off his muscles and baggy pants. His chest was heaving and he blew breath like a cornered bull as he shot a glance back at Stanford, who was just now getting to his feet, then back at Rica. His smile broadened and he began strolling toward her with a deliberate, casual gait. She couldn’t help thinking he was a handsome guy. Great smile. She smelled his sweat and fear as he got closer. “You gon’ be a good lil’ pussy,” he said softly. “I jus’ know it.”
And he did know it. Rica was frozen. She could only stare at him as he approached her, then gingerly removed the 9mm from her hand. Then oddly, for he was on fleeing fugitive time, he reached out and squeezed her left tit. Not hard, and his fingers danced in a quick massaging motion as he withdrew his hand.
The man sensed greater danger from behind and turned to aim and fire at Stanford, who was running toward him, still moving unsteadily after being struck by the exploding door.
That was when Rica’s paralysis passed. She used the baton in her left hand to strike the man hard on the side of his head. Then she switched hands and clubbed him on his right collarbone. The crack of the bone was something she still dreamed about.
The gun dropped to the floor.
He didn’t attempt to pick it up. Instead he turned slowly toward her. He looked betrayed, and damned if she didn’t feel as if she had somehow betrayed him.
“Nigger bitch!” he said, kind of surprised, and reached for her.
Training took over. She used the baton as a jabbing weapon, driving its tip deep into the man’s stomach just beneath the sternum. Warm breath that carried the stench of bourbon whooshed out of him as he doubled over. She brought the club down twice on his head, driving him to the floor, knocking him into a daze if not unconsciousness. As she bent over him in the dim hall to wrestle his wrists behind him and click on the handcuffs, she picked up her gun and slid it back in its holster.
“That’s good fucking work!” Stanford said, as he reached the fallen suspect and got down on one knee to make sure she didn’t need help.
“I dunno,” Rica said, breathing hard. “This can’t be Jefferson.”
Stanford laughed. “Whoever he is, he didn’t want any part of the law. Maybe he’s Jefferson’s brother.”
In fact, he turned out to be Jefferson’s cousin and dealer, who’d just finished administering a beating to Jefferson for molesting his girlfriend’s young daughter
