Worst Case

Chapter 19

CHELSEA SKINNER COULDN’T stop trembling. At first it was strictly because of fear, but after three hours of lying bound on a bone-numbingly cold stone floor, she felt like she was actually freezing to death.

The only other time she could remember being as cold was when she went skiing in Colorado for the first time, when she was six. Seeing her breath in the backyard of the house that her dad had just built, she’d made her mom crack up as she pretended to smoke an imaginary cigarette.

Chelsea began to cry through her chattering teeth. That was her problem right there, wasn’t it? Always wanting to be older, always having to push it. Why couldn’t she just be satisfied? It was as if there were a hole inside her, and no matter what she tried to fill it with-clothes, food, friends, drugs, boys-there was always just a little itty-bitty space left that kept her from feeling like a whole person. She practically deserved this. It was bound to happen. It was-

Stop! she commanded herself. You stop that right now!

She’d been abducted, and she was getting down on herself? Blaming herself? That had to stop yesterday. This wasn’t therapy. This wasn’t a confidence-building activity at Big Country, the wilderness rehab camp that her parents had sent her to last summer to “get her rear in gear,” as her dad had so cornily put it.

This was real.

Fact: Someone had knocked her out in front of her house as she was coming back from a night of dancing.

Fact: Someone had removed her jeans and T-shirt, and she was now in her bra and underwear.

Fact: Her hands and feet were bound with giant plastic twist-tie strips, and she was being held against her will in what felt like a crypt.

All the facts were bizarre, horrible when you got right down to it, but very, very real. She suddenly remembered something that Lance, her Big Country eco-psychologist, had kept stressing. You make your own reality.

At the time, she’d thought it was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard, but now, as she considered it, maybe this was what he meant. When you were in a very bad situation, you could either feel sorry for yourself or you could-

Chelsea stilled herself as the lights went on. The door to the dilapidated room she was locked in creaked open. The saliva in her mouth evaporated.

At the threshold stood a man wearing a suit and a ski mask.

This isn’t happening, she thought as the man stepped in and knelt down beside her.

“Hey, Chels,” the man said in a polished voice. Then he head-butted her in the face and the world dimmed.

She gained consciousness to a zipping sound. The man in the ski mask was tightening the last of the straps of the appliance hand truck that she was now lashed to. He rolled her out of the room and bumped her up some steps and whirled her dizzily around a long, tiled corridor.

The room they entered had a low ceiling and a long stainless-steel counter that ran the length of one wall. She came to a clanking stop.

“I didn’t-,” Chelsea said, shaking now. “I d-d-didn’t do anything.”

“Exactly,” her abductor said from behind her. “Maybe you should have. Have you considered that? Have you considered what you have failed to do?”

As she watched, the man went over to the sink. He lifted an orange five-gallon Home Depot bucket from underneath it and opened the tap.

“Now, I want you to take a little test,” he said as he filled the bucket. “The subject is water. Did you know that one-point-one billion people worldwide lack access to fresh drinking water? That’s a lot of folks, wouldn’t you say? Now, my question is this: How much clean water does it take to wash your Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt and Dolce and Gabbana jeans?”

I am having a nightmare, Chelsea thought, staring at the man as he turned off the tap and stepped back, holding the heavy bucket easily in his left hand.

I am Alice, and I have dropped down the rabbit hole and eaten the wrong slice of cake.

Chelsea finally lowered her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said in an almost whisper.

Without warning, the man grasped the bottom of the bucket and swung it forward. The water that hit her full in the face was frigid. If she thought she was cold before, she was out of her mind. She was Arctic Sea-cold now. Deep space-cold.

“It takes forty gallons!” the man in the ski mask screamed. “In the villages of rural Cambodia and northern Uganda, two to three hundred people struggle daily to share one hand pump in order to get the water they need to survive. Families die for water. The only time you give it the foggiest thought is when a waiter asks you if you want yours sparkling or not!

“Now, question number two: How many thousands of children die every day throughout our world from water-related illnesses, like cholera, dysentery, and hepatitis?”

Chelsea was no longer listening. She was too cold to hear, to think. It was like a glacier was moving through her body now, petrifying her muscles and tendons and bones. It would reach her heart soon, she thought, and the cold would make it seize up like a frozen engine.

The man went back to the sink with the bucket. He began whistling the theme from final Jeopardy! as he squealed open the tap again.

Chapter 20

A MIGRAINE HEADACHE woke Emily Parker at the ungodly hour of six a.m. Now that’s what I call a wake-up call, she thought, wincing as she sat up. She’d been suffering from migraines on and off ever since she was in college. The pulsating, stabbing sensation was always in the same place, above her left eye, as if something were trying to dig its way out of her skull with an ice pick.

Sometimes it was so bad, it made her vomit. Sometimes, for some inexplicable reason, it made her extremely thirsty. Before he left, her New Age husband, John, had suggested that it was the price for her investigative skill, the price for her ability to make intuitive leaps that saved people’s lives.

Or maybe it was the stress brought on by my no-good husband, she wished she could tell him now.

She found her bag and fished out an Imitrex, her headache prescription. Swallowing it dry, she saw a flashing image of Jacob Dunning dead in the South Bronx boiler room.

What was she still doing here? she thought. Her boss told her to hang tight up in New York, at least until the results from the medical examiner were in, but she wasn’t sure. Thirty-five was definitely too old for this shit in the Bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. She found herself missing her cozy beige cubicle and cinder-block walls. Or maybe she should get out altogether and try to get a teaching job. Something that coincided with Olivia’s schedule. Give some fresh, young world beater the chance to go after these monsters, deal with these poor families.

She was shaking another Imitrex into her palm when her cell went off.

“Hey, it’s Mike,” Bennett said. “Sorry to wake you up.”

She found herself smiling. His calm voice was like a lifeboat against the nauseating waves of tightness in her skull. She remembered dinner, his crazy kids. At least that had been fun.

“Tell me something good, Mike,” she said. “The media coverage jogged someone’s memory?”

“I wish,” he said. “I just got off the phone with my boss. Looks like we got another missing kid. Her name is Chelsea Skinner. She’s seventeen, and her father is the president of the New York Stock Exchange. Friends let her out of a cab on the corner of her street early this morning, but she never made it home.”

“Already? My God! Even for a serial, that’s unbelievably fast to do it again,” Emily said. “Should we head to the family’s residence?”

“No,” Bennett said. “Schultz and Ramirez are already on their way. Our presence has actually been requested at the task force meeting they’re putting together down at headquarters. I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty so we can get our game faces on. You like lox on your bagel? I don’t think the Jewish deli I go to has grits, but I can ask. What are grits, anyway?”

