CHAPTER THREE
The helicopter blades made a noise that sounded like the end of the world.
Kate pressed her headset tighter over her ears, though it barely made a difference. Across from her, Marcus was about to fall asleep. He had that maddening ability to nap anywhere — plane, train, or an aircraft vibrating itself to pieces in midair.
The lights of Manhattan spread out beneath them, molten and infinite. Kate had seen it a hundred times before, but never like this — midnight mist rising off the East River, skyscrapers piercing through like the spines of some prehistoric animal.
Victoria Winters’s call had come at seven that evening, just as Kate was leaving her mother’s house in Portland. No preamble, no small talk. Winters never wasted words, and when she said now, she meant drop everything.
The helicopter tilted, and her stomach did the same. The pilot’s voice crackled in her ear.
"Landing at East 34th. Car waiting. You've got fifteen minutes to the scene."
Kate glanced at Marcus. He raised his eyebrows. “Fifteen minutes. Long enough for coffee?”
“Not unless you drink it through an IV. Want a tic-tac?” She rattled the box.
“Why’ve you started guzzling them again?”
“I’m trying to wean myself off chocolate,” she replied, crunching one and popping another into her palm.
“Good luck with that. What were you doing when the bat-phone rang?”
“Just leaving my mom’s. You?”
Marcus made a face. Somewhere between a grin and a leer. “Role-play.”
“Euw. TMI, Marcus.”
“You asked.”
They touched down in a roar of noise and wind. The car was already idling at the edge of the helipad, a black SUV with government plates. Inside, a young uniformed officer handed Kate a folder.
“Detective Torres asked me to give you this, ma’am.”
Kate flipped it open: crime scene photos from the 37th floor of Stemberg not so much a killing as a slaughter.
But there were symbolic elements too. A shorter, slimmer wound to the right side.
And his hands were nailed flat to the desk surface, a dark pool spreading across the tooled leather top and dripping to the carpeted floor below.
Between his wrists, carved deep into the desk itself, were the same delicate shapes she knew all too well. Hebrew.
She sighed. She was right, though it gave her no satisfaction. Surely it meant Cox was alive. Alive and, presumably, whispering poison into the ear of some new acolyte.
Marcus leaned in. “So Cox didn’t die after the escape from prison.”
It had been an audacious operation, and a demonstration of the kind of network Cox had to have.
He’d arranged his own stabbing in prison, then given himself sepsis in order to get shipped to hospital.
En route, the ambulance was targeted by a team of his henchmen, and despite Kate’s best efforts, Cox had limped away into the wilderness.
“I’m guessing not. I mean, he could have died, but left instructions for his followers, I guess, but…
I don’t know. Don’t tell me I’m crazy, Marcus, but all the while he’s been gone, I’ve just felt that he’s still alive.
I know it. I can’t explain it. I don’t want to say I’ve got a connection to him, but… .”
“You’ve got that connection because you’re a good agent,” Marcus said, looking at her sternly. “And don’t forget it.”
She gave him a half-smile of gratitude, then returned to the photographs in the folder.
“The verse is Exodus chapter 20, verses eight to eleven. Zakor et yom hash-shabbat l’kadesho. Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. The verse is Old Testament. The wound to the side and the crucifixion recall the death of Jesus.”
“What about the neck?”
“I don’t know. Elijah Cox likes to see all his deeds as a kind of new covenant, the next phase of God’s revelation.
But other self-styled prophets have had similar ideas.
And the jugular’s also a very practical choice – Brennan would have been incapacitated by blood loss within a few seconds, making it much easier to nail him to the desk. ”
Conversations like that came with their own obligatory silence, and they didn’t speak again until they reached Lexington. The office tower loomed like a polished blade, floodlights bleaching the street. NYPD cruisers lined the block, cameras flashing. A forensics van hummed at the curb.
“The gang’s all here,” Marcus muttered as they stepped out.
Detective Amanda Torres met them at the revolving doors — compact, precise, with dark curls scraped into a knot and the look of a woman who’d been awake for thirty-six hours.
“Valentine, Reid,” she said, shaking their hands. “Welcome to my mess.”
“Thanks for the invite,” Marcus said.
The thirty-seventh floor gleamed — glass, chrome, and too much money. The kind of place where ambition came with its own espresso bar.
