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The only good news was the sight of the newly arrived CSU van in front of the store. Inside, Manhattan South Evidence Collection Unit detective Stacy Bergen was on her hands and knees on the carpet examining the cases and shattered glass fragments with a burning white high-intensity light.
“Anything, Stacy?” I said.
“No blood so far,” Bergen said. “Which is surprising, because some of the holes in these cases are very jagged. I’m not holding my breath for getting any prints. They had to have been wearing thick work gloves.”
I was just about to tell her about the find on the roof when my phone rang. It was my buddy Arturo Lopez from the Harlem squad.
“Mike?” Lopez said, out of breath. “Did you hear about Holly Jacobs? EMTs are rus
hing her over to the Harlem Hospital Center as we speak.”
“What!” I cried.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ellie Santanella emerge from the rear of the store and make a beeline for me.
“Here’s what we lost,” the haughty young woman said, thrusting a paper-filled folder at me. “Here’s what those bastards stole from us.”
“One moment, please, Mrs. Santanella,” I said, and watched her face go crimson as I ignored the folder and showed her my palm.
“Arturo, I’m here. What happened to Holly?” I said frantically.
“They found her at her apartment. She was shot, Mike. Multiple times. That son of a bitch finally did it. He got her.”
“Wait! Where do you think you’re going?” was the last thing I heard as I ran out of the store and into the street for my car.
CHAPTER 59
BY THE GRACE OF GOD, I just barely dodged bowling over a smiling family clutching Mylar and a bundled blue blanket on the corner of 136th and Lenox by the Harlem Hospital Center. I didn’t even have time for an apology as I sprinted past on the sidewalk for the red emergency room awning.
Inside, Brooklyn Kale was at the other end of the crowded waiting room, standing by the nurses’ station. She looked down and shook her head somberly as I rushed up.
“She still had some vitals when they brought her in, Mike, but by the time they got her on the table, it was too late. Robertson and Lopez just called down. They were up there trying to see if she would give them a deathbed identification, but she never got even one word out.”
Off the hospital elevator on four, we spotted Lopez and Robertson by a room at the end of the corridor. Inside the room, under the huge lighting apparatus and between gray metal cabinets and computer and IV carts, was a gurney covered in a white sheet.
I immediately starting sweating heavily as I entered the bright room and stood over the stretcher. It wasn’t just from running, I knew, but because trauma operating rooms are kept at eighty-five degrees to stabilize the plummeting body and blood temperatures of gunshot victims.
Swiping sweat, I finally pulled the sheet and stared down at Holly Jacobs.
There was blood everywhere. Red streams of it from her mouth and nostrils, red pools of it in the folds of the warming blanket she lay on. In addition to the multiple wounds in her head and neck and chest, there were through-and-through wounds in both arms. I let out an angry breath as I looked at the carnage of her left hand, where her ring finger had been blown off completely.
Someone had unloaded a nine-millimeter into her, maybe a whole fifteen-shot magazine at very close range. Looking at the blood in her stylish hair and the sadness and terror in her purple-eye-shadowed brown eyes, I suddenly pictured Holly down on her knees thrusting up her hands to protect herself.
Because there had been no one else there to protect her, I thought, still angry as I wiped at the sweat now dripping off my nose. She’d come to us to save her, had begged for help, and we’d completely let her down.
“What the hell happened? I thought she was supposed to go away,” I said when I got back out into the hallway.
“We think it was her cat,” Lopez said, shaking his head. “She was so nervous when she left, she must have forgotten about it. We think she probably came back to grab the cat, and he was waiting for her. Ambushed her right outside her building’s front door.”
A moment later, I heard the sound of muffled weeping. When I turned around, I saw that it was coming from Noah Robertson, who now had his arms wrapped around a shocked-looking Brooklyn Kale.
Brooklyn quickly unclenched the still-crying Noah and turned to me for help.
I felt bad for Noah. The poor young guy was really upset. This must have been the first murder victim he’d ever seen. At least, the first one he’d ever seen this brutally up close and personal.
“Hey, Noah,” I said, steering him down the hallway a little as he continued to break down. “You’re obviously a very compassionate person, which is good. Caring about people is what we do for a living.
“But if you want to do this job, if you really want to be a detective, you need to put some armor on. It won’t help victims or their families to see us emotionally compromised, understand? We’re the ones they rely on. The ones who need to be tough.”