“Tell me, Mike,” Emily said with a smile. “Are all New York cops wiseasses twenty-four/seven?”

“Just the good-looking ones with double-digit kids,” Bennett said. “See you in a few hours, Agent Parker.”

Chapter 21

THE TASK FORCE meeting was at a brand-new section of One Police Plaza ’s tenth floor. They must have pulled out all the stops with Homeland Security money, because it looked like a war room out of Hollywood.

There were brand-new flat-panel monitors everywhere, state-of-the-art telephone and radio com hookups, and huge PowerPoint screens covering one of the large space’s long walls. You could still smell the chemicals in the new carpet. Or maybe that was just the shoe polish that glossed the expensive wingtips of all the high-powered attendants.

The mayor was back early, I noticed, with our old pal Georgina Hottinger hovering around him like a scavenger fish around a shark. They were busy conferring with police commissioner Daly and his contingent of white-uniform-shirted chiefs. There was even a group of healthy-looking guys with executive hair whom I could only assume were colleagues of Emily’s.

Emily went over to powwow with the other Fibbies a moment after we entered. I made myself busy by taking out my cell phone and checking for any updates.

Right before the festivities were about to begin, Emily returned to where I was sitting double-fisted with coffees.

“I put a rush on the lab down in Washington for the ashes on Jacob’s forehead. The eggheads are waiting with bated breath,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “I heard back about the phone numbers. It looks like our guy hired illegals to buy the phones in cash from the three different stores. Also, Verizon Wireless pinpointed where his calls were made from. The first came back on the West Side Highway and the second one from the FDR Drive. Apparently, he was on the move the whole time he was talking to us.”

Ten minutes later, Emily and I went to the front of the room and briefed everyone about Jacob Dunning.

“Sometime in the early-morning hours of Saturday the twenty-first of February, Jacob Dunning was abducted outdoors by an unknown subject. The subject contacted the family on Sunday. A second call was made a few hours later, during which the abductor requested to speak to us.

“Proceeding by the abductor’s instruction to two-five-oh Briggs Avenue, a high-crime area of the Bronx, we found Jacob in the basement, shot once in the head with a three-eighty-caliber bullet. The body was found in a child’s school desk in front of a blackboard, indicating a high level of scene staging. There was what appeared to be a cross or an X made probably of ashes on the victim’s forehead. No foreign DNA, latent prints, or ballistic casings were found.”

I nodded to Emily.

“In terms of motive, there’s no clear indication as of yet,” she said. “No monetary demands were made. We’re not sure if the kidnapper was about to ask for money but then didn’t because of police interference. A question-and-answer sequence between the abductor and the victim does seem to suggest some vague political motives.

“Preliminary voice analysis seems to indicate that the subject is male, over the age of thirty-five, and highly educated. The subject also seems to have known many intimate details about the victim and his family, so some connection to the Dunnings by the suspect remains a distinct possibility. That’s all we have.”

Chief Fleming stood.

“For those of you who don’t already know, early this morning, a seventeen-year-old Riverdale resident by the name of Chelsea Skinner was reported missing. Her father, Harold Skinner, is the president of the New York Stock Exchange. Though there’s been no contact from anyone yet, we’re treating this as an abduction by the same person until further notice.”

There was a lot of shocked head shaking as we returned to our seats. And even more grumbling. Right now, we had no good leads, just about the worst-case scenario for the department in a high-profile media case.

I wasn’t surprised at all when Georgina Hottinger sat herself next to us a few minutes later. Giving her useless two cents seemed to be her favorite hobby.

“There are to be no information leaks from this task force, and I mean none. Anyone who is thinking of calling their hook at whatever media outlet better think again if they value their jobs. The last thing we need is some media circus.”

She turned and stared directly at Emily.

“Am I coming in loud and clear?” she said.

“Not that clear,” Emily said with her charming southern smile. “But definitely loud.”

Chapter 22

OVER THE NEXT hour, a Major Case management setup was hashed out. A command group of all the chiefs would be situated at One PP along with the intelligence coordinators who would be in charge of collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating all the different leads and breaks in the case. A rapid-start operations group along with a separate investigative group was put on call to be sent to pertinent crime scenes and victim residences.

Emily and I, as the lead investigative coordinators, headed directly out to the Skinners’ residence in the River-dale section of the Bronx. We didn’t have to be told twice to get away from all that brass.

My phone rang as we got on the West Side Highway.

“Bennett here.”

“Bennett here, too, Detective,” Seamus said. “I wanted to go over the plans for you-know-who’s you-know-what.”

He was talking about Mary Catherine. Her birthday was coming up on Wednesday, and we were planning a big surprise bash. I shook my head. I’d better come up with something good. With the funny way she was acting lately, this was pretty much going to have to be the social event of the year or I was doomed.

“I’m busy right this second,” I said. “I’ll have to call you back.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re with her right now, are ya?” Seamus said in a conspiratorial tone. “Oh, she’s a cute one, all right. I’d have a crush on her, too, if I was your age. Give me a note, and I’ll pass it to her. You know you want to.”

I hung up on him.

“Who was that?” Emily said.

“Wrong number,” I mumbled.

Emily shook her head at me with a smile.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you. How do you do it?” she said. “Great cop. Great dad. Head screwed on straight. How does that happen with ten kids? Oh, and a cat. Now that’s just showing off, don’t you think?”

I laughed as I gunned it north toward the Bronx.

“You see right through me,” I said. “I rent the cat for atmosphere.”

Chapter 23

THE SKINNERS’ HOUSE was on Independence Avenue about a half mile west of the Henry Hudson Parkway near Wave Hill. A stunning view of the Hudson River rolled silently behind the ivy-draped rambling Tudor.

There was a genteel country air about the landscaped neighborhood. Getting out of the car, I thought about how nice it would be to have a backyard. I imagined the peace and quiet as I sat on warm grass with a cold drink. More like fantasized. Within the confines of New York City, genteel country airs with river views usually go for about eight figures.

We met Schultz and Ramirez in the horseshoe-shaped gravel drive.

“Last night around ten, Chelsea snuck out of her house to party downtown with a couple of girlfriends,” Ramirez said, reading his notes. “They said they let her out of a cab here on the corner of West Two Hundred and Fifty-fourth at around two-thirty. They didn’t want to drop her right in front of the house because they didn’t want to wake up her parents. Her mom found Chelsea ’s bag with her cell phone in it on the driveway just before six. He must have been waiting for her. Nobody saw any cars or people. Neighbors didn’t hear a thing.”

