The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 4

JoAnna Gartner gazed at the man who lay on the bunk on the other side of the bars. Right now he looked utterly harmless. His hands-slim fingered, almost feminine- were folded over his chest, which was rising and falling in the slow and steady rhythm of sleep. His eyelids, barely twitching with the tic that kept them constantly blinking whenever he was awake, now hid the glowing flame of rage that made JoAnna want to shrink away from him whenever his gaze fell directly on her.

Jagger.

That was his name: Jagger. He had a first name, but she, along with everyone else at Rikers Island, never used it.

Nor did they use the nickname the other prisoners had given him, back when he had been in the general population.

The Dragger.

Jagger the Dragger.

She hadn't understood it at first; when she first heard it, she assumed he must be in the habit of dragging things out. A lot of the prisoners did that-filling the long hours of their sentences with even longer tales of why they didn't belong here at all, or dragging out their chores in the kitchen, or the laundry, or the dining room, in an effort to avoid going back to their cells. But that wasn't how Jagger had gotten the nickname. He'd come by it far more legitimately.

Initially, JoAnna hadn't believed the story. She assumed it was just one of the rumors that flowed through the cell blocks every day, getting more and more outlandish with every retelling. But then she'd seen the photograph.

In the photo, a body was lying on a floor in the midst of a pool of blood that all but obliterated the worn-out carpet on which it lay. It was easy to see where all the blood had come from: the body was so badly mutilated that its gender was no longer distinguishable.

Its face was covered with makeup, put on so garishly that it looked like the work of a child.

The muscular arms of the corpse had been shoved through the sleeves of a woman's blouse-a blouse so small that the arms themselves had torn the sleeves to shreds. There was a skirt, too, partially wrapped around the corpse's waist.

"Jagger dressed him up in drag after he killed him," the person who showed JoAnna the photo explained. "Guess he wanted to pretend he was screwing a girl."

JoAnna's stomach heaved, and she dropped the photo as if merely touching it could somehow infect her with the insanity it depicted.

Right now, though, asleep in his cell, the Dragger looked perfectly harmless.

But she knew that he was not.

If he was, then Bobby Breen would still be alive. But Bobby Breen wasn't alive, because JoAnna herself had found his corpse yesterday, stuffed in a closet in the large kitchen where he and Jagger had both been working. Stripped naked, the genitals hacked away with the same jagged tin can lid that had been used to slit his throat, his cheeks and lips were stained a purplish red with grape juice, and an apron was tied around his waist as a makeshift skirt.

Jagger had not yet spoken a single word about what had been found in the closet. In fact, he hadn't said a word about anything.

"They want him downtown for evaluation," JoAnna had been told an hour ago, as her captain handed her the orders transferring Jagger from the prison to a hospital. "Don't know why they're bothering-if they want to know if he's crazy, all they have to do is ask me."

Or me, JoAnna had thought. But she hadn't said it. Instead she'd looked at the clock-it was after midnight, but nowhere near four a.m., when they usually woke up the prisoners that were being taken downtown. "Why now?"

The captain shrugged. "I figure they're just trying to make him disappear-get him out before anybody has a chance at him. Everybody liked Breen-everybody hates Jagger. So what are you gonna do?"

So now JoAnna Gartner stood in front of Jagger's cell on the second tier of the Central Punitive Unit.

"Time to go." Though her voice was low enough not to waken any of the prisoners who might be sleeping, Jagger's eyes snapped open. Sitting up, he locked his eyes on to hers, and, as always, JoAnna had to resist an overwhelming urge to step back from the burning fury that glowed inside the man.

"Stand up and turn around, back to the door, hands behind your back," she ordered.

Jagger's eyes flicked toward JoAnna's backup, Ruiz, who was standing a few yards away, silently using a video camera to capture every second of the prisoner's transfer. Saying not a word, Jagger obeyed. As he unfolded himself from the bunk, his six-foot-five-inch frame-bulked up to nearly 250 pounds of heavily tattooed muscles-loomed over JoAnna, and once again she had to resist the urge to back away from him.

Only when Jagger's hands were shackled behind him did JoAnna open the door. He started to turn around, but JoAnna reached out and grasped the chain between the manacles on his wrists, lifting his arms just enough to let him know how much it would hurt if she raised them any higher. "Let's just take this nice and slow," she told him.

With Ruiz keeping the camera trained on them, she steered Jagger out of the cell and down the steps to the main floor.

They paused at the pen just inside the entrance to the CPU while two more officers fitted Jagger with leg irons and waist chains and moved his hands to the front of his body, where they were locked to the waist chains. Then they began the slow progress toward the main entrance, waiting for each barred door to close behind them before the one in front opened.

It was twenty past midnight when they emerged from the building. A black van was already waiting, with a captain and an officer from the Emergency Services Unit ready to receive the prisoner.

Twenty minutes later the van pulled into a hospital emergency entrance. Four men in orderlies' uniforms were waiting with a gurney. Both officers got out, one glancing up and down the deserted sidewalk while the other unlocked the padlock on the back door of the van.

A minute later Jagger was out of the truck.

"Get on the gurney," one of the orderlies said.

When Jagger made no move to obey, one of the officers nudged him with the butt of the MP-5 cradled in his arms. "You heard the man."

His eyes smoldering, Jagger lay down on the gurney.

The orderlies strapped him tight.

With two of the orderlies at the front of the gurney and the other two at its rear, they moved Jagger quickly through the doors, down a hall, and into a waiting elevator.

The doors slid closed, but instead of pressing a button that would take the elevator up to the floors housing the patients, one of the orderlies slipped a key into a lock, turned it, and punched a button that sent the elevator down.

In the second subbasement, they emerged into a long hallway. The orderlies quickly pushed the gurney to the far end, through two dark rooms, and finally into a third, lit only by a single bulb hanging in a metal cage in the center of the ceiling.

At its far end was another door, covered in metal.

One of the orderlies produced a key and opened the door.

Beyond lay only darkness.