Worst Case

Chapter 1

BOUND IN THE dark, Jacob Dunning thought about all the things he would give for a shower.

All his possessions? Done. One of his toes? In a heartbeat. One of his fingers? Hmmm, he thought. Did he really need his left pinkie?

Unidentified mudlike filth stuck to his cheek, his hair. Wearing only his NYU T-shirt and boxers, the handsome brown-haired college freshman lay on a soiled concrete floor in a very tight space.

An angry industrial hum raged in the vague distance. He was blindfolded, and his hands were cuffed to a pipe behind him. A gag around his mouth was knotted tight against the hollow indentation at the base of his skull.

The indentation was called the foramen magnum, he knew. It was where your spinal cord passed into your skull. Jacob had learned about it in anatomy class a month or so ago. NYU was step one in his lifelong dream to become a doctor. His father had an 1862 edition of Gray’s Anatomy in his study, and ever since he was a little kid, Jacob had loved going through it. Kneeling in his father’s great padded office chair with his chin in his hands, he’d spend hours poring over the elegant, fascinating sketches, the topography of the human body shaded and named like distant lands, like treasure maps.

Jacob sobbed at the safe, happy memory. A drop of lukewarm water landed on the back of his neck and dripped down his spine. The itch of it was unbearable. He would get sores soon if he wasn’t able to stand. Bedsores, staph infection, disease.

The last thing he remembered was leaving Conrad’s, an Alphabet City bar that didn’t care about fake IDs. After a monstrously long chem lab, he’d been trying to chat up Heli, a stunning Finnish girl from his class. But after his fifth mojito, his tongue was losing speed. He’d called it a night when he noticed she was talking more to the male model of a bartender than to him.

His memory seemed to stop at the point when he stepped outside. How he got from there to here he couldn’t recall.

For the billionth time, he tried to come up with a scenario in which everything turned out all right. His favorite was that it was a fraternity thing. A bunch of jocks had mistaken him for some other freshman, and this was a really messed-up hazing incident.

He started weeping. Where were his clothes? Why would somebody take his jeans, his socks and shoes? The scenarios in his head were too black to allow light to enter. He couldn’t fool himself. He was in the deepest shit of his young life.

He banged his head on the pipe he was chained to as he heard a sound. It was the distant boom of a door. He felt his heart boom with it. His breath didn’t seem to know if it wanted to come in or go out.

He was pretty much convulsing when he made out a jangle interspersed with the steady approach of footsteps. He suddenly thought of the handyman at his parents’ building, the merry jingle of keys that bounced off his thigh. Skinny Mr. Durkin, who always had a tool in his hand. Hope gave him courage. It was a friend, he decided. Somebody who would save him.

“Hppp!” Jacob screamed from behind the gag.

The footsteps stopped. A lock clacked open, and cool air passed over the skin of his face. The gag was pulled off.

“Thank you! Oh, thank you! I don’t know what happened. I-”

Jacob’s breath blasted out of him as he was hit in the stomach with something tremendously hard. It was a steel-toed boot, and it seemed to knock his stomach clear through his spine.

Oh, God, Jacob thought, his head scraping the stone floor as he dry-heaved in filth. Dear God, please help me.

Chapter 2

JACOB WAS UNCUFFED and pulled roughly for twenty or so steps and slammed into a hard-backed seat. Light spiked his eyes as his blindfold was sliced away, and his hands were cuffed again behind his back.

He was in a child’s school desk in a vast, windowless space. In front of him was an old-fashioned wooden rolling blackboard with nothing written on it. Behind him was a cold presence that lifted the hairs from his neck.

Jacob sobbed silently as a lighter hissed. The faintly spicy scent of tobacco smoke filled the air.

“Good morning, Master Dunning,” said a voice behind him.

It was a man’s voice. The man sounded perfectly sane, highly educated, in fact. He reminded him of a popular English teacher he’d had at Horace Mann, Mr. Manducci.

Hey, wait. Maybe it was Mr. Manducci. He always did seem a little too, er, friendly with some of the male students. Could this be a kidnapping or something? Jacob’s CEO father was extremely wealthy.

Jacob could actually feel the relief emit from his pores. He decided he’d take a kidnapping at this point. Ransom, being released. He was down with that. Please be a kidnapping, he found himself thinking.

“My family has money, sir,” Jacob said, carefully trying to keep the terror out of his voice and failing.

“Yes, they do,” the man said pleasantly. He could have been the DJ for a classical music station. “That’s precisely the problem. They have too much money and too little sense. They own a Mercedes McLaren, a Bentley-oh, and a Prius. How green of them. You can thank their hypocrisy for bringing you here. Unfortunately for you, your father seems to have forgotten his Exodus twenty, verse five: ‘For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons.’”

Jacob twitched violently in the hard chair as a stainless-steel pistol barrel softly caressed his right cheek.

“Now I’m going to ask you some questions,” his captor said. “Your answers are very, very important. You’ve heard of pass-fail, haven’t you?”

The pistol jabbed hard into Jacob’s face, its hammer cocking with a sharp click.

“This test you’re about to take is pass-die. Now, question one: What was your nanny’s name?”

Who? My nanny? Jacob thought. What the hell was this?

“R-R-Rosa?” Jacob said.

“That’s right. Rosa. So far, so good, Master Dunning. Now, what was her last name?”

Oh, shit, Jacob thought. Abando? Abrado? Something. He didn’t know. The sweet, silly woman that he had played hide-and-seek with. Who’d fed him after school. Rosa, pressing her warm cheek against his as she helped him blow out the candles on his birthday cake. How could he not know her last name?

“Time’s up,” the man sang.

“Abrado?” Jacob said.

“Not even close,” the man said in disgust. “Her name was Rosalita Chavarria. She was a person, you see. She actually had a first and a last name. Just like you. She was flesh and blood. Just like you. She died last year, you know. A year after your parents fired her because she was becoming forgetful, she went back to her home country. Which leads us to our third question: What was Rosa ’s home country?”

How the hell had this guy known about Rosa ’s termination? Who was this? A friend of hers? He didn’t sound Hispanic. Again, what was this?

“ Nicaragua?” Jacob tried.

“Incorrect again. She was from Honduras. A month after she returned to a one-room shack owned by her sister, she had to go for a hysterectomy. In a substandard hospital outside of Tegucigalpa, she was given a tainted transfusion of blood and contracted HIV. Honduras has the highest concentration of AIDS in the Western Hemisphere. Did you know that? Sure you did.

“Now, question four: What is the average life span in Honduras for an HIV-positive person? I’ll give you a hint. It’s a hell of a lot less than the fifteen years it is in this country.”

Jacob Dunning began to cry.

“I don’t know. How would I know? Please.”

“That won’t do, Jacob,” the man said, jamming and twisting the barrel of the gun painfully against his teeth. “Perhaps I’m not making myself clear enough. There’ll be no Ivy League A in this class. No tutors. No helpful strategies to maximize your score. You can’t cheat, and the results are ultimate. This is a test that you’ve had your whole life to study for, but I have the feeling you were slacking off. So I’d try to think a little bit harder. HIV-positive life span in Honduras! Answer now!”

Chapter 3

IT WAS THE Catholic grammar school version of March Madness in Holy Name’s gym that Sunday around noon. A deafening chaos of ringing basketballs, screaming cheerleaders, and howling sugar-crazed kids rolling over the laminated hardwood on Heelys rose to the angel-carved rafters.

In addition to the noise, it was overly hot, dusty, and crowded, and I couldn’t have been happier.

