was coming up behind him. He wanted to turn and look at it. He didn't want to turn and look at it. He wanted to plunge into the water. He was afraid of plunging into the water. He stood frozen at the bank of the lake or whatever it was and wished he could wake up.
Jacob Laudano, damn it, was on a horse again. He knew he was dreaming, but he couldn't wake up and he couldn't get the horse to stop or slow down. He crouched over, hanging on, knowing from the position of the other horses around him that he was going to lose or, worse yet, that he was going to fall. He had been a jockey for eight years and hated every day of every diet, every moment on top of the stupid animals he could barely tolerate. He didn't like them. They didn't like him. He had been a lousy jockey. He was an average thief. If he could wake up, he could get a glass of something, water, rye, something. Then he could go back to sleep. He had gotten to his apartment less than an hour ago. He had done what he had to do. It had been easy. He got his money. So why the hell was he having bad dreams. This dream in particular, putting him on a damned horse, knowing he was going to lose. He made the effort, called out in his sleep, struggled, and burst into darkened wakefulness. The roar of the crowd was the whirling of the wind. The breeze on his legs was from the cold that seeped in through badly insulated windows. The sweat on his forehead wasn't from the exertion of the race but a sense of waking fear. Jacob the Jockey was afraid to go back to sleep.
She had three names, the one she was born with, the one she had taken when she married the hedgehog who had slunk away one night when she was asleep, and the name she used for her job, her professional name, her respectable name.
Helen Grandfield was born at the age of thirty, having put behind her identities as a stripper and lap dancer who had failed to become popular and whose tainted reputation had failed to drive her father into a rage. The old man had simply ignored her. As long as she didn't use the family name, he didn't care. He had other children who didn't try to drive him crazy and he had too much on his mind, like staying alive and away from the law, to worry about one daughter. Then she had changed. Just like that. All of a sudden. Took business courses at Fordham after learning accounting. She had practical value to her father now, and was not only appreciated but listened to. She was content. She slept well. Things were going on tonight. Important things. Things that could mean a great deal for her father, for herself. Deep inside she even considered that if things went as well as planned, she'd find her hedgehog husband and have his throat cut- if possible while she watched. Helen Grandfield slept peacefully.
Ed Taxx and Cliff Collier had not slept. They had not tried to sleep. They were not supposed to sleep. They sat in the hotel room, Ed reading a mystery novel by Jonathan Kellerman, Cliff watching a taped rerun of a hockey game played hours earlier. He had avoided watching the news or ESPN so that he wouldn't know how the game turned out. At the moment, the Rangers were ahead 3-1 at the start of the third period. Cliff worked on a Diet Coke. Ed had a Dr Pepper. Neither man was really tired. Too much on their minds. However, a jolt of caffeine short of coffee or Mountain Dew wouldn't hurt. Taxx looked at his wristwatch. Two hours or so till dawn. He was having trouble concentrating on the book. Cliff had offered to watch the game without sound, but Ed had said he didn't mind. He didn't like hockey, but he knew he could tune it out. Ed adjusted his shoulder holster and lay back with the book on his chest.
The girl's name was Lilly. She was eleven, a little short for her age but not much. Something woke her. She looked over from her bed to her mother who was breathing the way she did when she slept. Lilly was reasonably sure it was the wind that awakened her.
She got out of bed and moved into the living room where she turned on the lamp on the table in the corner. It was there, the dog. It wasn't a bad-looking dog, but it wasn't a beautiful one either. She wondered if she should have painted it brown and gold instead of black and white. It wasn't too late. But she knew she wasn't going to do it. She was tired. She might make a mistake, make it worse. It would have to stay black and white. She hoped he liked it even though it wobbled when it stood. She had made one rear leg too short. Lilly got a glass from the kitchen shelf and the chocolate milk from the refrigerator. She sat with a glass of milk and a chocolate chip cookie and continued to examine the dog. She decided to call him Spark. Or maybe something else.
Lilly finished her cookie and milk, put the empty glass down on the table in front of her, and leaned back. She could see the snow hitting the window, not wanting to get in but simply being lazy. Lilly fell asleep.
1
THE DEAD MAN SAT SLUMPED against the rear wall of the small, wood-paneled elevator. His head was resting against his left shoulder, his hands were folded against his chest. Just above his right hand was a blotch of blood. His left leg lay out of the elevator door.
The slippered foot was the first thing Detective Mac Taylor saw as he walked quickly across the marble-tiled lobby of the apartment building on York Avenue near 72nd Street.
Mac moved past two uniformed officers and stood in front of the open door next to Aiden Burn, who was clicking away with her camera at the corpse and the elevator. The dead man was wearing a gray sweat suit with two holes chest high leading into bloody darkness.
'Still snowing?' asked Burn as Mac checked his watch. It was a few minutes after ten. He pulled on a pair of white latex gloves.
'Three more inches expected,' said Taylor, kneeling next to the body. There was just enough room for the two Crime Scene Unit investigators and the corpse inside the small elevator.
'Who is he?' Mac asked.
'Name's Charles Lutnikov,' Burn said. 'Apartment six, third floor.'
Lutnikov was about fifty, had thinning dark hair, and a paunch.
'No pockets in the sweat suit,' said Mac, gently rolling the body first right and then left. 'Who IDed him?'
'Doorman,' said Burn, glancing back at the uniformed patrolman who was clearly admiring her rear end.
'You married?' Burn asked the cop, camera in one latex gloved hand.
'Me?' the cop said with a smile, pointing to himself.
'You,' she said.
'Yes.'
'A man is dead here,' she said. 'Probable homicide. Look at him, think about him, and not my ass. Can you do that?'
'Yes,' said the cop, no longer smiling.
'Good. The kit out there next to the door. Move it just where I can reach it.'
'Bad night?' Mac asked.
'I've had better,' said Aiden, continuing to snap away as the cop moved Aiden's equipment box.
Mac's eyes were focused on the dead man's chest. 'Looks like two bullet holes. No powder burns.'
Mac looked at the walls, the floor, the ceiling of the small wood-paneled elevator and then leaned over and carefully pulled the corpse forward.
'No sign of exit wounds,' he said, letting the body slump back.
'Then the bullets are still in him,' said Burn.
'No,' Mac answered, removing from a leather packet in his pocket a thin steel probe that looked like a dental tool.
He carefully lifted the dead man's shirt to get a better look at the wounds.
'One shot,' he said, touching each hole with the probe and talking as much to himself as to Aiden. 'This one is an entry wound. Small caliber. It's almost closed. This one is an exit wound, broader, rougher, skin erupted outward.'
'Then there should be some blood spatter in front of the body,' she said.
'And there they are,' said Mac, looking down at dark tear-shaped spots on the floor.
He stood up, put the probe away, took off his latex gloves, dropped them in a bag in his pocket and put on a fresh pair of gloves.
When blood was present, you changed your gloves every time you touched something. No contamination. Criminalists across the world knew that. It took foul-ups in the O.J. Simpson case to make it gospel.
'No gun?' he asked.
