Page 63 of The Writer

There is no response.

No doubt this is a safe building, but it seems odd for anyone in New York to leave their door unlocked overnight.

Cordova spots a set of keys in a silver bowl on a narrow side table. The BMW key fob is there too. An uneasy feeling comes over him at the sight of those. He has no real frame of reference, having never stepped foot in this apartment before, and at a glance, nothing appears out of place or disturbed, yet something feels off.

Cordova quietly takes the gun on his hip out of its holster. “Geller Hoffman! This is Jarod Cordova with NYPD. Are you home? I’m coming in!”

His voice echoes off the marble and fades.

No response comes.

Cordova walks farther into the apartment, realizing he didn’t tell a soul he was heading here. If Hoffman barrels out of a back room and unloads on him, nobody will come to his rescue. They’ll find his body in a dumpster before the night is over, no different than Mia Gomez. He tries to shake that thought off but manages only to tamp it down.

The living room is dark save for the city lights filtering in through the wall of windows. They create an eerie glow on Hoffman’s white furniture, on the artwork on the walls, a series of abstracts that might have cost a million each or might be the pictures that came with the frames—Cordova has no idea.

“Geller Hoffman!” he calls again, and again receives no response.

The living room is open to the kitchen, separated only by a giant island of white marble surrounded by barstools. A cuttingboard, a loaf of bread, a jar of mayonnaise, and bits of lunch meat litter the countertop. Not the kinds of things you leave out unless you’re nearby.

A prickle runs across the back of Cordova’s neck, goes down his spine.

Something is very wrong here.

Cordova wants to believe the man made himself a sandwich, took an Ambien, and is passed out somewhere in the apartment, but his decades on the job tell him otherwise. There is a stillness to the apartment you don’t find when someone is there.

Beyond the kitchen and expansive living room is a wide hall. Gun raised, finger on the trigger guard, Cordova goes down the hall, passing a luxuriously appointed office with floor-to-ceiling dark wood bookcases on two walls and an oversize window behind the desk offering sprawling views of the city. An open briefcase rests on the desk next to a MacBook, the screen alive with images of fish swimming lazily in blue water. Opposite the office, on the other side of the hall, is a guest room and a bath. The main bedroom is at the end of the hall, its double doors open. The faint glow of a flickering candle dances across the wall.

“Hoffman! This is NYPD! Show yourself!” Cordova calls, knowing it will do no good.

The king-size bed is unmade, the sheets a rumpled mess at the foot of it. The candle burns in a glass jar on one of the nightstands, about half gone.

Cordova finds Geller Hoffman in the spacious walk-in closet off a bathroom large enough to be a basketball team’s locker room.

Hoffman is on the floor, his pants and underwear around his ankles, one hand around his erect penis. Dead. A leather belt is looped around his neck and secured to a clothing rod above his head. Hoffman’s open eyes, lined with the deep red of burst vessels, are bulging so far out of his skull, they look like they might explode. His skin is bluish purple from oxygen deprivation—asphyxiation.

Autoerotic asphyxiation.

That’s the official term.

Cordova saw it once before, about twelve years ago, a junkie they’d pulled out from behind a dry cleaner on Eightieth. Lack of oxygen at the moment of ejaculation was supposed to heighten the experience. Downtown, they called it gasping. Declan had once joked it was all good until it killed you.

Cordova gently pinches the sleeve above Hoffman’s free hand, raises it a few inches, and lets it drop. Rigor mortis has only just begun to set in, meaning Hoffman has been dead less than two hours. The ME will be able to narrow that window further. Cordova holsters his gun and kneels to get a better look.

Scattered around Geller Hoffman’s lifeless body are pictures of young girls. Some were torn from the pages of magazines; others came from a photo printer. Still others are Polaroids. Polaroids similar, if not identical, to the ones they found in Ruben Lucero’s apartment years back. Candid shots, some taken at a distance, others from up close. Others from too close—these girls, these children, clearly aware they were being photographed in ways they shouldn’t be. There’s a shoebox off to the side filled with more of the same. Probably twice the number of pictures they found at Lucero’s.

That is a problem.

That is abigproblem.

Cordova takes out his phone; his fingers hover over the keypad. He needs to call Daniels, but what the hell will he tell him?

This long night just got longer.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

DECLAN WAKES TO the warmth of morning sunlight streaming through the large windows of Denise Morrow’s bedroom. He rolls to his side, reaches for her, and finds she’s no longer in bed. The sheets are still warm, though. She hasn’t been gone long.

Denise’s cat, Quimby, is sitting on her pillow, licking a paw and eyeing him curiously.

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