“Already checked out the Skinners,” Schultz said. “Parents are clean, but Chelsea got a desk-appearance ticket for drinking on the subway about a year ago. Chelsea, apparently, is a bit of a handful.”

I counted four luxury cars parked in the Skinners’ driveway as we walked toward the portico. A tall, upset-looking man in a pinstripe suit pulled open the door as we were about to ring the bell.

“Well, have you heard anything?” he said, staring at my shield. “Have you found Chelsea? I want answers.”

“Are you Harold Skinner?” I said.

“No, I’m not. Mr. Skinner is busy dying of grief that his daughter has been taken from him.”

A plump middle-aged woman appeared behind him.

“Mark,” she said to the man. “You’re my brother and I love you, but would you, please, just for one second, do me a favor and stop?

“I’m Rachael Skinner,” she said, shaking my hand. “Please come in.”

About a dozen of Chelsea ’s extended family were sitting in the dead silent living room. They were red-eyed and shattered-looking, like mourners at a wake. Another tight-knit family was in agony this morning.

“Is Mr. Skinner around?” I said. “We’re going to have to speak to him as well.”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Skinner said. “He’s resting right now. Sedated, actually. The family physician left a few minutes before you arrived. Tell me something, if you would, Detective. I heard that the other boy who was taken was found with ashes on his forehead. That’s a Catholic thing, isn’t it, with the ashes? We’re Jewish. What do ashes signify?”

How did she know about that? I thought. We’d kept that out of the media coverage. Someone in the task force must have spilled it. My money was on Deputy Mayor Hottinger. So much for plugging all the leaks.

“It’s a sign of willingness for Catholics to repent for their sins,” I said. “In addition to abstaining from indulgences like smoking or drinking and eating meat on Friday, it’s a way to symbolically share Christ’s sacrifice during Lent.”

“I see. Then this person, the kidnapper, is Catholic?”

“We don’t know what he is,” I told the poor woman truthfully. “We don’t even know that Chelsea ’s been kidnapped. Don’t assume the worst, ma’am. Let’s take things one at a time.”

Chapter 24

THERE WAS A family-photo wall in the hallway leading to the kitchen. Chelsea was a beautiful black-haired girl with striking light blue, almost gray, eyes. In the latest picture, she was wearing a hoodie with Lifeguard written across the front.

“Your daughter’s beautiful,” Emily said as Mrs. Skinner guided us to a large, bright kitchen table.

“ Chelsea had a brain tumor when she was six, a medulloblastoma on her brain stem,” the kind woman said quietly as she poured us coffee. “She completely beat it. The operations. The chemo. She’s a fighter. This is nothing compared to that. She’ll get out of this. I know she will.”

I wished I could have shared Mrs. Skinner’s startling conviction.

Some PD TARU guys arrived and got up on the Skinners’ wall phones and cell phones. An FBI tech from the New York office showed up as well and installed some e-mail-tracing software, in case our guy decided to switch tactics.

Mrs. Skinner showed us Chelsea ’s room on the third floor. It had a huge, sloping beamed ceiling and a little balcony that overlooked the garden and the covered in-ground pool. It was sleek with modern furniture. It looked more like a rich thirty-five-year-old’s room than a teenager’s. Jacob’s room by comparison looked unsophisticated, childish.

There had to be a link between Chelsea and Jacob. They were both only children, both rich. We’d learned that Chelsea attended Fieldston, a nearby expensive private school that was close to Horace Mann, where Jacob had gone to high school. Had they known each other? Maybe there was a teacher who had worked at both places. Was that the connection?

One thing I was sure of, this guy was definitely not picking these kids out of a hat.

After Mrs. Skinner left, Emily pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and got on the kid’s laptop. Chelsea ’s home page was her MySpace page.

Over Emily’s shoulder I read parts of Chelsea ’s blog. Some of what she was saying was pretty out there. Sexual boastings. Violent fantasies. I was shocked to see that there were some fairly explicit photos of her.

“Is this what kids are up to now?” Emily said.

I shook my head alongside her as a photo of Chelsea with mascara-thick eyelashes leered from the screen. Was this what I would have to look forward to when my daughter Julia turned seventeen in three years?

“God, I hope not,” I said. “Note to self: Become Mennonite and save money for house in the middle of nowhere. I have ten kids. We could learn to farm, right? Get back to Mother Earth, reduce our carbon footprint, and build character all at the same time.”

“Don’t forget the cat,” Emily said.

“Socky. Right,” I said. “He could herd the cows.”

Chapter 25

I WAS COMING out of Chelsea ’s room when the phone rang. But it wasn’t the Skinners’ phone. It was mine.

“Mike, hello. How’d you sleep? Well, I hope?”

Son of a bitch! I stopped in midstride, adrenaline jolting through me like live wire. It was him! The sly bastard was calling me instead of the house.

“Fine,” I said, ungluing myself from the carpet and racing downstairs into the study, where we were set up. I found the department tech and pointed excitedly at my phone. He retrieved a handheld voice recorder from a laptop bag and handed it to me. I held it by my phone’s earpiece.

“I’m glad you called back,” I said. “Where are you? Maybe we could talk in person?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But then again, maybe not, Mike. How do you like the Skinners’ place? Exquisite, wouldn’t you say?”

What? He knew I was here? Or was he just guessing? Was he watching the place?

“And that view,” he continued. “The grandeur of the mighty river beneath those austere crags. Truly to die for, if you’ll excuse the term. Thomas Cole himself could hardly have done it justice, wouldn’t you agree? But what am I doing, dropping such names to a policeman? Thomas Cole was a painter, you see. He started the Hudson River School.”

“Was Frederic Edwin Church a Hudson River School guy?” I said, to keep him talking.

“Why, yes, he was, Mike. You know your art history. Where did you go to school?”

The police academy, scumbag, I felt like saying to him.

“ Manhattan College,” I said instead.

“Never heard of it,” the kidnapper said.

“Well, it’s pretty small,” I said. “Could we speak to Chelsea? We’re ready to give you what you want if you’d only tell us.”

Then he said the words I was dreading.

“If that’s the case, then listen closely,” he said. “I want you to come and get it. I want you to come and get little Chels and bring her back to Mumsy. You know the drill. Get in a car. Ten minutes. You can bring your pretty little FBI friend, too, if you like.”