I found myself where I always do when chaos is present, smack-dab in the middle of it. With a whistle around my neck, I was standing at center court, overseeing layup and passing drills as our JV squad, the Holy Name Bulldogs, warmed up. St. Ann ’s, our crosstown rival from Third Avenue, was doing the same at the opposite end of the court.

Having one son, Ricky, on the varsity squad and another, Eddie, on the JV, I’d somehow found myself nodding in the affirmative when I was asked by the principal, Sister Sheilah, to replace the JV’s coach. At first I’d been reluctant. Hello? Single dad, ten kids? Like I didn’t have enough to do? But Sister Sheilah can smell a sucker like me from two miles away.

From ball-handling drills to doing the Xs and Os on the chalkboard to even putting away the folding chairs after the game, I’d actually come to get a kick out of coaching. I don’t know if any of my 0-and-6 Bulldogs were NBA-bound, but witnessing them gain confidence in themselves and watching the magic that came from going from a bunch of individuals to a somewhat cohesive team, I guess you could do worse things with a Sunday.

The crowd had become so loud at the tip-off that I almost didn’t hear the phone going off at my hip. I didn’t recognize the number as work, but that didn’t mean much. We rotated weekends on my new squad. Guess whose weekend this was?

“Bennett here,” I screamed into it.

“Mike, it’s Carol. Carol Fleming.”

Damn, I thought, closing my eyes. I knew it. Carol was my new boss. Well, my new boss’s boss actually. Her name was Chief Carol Fleming. She was the commanding officer of the NYPD’s Special Investigative Division, which would have been a big deal even if she weren’t the first woman ever to hold the job.

In January, I’d been rotated out of Manhattan North Homicide to the Major Case Squad under her command. Although I preferred Homicide, I had to admit that Major Case, which investigated high-profile bank robberies, art thefts, and kidnappings, wasn’t exactly putting me to sleep.

“What’s up, boss?” I said.

“We have a possible kidnapping uptown. You need to see April Dunning at One West Seventy-second Street, apartment ten B. Her son, Jacob, seems to be missing. Jacob’s father, Donald Dunning, is founder and CEO of-”

“Latvium and Company, the multinational pharmaceutical company,” I finished for her. “I’ve heard of him.”

I’d actually read about him in a Forbes magazine at my kids’ dentist’s office. Dunning was a billionaire, and one of the mayor’s golfing buddies. I could see where this was heading.

“How old is his kid, Jacob?”

“Eighteen,” the chief said.

“Eighteen!?” I said. “Jacob’s not missing. He’s eighteen.”

“I know what it sounds like, Mike. Somebody with City Hall juice looking for their probably party-hearty kid. Be that as it may, I still need you to check it out. Get back to me as soon as you can.”

I wrote down the time and address on the back of my player list after I hung up. Find somebody else’s kid? I thought. I had trouble enough keeping track of my own. I waved over Seamus, who was booing furiously as one of the St. Ann ’s players hit a three-pointer.

“Putting me in, Coach, are ya?” my wiseass grandfather priest said in his Guinness-thick brogue. “I keep telling ya I still got game.”

I shook my head.

“Listen, Monsignor. I need to check on something, hopefully very quickly. Fill in for me until I get back. On second thought, just stand here and don’t say or do anything. Please.”

“Finally,” Seamus said, gleefully snatching the clipboard from me and rolling up the sleeves of his black shirt. “Maybe we’ll win one this time.”

Chapter 4

ONE WEST 72nd Street turned out to be the Dakota, the famous Gothic castle-like building where John Len-non had lived before he was shot in front of it. It was also the place where the lady who gives birth to the devil in Rosemary’s Baby lived, I remembered cheerfully. The good omens just kept on coming this afternoon.

I passed the building and left my van up around the next corner on Columbus and walked back along 72nd. If in the unlikely case this was a kidnapping, it already could be under surveillance. I definitely did not want to advertise that the family had contacted the police.

I passed through a wrought-iron gate at the Dakota’s entrance. Its double-wide arched entryway was the very spot where Chapman had killed the ex-Beatle, shooting him in the back before he could get into the lobby entrance up a short set of stairs to the right. The building was a popular sightseeing tour stop. Yoko, who still lived here, had to be overjoyed when she saw people looking around for bullet holes.

The heavy brass barred door opened as I reached the top. A portly Asian doorman in a hunter green suit coat and hat stood beside an ALL VISITORS MUST BE ANNOUNCED sign.

“I’m here to see the Dunnings,” I said, discreetly showing him my shield.

After I was announced, an elderly hall man appeared and guided me through the lobby. The walls had the richest, darkest mahogany paneling I’d ever seen. A massive ballroom chandelier and brass wall sconces softly lit the intricately detailed ceiling moldings and white travertine marble floor.

The hall man, in turn, passed me off to an elevator man. Upstairs, a diminutive butler waved me in through the open door of 10 B.

Through the nearly double-height French doors, I could see the whole way through the Dunnings’ apartment to Central Park. The grand rooms were arrayed in the classic enfilade design, allowing more than one way into each room so guests could avoid the servants. The wood floors, like the paneled walls, were Cuban mahogany. They were laid out in a herringbone pattern with what looked like a black-walnut trim.

A striking black-haired woman came quickly down the long corridor of the apartment. She was wearing a rumpled blue evening dress, and even from a distance, the agony in her fine-boned face was unmistakable. My annoyance at being called in dissipated as my heart went out to her. Even with her elegant clothes and her surroundings, she was just a concerned mom sick with worry.

“Thank God you’ve come. Detective Bennett, is it?” she said with an English accent. “It’s my son, Jacob. Something’s happened to him.”

“I’m here to help you find him, ma’am,” I said as reassuringly as I could while I took out my notebook. “When was the last time you saw or spoke to Jacob?”

“I spoke to him three days ago. Jacob lives at school. At NYU. Hayden Hall, right alongside Washington Square Park. My husband is still down there with my father. They’ve spoken to his friends, and no one has seen him since Friday. Not his roommate. No one.”

Maybe he met a cute girl, I felt like saying to her.

“Not seeing someone for a few days might not necessarily mean something’s wrong, Mrs. Dunning. Is there a specific reason why you think something’s happened to him?”

“My husband and I had our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary last night at Le Cirque. We’d planned it with Jacob for months. Jacob’s grandfather flew in from Bordeaux for the occasion. Jacob would not have missed it. He is our only child. You don’t understand how close we are. He would not have missed our special event or the rare chance to see his grandfather.”

I was starting to understand her concern. What she was telling me did seem strange.

“Did he say anything to you when you last spoke to him? Anything odd? Someone new he might have met or-”

That’s when the phone on the antique sideboard beside her rang. She stared in horror at the caller ID number, then at me as it rang again.

“I don’t know that number,” she said, raw panic in her voice. “I don’t know that number!”

“That’s okay,” I said, trying to calm her down. I scratched down the number, and let my instincts kick in.

“Listen, April. Look at me. If it’s someone involved with Jacob being gone-I don’t think it is, but if it is-you need to ask them exactly what you need to do in order to get your son back, okay? And if you can, say that you want to speak to Jacob.”

Tears were streaming down her face as the phone rang again. She used a shaking fist to wipe them away before she grabbed the receiver. I listened at an extension in the adjacent study. I pressed the phone’s answering machine’s Record button as I lifted the receiver.

“Yes? This is April Dunning.”

“I have Jacob,” a strangely serene voice said. “Listen.”

There was a click and hum on the line and then what sounded like a recording.

“Question number nine: If you were born in Sudan, what would be your chances of living to forty? And what does that have to do with your cute little red iPod nano?”

