Monday morning, Manhattan
Esmerelda Cardenas stepped off the bus at Twenty-third and Ninth Avenue and started up the block toward Twenty-fourth Street. The Monday morning Chelsea traffic was lighter than usual, she thought, as she adjusted the large tote bag on her shoulder so it wouldn’t pinch her weathered brown skin.
She turned left on Twenty-fourth and continued on down the half block to Senora Silverman’s house. Every Monday for the last nine years, she had taken a two-hour-long combination of subways and buses in from her apartment in Queens to clean the Senora’s brownstone. The commute was long, but compared to some of her other houses, the work wasn’t that hard. The Senora lived alone and had few visitors. She kept her house neat. It wasn’t a hard house to clean.
Esmerelda had let herself grow fonder of the Senora than she was of many of her customers. Five years earlier, Senora Silverman had given Esmerelda a key to the house so she wouldn’t have to come in so early. Now Esmerelda could sleep in until almost eight. The Senora was always at work by the time she got there. Esmerelda could take her time cleaning the house. The Senora had cable TV and let her make lunch. The Senora trusted her.
Esmerelda worried about her, though. She saw the enormous number of liquor and wine bottles that were thrown into the recycling bins. If the Senora lived alone and drank that much, she must be borracha every night.
Perhaps, Esmerelda often wondered, the Senora was lonely. Every woman, Esmerelda knew, needed a man.
She climbed the stairs to the front door and pulled a set of keys out of her tote bag. She unlocked the door and walked into the Senora’s house. To the right of the front door was a keypad for the burglar alarm. Esmerelda started to enter the code when she noticed the alarm wasn’t on.
Muy extrano, she thought. She hoped the Senora wasn’t ill. She locked the front door behind her, then walked through the living room and into the kitchen. She set her tote bag on the floor and looked around. The sink was full of dirty dishes, with dried, crusty food left out on both the counter and the kitchen table.
Esmerelda’s brow furrowed. “Senora?” she called out.
“Senora Silverman?”
Esmerelda heard only silence. She left the kitchen and walked back down the hall into the living room. At the foot of the staircase, she stopped and looked upstairs.
“Senora Silverman?” she called out again.
Worried, Esmerelda slowly walked upstairs, the creaking of the wooden staircase the only break in the silence. She got to the top of the stairs and looked around.
Nothing.
“Senora,” she said, her voice softer. Esmerelda flicked the hall light switch and continued on, her footsteps muffled by the carpeted runner that ran the length of the hallway. The Senora’s bedroom door was closed at the end of the hall. She stopped, put her ear close to the doorway and listened.
She knocked gently on the door. “Senora?” she asked again. “Senora Silverman?”
Then she reached out, took the doorknob in hand and twisted it. The door was unlocked. She pushed the door open.
The first thing she saw was a large letter-N-smeared in red on the wall above the Senora’s bed. Then she saw what was below.
Esmerelda Cardenas started screaming. She didn’t stop for a long time.
“I can’t stay here much longer,” Taylor Robinson complained as Hank Powell held up the coffeepot, offering her another cup. “And I sure as hell can’t drink any more coffee.”
“You have to stay,” Hank said. “It’s too dangerous for you.”
Then he smiled. “But you don’t have to drink any more coffee.”
Taylor paced around the small center room in the hotel suite she’d been in since the debacle at Grand Central Station Friday afternoon. Hank had spirited her away to a midtown hotel right after Michael’s threatening phone call, where she’d been under constant guard ever since. A team of NYPD officers had been with her around the clock, with frequent checkins by Joyce Parelli’s team from the FBI Field Office.
“It’s been seventy-two hours,” Taylor said. “I can’t live the rest of my life like this. I’ve got work to do.”
“All we’re trying to do is make sure you’re around to do it,” Hank said defensively. He shook a small packet of powdered creamer into his own coffee and stirred. “Look, Taylor, we can’t take any chances. NYPD’s front-burnered this big time. He can’t hide forever. Sooner or later, he’ll slip up.
And this time, he won’t get away. Why don’t we just order some lunch? I can hang around until two o’clock or so, then I have to catch the Metroliner back to D.C.”
Taylor stopped pacing and slid into a leather easy chair in the corner of the room. “I feel so damn helpless,” she said. “As though my whole life is out of control. Everything I do, everything I think, everything period, is controlled by this, this horrible thing that’s come into my life. I can’t even think of him as a person anymore.”
Hank sat down at the small table across from her and cradled the plastic cup of coffee between his hands. “I know this is hard, Taylor. For what very little it’s worth, I think you’re being incredibly courageous in dealing with this.”
Taylor laughed bittersweetly. “Me, brave? I’m scared to death. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Hank Powell’s cell phone went off. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and flipped it open.
“Powell,” he said.
His eyes darkened and his jaw muscles tightened. “When?”
he asked. He reached into his jacket and yanked out a small notebook. Cradling the cell phone in the crook of his neck, he took out a pen and opened the notebook.
“Give me that again,” he instructed. “Okay, Twenty-fourth Street. Got it. Now where is that? Between Ninth and Tenth, right? Okay, I’m on my way.”
Hank closed the phone and slipped it into his pocket. He studied the page he’d just written on for a moment, then closed the notebook. He looked up. Taylor was staring at him, hard.
“Twenty-fourth between Ninth and Tenth,” she whispered, her eyes questioning.