Chapter 26

THE CIRCLE LINE tour boat was coming through the Amtrak swing bridge down on the Harlem River as we raced across the Henry Hudson Bridge.

And if you look up, ladies and gents, I thought, emergency lights blazing through the lower level’s E-Z Pass lane, you’ll see an authentic, stressed-out New York City cop about to break the sound barrier.

I clicked the siren to full auto as we blasted through the Manhattan-side tolls at a stomach-churning seventy.

We’d just been told Chelsea was in Harlem. I couldn’t lose another kid. If there was any possible way to get to her before it was too late, I was going to do it.

“Where are you now?” the kidnapper said into the ear of my hands-free headset. Again, he’d insisted on guiding me street by street. My own personal insane OnStar operator.

“On the Manhattan side of the Henry Hudson Bridge,” I said.

“Did you know that it was built by Robert Moses back in the thirties using New Deal labor?” he said. “In twenty years, Moses managed to build most of New York City ’s major bridges, parkways, and public beaches. The Twin Towers were knocked down almost ten years ago, and it’s still just a pit. Our civilization is winding down, Mike. It’s obvious. So’s our planet. Take a fork out of the drawer and turn off the oven timer. This place is done.”

“Hello? Hello? I think the signal’s breaking up,” I said as I whipped off the headset to clear the sweat and bull crap out of my ears. Beside me, Emily was working two radios and her cell phone as we gunned it south. I cupped my cell’s microphone.

“How are we looking?” I whispered.

Besides Aviation and the Emergency Service Unit backing us up, the phone company was on board now, actively working on a trace.

“Verizon’s still trying to triangulate,” Emily said. “Nothing so far.”

As I drove, I racked my brain to come up with a way to try to throw the kidnapper off balance, turn the tables on him. He was in charge, and what was worse from the smug tone of his voice, it sounded like he knew it.

“Are you there?” he was saying angrily when I patched back in.

“Hello? Hello?” I said. “The signal seems to be back now.”

“The signal, huh? I believe you, Mike. Almost. Now take the George Washington Bridge exit.”

Shit, I thought. That exit was already blowing past on my left. I spun the wheel, mercilessly mowing down a family of construction traffic cones on the exit’s shoulder. We missed a head-on with a construction light cart by a few millimeters as I just made it back into the lane.

“Can you hear me now?” the kidnapper said. “Head over to Broadway, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Chapter 27

I FOLLOWED THE kidnapper’s instructions through Washington Heights and on deeper into Harlem. As we turned off Broadway at St. Nicholas Avenue, we passed a series of enormous housing projects that were as stark and depressing as warehouses in an industrial plant.

Bulletproof windows began to appear on the corner delis and Chinese takeouts. It looked a lot like the section of the Bronx where we’d found Jacob Dunning.

I was on another magical misery tour of the inner city, complete with constant narration.

“Take a good look around, Mike,” the kidnapper said. “Remember the War on Poverty? Poverty won. African Americans and Latino immigrants were lured into the cities because of jobs, and then the jobs moved away with all the white people. The racial and economic inequality that still exists in this country makes me physically sick sometimes.

“It’s not just here, either. Look at places like Newark, Pittsburgh, St. Louis. It’s the twenty-first century, and still there’s a lack of decent employment and no shortage of discrimination toward people of color.”

“Where to now?” I said.

“You’re getting warm. Make a left onto One Hundred and Forty-first, a left onto Bradhurst, and a right onto One Hundred and Forty-second,” the kidnapper said.

At 142nd, a single, leaning brownstone stood on the corner of a mostly rubble-filled lot. I slowed, scanning its surrounding weeds. I spotted a diaper, a mattress, and a rusty shopping cart but, thankfully, no Chelsea.

“Go to two-eight-six. That’s where she is, Mike. Time for me to go. Tell Mom I said hi,” he said and hung up.

I rapidly scanned the buildings and screeched to a stop in front of the address. I jumped out of the car and stared up at the onion-shaped dome above the three-story building in front of me.

“It’s a mosque,” I radioed our backup. “I repeat. We’re at two-eight-six One Hundred and Forty-second Street. It’s on the north side of the street. We can’t wait. We’re going in the front.”

We opened a pair of elaborate doors and rushed into a large, shabby, definitely unchic lobby. It looked like the mosque had been converted from an old movie theater.

“Hello?” I called as we entered an open area where the seats had once been. There were windows in its walls now, and the floor was covered in Oriental rugs. It must be the prayer room, I figured. The light-filled space was divided in half by a large lace screen, and one of the walls was covered in elaborate tile.

A stocky black man wearing a bright green, red, and yellow kufi on his head appeared in a doorway at the other end of the room. He hurried over, shock and anger in his face.

“Who are you? What are you doing here? You’re not allowed in here. Your shoes! You can’t wear shoes here in the mussalah. Are you crazy? Can’t you see this is a holy place?”

I showed him my shield.

“I’m with the police department. We’re looking for a girl who was-”

That’s when the Muslim man grabbed me violently by the lapels of my suit jacket.

“I don’t care who you are,” he cried, dragging me toward the door. “This is a sacrilege! Get out of here now! You have no right to do this!”

As we were busy struggling, I remembered the Harlem mosque incident in the seventies in which an NYPD cop had been killed. A police community conflict was all we needed now in the middle of a kidnapping.

A moment later, the muscular man suddenly fell to his side. Emily had tripped him somehow and now had her knee in his back as she ratcheted her cuffs onto his wrists. I helped her pull the hysterical man to his feet.

“Sir,” Emily said. “Please calm yourself. We’re sorry about the shoe mistake. We were unaware and apologize. We are law enforcement officers looking for a kidnapped girl. We were told she was here. Please help us. A young girl’s life is at stake.”

“I see,” he said. “I’m Yassin Ali, the imam here. I lost my temper. Of course, I’ll do anything to help.”

Emily undid his cuffs, and he guided us back out into the foyer.

“You say a girl is being held here?” he said, staring at us in disbelief. “But that’s impossible. There hasn’t been anyone here since morning prayer. What’s this girl’s name? Is she a member of the congregation?”

I showed him Chelsea ’s picture.

“A white girl?” he said, perplexed. “No. There’s no way. There must be a mistake.”

“Has anything out of the ordinary occurred today? Anything that might direct us to where this girl could be?” I said. “Any deliveries or-?”

“No.” Then something flashed in his eyes.

“Actually, yes. When I came in, I heard a loud noise from the side of the building, where my office is. There’s an alley between us and the construction site next door. I thought maybe one of the workers had dumped some debris again, but when I looked out, there was nothing.”