“I don’t know,” a young man sobbed. “Stop. Please stop.”

The recording clicked off.

“You’ll receive instructions in exactly three hours,” the calm voice said. “Follow them to the letter or you’ll never see your son alive again. No police. No FBI.”

The connection was cut. I was hanging up the extension when there was a crash in the hallway. Mrs. Dunning was kneeling on the herringbone floor, sobbing inconsolably.

“It’s Jacob,” she moaned. “That bastard has my Jacob.”

The butler arrived a step before me and helped her into a chair.

I speed-dialed the chief. Unbelievable. This really was a kidnapping. We had no time to waste to get set up. We needed to hustle if we were going to have all our teams in place in three hours. It was going to be close.

I frowned out the window. Down across Central Park West, a tour bus was disembarking, people checking their cameras as they crowded toward the Strawberry Fields John Lennon memorial. My boss’s phone rang with a painful slowness as Mrs. Dunning’s cries carried through the high-ceilinged rooms.

“C’mon,” I said in frustration. “Pick up.”

Chapter 5

A BUSINESS JET inbound for Teterboro Airport made FBI special agent Emily Parker duck her copper-colored head as she hurried across the Enterprise parking lot on Route 46 in New Jersey. She stopped for a moment and watched it streak down the runway toward the sleek Gulf-stream G300 that had just dropped her off.

She checked her watch after she turned over the engine of her rented Buick LeSabre. It was not yet three. Her boss had called her at twelve-thirty at her home outside Manassas, Virginia. She’d traveled two hundred fifty miles in under two hours.

Now, that’s what I call a rush job, she thought. Granted, she was used to the pace, having been in charge of the FBI’s northeast regional CARD, or Child Abduction Rapid Deployment, team for two years.

“The ADIC asked me to put my biggest badass on this one, Emily,” John Murphy, the special agent in charge of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, had said to her. “Guess what. You’re it.”

She hadn’t been told much. Only that she was to be a special kidnapping adviser to the NYPD on the abduction of some kid named Jacob Dunning. Jacob’s father, Donald Dunning, was actually the one who had sent his Gulf-stream for her, which was about as far from normal procedure as you could get.

She was beginning to wonder what kind of special assignment she’d just gotten herself into.

She speed-dialed home as she gunned out of the parking lot. Her brother, Tom, answered his cell on the second ring.

“Just got off the plane,” she said. “How’s she taking it?”

“Everything’s fine. We set up a lemonade stand at the end of the driveway. That’s so cute that you guys do that every Sunday.”

“That little fibber,” Emily cried. “A lemonade stand? Near the street!? Oh, that’s just like her. She’s got her hooks into you already. I told her no last week. What about the traffic? Are you there? Right now? Who’s watching her?”

“Of course I’m here, Em. What do you think, I’m talking to you from a bar?” her brother said. “Me and the Olive are glued together at the hip.”

Tom had gotten a job with a defense contractor in Bethesda after getting out of the Marines the month before. He was due to start next week. Renting him the basement apartment in her split-level had turned out to be a win-win stroke of genius, a built-in babysitter. Emily grinned, picturing her precious goofball of a four-year-old, Olivia, out by the end of the cul-de-sac in her winter coat, wondering where the customers were.

“Do we even have lemonade?” she said.

“I made a command decision and substituted Kool-Aid.”

“Kool-Aid!? That’s pure processed sugar and dye. Kool-Aid! She can only have one glass. One.”

“You sound like I’m force-feeding her antifreeze. Besides, she’s not drinking it, she’s trying to sell it. Try not to have an aneurysm, please. I survived Kabul, I think I can look after the Olive. You have any idea how long you’re going to be gone for?”

“Not yet, but I’ll let you know. Kiss her for me, okay, Tom? I know you can take perfect care of her. I just get nuts leaving ever since… you know.”

“The D-I-V-O-”

“Shut up, Tom, would you? She can spell better than you. Good-bye.”

After her divorce the year before, Emily had taken a transfer to ride a desk at CASMIRC, the Bureau’s Child Abduction and Serial Murder Investigative Resource Center, because it had regular hours. The case files that came in for review from every corner of the country weren’t exactly light reading, but when you were a profiler, you had to take the work where you could find it.

The job was ideal for taking care of Olivia, but to say Emily was starting to climb the beige walls of her cubicle in the basement office at the FBI Academy would be putting it mildly.

Emily smiled as she dropped the Buick’s hammer up the entrance for the turnpike, cutting off a tricked-out Cadillac SUV. Off to her right, New York City ’s metal-and-glass skyline appeared like a vision over the Jersey swamp.

Still got it, she thought, keeping the gas on the floor. Gangway, badass coming through!

Chapter 6

I DON’T THINK I’d ever been as proud of the NYPD. In only two hours, we’d managed to get everything up and running.

I, two other Major Case detectives, and a PD tech were stationed at the Dunnings’ apartment. Another team of detectives was busy scouring NYU to find out where Jacob had last been seen. A third surveillance team, made up of undercover Emergency Service Unit tactical guys, was spread around outside the Dakota, especially the Strawberry Fields area in Central Park.

After Lennon was shot, the building had become a kind of morbid landmark, like the grassy knoll in Dallas. Maybe it was just a coincidence that Jacob lived here, but for the time being, we couldn’t rule out the pull of the place for some unbalanced person.

An NYPD TARU tech had already spliced recording equipment onto the Dunnings’ line. The phone company had been contacted and was ready with something called a time-stop trace. Its billing computer would zip through its millions of circuits that were operational at the exact second the Dunnings’ phone rang and find the one calling the apartment.

All we had to do now was the hard part. To sit and wait until four o’clock. Sit and wait and pray.

My heart rattled like an alarm clock in my chest cavity when the phone rang at three-thirty. It took me a long second to realize that it wasn’t the apartment phone but the building’s intercom buzzer in the kitchen.

Armando, the butler, rushed to answer it.

“There’s an FBI agent in the lobby, sir,” he called to Donald Dunning.

What?! I thought. Who called the FBI?

“Send her up,” Dunning said. Turning to me, he added, “Did I forget to tell you? I called the Justice Department when I was down at Jacob’s dorm. The attorney general, Fred Carroll, dated my sister in college. He’s sending in his best, he told me. You can work together with the FBI, right?”

“Sure,” I said, exchanging uncertain glances with Detectives Ramirez and Schultz, the other members of my team. We had everything ready to go. Now the Feds were here? What did that mean?

We exchanged much happier looks as a tall, auburn-haired woman came through the door two minutes later. Good-looking women, even ones who were turf-invading FBI agents, were always a pleasant surprise.

She spoke to Donald Dunning and his wife briefly in the foyer before stepping into the study.

“Emily Parker,” she said, offering her hand. She had a slight southern or maybe midwestern accent. “Mike Bennett, is it? I can see by your surprise that no one told you I was coming. Of course not. My boss is calling your boss or something.

“I know you guys are as good as we are. I’m not here in any way to take the case away from you. Just here to coordinate resources you guys might not have, get you on the front of the line for databases and such. This is odd, I know, to come all the way up from Washington and-”

“Wait, what?” I said. “From Washington? Why didn’t they just send someone from Twenty-six Fed?”

“Because I wanted the best,” Donald Dunning said, coming in behind her. “You solved two. That’s what Freddy told me. You got two kidnapped kids back safely.”

“It was actually three, but yes.”

Okay, now I saw where this was going. Dunning was flexing his considerable muscle, using his juice to pull out all the stops.

