Sloane Michaels owned a beachfront house in Southampton, New York, a ski chalet in Aspen, Colorado, and a winter retreat in West Palm Beach, Florida. Georgia took the precautions of alerting authorities in all three locations. But in her bones, she sensed Michaels was still in New York. He’d never leave Amelia.
“Still, he hasn’t shown up at the hospital or his office at Knickerbocker Plaza,” Carter reminded her. “He’s probably got some rich friend who’s hiding him until he can find a good lawyer.”
“I don’t think so,” Georgia argued. “I know Michaels a little. I don’t sense that any of those rich people he hangs out with are his friends. And I think he’d be afraid that his drug-dealing clients would rather shoot him than save him.”
“So, where do you think a man worth eight hundred million might escape to?”
My freedom…my escape…
“A place no one who doesn’t know him would think to look.”
The Knickerbocker Plaza’s night manager was all of twenty-six, yet he possessed the haughtiness of a dowager. He regarded Georgia’s bruised face and black leather jacket sourly as she and Carter flashed him their shields and asked to be let into Sloane Michaels’s office.
“I’ve already accommodated the NYPD.” He sniffed. “I can’t have people traipsing willy-nilly through his office without a search warrant.”
“It’s not the office I’m interested in,” Georgia shot back.
The manager went to open his mouth, but Carter put a hand on his jacket sleeve. “Son, I think it’s best if you just let us in.” The “son” was deliberate, Georgia knew. The manager might take an attitude with a disheveled white woman from Queens, but he would be reluctant to give offense to a black man in a suit who was old enough to be his father.
“Don’t touch anything,” the manager warned, wagging a finger at them as he led them up the mezzanine stairs. With an electronic key card, he unlocked the suite’s door. The reception area’s carpet had the thick, brushy look of a recent vacuuming, and the Queen Anne chairs smelled of lemon oil from a fresh waxing. Georgia and Carter each put on a pair of latex gloves and followed the wainscoted walls to the elevator. Georgia pushed the down button.
“Where’s this lead?” asked Carter.
“To Michaels’s private garage.”
Carter grinned. “He show you his etchings down there or something?”
Georgia made a face. “Every firefighter’s got a one-track mind.”
A smoldering smell, like rubber tires, greeted them as the elevator doors opened. Georgia sniffed at her clothes and noticed Carter doing the same. They had been in a lot of smoke at the car fire. It wouldn’t be the first time they came away smelling like pork chops. But then Georgia noticed the night manager wrinkling his nose as well.
In the middle of the lounge, a beige linen couch sat across from a television. Something brown had dripped along the couch’s armrest. Carter scratched at the stain through the sheer covering of his latex gloves.
“Blood,” he said, a puzzled look on his face. He turned the seat cushion over. On the other side, all that was left of the fabric was a jagged edge of brittle black cloth along the perimeter. The cushion had been burned.
Georgia walked into the garage and fumbled around for a light switch.
“Do me a favor, Randy? Find the light for this room, will you?”
“Affirmative,” he said. “I think it’s back here, in the lounge.”
Georgia pulled her flashlight off her duty holster now and shone it across Michaels’s tool bench and equipment, trying to locate his bikes. He had four of them, she recalled. A Ducati racer, a vintage Vincent Blackshadow, an Italian Bimoto, and the monster Harley-Davidson Ultra Classic. If one was missing, Georgia would be able to call in the description to police and track Michaels down.
Her heart sank as she counted all four sets of chrome. She went to lower her flashlight when a metallic red motorcycle helmet caught her eye. It was resting on the cement of the garage floor, just behind the rear wheel of the Ultra Classic.
Georgia took a step forward, noticing for the first time that there was something inside the helmet, something dark but glistening. She shined her beam on it and stepped closer. The burning smell intensified. She recognized it now. Not just a burning smell—a human burning smell. Like rotten meat. Her stomach roiled. A buzz reverberated overhead as the fluorescent lights kicked on. Georgia looked up while they flickered to life, then, with the full force of their wattage on the room, she looked back at the helmet.
The face inside was hideous. The skin was blackened and swollen, the nose and lips burned away. The eyes were just slits of brown-red blood. But what really scared her was what she found as she stepped closer to get a full glimpse of the rest of the body. It wasn’t burned—at least not like the face. The horror was more personal than that.
The victim was wearing Georgia’s sweatshirt.
It was the navy blue one, with an FDNY insignia on the left shoulder and the number of her old engine company stitched on the right front pocket. Her sweatshirt—from the laundry bag in her car. People were dying hideous deaths in her clothes.
Carter came up behind her now and got a good look at the body. “Holy mackerel,” he said slowly, drawing out each syllable. “You think this guy is Michaels?”
Georgia nodded as if in a trance. “Finney did this to him.”
“Finney’s dead, girl.”
“No, he’s not. The sweatshirt? It’s mine. Finney stole my laundry that night he attacked me in my car. He’s the only one who could’ve put it here. It’s a terrible, terrible joke, Randy—don’t you see? A joke on me.”
Carter put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “Why don’t you get some air?” he said gently, helping her to the door of the lounge. “I’ll call Suarez, tell him we’ve got another body, and see what he’s coming up with.”
Georgia sat on the steps by the front entrance of the Knickerbocker Plaza, across from Central Park, breathing in the midnight air as if it had the power to wash thoughts from her head. Above the dense, dark thickets of trees in the park, the sky seemed nearly colorless, the streetlights having sucked up the darkness the way a child sucks the flavoring from a snow cone. Georgia rubbed her neck, feeling tired and distracted. A headache throbbed at the base of her skull. She thought suddenly of Richie. It seemed like years since she’d seen him, rather than just hours. She felt heartsore with longing.
A couple of police cruisers screeched to a halt at the curb, along with a van from the medical examiner’s office. Georgia turned to see Carter racing toward them, out of breath. He briefed the cops and the ME’s assistant, then shot Georgia a panicked look.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I just spoke to Suarez,” he sputtered, trying to catch his breath. “Marenko’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“The search warrant for Finney’s apartment? It came through.”
“Now?” Georgia asked, alarmed.
“Brennan convinced the judge it was an emergency, what with Finney on the loose. When Mac called Brennan for an update on the case, the chief asked him to start the search himself.”
“But Michaels has that place rigged to blow—”
“I know,” said Carter. “I just told Suarez and Chief Brennan. They called Mac’s brother’s place, but he’d already gone. Our frequency doesn’t work on Long Island. Dispatch is gonna keep trying to reach him, but nobody can say for sure if he’ll pick up.”
“But surely the police have Finney’s place under surveillance in case he shows up—”
“The patrol car had another emergency. They’re dispatching a backup, but it may come too late to stop Mac from going inside.”
Georgia rubbed the ache between her shoulders. A series of blunders and bad luck. That’s how stuff happens. It’s never just one thing. One thing, you can work around.
“How fast can we get to Finney’s place?”
Carter jingled his car keys. “We’ll find out.”