“Please show us,” Emily said. “We don’t have a moment to waste.”

Chapter 28

THE SIDE ALLEY Yassin showed us was appalling. Water-from a busted sewage line, judging by its stench-cascaded down the brick wall of the building under construction next door. A faded blue tarp flapped from a hole on its third floor.

You knew you were in a bad section of Manhattan when even the real-estate flippers had abandoned ship.

The piles of debris in the dim alley looked like something out of a photography book about the Great Depression. I rushed ahead, wishing we’d brought a pair of wading boots as I slogged over garbage bags, old bricks, the rusted door of a car.

I was coming back from the rear of the alley when I almost tripped over a fridge discarded on its back with the door still attached. By law, supers were supposed to remove the doors because of the notorious suffocation death-trap threat to curious kids.

My breath caught as a thought suddenly occurred to me.

I flipped up the fridge’s freezer door with the heel of my shoe.

Something went loose in my chest as I stared down.

I didn’t want to be seeing what I was seeing, yet I had to drag my eyes away. Then I reeled back to the alley’s fence behind me. With a shaking hand held over my mouth, I stood staring at the broken glass glittering in the rubble-strewn field beyond the alley. A train creaked and clattered in the distance. The wind played with a plastic bag.

I went back only when Emily got to the spot. We stood beside the open fridge, solemn and silent like mourners beside a strange white casket.

From inside, Chelsea Skinner stared back at us.

Her neck must have been broken when she’d been crammed in, because her body was twisted, facing the ground. It looked like her legs had been broken as well in order to fit her inside.

There was a bullet hole in the top of her head, and she had a cross made of ashes on her forehead.

Emily placed her gloved hand on the dead girl’s cheek.

“I’m going to catch the man who did this to you,” she promised the girl as she took out her phone.

Chapter 29

THE SUBWOOFER THUMPING of the low-flying PD chopper seemed to echo through my raging blood as I left Emily and threaded the narrow alley back to the sidewalk.

I stared at the line of decrepit three- and four-story brick town houses across the street. The ground floors of many of the buildings bore the closed steel shutters of abandoned stores, but I could see curtains and blinds in many of the upstairs windows that faced the alley. Somebody must have seen something.

A crowd had gathered around the just-arrived Emergency Service Unit truck, which was parked in front of the mosque. I could see Lieutenant Montana through the windshield, working the radio, calling for backup. Around the truck were many mosquegoers, men in kufis and some women wearing hijab head scarves. But others-local non-Muslim street folk looking for some stimulation-also seemed to be arriving by the minute.

I took out a picture of Chelsea as I walked over to the throng of people. “This girl was found dead in the alley back there,” I announced, holding it up. “Did anyone see anything this morning?”

“Oh, a white girl. That’s what all the fuss is about. Figures,” said a pudgy young woman, laughing between bites of her takeout.

“Word,” said a large man in cornrows beside her. “Why you cops messing around this mosque for? These are God-fearin’ people. This is harassment. Religious and racial discrimination. We don’t know anything about any white girl!”

From the way the large man stood, half turned, unconsciously shielding his right side, I would have bet my paycheck that he was carrying under his XXL Giants jersey. I wanted to bust him right there and then. Make the wiseass the recipient of the anger that was still reeling through me. l almost didn’t care that it would probably incite the rest of the gathering crowd.

I exhaled a long breath and let it go as a couple of Twenty-fifth Precinct radio cars turned the corner a moment later.

I was heading back toward the crime scene when I heard a window slam across the street. Behind the pane of dusty glass in one of the town houses’ second-story windows, a thin, middle-aged black woman stared down at me. She made extended, knowing eye contact with me and nodded before fading back further into her apartment.

She wanted to talk, but not in front of the neighborhood. Please, let this be a lead, I prayed as I went to get Emily.

I left a couple of uniforms to cordon off the alley and took Emily with me across the street. The town house’s inner door’s lock buzzed as we entered the foyer. As we reached the top of the narrow stairwell, a door cracked open down the hallway. The woman whom I’d seen in the window put her finger to her lips and motioned us silently inside.

The apartment was immaculate. The furniture was arranged tastefully on polished hardwood floors, and there was a granite island in the stainless-steel kitchen. Through an open bathroom doorway, I spotted a nurse’s flowered uniform blouse hanging on the shower curtain rod.

The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Price, and I showed her Chelsea ’s picture as we stepped into the living room.

“This girl’s body was found dumped across the street,” I said, keeping my voice down.

The woman tsked loudly as she stared at the photo.

“Another dead child,” she said in a lilting Caribbean accent. “I’d say dis world has gone damn crazy, but I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t.”

“Is there some information you could share with us, Mrs. Price?” Emily prompted. “This probably happened right after the call-to-prayer speakers went off at five.”

“Oh, I know dose damn speakers,” she said. “Dey shouldn’t be allowed to do dat. Religion or not, dat’s noise pollution. I called three-one-one a hundred times, but do you tink anytin happen? Tink again.”

“Did you see anything?” Emily said.

“No,” she said. “But you talk to dat Big Ice. He’s de local drug dealer.”

“The loud guy with the cornrows?” I said.

She pursed her lips as she nodded.

“Big Devil, I say he is. Making dis block a livin hell for all de decent folks with jobs, tryin to raise families. Big Ice’s people are out all morning early on dat corner and stay out to all hours de next mornin. If anytin happened on dis block, dey seen it, sure. He tinks he so slick, runnin tings from dat clothes store round de corner while his runners and such do his biddin.”

“What’s the name of the store?” I said.

“Ener-G Boutique. Sells all dat hip-hop nonsense clothes. It’s right on de corner.”

“You’re a good person, ma’am,” I said, putting the picture away. “Speaking up is a courageous thing.”

“You tell dat beautiful young girl’s mother I’m sorry for her loss,” the thin woman said as we headed back to the door. “I raised three sons on dis block by de skin of my teeth. If dey were taken from me like dat, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Chapter 30

THE ENER-G BOUTIQUE was right where our witness said it would be. I thought it was going to be a fly-by-night front sort of place, but it actually seemed legit. In the window were name-brand clothes from the Wu-Tang Clan, Phat Farm, Sean John, G-Unit, FUBU. They apparently sold footwear, too, to judge from the neon Timberland and Nike signs on the plate-glass door.

The clerk, plucking her eyebrows behind the counter, didn’t have a chance to say, “Can I help you?” by the time Emily and I, plus a couple of ESU SWAT cops, had crossed the store with our guns drawn. Big Ice was sitting on the shoe department’s try-on bench, slipping on a pair of Nike Dunks, when we approached him.