He obviously didn’t realize the strange kind of animal that an investigation in New York City is. I’m sure Homecoming Queen Emily Parker kicked ass out in those big square states where they didn’t have things like subways and Brooklyn and eight million people. The NYPD, despite its gruff demeanor, Bugs Bunny accent, and lack of executive hair, was the investigative equal of any law enforcement agency, especially when in its own backyard.

But I knew if I made some kind of jurisdictional stink, the Feds could invoke the Federal Kidnapping Statute and actually take over the case.

Instead of ranting and raving, I stood there politely holding my tongue and keeping a stiff smile.

Chapter 7

“MR. DUNNING, I’D like to speak to you and your wife further in a moment,” Agent Parker said. Her demeanor was the perfect mix of directness and caring. “I just need to go over a few things with Detective Bennett first. Will you be in the kitchen?”

“Oh, of course,” Dunning mumbled before leaving the study.

That was about as polite a “get lost” as I’d ever seen. I was impressed. Maybe Agent Parker had some chops after all.

She closed the French doors tightly behind him.

“Did you check out the Dunnings for any domestic violence complaints or criminal records?” she said.

I saw where she was going. It had to be verified from the start that it was, in fact, a stranger kidnapping and not a cover-up for a murder or something else. Step one was ruling out the family. I was way ahead of her.

“Both clean,” I said, nodding. “We’re still checking out the staff. How did the Dunnings’ demeanor seem to you? About right?”

“The mom seems to be in a dissociative fugue, and the father looks like he’s just chugged a quart of battery acid,” Parker said with a shrug. “In this case, both typical responses. You want me to toss their name at the White Collar Squad just in case? Can’t hurt to check out any recent debt or insurance activity. We could even look up psychiatric history, if any.”

Wow, I thought. Talk about trusting no one and nothing. I liked that in a cop.

“Do it,” I said.

She took a pad from her briefcase and scribbled on it.

“Any witnesses to the abduction?” Parker said.

“None,” I said. “A girl in one of his classes has Jacob leaving some shithole in Alphabet City at one o’clock in the morning Saturday.”

“ Alphabet City?” Parker said.

“A neighborhood near his school,” Detective Schultz piped in.

“A skanky one,” added Ramirez.

“Go on,” she said with a nod.

“We’re thinking he was grabbed right then because by the look of things, Jacob never made it back to his dorm room,” I said. “We already interviewed his roommate and tossed the building. Nothing. If he went on a trip, he forgot to tell everyone he knows.”

I handed her the rough copy of the victimology report I’d already done, along with a current photograph.

“This report is excellent,” Parker said, turning the pages with an impressed nod. “Physical characteristics, behavior personality, and family dynamics. This NYPD thing doesn’t work out, we could use you down in Quantico. Tell me about the contact with the kidnapper.”

I went to the desk and pressed Play on the answering machine. Special Agent Parker squinted with surprise as the strange question-and-answer recording echoed through the room.

I clicked it off when it was over.

“Parents confirmed the person being questioned is Jacob,” I said. “Have you ever heard anything like that before?”

Parker shook her head.

“Not even close,” she said. “Sounded like an odd game show or something. Have you?”

I let out a frustrated breath.

“Sort of,” I said. “About a year ago, there was this guy who called himself the Teacher. Like this guy, he would blather on about our unjust society. Right before he blew holes in people.”

“Of course. The spree killer. The plane that crashed in New York Harbor, right? I read about that,” Parker said.

I nodded.

“Wait! The cop in the plane! Bennett, my God, that was you?”

I nodded again as she took that in.

“So, you think this is some sort of copycat?” Parker said.

I took a breath, remembering how hard I’d knocked on death’s door.

“For this family’s sake,” I said, shaking the last drop of coffee from my cup, “I hope not.”

Chapter 8

EVERY TWO MINUTES or so, Armando came in to refill our china cups from a polished silver coffee urn. I’d told him twice that he didn’t need to go to all the trouble, but he’d turned a deaf ear to us. He seemed as concerned about Jacob as his parents were.

The whirring sound of a mixer started in the kitchen. From the study, I saw Jacob’s mother, tears pouring down her cheeks, her hair mussed, her evening gown covered in flour, open the fridge and go back to the island, carrying eggs.

Armando made the sign of the cross.

“Poor Mrs. D, always she bake when she is upset,” he said in a whisper.

I’d shown Jacob’s room to Agent Parker and had just started going over potential media strategies when Detective Schultz called me over to the study’s window. Outside the Dakota’s main entrance, a black Chevy Suburban with tinted windows had its blue police light flashing on its dashboard.

I immediately called down to the ESU guys doing surveillance on the street.

“What the hell is going on down there?” I said. “Kill those lights. Who is that jackass? This is supposed to be an undercover operation.”

“Someone from the mayor’s office,” an ESU sergeant stationed in the lobby said. “She’s on her way up.”

A minute later, a sharp-featured fifty-something woman with a salon-perfected blond bob came through the apartment’s front door.

“April! I came straight here when I heard the news,” she said.

Mrs. Dunning seemed taken aback as she was engulfed in the tall woman’s viselike embrace. So did Mr. Dunning when he was given the same treatment.

“Christ, this is all we need,” I mumbled.

It was the first deputy mayor, Georgina Hottinger. Before being promoted to the mayor’s second in line, she’d been in charge of the New York Improvement Fund, which roped wealthy individuals into paying for city events. Which would have been useful had this been a charity function instead of a kidnapping investigation.

“Who’s in charge here?” she commanded as she burst into the study. I guess she was through with the air- and ass-kissing.

“I am. Mike Bennett. Major Case Squad,” I said.

“Every development in this case is to be sent immediately to my office. And I mean every one. The Dunnings will be shown every imaginable courtesy in their time of need, first and foremost being their privacy.”

Staring into her ice-pick blue eyes, I suddenly remembered the nickname the City Hall press corps had given Hottinger. Still resembling the ballerina in the San Francisco ballet that she’d once been, the take-no-prisoners politico was called the “Barbed-Wire Swan.”

“This woman is a personal friend of mine, Detective,” Hottinger continued. “So I hope we’re clear on how this thing is to be run. I’ll be holding you personally responsible for any fuckups. Why are we running this, by the way? Are we even capable? I thought kidnappings were a federal offense. Has the FBI been informed?”

“Yes, they have, actually,” Emily Parker said, glaring at her. “I’m Special Agent Parker. And you are?”

Georgina whirled around, looking like she wanted to give Emily a roundhouse pirouette to the jaw.

“Me?” Hottinger said. “Oh, no one, really. I just happen to be the one who’s in charge of the capital of the world until the mayor comes back on Tuesday. You have any other stupid questions, Agent?”

“Just one,” Emily said, nonplussed. “Did it occur to you when you pulled up with your lights flashing that the person responsible for abducting Jacob could now be watching this building? They demanded that no police be contacted. Now it looks like you’ve blown that. I believe you were saying something about fuckups?”

I got between the two ladies before the fur started flying. And they say men can’t get along. I decided I was starting to like Parker a little.

“I’ll be in contact with your office, Deputy Mayor. As soon as I hear anything, so will you,” I said, guiding her out into the hall. “We’re still waiting for the perpetrator to call back, so if you’ll let us get back to work.”

Parker was blowing out a flushed breath as the apartment’s front door slammed behind Hottinger.

“This political personal-service crap pisses me off to no end, Mike,” Parker said. “First the attorney general, now the mayor’s office is involved? I actually got here on Dunning’s jet, did I tell you that? Do you think for a minute that there’d be this much effort if some poor nobody kid was abducted?”

