CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

He hadn’t been dead very long. Twelve hours, give or take, probably. Looked like most of his blood was pooled around him on the floor. No point in checking for a pulse.

Brewer said, “This was Simon Peck. The co-op board president. Bishop said Peck met with the mystery man who arrived today. He also said Peck hadn’t been answering his phone since then.”

“Have you called this in to your homicide desk?” Gaspar asked.

“Not yet. I’m having trouble coming up with a plausible reason for being here,” Brewer said.

Gaspar smirked. “Yeah, that seems like a problem for you.”

Brewer frowned. “Thought you might help me out with a solution.”

“Which is why you brought us here,” Gaspar replied. “You’re starting to piss me off, Brewer.”

“We can argue about this later.” Otto held up a gloved hand. She looked at Brewer. “This is where the money was found after the foreclosure, you said. How much money are we talking about?”

“I never saw the money. And everyone involved tried to hush the situation up as soon as the money was found.” Brewer cleared his throat. “But I heard it was something around the neighborhood of nine million dollars.”

Gaspar whistled. “Nice neighborhood.”

“Who’d you hear that from? Pauling?” Otto asked.

Brewer leaned his head toward the body. “Peck, here, told me.”

Gaspar’s eyebrows arched higher than usual. “That’s a lot of bulk cash to have lying around. Most people would put it in a bank. This guy some kind of wacky survivalist or something?”

Brewer said, “Or something.”

Gaspar nodded. “And it would take time to move all of that paper. What happened to it?”

Brewer shook his head. “I really don’t know. But I think Pauling does.”

Otto squatted down near the body, careful to avoid the congealing blood. A knife, presumably the murder weapon, lay open and partially covered by the darkening goop. “This is a Strider SMF. Marines Special Ops weapon. Created for their Detachment One unit.”

“Not the kind of thing an ordinary street punk would be swinging around at more than seven hundred dollars to buy,” Gaspar said.

“So it’s a military guy? A Marine?” Brewer asked.

“Maybe,” Gaspar replied.

“Looks like most of the blood came from the deep cut across his throat. But he’s got several more superficial cuts around his face and hands,” Otto said. “The killer must have been trying to get some information from the guy or something. Otherwise, he’d have killed him immediately without bothering to carve him up first.”

“Hang on. The doorman gave me a cell phone number for Peck this afternoon.” Gaspar pulled Peck’s business card from his pocket and dialed the number.

It rang several times, and Peck’s voice mail picked up. But they heard no ringing from Peck’s pockets or inside the vault. Gaspar disconnected.

“The killer took Peck’s phone,” Brewer said. “We can ping it. Find him that way.”

“Unless he destroyed the phone and disposed of it already. Which is what he probably did,” Otto said. She pushed up off the floor. “I don’t see any obvious prints on that knife. Killer probably wore gloves.”

“I guess we’d better find Pauling before the guy who killed Peck finds her first,” Otto said. “Do you have her address in Palm Beach?”

Brewer shook his head again. “Wish I did.”

Gaspar said, “You’re not a lot of help, Brewer.”

“I realize that. But there’s nothing I can do about it.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “I’ve got to make the call to start getting this homicide processed. NYPD will get on this mystery visitor. Maybe he’s still in the city.”

“Chances of that are pretty slim,” Gaspar said.

Brewer nodded. “You could get your FBI whiz kids to find Pauling by pinging her phone.”

“Yeah. We can do that,” Otto said. “We’ll find her. You find the killer.”

Brewer hovered his thumb over the touch screen on his phone.

Before he made the call, Otto said, “And I want to know what happened to bring out the cavalry at our hotel tonight. What do you know about that?”

“Nothing. What I heard on my radio on my way over was that some civilian had called in a potential suicide bomber. You might be able to pick up more on the news by now.” He made the call and put the phone to his ear to report the homicide. “Keep in touch.”

“Yeah, you, too,” Gaspar replied on the way out.

Otto’s phone vibrated in her pocket.