We drove back to the precinct, where I showered, shaved, and grabbed a change of clothes from my locker. By the time I got to my desk, Kylie had already cleaned up and was checking her email.
“We got a gratitude note from Mayor Sykes.” She tapped her computer screen. “Take a look.”
My mind was too preoccupied with Cheryl for me to care about reading an attaboy from the mayor. “How about you just give me the executive summary?”
“Sure,” she said, swiveling her chair away from the screen. “‘Blah, blah, blah, Jordan and MacDonald, quick thinking. Blah, blah, blah, Jordan and MacDonald, excellence and valor.’ Plus four more paragraphs of ‘Blah, blah, blah.’ Bottom line: we are the flavor of the month.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse.”
“That’s the beauty of politics, Zach. It’s both—all wrapped up in a digital love letter, with copies to Cates, the chief of d’s, and the PC himself.” She stood up. “We should get out of here. Our backup team is waiting for us at the diner.”
“I’ll meet you there,” I said. “Give me five minutes to stop on the second floor and say hello to the department psychologist.”
She looked at her watch. “Five minutes? Really?”
“Maybe ten. I might think of something else to say besides hello.”
I took the stairs down to Cheryl’s office. She was at her desk, reading, dark brown eyes fixed on the thick binder in front of her, wavy jet-black hair framing her face and resting on her shoulders. I stood in the open doorway and thought, God, she’s gorgeous.
Or maybe I said it out loud, because she raised her head, sang out my name, came around to the other side of the desk, pulled me into the room, closed the door, grabbed me in her arms, and gave me a long, slow, lingering kiss. She looked, smelled, felt, and tasted like heaven.
“You’re alive,” she said.
“And becoming more alive by the second,” I said, as she dug her hips into mine. I backed off reluctantly. “Let’s not start anything we can’t consummate. I’ve got two fresh homicides to work. Can we pick this back up again at dinner?”
“Oh, we will,” she said, letting me go. “But fair warning: I know you didn’t get any sleep last night. Don’t expect to get much tonight, either.”
She kissed me again, and I left the room happy and horny. I double-timed it around the corner to Gerri’s Diner and found Kylie at a booth in the rear with our backup team.
Danny Corcoran is second-generation NYPD who did his twenty and is two years into his next five. As usual, he was well-dressed, sporting a gray off-the-rack suit from one of the city’s better racks. Hair-challenged, he topped off the look with a gray newsboy cap.
Always on the wrong side of the body fat index, his round Irish face lit up when he saw me, and he tore himself away from a stack of pancakes with a side of sausage to give me a fierce bear hug.
“Still on that health kick?” I said, pointing to his lumberjack breakfast, and Danny responded by not so subtly scratching the tip of his nose with his middle finger. Then he introduced me to Tommy Fischer, who, like all of Danny’s partners over the years, was the quiet type.
“Foreplay is over,” Kylie said. “Cut to the chase, boys.”
“We hit the garage at about three a.m. and found her car,” Danny said. “The attendant who punched her in was long gone, so we got his home address and paid him a visit.”
“Did he remember her?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. She greased him twenty bucks to keep her car up top in one of those golden spots reserved for good tippers. She said she’d be back soon, but of course she never showed.”
“Had he seen her before?”
“She wasn’t a regular, but she’d park there from time to time. Mostly overnight. A few times he remembers her driving in with some yobbo half her age. He called him ‘a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.’”
“Sounds like the boy we like for the murder,” I said. “Name is Janek Hoffmann. He’s her cameraman. Where’s the car now?”
“Impounded. The lab guys are dusting and probing.”
“How about her apartment?” Kylie asked.
“It’s like the Barbie Dreamhouse for the terminally oversexed.” He handed Kylie his cell phone. “Scroll through some of the highlights.”
Corcoran had taken pictures of a closetful of sex paraphernalia that for most people would be taboo, but for Aubrey Davenport was the norm. I looked over Kylie’s shoulder as she flipped through the pictures in a hurry. By now we knew enough about Aubrey’s world not to be surprised.
“Drugs?” Kylie asked.
Fischer flipped open a notepad. “Ecstasy, coke, poppers, weed, plus scripts for Paxil and Zoloft,” he said. “The prescribing doc’s name is Morris Langford. Here’s his number.” He tore off a page and handed it to me.
“We’re looking for her video cameras and her computer,” I said. “You find any in her apartment?”
“Nothing.”
“How about her office?”
“It was closed, so we left a pair of uniforms in front of the door,” Corcoran said. “They called a few minutes ago. Her assistant just opened up. His name is Troy Marschand. They’re holding him. You want us to talk to him?”
“We’ll take it,” I said. “I’d rather you go back to the parking lot attendant and show him a photo lineup of six young Arnold Schwarzeneggers. One of them should be Janek Hoffmann. You can dig out five more from the files.”
Danny stuck his fork back into the stack of hotcakes and grinned. “I only need four more,” he said. “The fifth one can be a selfie.”