Waltz pulled a cellphone from his pocket, dialed a number. He held the phone up for the Lieutenant to take. The room was dead silent. I heard ringing from the phone, then a pickup.
“This is the office of the Chief of Police …”
The Lieutenant turned white.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
She snatched the phone from Waltz’s outstretched palm, snapped it closed, thrust it back at him: A surrender. She turned her anger from Waltz to me, her voice angry and demanding, pushing her frustration my way.
“What was left of her clothes looked like a runner’s garb. Like she went running, got grabbed off the street, brought here. Did she like to run?”
I said, “She ran marathons, even at sixty-three. She was a fitness junkie.”
“She ever run late at night?”
“She ran whenever she found the time, or was stressed. Were there any defensive wounds?”
“How about you shut up and let the Lieutenant ask the questions?” snapped a detective a few years past my age of thirty-four, a hulking monster with a Greco-Roman wrestler’s neck and shoulders. His face was pale and acne-scarred, making his small eyes look like green buttons floating in a bowl of cream of wheat. His hair was neither brown nor blond, but some shade in between, brond, perhaps. I’d heard someone call him Bullard.
Waltz said, “Her forearms are bruised, probably defensive. No tissue is visible beneath her nails. They’re cut close, unfortunately. The Forensics crew will vacuum the floor when we leave, maybe find something important.”
Another interruption from Alpha Lady. “Why did the victim give the big-ass sales job on your behalf? She was sorry about what?”
“I just got here. How would I fucking know?”
“Hey,” snapped Bullard. “Watch your goddamn mouth.” He stood to show me he was taller than me. Wider, too.
Alpha said, “Stay calm, Bubba. I’m trying to get a handle on things. Waltz told me about the box of crazies where she worked, this Institute. Is it possible a former patient might have held a grudge?”
I shook my head. “Couldn’t happen.”
“You psychic as part of your talents?”
“The only way out of the Institute is to stop breathing. They don’t rehabilitate, they analyze.”
Waltz nodded. “He’s right. I know of the Institute.”
I said, “Have you checked Dr Prowse’s whereabouts since she arrived, Lieutenant? Maybe she was targeted by the perp earlier. Maybe as early as at the airport. You might want to –”
She held up her hand. Shot me a fake and indulgent smile. “I’m sure you do fine on your home turf, Detective. But the NYPD actually looks into such things. We’ve done it a few times before.” She turned the fake smile to Waltz. “Take him to lunch, Detective. Show him the Statue of Liberty. Let him buy some postcards. But then it’s time for Mississippi to get its missing policeman back.”
Before I could correct her, she showed me her back and strode away with the sycophants in tow. The little turf war now over, Waltz seemed unperturbed.
“Somewhere in the good Lieutenant’s soliloquy I heard the word lunch. There’s a decent deli a couple blocks away. Give it a shot, Detective Ryder?”
The deli was little more than a long, narrow counter, and a few tables against a wall decorated with faded posters of Sardinia. I was without hunger and fiddled with a salad. Waltz seemed light on appetite as well and nibbled at a chicken sandwich.
I couldn’t quite figure out Waltz’s position in the hierarchy. His rank was detective, the Alpha Lady – named Alice Folger, I’d discovered – was a lieutenant. She was brusque to Waltz, but was obviously afraid to push him too far. Another big question: What gave Waltz the power to slow an investigation for several hours so I could be flown here? That would have taken sledgehammer clout.
I was about to ask when Waltz slid a mostly uneaten sandwich to the side of the table. “Let’s say Dr Prowse felt she was in danger. Why didn’t she ask the NYPD for protection?” He paused. “Unless, of course, she wasn’t in danger. That fits with her taking a midnight run through the neighborhood.”
“What about the recording?”
“We have no idea when it was made. Or why. Are you sure you have no idea why she’d record a testament to your abilities vis-à-vis psychopaths?”
Waltz was conversational, but I knew I was being interrogated. I looked down, realized it was a tell for a person about to lie. I scratched my ankle to give my down-glance a purpose.
“I’m as much in the dark as you, Shelly.”
“You have no idea what she was sorry for? Or anything about the serious whatever she was seeking?”
This time I could look him in the eyes. “I’m utterly dumbfounded.”
“What’s your background, Detective Ryder – if I may ask?”
“Eight years on the force, five in Homicide. I studied at the FBI Behavioral Division for all of a month. I also work in a special unit called the PSIT: the Psychopathological and Sociopathological Investigative Team.”
“Impressive.”
“In name only. The whole unit, which everyone calls Piss-it, is me and my partner Harry Nautilus. We’re activated maybe five times a year, usually a false alarm. Though we do have a decent solve rate when the action is bona fide.”
“Which is?”
“A hundred per cent. Still, like the unhappy lady lieutenant said, this is New York. Y’all deal with more crazies in a day than Mobile does in a year.”
Waltz spun his glass of iced tea. “Dr Prowse said you had a special gift for investigating psychos. She called it a dark gift. What’s that mean, if I may ask?”
I repeatedly punctured a piece of romaine. I didn’t want to lie, but couldn’t tell the truth. Not fully.
“I was a Psych major in college, Shelly. I did prison interviews with psychos and socios. Dr Prowse thought I had a rapport with them, made them drop their guard. That’s probably the gift she was talking about.”
I sensed Waltz didn’t believe I was telling the full story. But he shifted the conversation. “I’m not ready to close this box yet. I’ve convinced those in command to give you a few days here in case we need your input.”
I raised an eyebrow at Waltz’s ability to sidestep immediate authority. “Sounds like you went above Lieutenant Folger.”
“A step or two. That’s not a comment on her, either personally or professionally. She seems unhappy with some aspect of her life, and it makes her brittle, but the Lieutenant is blessed with a highly analytical mind. She’s destined ever upward, as the sages say.”
“She seems young for all the authority.”
“She’s thirty-two, but has been climbing the ladder three steps at a time. After a degree in criminal justice – top of her class, highest honors – she started in uniform in Brooklyn, grabbed attention by using her head, analyzing crime patterns, offering realistic solutions. She worked undercover for a while, setting up sting operations, pitting dope dealers against one another, busting a fencing operation that reached from Florida to Canada …”
“Not your ordinary street cop.” I felt a sudden kinship with Alice Folger. My departmental rise began by solving a major