CHAPTER 10
THE INVESTIGATION HAD gotten so big so fast that while we were with Jamie, we needed somebody to keep tabs on the dozens of detectives who had been interviewing the guests, the wedding party, the TV production people, and the catering crew.
And there’s no one we trust more than Detective Danny Corcoran. We’d recruited him a few months ago, and he quickly became our go-to guy. Give Danny an assignment, and he gets it done, no handholding, no excuses. And the fact that he’s also a trained hostage negotiator would be a bonus for this case.
He was waiting for us upstairs.
“Boil it down for us, Danny,” I said. “What have you got?”
“Not much. I’ve never seen so many self-involved people packed into one ballroom. None of them saw anything of any value, but that didn’t stop them from offering up theories—especially the actors who play cops on TV. We took names, addresses, and phone numbers, and let them go. The waiters, bartenders, and the rest of the staff were also no help. The inner circle—bridesmaids, groomsmen, best man—were as shocked as everyone else. They all swear that this marriage was the real deal. Jamie loved her; she loved Jamie. And of course they mentioned that the groom’s mother hates Erin, but by now I’m guessing you know that.”
“Thanks. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Don’t be obvious about it, but take a look at that woman on the other side of the yellow tape. The one in the black pants and gray jacket, breathing fire.”
I glanced over. The woman was staring straight at us, hands on hips. “Who is she?” I asked.
“Her name’s Anna Brockway. Her husband’s the network guy. She doesn’t like the way the investigation is being handled.”
“What did you tell her?”
“She wouldn’t talk to me. I’m not high enough on the food chain. She said she wants to talk to ‘that blond bitch in the blue dress.’ ”
Kylie smiled. She’d been called worse. “That would be me. What’s her beef?”
“She’s pissed because you told her husband that this whole kidnapping business was a big publicity stunt.”
“I never said that. Ask Zach.”
Danny turned to me.
“Technically, she never said it. But if I had to testify in court I’d say she implied it with extreme prejudice.”
“Hey, tell me you didn’t think of it,” Kylie said.
“Of course I thought of it. But you red-flagged it. You asked Brockway if the whole thing was scripted because you caught him harassing a cop and you wanted to get all up in his grille.”
Kylie shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Oh, it worked great. We’ve been on the case less than two hours, and you’ve managed to get a network executive’s wife complaining about how we’re handling it.”
“I’d love to stick around and do couples therapy with you,” Danny said, “but I’ve got work to do in the ballroom.” He gestured toward Mrs. Brockway. “Can I release the hounds?”
“Do it,” Kylie said.
He walked down the hall and lifted the tape, and a short, trim woman in her midforties strode toward us.
“How dare you?” she boomed while she was still twenty feet away.
“Ma’am, there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding,” Kylie said. It was about as close as she was going to get to the words I’m sorry.
“You bet there’s been a misunderstanding,” the woman said. “Starting with the fact that you don’t even know who I am.”
“Yes, I do. When I spoke to your husband—”
“You can stop right there. Forget that my last name is Brockway. I’ve been Erin Easton’s manager and publicist for fourteen years. I’m married to the head of programming at ZTV, but that’s none of your concern. Erin is my client. I came up with the idea for the Everything Erin show, I sold it to the network, and I’m one of the executive producers. So if you’re telling people that this horrific kidnapping is scripted, you’re accusing me of a crime.”
“Not accusing. Investigating. It’s my job. And when a high-profile celebrity who is a master at manipulating the media suddenly goes missing, my instincts go on point and I have to ask: Is this another one of her Hollywood publicity stunts?”
“The wedding is the publicity stunt, you moron! Erin is famous. She earns millions. Do you think I would be stupid enough to fake a kidnapping so she could be more famous and make more money? I know your name, Detective, and if you don’t treat this as the crime it is, I’ll call the police commissioner and have him assign someone who will.”
“And I know your name,” Kylie said, “so if it turns out that this is a hoax, I’ll know who to come looking for.”
“Bitch,” Brockway said and stormed off.
“I’m not keeping score,” I said, “but if I were, I would say that right now it’s Mrs. Brockway, one; Detective MacDonald, zero.”
“She called me a bitch and a moron,” Kylie said. “Believe me, Zach, it’s far from over. I’m going to—” Her phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. “It’s Cates.” She took the call. “Yes, Captain.” She listened for a solid twenty seconds, and I watched as her face morphed from pissed to positive. “Let’s go,” she said as soon as she hung up. “We caught a break. They found the box truck.”
CHAPTER 11
WE CALLED MCMASTER, met him in the lobby, and the three of us got in Kylie’s car.
“Cates got a call from the Manhattan North duty captain,” she said, pulling out and heading east on Thirty-Fourth. “Patrol spotted a white box truck with Asian lettering on the door. It’s sitting in the Fairway parking lot at a Hundred and Thirty-Second Street and Twelfth Avenue.”
“If we’re going to Twelfth Avenue,” McMaster said, “why are you headed east?”
“I’m stopping at the precinct to change. This dress is way too low-cut for me to be taken seriously as a crime fighter. When I was interviewing Jamie Gibbs, he barely looked me in the eye. Anyway, patrol found the truck, they ran the plate, and it came back to a VW Jetta registered to an address in Pelham Bay in the Bronx.”
“Son of a bitch stole the plates,” McMaster said like he was teaching a criminology class to a bunch of rookies at the academy. Like Kylie, he was a micromanager, and I wondered how often they’d butted heads when they worked together.
“Right, sir,” Kylie said, a touch of annoyance in her tone. “The plates were stolen, so they ran the VIN on the truck, and it came back to a Korean food-distribution company that had left it parked out at Hunts Point. A detective called them. It’s Sunday, so they didn’t even know it was missing.”
“Damn,” McMaster said, “this guy covers all the bases.”
“License-plate readers got multiple hits on the truck traveling from Hunts Point to Manhattan,” Kylie said. “He went off the grid about four thirty and resurfaced about two and a half hours later on Tenth Avenue a few blocks from the Manhattan Center. Then they tracked him up the West Side Highway to Harlem. Cates wants Chuck Dryden to cover both scenes, so he’s on his way up there to check out the truck, and she’s pulled in a dozen cops to canvass the neighborhood for witnesses.”