“Probably not,” I said. “But think about it. If your kid were in danger, wouldn’t you pull every string you had?” In the kitchen, Mrs. Dunning slammed a muffin tin hard enough to shake the glass in the French doors.

“You’re right. I would,” Parker said with a nod. “Can we at least both agree that the deputy mayor is one rabid bitch?”

“Now, on that one,” I said with a laugh, “I’m with you one hundred percent.”

Chapter 9

AT 3:55, DONALD Dunning sat down at the Chippendale desk in the study. On it were chess sets chiseled in marble, leather-bound books, antique tin soldiers, a seashell inlaid with gold. But his eyes, along with everyone else’s, were locked squarely on the phone.

It rang at the stroke of four. It was a different number from the first call, a 718 area code this time.

Dunning wiped his sweating hands on his slacks before he lifted the receiver.

“This is Donald Dunning. Please tell me what I have to do to get my son back. I’ll do whatever you want,” he said.

“You mean except for calling the police when I told you not to?” the calm voice from the first call said. “Put them on the line. I know they’re there. Try to fool me again, and I’ll FedEx you a piece of Jacob in a biohazard bag.”

Dunning’s face went a shade of white I’d never seen before. His lips moved silently. I nodded to him that it was okay as I took the phone from his shaking hand.

“This is Mike Bennett. I’m a detective with the NYPD,” I said. “How’s Jacob? Is he okay?”

“We’ll discuss Jacob in due time, Mike,” the kidnapper said. “Did you hear that officious blowhard? His son’s life lies naked in my bare hands, and he thinks he can still give orders?”

“I think Mr. Dunning is just upset because he misses his son,” I said as I took out my notepad. “You’re obviously holding all the cards. All we want to know is how we can get Jacob back.”

“Funny you say that,” the kidnapper said. “About holding all the cards. I wish I really were, instead of absolute assholes like Dunning. Then this kind of thing wouldn’t be necessary.”

Former employee? I wrote on the pad. Disgruntled? Personal vendetta?

There was a pause, and then a strange sound started. At first I thought that I heard laughing, but after a second I realized the kidnapper was sobbing uncontrollably.

I don’t know what I had been expecting, but it definitely wasn’t tears.

Unstable, I scribbled on the pad.

“What is it?” I said after a little while. “What’s making you so upset?”

“This world,” the kidnapper said in a choked-up whisper. “How messed up it is. The greed and rampant injustice. There is so much we could do, but we just sit by and let it all go down the drain. Dunning could save twenty lives with what he pays for his shoes. Latvium stock rises on the corpses of the world’s poor.”

“Don’t they also create drugs that save lives?” I said. Rule number one in negotiating is to keep the person talking. “I thought a lot of big drug companies actually give drugs away to Third World countries.”

“That’s just bullshit for the multimillion-dollar marketing campaign,” the kidnapper said wearily. “The donated drugs are crap. Often expired. Sometimes deadly. In reality, the most common way Latvium interacts with Third World citizens is when it uses them as guinea pigs. The cherry on top is the way it launders its profits through offshore banks, using copyright laws and shell companies to avoid paying American taxes. Look it up, Mike. It’s common knowledge. Congress looks the other way. I wonder why. Can you say lobbyists? Can you say institutional corruption?”

The kidnapper sighed.

“Are you that dense? Latvium is a multinational company. The sole purpose of multinational corporations in every industry is the production of fabulous wealth for its upper management. National responsibility and human lives are asides to men like him. Always have been. Always will be.”

He did have something of a point, I thought. He was actually kind of persuasive. His voice sounded cultured, like an academic’s. Intelligent, I wrote on my pad.

“But the wind is blowing in a different direction now,” he continued. “The hand of destiny knocks upon the door. That’s why I’m doing this. To wake people up. To make them rethink the way in which they conduct themselves. Because these wings are no longer wings to fly but merely vans to beat the air. The air which is now thoroughly small and dry. Smaller and dryer than the will. Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.”

God, now he was talking gibberish. I underlined Unstable. Beside it, I wrote, Drugs? Schizophrenic? Psychotic? Hearing voices?

“Now getting back to Jacob,” I said. “Could we speak to him?”

He let out a deep breath. Then he gave me by far the largest shock of our conversation.

“I’ll do better than that. You can have him back, Mike,” he said.

I stood holding the receiver, stunned.

“You’ll have to come for him, though,” the voice continued. “Give me your cell phone number. Get in a car. I’ll call you in ten minutes.”

He hung up after I gave him my number.

“It’s over?” Dunning said happily, with surprise. “He’s going to give him back? I guess he changed his mind, is that it? He must have realized how crazy this was. April! Honey! Jacob’s coming home!”

I watched Dunning run out of the room. He was grasping at any hope now.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t as optimistic. The individual who’d taken Jacob seemed highly organized. He wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to just give him back.

What was filling me with even more dread was the way he kept changing the subject when I asked about Jacob.

I could tell by the skeptical look on Parker’s face that she was thinking exactly the same thing.

Chapter 10

AN UNMARKED BLACK Impala was gassed and waiting in the cold rain around the corner on Central Park West. In the front seat, I handed Parker one of the Kevlar vests draped across the dashboard and slipped into the other.

We would be the lead car, with Schultz and Ramirez loosely tailing us. Aviation had been called, and a Bell 206 was en route from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn for high-altitude covert surveillance.

“What was that about the wings?” I said to Parker as we sat there waiting for the kidnapper to call back.

“I think it was a poem. It’s on the tip of my tongue. My college English professor would kill me.”

“Where’d you go to school?” I said.

“UVA.”

“ Virginia. So that explains the down-home accent.”

“Accent?” Emily drawled. “Y’all Yankees are the ones with the accent.”

An FBI agent with a sense of humor, I thought, listening to the drumroll of rain on the roof. What were the odds?

I put my phone on speaker and was adjusting the no-hands microphone when it rang. It was yet a different number, I noticed, a Long Island 516 area code, the third number so far. Maybe our kidnapper owned a cell phone store, I thought as I folded it open.

“Listen to my instructions. Go exactly where I say,” the kidnapper told me. “Take the Central Park traverse to the East Side.”

I took a breath as we pulled out. It started to rain harder. Against the gray sky, the bare trees atop the park’s stone walls looked black in the rain.

A few minutes later, I said, “I’m coming up on Fifth Avenue now.”

“Keep going to Park Avenue and make an uptown left.”

I sped out of the park down two tony East Side blocks and screeched through the red light.

“I’m on Park Avenue,” I said.

“Welcome to the silk-stocking district, Mike,” the kidnapper said. “Holy one-zero-zero-two-one. Did you know you’re now driving through the highest concentration of wealth in the richest country on earth? In the salons above you, more money is paid over to both of our sham political parties than in any other place.”

We drove on. The only sound in the car was the windshield wipers. I didn’t see any salons. All the buildings outside were just gray smudges.

The last high-profile kidnapping Major Case had handled involved a garment factory owner who was kidnapped back in ’93. They’d pulled him, filthy and starving but, thankfully, still alive, out of a hole in the ground along the West Side Highway. I wondered what kind of hole Jacob was in now. Most of all, I hoped the eighteen-year-old was still alive when we pulled him out of it.

“Where are you?” the kidnapper said.

“I’m at One Hundred and Tenth and Park.”

“Spanish Harlem,” he said. “See how quickly it all turns to shit? When Park Avenue ends, head over the Madison Avenue Bridge into the Bronx.”

The tires slipped for a gut-wrenching second as we sped over the wet, rusting bridge. The Harlem River beneath was brownish green and looked almost solid, as if you could walk across it.

