Page 7 of NYPD Red 7: The Murder Sorority

She walked along the rooftop wall.

“Keep going.”

She took a few more steps.

“Right there! You got it. Right there.”

She bent down and studied the limestone slab on top of the parapet. “Looks like traces of gunpowder stippling,” she said. She took a deep breath. “I can smell the burnt powder.”

She stood up.

“I told you! I told you!” the man yelled triumphantly. “I saw him. Come over here and get me out. Tell the CO you want to talk to Elroy.”

“Looks like we’ve got a witness,” I said.

“But altruism doesn’t permeate the halls of the Tombs,” Kylie said. “Elroy is going to be angling for aget-out-of-jail-freecard in return for his generous cooperation.”

“If he gives us the guy who just put a bullet through Warren Hellman’s neck,” I said, “I’m pretty sure Selma Kaplan will escort him out the front door herself.”

My phone rang. It was our boss, Captain Cates. I put her on speaker.

“Jordan,” she said, “where are you and MacDonald right now?”

“We’re on a roof two blocks from the courthouse. It’s where the shot came from,” I said. “Crime Scene is on the way, but we’re running over to the Tombs to talk to one of the inmates who witnessed the shooting.”

“No, you’re not,” she said. “I’ll send another team down there. I need the two of you uptown forthwith.”

“Captain,” I said, “this has been our case since the day Warren Hellman killed Jonas Belmont. We have an eyewitness to the shooting. What’s going on uptown that’s more important than this?”

“A runner was stabbed to death on the West Side Highway jogging path,” she said.

“And you can’t lay that off on someone else?” I said.

“No, I can’t,” Cates said. “And even if I could, you wouldn’t want me to. Your newest victim is your current victim’s brother—Curtis Hellman.”

CHAPTER 5

The Hudson River Greenwayis athirteen-milejogging path that runs from the tip of Manhattan to the top. To the west are expansive views of the water and the Jersey shoreline, to the east highway traffic that at rush hour can creep along slower than the joggers.

Curtis Hellman met his demise at 102nd Street. When we got there, the path had been cordoned off three hundred feet in either direction.

Ordinarily, I’d expect to see eight to ten cops working the scene. But this was no ordinary victim. And on top of that, he was the city’s second celebrity homicide in a few hours. So it came as no surprise that the place was crawling with uniforms, many of them white shirts. Brass. Including the borough chief, who let us know that he was counting on us, and whatever it takes, blah, blah, blah. The usual bullshit.

OliviaDorsey-Joneswas in charge of the crime scene unit. She’s every bit as good as Chuck Dryden and a hell of a lot less socially awkward.

“Zach, Kylie,” she said. “I spoke to Chuck. He thinks the downtown hit was a professional job. It looks like we’ve got the same thing here.”

“Hey, Livvy,” I said. “Lay it out for us.”

“Start with the location. Look around. This running path is in full view of the parkway. Until you get here. This clump of trees, which is maybe eighty feet long, is so thick that it’s nearly impossible for drivers to see the joggers even if they’re sitting inbumper-to-bumpertraffic.” She held up a hand before we could comment. “Now, that doesn’t mean the killer is a pro. Maybe he’s just smart. Or he got lucky. Take a look at the body.”

The dead man was wearing blue running shorts, a grayT-shirt, black Nikes on his feet, and a Garmin heart monitor on his wrist. A water bottle and a portable audio player were on the ground. There was blood everywhere.

Dorsey-Jonesknelt beside the body. “I bagged his hands,” she said. “They’re manicured, pristine. He didn’t put up a fight. He likely never saw the killer coming. Now, here’s where it gets interesting.”

She pointed to thedark-redline that started at Hellman’s right ear. “Cause of death: an edged weapon sliced the trachea and slashed him to the jugular, nearly decapitating him. Most stab victims get knifed in the torso, but this has all the earmarks of someone who knew exactly where to plunge the blade so that he’d bleed out fast. One slice. One and done.”

“You have a time of death?” I asked.

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