“Yeah?” he said testily, looking up at us.

There were two cell phones beside him and a plastic Ener-G bag under the bench. Inside the bag, a chrome-plated automatic was plainly visible.

“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” I said as I knelt and lifted the bag. The gun was a Browning Hi Power 9-millimeter. “You have a license for this?” I said, showing it to him.

“Oh, that ain’t my bag, Officer. Somebody else must have left it there. I just came in here to get me some new walkers.”

There was a shoebox in the bag as well. I upended it onto the floor. A plastic bag holding a dozen tightly bound bundles of twenties bounced off the beige carpet.

“Then I take it this money isn’t yours either. Or anything else I’m going to find when I tear this place apart.”

“Oh, I get it,” Big Ice said, looking from me to each of the cops surrounding him. “You gonna try and pin that girl on me. Some white girl dies, so let’s blame the big black man. How original. This is bullshit.”

Big Ice was right. What we were doing was not ordinary police procedure by any stretch. I didn’t care. I was past the point of doing this thing by the book. I didn’t have time to listen to a thousand “I didn’t see nothing”s. I was sick of looking at dead kids.

“Toss me my cellie so I can speed-dial my lawyer,” Big Ice said, yawning casually. “I got that white boy on retainer. He’s going to blow your inadmissible illegal-ass search the fuck up.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But Clarence-goddamn-Darrow isn’t going to be able to get you back this shoebox full of twenties.”

Big Ice suddenly looked at me as if I’d grown another head.

“Oh,” he said, smiling. “You wanna play Deal or No Deal. Why didn’t you just say so instead of bullin’ in here, getting my lady all up in a dander? You come to the right place. What can I do for you?”

“I know you or your people are out on that corner early,” I said. “That girl didn’t fall from the sky. She was dumped there. You help me with some information about it, I’m going to let you get back to your shoe shopping. Might even leave this bag where that poor soul left it.”

“With the piece in it?” Big Ice said hopefully.

“Nah, I’m going to have to turn this gun in to the lost and found,” I said.

He took a loud breath as he considered. He finally nodded.

“Okay. I could make some calls,” he said.

I tossed him one of his phones.

“What a guy,” I said.

Chapter 31

WE STOOD AROUND as Big Ice made phone calls and left messages.

“Don’t worry,” he said, snapping his phone shut. “They know what’ll happen to ’em if they don’t call me back in less than ten minutes.”

On the wall above a rack of Avirex leather jackets was a flat-screen TV tuned to the BET channel. Big Ice stood up laboriously, found the remote under the cash register, and changed it to CNBC. He stared at the screen intently as a bald white man in suspenders talked about IPOs.

“Damn, you think I’m bad?” Big Ice said. “How ’bout you go after some of those private-equity joints. Those homies buy multinational companies with IOUs an’ shit. I should try that at Micky D’s. ‘Hey, how much is that Big Mac? Three bucks? Okay, I’ll take it, but instead of payin’ you right now, you can have the five Stacy be owin’ me whenever.’ They wouldn’t be lovin’ that shit, would they? But you times that scam by a couple of billion, you get a hospital named after you. Now how’s that work?”

Emily rolled her eyes at him.

“You in the market?” she said.

Big turned and stared at her.

“I look like someone who’s risk-averse to you, shorty? Course, I’m in. I be workin’ my S-an’-P portfolio all the time, re-up all those sweet dividends. You think them Knicks floor seats I got come cheap? You want, I could put you together with my broker,” he said with a wink.

“Would you?” Emily said sarcastically as one of Big’s phones rang.

“Listen good, Snap,” Big Ice said into it. “You out on the corner early this morning? Shut up and listen, fool. You didn’t see anybody over by the mosque real early, did you?”

Big listened, nodding.

“What’s up?” he said into his cell phone a few moments later. “What’s up is some white girl was found dead in the alley, chump, and I don’t want to get locked up.”

He closed his phone.

“Talk to us,” I said.

“Snap said around five-thirty he saw a white guy get out of a beat-ass yellow van. Reason why he noticed was business is slow that early, and he thought the guy must be a desperate customer. I like to stay out a little earlier and later than everyone else, customers be appreciatin’ that kind of extra service.”

“I’m sure they do,” I said impatiently. “Go on.”

“Well, Snap said this thin, mousy-looking dude with glasses and gray hair, wearing coveralls and wheeling a refrigerator, got out of the van. He figured it was a guy making an early delivery to the construction site or something. White guy came back with just the hand truck, got back in the van, made a U-turn, and took off.” I knew not to ask him if Mr. Snap had taken down a plate number.

It wasn’t much, but we had something finally.

“That help you?” Big Ice said, smiling as he rubbed his dinner plate-size palms together.

I dropped the plastic bag of drug money on the counter.

“Don’t invest it all in one index,” Emily called back as we left.

Chapter 32

THE STREET CROWD seemed somewhat calmer when we arrived back at the mosque. Imam Yassin had come out on the sidewalk and was speaking to his flock in a soothing voice.

I called back to the task force and passed on the information we’d gotten. I said the tip was anonymous to avoid further inconveniencing the NYPD’s newest friends, Big Ice and Snap.

“Okay, I’ll type up the DD-five for you and get it to the appropriate people,” said Detective Kramer, the Major Case detective who’d been put in charge of the Intelligence Squad.

I was getting paperwork done for me? I thought as I hung up. I was starting to like this task force stuff.

I caught up to John Cleary, the Crime Scene Unit supervisor, who was walking toward the alley with a biohazard box.

“Turns out the suspect didn’t dump the body into the fridge, John,” I said. “This guy actually dumped the fridge with the body already in it.”

“No shit?” Cleary said, removing his cell phone from where it was clipped to the collar of his Tyvek suit. “In that case, instead of dislodging the body here,” he said, “we’ll put the whole fridge onto a flatbed and do it at the lab.”

Back in my unmarked car, I called Detective Ramirez, still at the Skinners’ house, and broke the bad news. He let out a deep breath.

“That sucks,” Ramirez said. “This poor woman. She doesn’t deserve this. I’ll let her know, Mike. I’d rather shoot myself in the kneecap, but I’ll tell her.”

Not wanting to hear the grieving that would soon follow, I hung up quickly.

“So, what do you think?” Parker said, getting back into the car.

“I think we should eat,” I said. “I know the perfect place. It’ll almost make you forget the past couple of hours.”

