Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 4-6: Blood Brother, In the Blood, Little Girls Lost - J. Kerley A.

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by the handle, flipped it over his head, and laid everything into a horizontal yank, firing his pudding face into the wall like a cannonball.

      Thunk.

      He spun from the wall with knees collapsing, a skater going into a drunken sit-spin. When his butt hit the floor I expect he saw a half-dozen versions of me whirling above him. One or two of them might have winked.

      I put my hands in my pockets and walked away. When I turned, Bullard was limping in the other direction, heading for the restroom or the parking lot. I didn’t expect he wanted to explain what would soon be a blue-ribbon knot on his forehead.

      After my tussle with Bullard, I walked a few blocks until I came to a subway station, asked the woman in the cage what needed to be accomplished to get to Central Park. Not long afterward I was climbing into the sunlight at Lexington Avenue and 59th Street, continuing toward the oasis at the center of the city, arriving in a few minutes.

      The scent of a vendor’s cart caught my attention and I grabbed a soft pretzel, a Coke, and some spicy chicken impaled on a wooden spike. I sat on a bench beneath an oak tree and ate, trying to fathom the sense of separation in Jeremy’s files, the feeling that he had split into two entities.

      A woman of perhaps twenty-five years of age stumbled by, gums so rotten they couldn’t hold teeth, facial skin like wet fabric printed with sores – the effects of methedrine addiction. I heard frantic, overlapping sirens on the far side of the park, police vehicles racing to an emergency. I realized I was a few blocks from the Dakota apartments, John Lennon’s home until a madman shot him dead outside the front door.

      I couldn’t finish eating. I tossed the cup and skewer in the trash can, mashing its point on the sidewalk so no rifling trash-picker would spear his hand. There was a fresh-looking newspaper atop the trash, and I pulled it out, shaking off congealed French fries. When I saw it was The Watcher, I nearly jammed it back in the can but remembered the crime reports and snapped it open to local news.

      The headline grabbed my eyes.

       Slasher Kills Woman in Harlem.

      There was no shot of Waltz and me this time. Just a picture of Angela Bernal centered beneath the headline, a head-and-shoulder shot with an out-of-focus beach in the background. A breeze was trying to push her hair into her eyes and she was smiling as she held it back.

      My breath stopped. I stared at her features, heart racing. I grabbed my cell, glanced down to dial, returned my eyes to the paper. I couldn’t take them off the photo.

      This is Detective Sheldon Waltz, the recorded message said. I’m not able to take your call right now, but please leave your –

      I dialed my other NYPD contact number. It rang twice.

      “Lieutenant Folger.”

      “We’ve got a problem,” I said, feeling sick. Things had just jumped from bad to worse.

       Chapter 12

      “The victim’s not Ridgecliff’s type,” I told Folger. “It’s all wrong.”

      The full cast and crew had been assembled in a windowed briefing room with a whiteboard, a lectern, a dozen metal folding chairs. A bulletin board displayed photos of the victims, Jeremy, and a timeline. Half the chairs were taken by detectives working the case. Cargyle was multitasking in the corner, listening while repairing one of his phones. Bullard had shifted to jeans and an NYU tee, allowing him to wear a low-slung bandana over a bulge like a halved lemon. Whenever someone shot a curious glance, Bullard glowered back. Waltz watched from the doorway.

      “Not his type?” Folger said, incredulous. “You’re talking like he orders them from a goddamn dating service.”

      “The women Jeremy Ridgecliff killed were stand-ins for his mother. He thought she’d betrayed him by not stopping his sadist father. All his targets were Caucasian because his mother was Caucasian. Bernal is Hispanic. Out of his cultural pattern.”

      “Cultural pattern?” Folger rolled her eyes. “I’ll give you a pattern: The woman was re-fucking-arranged. Forensics found more hairs and fibers on the floor. The same internal organs are gone. What do you need, Ryder? Ridgecliff to leave a calling card?”

      “You’re not understanding, Lieutenant. I’m not saying Ridgecliff didn’t do it. I’m saying he’s jumped from his target profile.”

      Folger narrowed an eye. “You’re saying he started out killing Mommy, but they’re all Mommy now? Every woman out there might be setting the bastard off?”

      “It’s possible,” I said.

      “Jesus.”

      Leaving Folger shaking her head, I walked to the window, put my hands on the sill, and looked skyward into a sprawling advance of nimbus clouds, their purple underbellies gravid with rain. The room was silent at my back, everyone digesting the news that our suspect was potentially at war with every woman in New York City.

      The quiet was broken by Bullard’s voice, loud and demanding attention.

      “Everyone seems to have forgotten that Ridgecliff’s first vic, Prowse, made a recording saying ‘call Ryder’ if she was found dead. Am I the only one that thinks that’s real curious?”

      Folger said, “How so, Detective Bullard?”

      “Prowse was under Ridgecliff’s total control, right? Who doesn’t believe that? Show of hands.”

      No hands went up. Bullard continued.

      “I saw the reports from the nut basket, the Institute or whatever. Ridgecliff’s a whack job, but he’s probably the Einstein of whack jobs.”

      “Your point, Detective?” Folger said.

      “In the video recording, Prowse looks scared. What if Prowse didn’t make the recording on her own? What if Ridgecliff was behind the camera flashing one of those knives he loves?”

      “It’s a possibility,” Folger nodded. “Maybe a big one. And?”

      “Then it wasn’t Prowse that wanted Ryder here. Ridgecliff did.”

      I felt the sudden weight of every eye in the room. Bullard’s point was a damn good one, and I realized he might be a jerk, but he wasn’t a dim bulb.

      “Reflections on that idea, Ryder?” Folger asked, arms crossed. “That it’s Ridgecliff who wants you here?”

      “A good theory,” I said, nodding to Bullard, credit where credit’s due. “But if Ridgecliff’s so smart, why would he want me in New York? I was the one who ID’d him, after all.”

      “He sent the blind guy to you,” Bullard said. “Why?”

      “Once he saw the picture in the Watcher and knew I was here, he had to make contact. It was pure hubris.”

      “Pure whatsis?”

      “Pride,” Waltz interrupted. “Sociopaths are ego machines, part of their delusion being they’re smarter than everyone else.” He paused. “Ridgecliff has some actual claim there.”

      “He was pissing on my shoes,” I explained. “Rubbing my face in the fact that he knows I’m here and he thinks there’s nothing I can do.”

      But Jeremy always had a subtext. Was it my brother’s way of saying good-bye, a last fond knock on the kid’s head before he slipped into the persona that was consuming him? What, exactly, had my brother tried to convey through Parks’s message?

      “We might also consider the opposite,” Waltz said. “Let’s say Ridgecliff believes you’re the only one outside of Dr Prowse who knows how he thinks. Maybe he does want you here. He can’t do a thing if you’re in Mobile.”

      I

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