She gave the open door a sidelong glance.
“Maybe I just did.”
He understood her. His eyes went narrow as he studied her up and down.
“You’re saying there’s a connection. How’d you end up here, exactly?”
“Can’t tell you that,” she said.
“Confidential source?”
More like I don’t want to get arrested for stealing phone-company data, she thought, but sure, that’ll do.
“Nothing that would help you,” she lied.
“What might? The more useful you are right now, the happier I’ll be. And you want me happy.”
“I just gave you something. Check the victims’ prints. See if one matches the wineglass at Wendt’s place.”
“No need,” Jordan said. “We’ve already IDed the two vics, and trust me, neither one of ’em was anywhere near Fifth Avenue last night.”
“Who were they?”
He folded his arms and turned into a human wall. She put a hand on her hip, throwing his attitude right back at him.
“Come on,” she said. “I scratched your back, and mine’s still itchy.”
“Lowlife street dealer, goes by the name ‘Ducky.’ The other one’s a burnout named DeeAnne Miller, rap sheet long as your arm, all petty stuff. The perp walked in and shot both of them.”
“Robbery?” Nell asked.
Jordan looked sour, like he’d swallowed something and didn’t like the taste.
“There’s a safe in the bedroom, locked tight and untouched. Techs just got it open and they found a small pharmacy inside. Riddle me this: who murders a drug dealer and doesn’t even try to steal his stash?”
Someone who came here looking for a murder witness and the precious cargo she carried with her. Nell’s doubts were evaporating faster than the steam from her morning coffee. The killer had followed the mystery woman’s trail, just like Nell but a step ahead all the way, and now he was on a rampage.
“Only one thing stranger than that,” Jordan said.
“Try me,” Nell said.
“Body by the front door,” he told her. “Body against the kitchen cabinets. Blood in the bedroom.”
Fresh apprehension twisted Nell’s guts into a knot. Had he found her hiding there? Dragged her out and taken her with him as a hostage?
“How much blood?”
“In nonscientific terms?” Jordan asked. “About a bucket and a half, splashed all over the carpet, the walls, the bedspread—it’s a real horror show in there. Techs say there’s no way the blood donor is still breathing.”
“There were three victims,” Nell said.
“Three victims, and this psycho didn’t just kill ’em.” Jordan looked to the open doorway. “He stole a dead body.”
* * *
Seelie needed to get off the street. She didn’t think her father’s thugs would come after her again, not that fast and not that openly, but she’d be safer behind closed doors. She found a corner bodega and drifted along the cramped aisles, watching the sidewalk outside the window for any signs of the Pontiac prowling past.
Her stomach was grumbling itself into a clenched fist now, and she felt shaky on her feet. She made her way to the back of the store and poured herself a tall cardboard cup of coffee. The aroma of the dark roast, rich and black, lingered when she set the pot back down on its warming pad. Street survival trick: coffee didn’t just keep you alert and functioning after a night with no sleep, it was a cheap appetite suppressant. Two packets of sugar rained down, spreading out across the dark liquid, a grainy constellation of dying stars.
She paid for the coffee and lingered; she was in no hurry to go back to wandering, and she didn’t know where to go. Besides, the bodega cat—a fat orange-and-black tabby with one crooked ear—was glaring imperiously from the top of the deli case and demanding her attention. The cat rewarded her with a rumbling purr as she stroked his ragged fur. A grainy television was on, propped on mounting brackets in the corner, and a talking head was reading off the local news.
“—embattled Columbia University professor Joshua Ramis broke his silence on Tuesday for the first time since his alleged discovery of a treasure trove of historical documents. Forgeries, some are saying, which were concocted to promote his upcoming book.”
Seelie watched, sipping her coffee, as the camera cut to a prerecorded interview. The man’s hair had migrated south with age, leaving him with a bald egg and woolly-white muttonchops. The patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket felt as obligatory as the book propped up at his side, a thick hardcover with a stern founding father on the cover and the title Washington: A Time of Valor.
Seelie was good at reading people, though, and his body language told a more complicated story than the professorial front. He was uncomfortable, eyes and hips shifting in his tall-backed leather chair, but the camera had him pinned like a bug.
“I was in Westchester County last year,” he said, “researching the Yorktown Campaign of 1781. Washington had established an encampment in the village of Dobbs Ferry, waiting for French troops to arrive and reinforce his planned march south to Virginia. He had appointed Alexander Hamilton as his aide-de-camp in March of 1777, but they suffered a falling-out in February of ’81 and parted ways for several months.”
“But they corresponded?” asked an off-screen voice, prompting him onward. His lips pursed.
“When he set up camp, Washington sourced furniture—some chairs, a writing desk, and so on—from a local artisan named Amos Ligget. That was standard procedure. He had learned early in his military career that traveling light made for an easier trip. And, also per his usual routine, it was all left behind when he departed for Yorktown. I tracked down a descendant of Mr. Ligget’s and discovered that they’d kept that desk as a family heirloom all these years. I asked if I could see it, out of pure curiosity.” The professor gave a self-depreciating chuckle. “I mostly wanted to take a photo with it. It was in pristine condition, a museum piece, really.”
“And then?” the interviewer asked.
A shadow passed over the professor’s face, like a rolling storm cloud.
“I noticed something…unusual about the construction of the desk. A thickness in the back panel that didn’t line up with the expected depth.”
Seelie was only half listening now, distracted by a new idea. What she remembered about the American Revolution mostly came from her interrupted high-school education, but she knew somebody who was crazy about it. Arthur. She thought back to his man cave, the dioramas of battling redcoats and patriots, the puffs of wispy cotton smoke. And the flag on the wall, concealing his treasure. She took his phone from her backpack and fired up the messaging app.
S-o-n-s-o-f-L-i-b-e-r-t-y painted the screen with a red X. So did 1776 and 1777. She took her own phone out and set them side by side on the deli case. The bent-eared cat stared at her, idly curious, as she pulled up a wiki article and started plugging in names, places, anything associated with Arthur’s heroes.
Paul Revere? No. John Adams? No. Seelie chewed her bottom lip. It wasn’t a bad lead, but there were too many names, too many possibilities. Thinking about the flag on Arthur’s wall, the one positioned to conceal his secret cubbyhole, she checked to see if anyone knew who designed it. In 1767, the article read, the Sons’ flag, dubbed the ‘Rebellious Stripes,’ was officially adopted—