“At some point.”
“When?”
“When I’m ready.”
“Are you lying?”
“If I was, then my saying I wasn’t would also be a lie.”
They stared at each other.
“Are you planning to hurt my mom?”
“What is it with all the questions? Jesus. No, I’m not planning to hurt her, or you. Now go sit down on your bed, go to sleep or read your books — slowly — and don’t drink any more. Can you do that?”
She shuffled back into the room, giving him a petulant glare.
He swung the door closed.
Just as it was almost shut, she said, “Goodnight. And thank you for the mask.”
The door stayed open a crack.
“You’re welcome.”
The bolt eased back into place, then she heard his boots making their way back to wherever they’d come from.
Chapter 22
Red and blue lights flickered off the glass storefront, the cheap neon sign overhead adding a carnival quality with its blinking, stylized, 1930s-era, tuxedo-clad cartoon figure waving a liquor bottle. NYPD had called in the FBI when The Regulator’s card was spotted clutched in the corpse’s bloody hand. A substantial contingent of agents had since gathered, waiting for the crime scene to be processed.
Sam looked like he’d been roused from a deep sleep, which was in fact the case when his jangling cell phone had jarred him awake an hour ago. He’d listened to the voice on the other end for a few moments, asked two or three groggy questions, then leapt into reluctant action, calling the lead members of the task force as he pulled on clothes and headed for the scene.
“What do we know about him?” Seth asked.
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment. “Not a lot. ID says his name is Stewart Corbess, address over on the West Side in one of those twenty-million and up buildings over by Columbus Circle.”
“He’s a little far from home, isn’t he?” Seth commented as he looked around the dilapidated parking lot, deep within the confines of Hell’s Kitchen. Even with the gentrification of Manhattan there were some areas that were unsafe after dark, and this area near Javits Convention Center was high on the list.
“Hey, you never know how a guy’s going to try to find his stimulation, right?” Sam countered.
Seth didn’t smile. “NYPD got a call, shots fired. Looks like he took three to the chest. Dead before he hit the ground.”
“Do I want to know what the card says?” Sam asked.
“Rough Neighborhood.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. Only that. Although he could have saved himself the trouble. I think most everybody agrees this isn’t a five-star block.”
Sam nodded. “The predators do enjoy their nighttime haunts, don’t they?”
“Hey, we have some data coming in on him…holy shit. This guy is a bigwig. Shows up as owning half of New York. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but still — he’s in the same ballpark as Trump. Oh — hey, guess what he did for a living?” Seth was reading off his iPhone as the feed uploaded.
“Bus driver?”
“Close. He’s the top dog at one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street. As in mucho billions.”
“How can I have never heard of these guys, and yet they’re worth as much as the average midsized city?” Sam complained.
“I guess you need to travel in different circles,” Seth advised, immediately regretting his words when Sam threw him a dirty look. “He’s got another address up in the Hamptons and one in Connecticut. This isn’t the kind of guy you’d expect to be looking for some street action in Chelsea, that’s for sure.”
Sam approached the blanket-draped corpse, stopping just beyond the crime scene tape.
“It’s going to be a long night. Get everything you can find on the victim. And call Richard. Get his ass out of bed, too. He’s the financial expert. Maybe he’ll know something about him.” Sam paused. “How old was he?”
“Fifty-seven. I think he’s on the Forbes richest A-hole list.”
“Didn’t really buy him a nice exit, did it?”
Seth shrugged. “Can’t take it with you, they say.”
“Not with three rounds in your chest, you can’t.”
Seth began making calls. It had only been a few days since the last killing, and the frequency was now completely unpredictable — any pattern theories could be thrown out the window. Maybe Sam was right after all — Seth had never heard of any serials who diverged in so many ways from their stereotype.
Seth looked at his watch and noted that it was now two thirty a.m.. He’d been up since one, which meant he’d get a whopping two hours of sleep today. He rubbed the beginnings of stubble on his chin and pressed the talk button on his two-way.
A lot of agents weren’t going to be happy.
The next morning, Silver took a careful sip of her steaming mug of coffee and logged back into the FBI network, anxious to see if anything had surfaced while she’d slept. She’d stayed up till one before taking a sleeping pill to force herself back onto a normal schedule. She’d woken at nine, surprised it was so late — she was usually up by six thirty every morning, ready to do half an hour of yoga before starting her day. The pill had worked better than expected.
She threw the drapes open and winced as the pale sunlight streamed in. A quick glance at the sidewalk below found no stalkers — the prior evening’s false alarm now seemed silly with a few hours of rest under her belt. That was one of the problems with sleep deprivation and nerves: imagination could easily distort reality, and a man admiring the turn of her leg suddenly became a ninja killer in waiting.
Her computer beeped, and she quickly navigated to her e-mail, then noticed that her phone was blinking. She thumbed through the menu to her voicemail and held the phone to her ear as she simultaneously scanned the e- mail messages on her system.
Two messages on the phone — first one from Seth, time-stamped that morning at six thirty. His voice sounded uncharacteristically tired.
“Hey, it’s Seth. The Regulator struck again. This time a shooting. A hedge fund bigwig. Three shots. No witnesses. You’re probably still asleep like any sane normal person, so I’ll try you back when I get a chance. Sam’s on the warpath and called an all-hands meeting for nine, which will last hours. In the meantime, I’ll forward what we have to your box. Check it at your leisure.
The second message was from Richard at eight o’clock. Same basic information.
She put the phone down and opened Seth’s most recent missive before spending the next twenty minutes reading the preliminary crime scene report. This killing was unlike any of the others, with the exception that the victim was in the financial industry and had been investigated by the SEC five years earlier, but with no charges brought. He’d been subpoenaed, and then the investigation had died. A one-sentence statement from the SEC last year had confirmed that there was no investigation active, so, whatever the suspicions, they had been put to rest. The only reason anyone had even known about it was because he had disclosed the subpoena in his quarterly letter to his investors.
She read further and saw another paragraph on his investment notoriety of late — he’d been one of a blessed few who had made a fortune from the 2008 crash, when betting against the real estate boom. She remembered reading something about that, so she switched to the Internet, opened a new window, and typed in the victim’s name. A slew of articles proclaiming him to be a financial genius appeared, most of them based on his remarkable
