Tick Tock - James Patterson [49]
As I waited, I leaned against the roof railing and texted the latest happenings and progress to my boss, Miriam. I was even feeling enough compassion to let Cathy Calvin in on the latest development, along with explicit instructions that she didn’t hear it from me, of course.
I put away my phone and from twelve stories up watched the lights of Lincoln Center and upper Broadway come on as the paling sky went dark. I stared down on the corner, where a couple of hard hats were feeding fiber-optic cable into a manhole. I envied how perfectly content and oblivious of the world’s problems they seemed. No psychos to worry about, no dead kids, no bosses or papers or mayor asking for their heads on a plate. Probably making time and a half, too, I’d bet. Was the phone company hiring? I wondered.
I spotted Emily as she came out onto the patio. She’d taken off her jacket and let her hair down.
We grabbed a table in a quiet corner and ordered off the bar menu.
Over some Kobe Sliders and ice-cold Brooklyn Lagers, we caught up with each other. Emily told me about her daughter’s trials and tribulations over learning how to swim at her town pool. I was going to tell her about the ancestral Irish feud my family was engaged in out in Breezy Point this summer, but I decided it was better if she thought I was at least a little bit sane.
I pulled my chair over to Emily’s side of the table as we showed each other cell-phone pictures of our kids.
After another round of Brooklyns, I told her about my meeting with the Son of Sam.
“Do you really believe he doesn’t know what’s going on?” Emily asked.
“If he’s a bullshit artist, he’s a good one.”
“Better than you,” Emily said, smiling over the rim of her beer bottle.
“Heck, probably even better than you,” I said, smiling back.
Our conversation went back and forth smoothly, almost too easily. Were there some sparks between us? I’d say so, considering I felt like I could have sat on that patio drinking beer and staring out at the bright city lights with Emily for about the rest of my life. I wanted to arrest the waiter when he came over with the check.
Reluctantly back in the elevator, we stopped at the seventh floor for her room.
“See you tomorrow, Mike,” she said after an awkward moment in which I probably should have said something like, “Hey, how about a nightcap in your room?”
“Tomorrow it is,” I said.
She tugged my tie before bailing out into the corridor.
Idiot, I screamed at myself in my mind.
“Em,” I said, painfully stopping the sliding elevator door with the back of my head.
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Oh, believe me,” I said. “You have.”
Chapter 55
I WASN’T SURE what time it was when I woke up, sweating in the pitch black of my beach house bedroom. It was early. Way too early, in fact.
After a few minutes, I knew there was no way I was getting back to sleep, so I decided to make use of my brain being on and sneak back into work while everyone was still asleep. Besides, it was Friday, and it would give me a chance to finish up early and beat the weekend traffic back. That was my story, anyway, and I was sticking to it.
The sun was just coming up behind me as I rolled into lower Manhattan. Beside a newsstand I saw that the cover of the Post showed the security video shot of our suspect under the headline “THE FACE OF EVIL.” For once, the press had gotten it right. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
It was so early, there was actually a complete lack of press corps outside HQ. The early bird outsmarts the worms, I thought, as the groggy security guard lifted the stick to the parking lot.
In the empty squad room, I found a stack of messages on my desk, left there by the night shift. I was hoping for a tip from posting the security footage and sketch on the news, but there were just fifteen crackpot confessions and two psychics offering their help.
I moved them to my circular spam file in the corner of my cubicle where they belonged, then made a few quick calls to the cops we’d posted at all the previous crime scenes.
There was no traction