reached the third floor landing they drew and checked their weapons. They padded silently along the corridor until they reached 303, and passed it by without stopping. Ryker pulled out his badge. Morales did the same. They crept back to the door. Raymond sucked in a deep breath. Morales crossed himself. Ryker fought an overwhelming urge to pass wind.
A narrow hallway. Doors to left and right. Bedroom. Bathroom. Kitchen. They peeked into each of these apparently empty rooms on their way to the living room at the end of the hallway. Ryker stepped into the living room and swung left, Morales went right. Empty. He peered beneath the couch and chairs. Nothing. He turned back to the hallway, saw Raymond at the open door in marksman’s stance, both eyes open, aiming right at him. As Ryker relaxed and Morales came up out of his crouch, she lowered her weapon. He realized that her expression must mirror his: disappointment that the neighbors, Lau’s nephew’s family, were wrong. Nobody was home.
A shadow fell across the hallway and obscured his view of Raymond for only a second. When he saw her again she was sitting outside, her back against the corridor wall, legs spread wide, head bowed so her hair cascaded down over her face. He bolted along the hallway and out into the corridor. His shoe struck Raymond’s gun as he skidded to a stop, sent it spinning away. Raymond’s arm flopped. Her head came up, her mouth moved, but she didn’t say anything. Her eyes rolled, following the direction of her flopping arm. Pointing? Ryker swung round, gun cocked, finger on the trigger. The shadow stood on the landing, looking back at him. That same face he’d seen in the security camera print, eyes like black stones, terribly beautiful, yet also terribly frightening. He pulled the trigger even as his senses acknowledged the shadow’s blurred movement up and over the hand rail, plunging down the stairwell. The narrow confines of the corridor reflected the percussion and deafened him; at the same time recoil slammed up his arm and hurt his shoulder. He already knew he’d missed. He ran toward the landing as Morales emerged from the apartment and moved to assist Raymond.
Lau and the two cops stood at the bottom of the stairway. They looked up at him with astonished faces. The older cop said something, cupping his hands around his mouth. Ryker pointed at his ear and shook his head, indicating that he couldn’t hear. His ears popped. It sounded like he had a sea shell covering both ears, giving the effect of waves on a beach. Morales’s footsteps grew louder. He joined Ryker and peered over the rail. “The hell happened?”
“She was here!” Ryker said. He shouted down to the cops, “Where is she?”
They looked at each other dumbly as if he’d spoken a foreign language. Then both men shrugged and spread their hands, the universal expression of incomprehension that told Ryker they didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about.
Ryker went down the stairs four at a time, leading with his Glock. Morales caught on and followed him. They reached the next landing down. Ryker peeked around the corner. The corridor was empty. At the far end, net curtains fluttered, pushed by a breeze. Ryker crabbed sideways along the hallway, pressing himself to the wall. Morales took the other side. They reached the curtains, which concealed an open window. Ryker peered out. The fire escape ladder was up, it hadn’t been used. Below the window lay a narrow alleyway with a row of trash bins. He leaned out as far as he could but there was no one down there.
“What happened?” Morales said. Ryker was torn between taking the fire escape down into the alleyway, and going upstairs to check on Raymond. “What the hell happened?”
“Stay here,” he told Morales. “Watch the alleyway. If anything moves, shoot it.”
Morales took up station, clearly bewildered. Ryker hurried back to the landing and called down to the cops, telling them to check the alleyway, even though he knew it was hopeless. They ran outside and Ryker climbed back up to the third floor, where he found Raymond on her feet, leaning against the wall and breathing deeply.
“Sandra. Talk to me.” He examined her for signs of injury, of blood, but couldn’t see either.
“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”
“Did you see her?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Raymond shook her head, then winced when it apparently hurt. “Give me a second. I don’t know, what the fuck, I was looking at you, next thing I knew….” She rubbed her neck, massaged the area of her collarbone. Ryker opened her jacket. Her white blouse was intact and blood-free.
“It hurts there?”
“Yeah it fucking hurts, don’t touch me. Christ, I thought the bitch must have shot me. The impact, I couldn’t feel my legs, what did she hit me with? It threw me back. My legs stopped working. A fucking sledgehammer or something?” He sensed her panic, a result of confusion and fear. They moved together instinctively and she clung onto him for dear life, trembling with reaction. Her words came out in breathless sobs. “I thought I’d be in a wheelchair. What did she do to me?”
“Sandra, did you see her?” He held her tightly, twisting his hips away from her to avoid any crotch contact. Last thing he needed right now was a hard-on.
“I saw something. It must have been her. She was there. Then she was gone.” Raymond delivered one last gurgling sob into his shoulder, then stepped back, disconnecting from him. “She was dressed in black, from head to foot.”
“She must have had some kind of weapon,” Ryker suggested. “A club, a T-bar, something like that?”
“I don’t, I’m not sure, if she had anything in her hands.” She touched his chest, making a fist, tapping him around his collarbone as if trying to visually recreate what she’d experienced.
“She punched you?”
Raymond frowned and shook her head, uncertain. Ryker’s phone rang, he flipped it open, saw Morales’s name on the display. “Luis, talk to me.”
“Our guys are in the alley,” Morales said. “Nada.”
“She hit Sandra,” Ryker said. “Knocked her right over. I don’t think anything’s broken. We’re going to the hospital to make sure.”
“That’s not necessary,” Raymond said.
“You hit your head. We’re going to the hospital. No argument.” To Morales he said, “Our bird has flown. We need to get someone to check out her apartment. And stick around in case she comes back. Call Furino, Luis. Tell him what’s happened. We missed her. She was here and we missed her.”
CHAPTER 15
An intern shone his flashlight into Raymond’s eyes, asked her a bunch of questions and seemed pleased with her answers, which pleased Ryker too. He decided to wait outside when they unbuttoned her blouse and exposed the livid purple bruise that had spread across her upper chest and over her shoulder. Thankfully a curtain cut off his view of further discolored flesh, and Raymond’s unblinking stare.
He sat in the waiting area, thinking about what had happened, and about his jangling feelings as he’d sped down Battery with Raymond beside him in the passenger seat, clutching her shoulder and grimacing in pain. He’d ignored the evening rush-hour lunacy of California Street and taken Pine instead, the one-way flow leading in timely fashion to Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. Now he tried to remember where he’d left Morales’s Ford. Somewhere close to the emergency room entrance, maybe. He took heart from the fact the public address system wasn’t demanding that the drunk driver who’d abandoned his vehicle move it so ambulances could get in and out. Nor could he hear a wailing siren or see flashing lights through the glass entrance doors, which suggested he must have turned them off before crashing inside with Raymond in his arms, a regular hero, only he was the chump who’d gotten her into this in the first place.
A sympathetic nurse recognized him and suggested he might want to get something to eat in the hospital cafeteria while they wheeled Raymond through to X-Ray, which sounded like a damn fine idea. He went outside first and called Morales, who told him a forensics team was still on its way to “Amy Wong’s” apartment. Morales offered to lie down and play dead to elicit a quicker response, only half-jokingly. Ryker considered calling Spider to exert pressure on the crime scenes unit, but what would that gain? He had a feeling that fingerprints and DNA weren’t going to be enough for this one. Amy Wong, if that was her name, didn’t play in the jealous ex-lovers league, he was sure of it. She was in another class entirely. When Ryker considered what that class might be, he got a sinking