Ten minutes later, we walked through the door of Sylvia’s restaurant on Lenox Avenue a few blocks away.

“You’re in luck,” I said to Emily, pointing to the menu after we sat down in the cozy, incredible-smelling place. “Not only do they have grits, they have collard greens, too.”

“Collard greens? Well, lordy me,” Emily drawled, wafting an imaginary fan at herself. “I’ll never be hungry again, though I definitely wouldn’t have pegged you as a soul food aficionado, Mike.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Parker. I can put away a six-pack and potato with the best of me Irish brethren. It was my wife who introduced me to it. She was the foodie. Every Saturday, she’d con Seamus into watching the gang, and she’d take me to new places. We used to come to the jazz brunch they throw here on Saturday afternoons.”

Over a couple of racks of Sylvia’s fall-off-the-bone ribs, we went over the case.

“I think things are looking up a little,” Emily said between bites. “The witness was horrible, but by allowing there to be one, at least it means our guy is human, capable of making mistakes. I wasn’t sure there for a little while. But bringing the body in a fridge and then dumping the fridge? That’s… bizarre, wouldn’t you say? He’s going to an awful lot of trouble.”

“Yeah,” I said, wiping my mouth with a napkin. “It’s not just a job for this freak. It’s an adventure.”

“I keep asking myself why he’s doing it,” Emily continued. “Why bother pretending it’s a kidnapping at all? He hasn’t asked for any ransom. I mean, why even contact the families if you’re just going to kill the vics?”

“Attention,” I said. “Has to be. He’s making this as dramatic as he can. Why do most of these psychopaths do this? They’re inadequate in some fundamental way, yet have this grandiose ego. Look at Oswald. The Columbine fools. They can’t be famous in a regular way, so they get attention by killing.”

“But,” Emily said, raising a barbecue-sauce-coated finger across the table, “you’ve spoken to this guy, Mike. He seems educated and very articulate. He doesn’t strike me as inadequate.”

I shrugged.

“Then he must be deformed or something, because no way is that staging and Q-and-A stuff a setup. Our cultured friend is getting his rocks off.”

“You have a point there,” Emily said.

I was shocked when the waitress came back around and Emily ordered a Jack Daniel’s.

“What happened to the full-sugar Coke? You hear that rumbling sound? That’s the sound of J. Edgar rolling over in his grave.”

“What can I say, Mike? You’ve completely corrupted me,” Emily said with a wink. “They warned me about you New York cops. Stupid me. I should have listened.”

When the check came, I tucked my credit card over the bill.

“Hold on. What are you doing?” Emily said, going into her purse. “We’re splitting this. You’re acting like this is a date.”

“Am I?” I said, staring into her eyes as I handed the bill to the waitress.

She stared back for a couple of long, very pleasant moments. She blushed. No, actually that was me.

What the hell I was doing, I didn’t know. My wife had been dead two years, and usually I felt unsettled when it came to new lady friends. Special Agent Emily Parker was different, I guess.

Or maybe I was just going crazy. That was probably it.

Chapter 33

IT WAS ALMOST nine p.m. when the end-of-day task force meeting ended, and an exhausted Emily Parker arrived back at her hotel. Six minutes after that, the top of her head hit the surface of the hotel’s indoor lap pool with a satisfying smack.

There was nothing like that first, magical moment for her. Like she did in every new pool she was in, she plunged down into the cold serenity of the water until her hand passed across the pool’s gritty bottom.

She sat Indian-style and closed her eyes. There were no worries down here. No aggravated bosses. No stresses. Certainly no dead children.

When she was growing up, her family had a pool in Virginia, and she’d spent practically every moment of every summer, from the time she was six until she turned ten, at the bottom of it pretending she was a mermaid. She’d close her eyes and put out her hand, waiting for it to be enveloped by her beloved mer-prince, who’d take her away to her lost kingdom.

When her lungs began to burn almost a minute later, Emily remembered that Chelsea Skinner had been a lifeguard.

She broke the surface and started her workout. Usually laps were enough to clear her head, but even after five, she couldn’t help thinking about the case. Swimming the English Channel probably wouldn’t have been enough to get her mind off this one.

The PD’s lab had still been working on the body by the time the task force meeting wrapped up. Mike had told her they’d had to cut off the top of the freezer with a Sawzall in order to get Chelsea out.

There was something so disturbing about this killer. Most serials went out of their way to avoid attention, Emily knew. This one seemed to relish it. It was as if he wanted to rub their noses in what he was doing.

What had he said? “Tell Mom I said hi.” Even for a sociopath predator, the callousness and arrogance of it was mind-blowing. This guy wasn’t just confident, he was cocky. With the exception of letting the one drug dealer spot him, he hadn’t made a single mistake.

Twenty laps later, Emily Parker carded back into her room and called home.

“How is she?” she asked her brother, Tom.

“You’re going to love this, Em. Today, one of Olivia’s knucklehead boy classmates overheard the teacher call her Olivia Jacqueline and then proceeded to call her OJ Parker for the rest of the morning.”

“That little bum,” Emily said.

“No, wait,” her brother said, laughing. “The kid’s name is Brian Kevin Sullivan, so the Olive dubbed him BK Sullivan. Now everybody calls him Burger King Sullivan. How do you like that? I think Burger King is going to think twice next time he wants to mess with the Olive.”

Emily couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Where is she now?”

“She’s in bed. Her My Twinn doll came for a sleepover tonight, so quarters are a little tight. She wanted to remind you that the American Girl store is on Fifth Avenue. And to make sure you say hi to Eloise at the Plaza Hotel.”

“Done,” Emily said, feeling a lightness in her heart that was sorely needed. “You’re the best uncle who ever lived, Tom.”

“Don’t forget the best brother,” he said. “Stay safe.”

As she hung up, she noticed that someone had left a message. Listening, she heard Mike’s voice, and she called him back.

“What now?” she said when he picked up.

“Nothing,” Bennett said. “I just wanted to let you know that there haven’t been any kidnappings in the past half hour.”

She thought of him. Their lunch, the wonderful dinner with his family. She sat staring at the utter loneliness of her room, her life. She hadn’t even thought of getting involved with anyone since her husband had abandoned ship. The more time she spent with Mike, though, the more she was starting to consider the possibility.

“Where are you now, Mike?” she discovered herself saying.

What the hell was she doing!

“I can’t hear you. One of these kids is screaming bloody murder. Hang on. There. I’m in the kitchen now. What did you say?”

Emily thought about it. She had to stop. A cop? In another city? How the hell would that work?

