NYPD Red

Chapter 63

Delia Cates is not the kind of cop who shows up at a crime scene just because the mayor is there. She’s smart enough to give her team enough time to pull together some information. When she got there, twenty minutes after the mayor left, we had plenty. Some of it downright scary.

“Give me what you’ve got,” she said.

“The shooter was Benoit’s girlfriend, Alexis Carter, a.k.a. Lexi. Her cell phone is a treasure trove. Nothing is password-protected,” I said. “From what we can put together from the texts between her and Benoit, she knew what he was up to, but she didn’t go with him when he killed Roth, Stewart, or Schuck.”

“She definitely made up for it this time around.”

“All of it behind her boyfriend’s back. Benoit had no idea she was going to pull this. In his last few messages he was looking for her frantically. And you were right. They’re plotting out a movie. We found the script for this scene in her purse. It had two endings.”

“One where she gets away, and one where she dies tragically?” Cates said.

“No. One where she gets away, and one where she gets caught by NYPD Red, and she stands up to us, protecting her man.”

“With Tammy Wynette on the sound track?” Cates said.

“She even uses my name and Zach’s in the script,” Kylie said, unfolding one of the pages we found in Lexi’s purse. “Her character is called Pandemonia Passionata. I’ll give you some of the dialogue.”

DETECTIVE JORDAN

Where is your partner? What does he have planned?

PANDEMONIA

Save your breath, pretty boy. You’ll get nothing out of me.

DETECTIVE MACDONALD

You have no idea how much trouble you’re in.

PANDEMONIA

And you have no idea how much trouble you’re in.

“That’s the way she saw this going down?” Cates said. “We either catch her, or she gets away? Did she ever write the ending the way it happened?”

Kylie shook her head. “No. She was blissfully delusional to the very end.”

“We need the rest of the script,” Cates said. “Do you have any idea where it is?”

“It may be in her computer, but she has an out-of-state license and all her last known addresses in New York are dead ends,” I said. “But we do have something. Remember Cheryl Robinson predicted that Benoit is about to do something big-much bigger than the previous murders? Listen to this.”

I pushed the message retrieval button on Lexi’s cell phone.

“Lexi, it’s me. Things are turning to shit. I’m outside Mickey’s building, and the cops showed up. I’m pretty sure they’re going to pick up Mickey. I got forty-five thousand dollars’ worth of C4 in my bag, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop them. That’s all. Oh yeah, one more thing. Where the fuck are you?”

“Forty-five thousand?” Cates said. “That’s a lot of C4.”

“It’s enough to call in Homeland and anybody else we need to help us track him down,” I said.

“I don’t want to track him. I want to be three steps ahead of him.”

“Zach and I have a list of all the events happening connected to Hollywood on the Hudson. But they’re spread all over town-hotels, theaters, restaurants, private parties. I don’t think we can find enough bomb-sniffing dogs to handle it all.”

“Can Benoit do this on his own?” Cates said. “It’s one thing to rig a Molotov cocktail, but that’s a lot of plastic for him to be handling without his resident bomb guy. We’ve got Peltz in custody. We can hold him for seventy-two hours.”

“That might slow him down, but I don’t know if it will stop him,” I said. “Benoit is smart. He had to figure we’d be paying a visit to a bomb expert who just got out of prison. That’s why he didn’t leave the explosives at Peltz’s place. More likely he used Peltz to score the fireworks and give him a short course in how to use them. C4 is not all that complicated.”

“Well, if Peltz taught Benoit how to use that plastic, then Peltz would have to know what the targets are,” Cates said. “Get back to the station as soon as you can wrap it up here and put the fear of God into Mr. Peltz.”

“Are we still waiting for his PO to show up?” Kylie asked.

“That’s the rule, isn’t it?” Cates said. “Don’t question the parolee without his parole officer present.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kylie said. “That’s the rule.”

“And you of all people ought to know, Detective MacDonald…some rules are meant to be broken.”