“I’m in the Bronx now,” I announced when I reached the other side of the river.

“Take the Grand Concourse north.”

We slid past project after project. We were passing alongside a lot the size of a city block, filled with stacks of old tires, when the kidnapper started in with more commentary.

“Did you know that the Grand Concourse was supposed to be the Park Avenue of the Bronx?” he said. “Look at it now. At the burned-out, marble-trimmed windows. At the granite facades painted over with graffiti memorials for slain drug dealers. How did we let this happen, Mike? Have you ever asked yourself that? How did we let the world become what it is?”

Soon the area became wall-to-wall decayed tenements. We were in the Forty-sixth Precinct now, I knew. “The Alamo,” they called it. It was the smallest, but the most drug-infested, precinct in the city.

As I stared out at the inner-city blight, flashes of Jacob’s room came to mind. The cross-country-running trophies he kept in the back of his closet, the Dave Matthews Band ticket stubs on his dresser, the shiny Les Paul guitar that hung on his wall. Despite his age, he was a kid, really. I gritted my teeth. This was no place for any kid.

“I’m coming up to One Hundred and Ninety-sixth,” I said.

“Good work,” the kidnapper said. “You’re almost there, Mike. Go right onto One Hundred Ninety-sixth. You’re really close now. Make a left onto Briggs Avenue.”

I cupped the phone mic.

“What are you packing?” I said over to Parker.

“Glock forty-caliber,” she said.

“Unsnap your holster,” I said.

Chapter 11

A HARD-LOOKING BLACK kid in a new North Face jacket twirled a Gucci umbrella on the corner. Behind him down the block at regular intervals, more menacing figures in dark hoodies stood on the thresholds of the rundown brick buildings. Apparently even the rain couldn’t put a damper on Briggs Avenue ’s open-air drug market.

“Whoop, whoop,” came the warning cry as I turned the car onto the avenue, and my unmarked was immediately made. “Five-oh,” one teen spotter hollered down the block helpfully to his coworkers through cupped hands. “Yo, Five-oh!”

I scanned the gloomy block uncertainly. The narrow cutout of the avenue extended for at least another two blocks without a cross street.

Where the hell were Schultz and Ramirez? I thought, glancing into my rearview. I felt like a sheriff who’d made a wrong turn into the wrong mountain pass.

“Stop at two-five-oh Briggs,” the kidnapper said.

Emily tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at a building up the block. I didn’t have time to look for a parking spot. I spun the wheel and bumped the Impala up onto the sidewalk in front of it.

With swirling architectural embellishments around its entrance, 250 Briggs Avenue, like a lot of old Bronx buildings, had once been a stately residence. Since then, one of the entrance’s Doric columns had been shattered, and there were smoke stains on the brick above most of the boarded-up windows of the third story.

I got soaked to the bone while I retrieved flashlights from the trunk of the detective car. So did Emily as we walked across the cracked sidewalk and pulled open the building’s broken front door.

“I’m here. I’m in the lobby of two-fifty now,” I said into the phone. My words echoed eerily back at me as I played the beam over the dim lobby. The walls were marble, but the low ceiling was bloated, pregnant with water stains and mold. A feeling as desolate as my surroundings enveloped me. I had the sudden desperate feeling that time was running out.

Where are you, Jacob? I thought.

“Did you know that people actually live here?” the kidnapper said in my ear. “Rats run through the halls. Some of the tenants on the third floor don’t even have doors after a recent fire. Is it any wonder at all that this area has the highest incidence of childhood asthma in the country?

“The slumlord who bought it last year, along with eighty percent of this block, has let it get like this because he’s trying to force out the rent-controlled tenants. He bought it at a HUD auction, despite his company’s history of thirteen hundred housing-code violations. This is happening here in the richest country on earth, Mike. This is happening right here, right now in America.”

“Where is Jacob?” I yelled, ignoring his grating litany. “I’m here. I’ve done exactly what you said. Where do I go?”

“Out back through the courtyard, go through the laundry room door on your left.”

We found a door at the end of the lobby and went back out into the rain. A cracked toilet lid floated beside half a dozen faded phone books in the courtyard’s standing water. I scanned the surrounding windows for movement. I wasn’t convinced yet that this wasn’t a trap.

I handed Emily my flashlight as I drew my gun and pulled open the door in the left-hand wall. I found the lights. No Jacob. Just a rusted-through sink beside an ancient coin-op washing machine.

“Where is he?” I yelled again.

“The stairs on your left. Take them down.”

Beyond the washing machine, iron steps descended through a raw concrete stairwell. The beams from our flashlights flickered wildly as we flew down the steps two at a time.

Dank heat hit me like a wall through the door at the bottom. In the distance, a boiler screamed as if it were being tortured. The basement walls looked like hewn stone, and I felt like we were entering a cave. Or a dungeon, I thought.

“This is where I’ll have to end our little conversation for now, Mike. Down the hall to your right. Take Jacob away. He’s all yours,” the kidnapper said and hung up.

Chapter 12

I COVERED EMILY as she jogged ahead. Even in the dimness, I could see her eyes widen in shock as she stuck her light and gun through the right-hand doorway.

I arrived a split second behind her. Emily’s flashlight showed a figure slumped over a child’s desk. Something stung my cheek as I raced toward it. It was a pull chain. I wrapped my hand around it and yanked.

The hanging bulb clicked on and then swung back and forth, heaving shadows of Jacob’s motionless body up and down the raw cement walls.

No! Damn it! Not like this! I thought.

Jacob was in his underwear, and his hands were cuffed behind his back. I checked for a pulse. Nothing. I scanned frantically for a wound.

“His hair,” Emily said quickly behind me. There was a crusted pool of blood at the top of his head. His hair was matted with it.

A bullet wound gaped at the crown of his skull. I turned away. Wiping the sweat from my face, I glanced at the blackboard, the desk, the naked cement wall, and then back at the body.

I ripped my phone from my belt, ready to smash it against the wall. The sick son of a bitch had been leading us along, whispering not-so-sweet nothings in my ear, and the whole time the kid had been dead.

“He lied to us from the get-go,” I said, desperately trying to throttle the life out of my RAZR phone. “This kid was long dead when he called. God, I want to nail this son of a bitch.”

“I’ll hold the nails while you swing the hammer,” Emily said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “This is a shock. Maybe we should take a quick breather. Do you want to go up top for some air?”

You better believe I wanted to take a breather. I wanted to get the hell out of that steaming South Bronx crypt.

My thumb found my boss’s listing instead.

“Tell me some good news, Mike,” Chief Fleming said.

“I wish I could. I’m in the basement of two-five-oh Briggs Avenue. We need the Crime Scene Unit and the medical examiner.”

“Goddammit,” my boss said. “How?”

“He blew the kid’s brains out,” I said. “I’d give the notification duty to Georgina Hottinger, if I were you. She likes to play cop with her flashing lights. I wouldn’t want to deprive her of getting all the way in on the act.”

I met Ramirez and Schultz in the hallway when they finally arrived five minutes later.

“Canvass everyone you can find in this dump,” I said. “Especially the super. Roust him and the landlord as well. This guy took his time with this kid down here. I want to know why nobody noticed.”

Chapter 13

WHEN I RETURNED, Emily had her jacket off and was hovering over the body. She had her blouse sleeves rolled up and was wearing green rubber surgical gloves she’d gotten from somewhere. Her bag probably. I was impressed.

“The back spatter on the floor here and the lividity in the legs indicate he was killed in the chair,” she said without looking up.