The body was still there.
Brennan — full name Nathaniel Francis Quentin Brennan, according to the file — sat at his desk, or rather slumped over it.
His throat was open in a wide, deliberate slash, a grotesque second mouth.
The cut was surgical, clean, aimed precisely at the jugular.
Blood had sprayed across the pale carpet in an arc that had already begun to brown.
His hands were spread and nailed through the palms into the desk with long steel spikes, each hammered flat.
Torres gestured toward the markings carved into the surface between the hands. The Bible verse was neatly executed, the spacing between the characters uniform and symmetrical, the size of each letter in perfect proportion.
“You think he had a stencil?” Torres asked.
“I think not,” Kate answered. “Quite possibly, he spent more time on the message than he did on the body.”
“What verses did you say it was?” Marcus asked.
“Eight to eleven. Why?”
“Why is there a number one next to it?”
He was right. It was easy to miss because of the blood and the spotlights. But at the start of the Bible quote was a small figure one with a period. 1.
“There must be a number 2,” Kate muttered, bringing her face as close as she dared to the congealing lake of blood. Marcus shone his torch over it, scanning each inch of wood.
“Or he intended to carve out a second message, but had to leave in a hurry,” Kate mused. “Who found him?”
Torres crossed her arms. “The custodian, at eight-thirty p.m., called 911, then had what looks like a small breakdown in the lobby. He’s clean, record-wise, regular John Q. No one else in the building. No forced entry. No signs of struggle.”
“Could mean Brennan knew the killer,” Marcus said. “Or was expecting him.”
“Normally, he’d receive a lunchtime delivery from the sushi place round the corner.
Creature of habit: maki rolls, yuzu tea, at 1.
30 PM on the dot. It had to go to the reception desk, because Brennan didn’t want to be disturbed.
But nothing came. The Guard told us, when he’d calmed down a little. So we called the restaurant. Kenzo.”
“What was the outcome?”
“Someone claiming to be Brennan cancelled it, at around 11.30 am.”
“Claiming?”
“More likely the killer. We traced the call to Kenzo; it came from a payphone on the corner of West 57th and 6th Ave. We’ll be checking nearby CCTV when the world goes back to work tomorrow.”
They stood in silence for a moment, the hum of the city pressing against the glass.
“Who was he?” Kate asked.
“Financial world heavyweight,” Torres said.
“Senior partner in Stemberg and Luft Capital. Hedge funds, derivatives, energy investments, crypto — all the stuff that makes civilians’ eyes glaze over.
Famous for working eighty-hour weeks and expecting the same from everyone else.
Brilliant and brutal, said Time magazine. ”
“Universally adored then,” Marcus said.
“About as adored as tax audits,” Torres said. “You’ll meet his wife, Belinda, later. We’ve got a counsellor with her.”
Kate’s eyes moved back to the body. The nails were thick, industrial. The hammering had been careful, deliberate. Right through the mid-palm area with no broken bones. Whoever did it had taken their time, took pride in their work.
Torres noticed her look. “The nails are D gauge, used on some of the older railways. We’re going to get the companies to check their inventory, see if anyone’s had a break-in.”
“Those are some solid leads, Detective,” Marcus said. “Thanks.”
Kate gave him an appreciative smile. Relations with local law enforcement could be hard to navigate; everyone had their territory, and perceived rights over it.
Tensions could start over the dumbest of things — a brusquely commandeered desk, a mislaid file — and end up jeopardizing a whole case.
But Marcus always knew exactly what to say, to whom, at just the right moment.
He managed to sound sincere, too, a feat Kate often felt was beyond her.
When she gave praise or thanks, she sounded like a child pretending to be a grown-up.
Torres drove them a few minutes away to an exclusive apartment block.
The penthouse had that serene quiet found only in chapels and the homes of the very rich.
A woman in a charcoal suit — more a majordomo than a maid — ushered them with reverence into a huge sitting room with a view across the Hudson.
Belinda Brennan sat on a low couch, a tissue crushed in one hand. She was auburn-haired and elegant, in her late thirties, a woman who could control a room just by arriving. Now, her eyes were red, and her posture conveyed the deep, instant exhaustion that accompanies grief.
Torres made the introductions. Belinda nodded faintly, her gaze flicking between Kate and Marcus.