Hank reached over, picked up the television remote, and pushed the power button. The screen flicked on instantly and he punched in the channel number for the local CBS
affiliate.
The midday news was on. The attractive, young, blond, anchorperson appeared on the screen just as the artwork behind her changed from a large bus with a red line drawn through it to the outline of a body on a sidewalk, with the headline below reading: BRUTAL CHELSEA SLAYING.
Hank raised the volume. “Police are at this moment on the scene of a brutally vicious murder in a quiet Chelsea neighborhood,” she said. “The body of a woman whose name is being withheld pending notification of kin was discovered just this morning by a cleaning woman, as WCBS’s Katie Jackson reports live from the scene.”
The station cut away from the studio to a live remote.
Taylor and Hank watched as the screen pictured the block of Twenty-fourth Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.
The street was jammed with squad cars, EMT vans, even a fire engine.
A young woman with short black hair stood in front of the camera. “The quiet Monday routine of this sedate Chelsea neighborhood was shattered this morning by the discovery of a murder that even the most hardened investigators are describing as the worst they’ve ever seen. Police are refusing to confirm or deny reports that the gruesome slaying here on Twenty-fourth Street is the work of the Alphabet Man,”
she said.
“Oh my God,” Taylor snapped. “Oh my God.”
Hank turned to face her.
“It’s Brett,” she squeaked.
“Who?”
“Brett. Brett Silverman. Michael’s editor. My friend …”
Hank turned back to the screen and stared hard for a moment. “Are you sure?”
Taylor nodded. “I’ve been to her house,” she whispered.
And then she began to crumple. Hank muted the TV and ran to her as she seemed to fold over in the chair. He helped her to her feet, her whole body shaking, loud wet sobs bursting from her throat.
“Why?” she gasped. “Why did he have to do that?”
Hank pulled her to him, his arms around her, her face pressed against his jacket. He held her tightly, afraid for not just her physical safety now, but for her mental state as well.
How much can one person take? he wondered.
Then she seemed to go still for a moment, the shaking stopped, the breathing quieted. He held her still, his left arm around her shoulders, his right hand at the back of her neck, stroking her hair, trying to calm her.
She pulled away slightly and looked up at him. “I want to see her. I want to go to her.”
“No,” he said firmly. “You can’t. Believe me, you don’t want to.”
“I have to,” she insisted. “She was my friend.”
He stepped back and put his hands on her shoulders, holding her still. “Listen to me. You don’t want to do this. I can’t let you. It’s a crime scene. The police won’t let you past, even if I agree.”
“She was my friend,” Taylor repeated blankly. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“No one did,” Hank said. “None of them did.”
They stood there a moment in silence. Then Hank glanced at his watch. “Where is that guy?” he asked, annoyed. “I’m sorry, Taylor, but I do have to go down there. NYPD Homicide is waiting for me.”
“What?” Taylor asked. “The officer?”
Hank nodded. “The one who was outside.”
“You said he could get a sandwich.”
“Damn it,” Hank muttered. “I didn’t say he could take the afternoon off.”
Taylor turned and walked across the room. She stopped at the window, staring outside for a moment. Hank watched her. She seemed okay now, as if something had settled down on her and calmed her. Maybe it was shock, he thought.
She turned. “Go,” she said. “The officer will be back in a few minutes. I’ll keep the door locked. Won’t let anyone in.”
“No,” Hank said. “I can’t do that.”
“Go on,” Taylor answered. “I’ll be fine. You don’t think I’d be stupid enough to open that door to anyone who isn’t wearing a uniform?”
Hank watched her for a few seconds, thinking. “All right,”
he said. “But you’ll keep this door locked and chained, right?”
Taylor nodded. “Don’t worry.”
“You’ll call me later?”
Taylor nodded again. “Okay,” Hank said, turning for the door. “I’ll check in, too. And I’ll let you know if anything happens.”
“Yes,” Taylor said. “Thanks.”
Hank opened the door to her room and stood outside. “I want to hear that lock click and the chain hooked before I leave.”
Taylor closed the door, locked it, and hooked the chain.
She looked out the peephole as Hank stood there for a few moments, then turned and walked toward the elevator.
A minute later, Taylor put on her coat, threw her purse over her shoulder, picked up the zippered canvas bag that still held the hundred thousand dollars, and left.
Taylor pulled her coat tightly around her as she exited the hotel out onto the side street. A cab sped down the street with its dome light on. She held up a hand and flagged it down. Once inside, she gave the driver her address, then hunched down low in the seat and settled back for the long ride downtown.
She was still trying to get her mind around this. Brett, gone. How much had she suffered? How unimaginably awful had it been?
She thought she would die herself. She felt her heart clutch in her chest and feared, for a moment, that it would stop beating altogether.
Then it hit her. The cops would never stop him. Michael Schiftmann was too smart, too determined …
Too evil.
No one would stop him. No one could ever stop him. They couldn’t stop him because they didn’t know him. When he was first accused of the murders, when she first believed he was guilty, she had thought that she didn’t know him.
But she did. She knew him better than anyone. She had lain in bed next to him in the middle of the night and listened to his heart beat. She had whispered her secrets to him in the darkness. He had whispered his secrets to her.
Apparently not all of them …
Despite that, she knew him better than anyone else. And she knew what that meant.
That if anyone was ever going to stop him, that someone would have to be her.