I probed Jacob’s arm gently with my thumb.

“Looks like a semi-advanced state of rigor,” I said. “I’d say he was killed sometime early this morning. The handcuff cuts on the wrists and his scraped knees look like he was treated pretty roughly before he was killed. Tying this in with the question-and-answer stuff from the first call, I’d say this looks like a teacher-student domination fantasy or something.”

“Yeah,” Emily said, waving away a fly. “Welcome to Hell one-oh-one.”

I peered at Jacob’s face. He had his mother’s dark hair and creamy complexion, his father’s blue eyes. Those eyes were frozen open forever now, along with his mouth in a rictus of shock and horror. There was a smudge on his forehead that I hadn’t noticed before, a gray mark like a small X.

“Hey, Mike,” Emily said a second later. She was standing at the other side of the room. “I think you need to see this.”

I joined her on the other side of the blackboard. On the back, someone had written:

MEMENTO HOMO, QUIA PULVIS ES, ET IN PULVEREM REVERTERIS.

“What is that? Latin?” Emily said.

“It is,” I said, staring at it. “My Catholic high school’s preferred method of torture. Memento means ‘remember,’ I think. Pulvis is ‘dust.’”

Cold numbed my back like a spinal tap as I suddenly realized its meaning.

“‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,’” I cried. “It’s what Catholic priests say on Ash Wednesday when you get your ashes. Which must be what’s on the kid’s forehead. He gave Jacob ashes?”

Emily snapped her rubber-gloved fingers loudly.

“Wait a second! That’s it. ‘Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.’ The poem is called Ash Wednesday, by T. S. Eliot. What does it mean? How does it tie into the kidnapping?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I think the clock just started.”

I wiped the sweat out of my eyes.

“Ash Wednesday is only three days away,” I said.

Chapter 14

THE SUPER WAS nowhere to be found. The closest occupants to the basement were in a crack house on the second floor, but to no one’s surprise, the strung-out inhabitants hadn’t noticed anything.

I was happy for the cold rain now as I climbed out of that hot pit. I needed something to wash the smell of death from my clothes, off my skin.

Despite our attempts to keep things under wraps, I spotted the police reporter from the Post standing behind the police tape among the half dozen Briggs Avenue drug dealers. Once the word was out, reporters and producers would pounce on Briggs Avenue like sharks on chum. A billionaire’s kid getting kidnapped and ritually murdered wasn’t just news, it was the next news cycle.

I headed for my car when I spotted the first news van. Media storms were like real ones, I’d found. The only way to truly withstand them was to evacuate immediately.

Emily was coming out of the corner bodega as I got to the car. She took the items from the bag as I cranked the heat in the front seat. Paper towels and a couple of cans of Coke.

“They didn’t have any Scotch, but at least it’s full sugar,” she said, handing me one.

I put the cold can to the back of my neck before I crunched it open.

“Full sugar,” I said. “I just might have to tell your supervisor about you, Emily Parker. Not for nothing, but you were great in there. You know your way around a body. I thought you were just a kidnapping expert.”

“I did time in the Behavioral Analysis Unit as a profiler,” she said offhandedly. “Lucky me, huh?”

I watched her rub her hair with a wad of paper towels. It was the color of black cherry soda where it was wet along the nape of her neck, I suddenly noticed.

She paused as the ME’s techs brought out Jacob in a plastic bag. They slid him into the back of the beat-up Bronx County Medical Examiner’s van parked beside our Impala.

“I lost four,” Emily said, staring out the rain-streaked windshield.

“What are you talking about?”

“Dunning was so impressed that I had found three, but nobody told him that I lost four,” she said, looking into my eyes. “Actually, five now,” she added.

I lifted my soda and took a sip. It wasn’t black cherry, which I had a distinct pang for all of a sudden, but the sugar rush would have to do.

“Three for seven,” I said. “That’s great. If this were baseball, you’d be Ted Williams.”

“This isn’t baseball, though, is it?” Emily said after a moment.

I took another sip of my Coke and dropped the transmission into reverse to let the death van out.

“You’re right,” I said as we bumped off the sidewalk onto the wet street. “There’s no crying in baseball.”

Chapter 15

IT WAS DARK by the time we rolled across the Madison Avenue Bridge and safely back into Manhattan.

Along the way, Emily had called her Bureau boss and dropped the bad news. Then she made another call to what I assumed was her family. It sounded like she was talking to a little kid.

Then and only then did I check her hand for a ring. Yes, men are that dumb. At least I am. There was no ring, which meant what? Maybe she didn’t wear one at work. I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Was I getting them up? I guessed I was.

As I drove, I called the TARU tech for an update about the phone leads. They’d actually made some headway. The phone numbers recorded at the Dunnings’ and the ones to my cell phone were from prepaid cells bought at three different locations in Queens, Manhattan, and Five Towns out on Long Island. Precinct detectives were being sent to interview the salesmen to see if they remembered anything about the purchaser.

My next call back to the Crime Scene guys was less promising. There were no bullet casings or fingerprints anywhere. Our guy had even had the presence of mind to take the piece of chalk he’d used to write the message.

All in all, this animal who’d killed Jacob had been calculated, methodical, and very careful. All negatives from where we sat. I still couldn’t get his perfectly inflected PBS voice out of my head.

We were on Fifth Avenue just passing Central Park North when I looked up. I was supposed to drop Emily off at the Hilton near Rockefeller Center, but I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. The suspense was killing me about my kids’ game. If Seamus had shown me up in the coaching department, I didn’t know if I’d be able to live it down.

Emily looked confused as I stopped in front of my building on West End.

“I need to stop at my apartment for a second. I have to, uh, see about something. You want to wait in the car-or what the hell, come up. I’ll get you an umbrella and a real Scotch if you need one. I know I do.”

Chapter 16

EMILY LOOKED EVEN more confused as my doorman, Kevin, opened the lobby door.

“How much do they pay New York City cops?” she said as we headed for the elevator.

“Very funny,” I said. “Don’t worry, I’m not on the take. It’s a long story, but basically I won real-estate lotto.”

You could hear the ruckus as soon as the elevator opened in my foyer.

“Is someone having a party?” Emily said.

I laughed as I opened the door.

“Oh, the party never ends around here,” I said.

Everyone was in the living room. Seamus. The teens, the tweens, and the little ones, who were getting bigger and more expensive by the hour. Wall-to-wall people, laughing, fighting, gaming, watching TV. The mosh pit that was my home life.

“Dad!” several of my kids cried when I was eventually noticed.

When I turned back to Emily, I could see that she was beyond confused and now deep in utterly bamboozled territory. I smiled, remaining silent. Teasing her was becoming quite pleasant.

“They’re not all yours,” she said.

“Except for the priest,” I said, making an expansive gesture with my hands. “He’s just a loafer.”

“Very funny,” Seamus said. “We won. So there.”

“No!” I yelled, stricken. “No, it’s not possible. How? You threatened to excommunicate the other team?”

“No, I tried something you wouldn’t know about. Sound coaching techniques. Take that, ya wiseass,” Seamus said. “Now how about introducing me to your lovely friend here.”

“Emily, meet Father Seamus Bennett, our local pastor, and though I don’t like to admit it too often, my grandfather. We’re working together on a case, Monsignor. Emily’s an FBI agent.”

“FBI,” Seamus said, impressed, as he shook her hand. “A G-lady in the flesh. Is it true they let you torture suspects now?”

“Just annoying old men,” I answered for her.

The kids, finally noticing that there was a stranger in their midst, quieted down and sat staring. Trent, one of our family’s many comedians, stepped over like a four-foot-tall butler.