“Nothing,” she said. “See you in the morning, Mike.”

Chapter 34

I STOOD THERE in my kitchen, staring at my cell phone.

There had been a moment there between us, some kind of hovering opportunity, but goddammit, I’d missed it somehow.

Still, it was nice just hearing her voice. Not as nice as seeing her face, but almost. She was a good cop, good for a laugh, and good-looking. All good, in my book. I felt like we’d known each other for two years instead of three days.

My phone rang while I was still standing there, pining like one of my love-struck tweens. Back to reality, Casanova, I thought.

It was my boss, Carol Fleming.

“Mike, I just heard some City Hall flack came by the task force for a copy of all your reports. You have any idea what the deputy mayor would want with them?”

“Unfortunately,” I said, “we banged heads with Hottinger when the Dunning kid was snatched. She’s probably just trying to make trouble for me, boss. Looking for something to jam me up.”

“That anorexic bitch can pound sand,” my boss said angrily. “Internal police records are strictly confidential, and if she wants information, it’ll come from me personally. This case couldn’t be run more professionally. Don’t you worry about her or anyone else as long as I’m around. Get some sleep, Bennett.”

Wow, I thought after I hung up. A boss who had confidence in me and who was willing to stick her neck out to protect me. That was a nice switch.

But about that sleep, I thought, walking out of the kitchen and staring at the wreckage that used to be my dining room table.

There were beakers, plastic tubing, stopwatches, food dye. Enough poster board to build a light aircraft.

Yep, it was that dreaded time of year again. Holy Name’s annual science fair.

Six of my ten kids were furiously finishing their projects. Jane was testing the soil in Riverside Park. Eddie was investigating the geometry of shadows. Brian was doing something on television watching and brainpower. Or was he just watching television instead of getting his work done? I wasn’t exactly sure.

Even my five-year-old, Chrissy, had been enslaved by the science police. They had her making a stethoscope out of toilet tissue tubes. The Manhattan Project had taken less work.

I reached out as a streak of tinfoil went past my head.

“Is this ball yours, Trent?” I said, handing it back to him.

“That’s not a ball, Dad,” I was informed with a groan. “That’s Jupiter.”

After I’d gotten in from work, I’d been immediately dispatched to our local Staples for some last-minute items. I hadn’t seen that many crazed-looking adults since April 15 at the post office. Didn’t the guidelines say that the students were to put together their own experiments? Yeah, right.

Ten minutes before midnight, I tucked in the last of the Edisons and Galileos and headed for the kitchen.

With glue-speckled cheeks and Sharpie-stained fingers, Mary Catherine was busy putting on all the finishing touches.

“Hey, Mary. I bet you never thought you’d have the pleasure of immersing yourself this deeply in the joys of science. Is your mind feeling as expanded as mine?”

“I have an idea for an experiment I’d like to run by those science people,” she said as she twirled a pipe cleaner.

“How much stress can people take before their heads actually explode?”

Chapter 35

IT WAS 2:20 in the morning when Dan Hastings exited Butler, Columbia University ’s main library. Instead of heading toward the handicap ramp, the handsome blond freshman economics major smiled mischievously, zipped his iBOT wheelchair into stair mode, and rode the sucker all the way down the massive building’s Greek temple stairs.

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson, he thought as the expensive computer-balanced wheelchair bounced hard off the last step. His legs had become paralyzed in a mountain-biking accident.

He’d been on an extreme adventure trip to the Orkhon Valley in Central Mongolia with his dad. One second he was flying down a jeep track like the reincarnated Genghis Khan, and the next, his front tire got jacked between a couple of boulders.

His landing at the bottom of the ravine had pulverized his ninth, tenth, and eleventh thoracic vertebrae, but he wasn’t complaining. He still had his brain and his heart and, as a Mongolian parting bonus, the full use of his penis. With his iBOT, the so-called Ferrari of wheelchairs, he was putting the whole thing where it belonged. Behind him. He could and would continue to go anywhere he wanted.

Tonight’s late studying marathon was due to a mother of a stats test he had the next day. That, and the fact that his roomie was hosting a party for his Peace Studies group. He’d rather sleep in the stacks than hang with those tree huggers.

If truth be known, he was the biggest conservative he’d ever met. At liberal Columbia, that made him a spy, embedded deep in enemy territory.

His chair’s motor hummed as he opened it up across College Walk into Low Plaza. Usually, the area was filled with sunbathers and Hacky Sackers, but it was completely deserted now, the lit-up majestic dome of Low Library looking strangely ominous against the dark night sky.

Hadn’t the antiwar hippies taken over that beautiful building during the sixties? What a disgrace. What was even worse was that a lot of his fellow students still believed in that garbage.

Not him. He was an economics major. His original plan was to work his ass off, graduate summa, and get his ticket punched as an intern for one of the major Wall Street investment banks. But ever since Bear Stearns, Goldman, and Merrill had blown themselves up, he’d been thinking about trying to get on with a private-equity firm. He didn’t care which, just so long as it was big.

Go big or go home in a Med-Lift chopper was pretty much the Dan Hastings credo.

He popped in his iPod earbuds and scrolled himself up a little Fall Out Boy. That and My Chemical Romance were the greatest in wheelchair-cruising tunes.

He was passing Lewisohn Hall when he saw the light. A strange blue strobing coming from a doorway on its south side. Was it a cell phone? He slowed the chair and tugged out his earbuds.

“Hey, Dan. C’mere,” called a voice in a loud whisper.

What was up? Dan thought, zooming over. Was it somebody from one of his classes? College high jinks? Maybe it was a pantie raid. He was down with that. What was a pantie raid, anyway?

When he was about five feet away, Dan almost jerked out of his chair as he braked to a dead stop. A guy in a black pea coat and a ski mask stepped out of the doorway, holding a pistol.

What the fuck was this? And where the hell was Security?

He’d heard that Morningside Heights, the neighborhood around the Ivy League school, was notoriously dangerous, but he’d never heard of someone actually being mugged on campus.

“Take it,” Dan said, offering him the iPod. “There’s a hundred and fifty dollars and an American Express card in the wallet in my bag. You can have that, too, buddy.”

“Gee, aren’t you nice?” the man wearing the ski mask said as he grabbed Dan by his jacket and ripped him full out of the chair. The service door beside the man boomed as he kicked it open.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Dan cried as he was carried into the dark building.

The man hoisted him over his knee and violently wrapped his arms, legs, and mouth with masking tape.

“Shhh,” the man said, slinging him over his shoulder. “Quiet down now. No talking in class.”