“Hello,” he said, offering his hand to Emily. “Welcome to the Bennett home. May I take your coat?”

Emily stared at me as she shook his hand. “Um…,” she said.

“How do you do?” said Ricky, getting in on the act. “It’s sooo nice of you to come for dinner, ma’am.”

“All right, you goofballs. Enough,” I said.

Just then, Juliana, my oldest girl, stopped as she came in from the kitchen. She pulled out her ever-present iPod earbuds before turning back for the kitchen.

“Mary Catherine, Dad brought a guest home. Should I set out another plate?”

Mary Catherine appeared a minute later.

“Of course,” she said.

“Oh, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want to impose, Mrs. Bennett.”

“Did you hear what she said?” cried Chrissy. “Hey, everyone. Did you hear that? She called Mary Catherine Mrs. Bennett!”

“I’m sorry?” Emily said, looking at me, raw pleading in her face.

“That’s it, you guys. Back off now, and I mean it,” I said. I turned to Emily. “It’s a long story. Mary Catherine and I aren’t married,” I started. I laughed suddenly. “That didn’t come out right. What I mean to say is-”

“What he means to say is that I work for this crew,” Mary Catherine said. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, shaking Emily’s hand briskly.

“Oh, my mistake,” Emily said.

Just then, the saliva-inducing scent of rosemary, garlic, and pepper hit us like a freight train. Emily turned as Juliana placed a massive roasted leg of lamb on the dining room table. It smelled insanely good.

“On Sundays, Mary Catherine pulls out all the stops,” I explained.

Emily’s eyes went wide as Brian came in carrying mashed potatoes on a platter the size of a toboggan.

“You definitely do not have to stay,” I said to Emily. “Don’t let these tricksters fool you with their polite routine. We redefine the term family-style.”

Socky began rubbing himself on Emily’s shin.

“But, Daddy, look. Even Socky wants her to stay,” said Chrissy, batting her butterfly-wing eyelids up at Emily.

Emily knelt down and finally petted the cat.

“Well, if Socky says I should, I guess I have to,” she said.

“In that case, here,” I said, pouring Emily a huge glass of red wine. “You’re going to need this.”

Chapter 17

TRYING TO KEEP her balance amid the swirl of kids and motion in the bright, warm apartment, Emily Parker sipped her wine and smiled.

Incredible, she thought. All these children. So many races. They had to be adopted, right? At least some of them did. And was there a Mrs. Bennett? She’d definitely gotten single vibes off Mike.

She watched as Mike knelt down and lifted up the seven-year-old black boy and softly judo-flipped him over his shoulder onto the couch next to an Asian girl.

She certainly hadn’t expected this.

“Hey!” one of the kids yelled. “Check it out!”

On the TV screen, Emily and Mike were on the sidewalk in front of the Bronx building. The coverage of the kidnapping had already begun.

The children all started clapping. One of the tween girls put her pinkies in her mouth and whistled like a doorman hailing a taxi. Emily chuckled as she watched Bennett take an elaborate bow.

“Thank you, everyone. No autographs, please. Enough fame for now, it’s time to eat!”

And the dinner, Emily thought as they finally sat, looked incredible. One of the hugest dining room tables she’d ever seen, and set with china, no less. How did they manage that? Looking at the faces of the kids finding their seats, she thought of herself and Olivia eating Lean Cuisines at the kitchen island in her silent town house. Could this be more different?

They all folded their hands together and closed their eyes as the priest led them in saying grace.

“Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ our Lord, amen,” the sweet old man said. “Now pass the gravy!”

She didn’t just see that, did she? The setting looked like a lost cover of The Saturday Evening Post, only it was real. The only time she ever had a home-cooked meal like this was on Thanksgiving at her dad’s house.

The last thing Emily had expected when she was called on special assignment this afternoon was that she’d be eating dinner with some crazy, enormous, happy family. She couldn’t wait to call her daughter and tell her all about them.

She shook her head as she caught Mike’s eye at the head of the table.

“And a cat, too?” she said.

“Ah, he’s just another loafer,” Mike said. “Like the priest.”

Chapter 18

AFTER WE ATE, all the kids lined up to say good night to Emily.

“It was indeed a pleasure to meet you,” Trent said, still hamming it up. “And good night, Father. Do sleep well.”

“Oh,” I said, tickling him hard enough to make him squeal. “Do sleep well yourself, Sir Hamlet.”

When we were finally alone, I poured Emily the last of the wine and gave her the short version of my life story. I told her about Maeve, my wife. How we’d adopted our kids, one by one, until we turned around one day and saw that we had ten. I even told her how my wife had passed away. How Mary Catherine and Seamus and I struggled to keep the wheels from falling off.

“But enough about me,” I said, getting that off my chest. “Fair’s fair. It’s time for you to give me the vitals on Emily Parker.”

“There’s not much. I have one daughter. Olivia,” she said, taking a picture out of her bag.

“A cutie,” I said, leaning in close to Emily to see the picture. Like her mother, I almost said. It was amazing how comfortable this was starting to feel.

“How old is she?” I said instead.

“Four.”

“The only age we don’t have in this house,” I said. “What are the odds?”

Mary Catherine came in with two plates and caught us laughing.

“Mary, that isn’t what I think it is, is it? Apple pie?” Emily said.

Mary Catherine dropped the plates loudly on the table.

“I left the stove on,” she said, quickly turning around. “Will that be all tonight, Mr. Bennett?”

“Sure… that’s fine, Mary,” I said, a little confused.

When the kitchen door closed, I lifted the picture of Olivia off the table.

“So, where’s Olivia’s dad?” I said. I put the picture down. Wow, did I just say that out loud? Real subtle there, Mike. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”

“No, it’s okay. Olivia’s dad is in, um, California. We’ve been divorced two years now. We met in the air force. John was a little rough around the edges, but he was loving and funny and a brilliant natural mechanic. I always thought of him as the impulsive yin to my everything-in-its-place yang.

“In the beginning, everything was fine. John ran the service department of the Bethesda Mercedes dealership as I got promoted up through the ranks of the Bureau. It was hectic, of course, juggling two jobs and then Olivia, but we were a team, a real family. Then, two days after Olivia’s second birthday, John announced he needed to redefine himself.

“First came the tats and the piercings, and then finally, without my knowledge, the purchase of a body shop in California with most of our joint savings.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Yeah, ouch is the word. JonJon’s Rods does custom hot rods for all the stars now, GTOs, Shelby Cobras. California ’s actually been really good for him.”

“And really, really shitty for you and your daughter,” I said.

Emily finished her wine and placed the glass carefully on the tablecloth in front of her.

“I should get going before you have to roll me out of here, Mike. I can’t tell you what a nice time I had. Your kids are even more incredible than that meal was. You’re a lucky man.”

“I’ll get you a taxi,” I said, standing.

The dining room table was cleared by the time I got back upstairs. I found Mary Catherine in the kitchen, banging dishes into the machine.

“Mary Catherine, you didn’t happen to see my slice of pie, did you?”

“Oh, sorry. I tossed it,” she said without turning around. “I thought you were done.”

She wiped her hands on a dish towel and opened the back door, heading to her room on our prewar’s top floor.

“Good night, now,” she said, slamming the door behind her.

Chrissy came into the kitchen then in her pajamas as I was wrapping my mind around what had just occurred.

“Daddy, Shawna says that Emily Parker is your new girlfriend. Is that true?” Chrissy said.

Oh, I thought, staring at the just-slammed door. Okay. Now I got it.

Like I said, men are dumb.