"I"m sorry," she said. "I"m just so effing angry. We asked the DA for police protection for Rachael, but a dozen death threats and the fact that the jury found her innocent wasn"t enough to convince him."
"And yet when your sister was kidnapped, you called the DA"s office instead of dialing 911," Kylie said.
O"Keefe stood up. Her jeans and her T-shirt were wet and covered with some of the same slop that streaked the floor. The left side of her face was bruised, there were cuts on her neck and chin, and her wrists and ankles were caked with dried blood.
"Ms. O"Keefe," Kylie said, "we can drive you to the hospital."
"Call me Liz. No, I"m fine. Let"s get out of this mess."
She tiptoed through the broken gla.s.s, and we followed her into a small, cluttered living room that looked as though it had been sealed in a time capsule the day it was furnished back in 1960.
Kylie and I sat on a cushy sofa, and Liz, whose clothes were too wet for the fabric, sat on a cane-backed wooden chair.
"I didn"t call the DA first," she said. "I called Dennis Woloch, Rachael"s lawyer. He can"t legally tell me not to call 911, but he said dialing it would get me the local cops, who would run right over as soon as they finished responding to a loud music complaint or a couple of teenagers smoking weed in the park. I know that"s bulls.h.i.t, but he also said if the news went out on the local police band, the press would turn the whole thing into another media circus."
"That part is not bulls.h.i.t," Kylie said.
"Mr. Woloch said the DA released Rachael without any protection, and he might be embarra.s.sed enough to call in this elite squad from NYPD, but I guess he sent you instead."
"Sorry to disappoint you," Kylie said, "but we are the elite squad."
"Oh...I was kind of expecting something more like the navy SEALs."
"Tell us what happened," I said.
"One second Rachael and I were in the kitchen talking, and the next second two masked guys with guns came through the breezeway door."
"Do you think they followed you from New York?" I asked.
"I was thinking somebody might, so I kept checking my rearview, but I never saw anyone. Even when I turned onto this dead-end street. n.o.body."
"What happened once they broke in?"
"They made us get on the floor. One tied Rachael up. The other one holstered his gun so he could tie me up, and I kneed him in the b.a.l.l.s. Do you know Krav Maga? It"s an Israeli self-defense technique."
"We know it well," Kylie said.
"I"ve been studying it ever since I got mugged five years ago. If it had been just the one guy, I could"ve taken him, but they double-teamed me."
"And then what?"
"They carried me to the bathroom, tied me up, and disabled all the phones. A few minutes later, I heard them carry Rachael out and drive away."
"If their car was parked nearby, wouldn"t you have seen it when you drove in?"
"No. I was worried about someone following me. I didn"t check out the parked cars."
"Can you describe the two men?" I asked.
"They were dressed in black. One was maybe six two. The other was shorter. Both strong. Their voices sounded like they were most likely white guys, kind of young-they knew what they were doing, like they were military."
"Who knew you were bringing Rachael to this specific address?" I asked.
"Just me and Rachael"s lawyer, Mr. Woloch."
"Did you tell anyone else?"
"No. Mr. Woloch had to tell the chief of corrections, but that"s because Judge Levine is going to sentence Rachael on the child endangerment charge in forty-five days, and they have to know where she is."
"Detectives..." It was Dryden. "Can I see you outside, please?"
We followed him to the back of the house. The back door had been jimmied open. The wooden frame was cracked, and a small pane of gla.s.s had shattered onto the breezeway floor.
"You have prints?" I asked.
"They wore gloves. They left footprints when they tracked through the mess in the kitchen, and I can figure out which brand of sneakers they wore and what size, but I doubt if it will help. I wish I could do more, but these guys are pros, and I have to clear out of here."
He left, and Kylie and I stood there at the back door. Clueless.
"Do me a favor," she said. "Walk through the breezeway, go into the kitchen, and close the door."
I did. Five seconds later, I heard gla.s.s breaking. I opened the breezeway door.
Kylie had her gun in her hand. "I broke another one of these windowpanes in the back door. Did you hear it?"
"Of course I heard it."
"So if Rachael and Liz were in the kitchen when these guys broke in, they"d have heard the gla.s.s smash," she said.
"But they didn"t," I said.
"Because they broke in before Rachael and Liz got home," she said.
"According to Liz, n.o.body knew where Rachael was going to hide out," I said.
"Somebody knew," Kylie said. "And they were already inside the house, waiting for her."
Chapter 50.
"Like father, like son," Jojo said, thumbing through his brother Enzo"s leather-bound collection book. "He was only in high school and he already had a nice business going, shaking the other kids down. He even used the family numbering code."
Papa Joe Salvi smiled and tilted back in the very same desk chair that had been pa.s.sed down by his father and his grandfather before that. He ran his thumb over the bra.s.s studs that held the green leather armrests to the ornate mahogany arms. "I taught him that code when he was only twelve."
"He never told you?" Jojo said.
"Told me what?"
"About the code. You taught it to me when I was twelve, but I had trouble with it, and I didn"t want to tell you, so I showed it to Enzo. He figured it out in two minutes, and then he explained it back to me. He was a kid, only nine, but that was Enzo-smart as a whip."
"Oh, he was smart," Joe said, taking the book from his son"s hands and stroking the soft red leather. Enzo, his youngest-named for his blessed father-Enzo was the one he"d always planned to pa.s.s the torch to. Enzo had a head for the business. He was a fox. His big brother was a bull.
"This Mrs. Frye who returned the book," Jojo said. "Is she white?"
"She"s from St. Agnes," Salvi said. "What else would she be?"
"Pop, I"m just saying-I always thought the blacks from Ozone Park killed Enzo. They had a grudge from when he beat the s.h.i.t out of one of their g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers."
Salvi shook his head. "You think this Mrs. Frye got Enzo"s book from some black kid in Ozone Park? No. She found it in her house, and I"ll bet her kid hid it there on the very night that Enzo died."
"So then this Frye kid-he killed Enzo?"
"Either him or he knows who did."
"So let me go have a little talk with him," Jojo said.
"In order for that to happen, I"d have to know who Mrs. Frye"s son is and where to find him."
"No problem. Why don"t me and Tommy Boy go over there and have a little chat with Mrs. Frye?"
Salvi rubbed his chin and took a deep breath. "Jojo, do you really think that sending over two muscle-bound stunads to scare the s.h.i.t out of some old lady is the way to go?"
"I don"t know, Papa. I didn"t think about the whole thing. I was just trying to help."
"There will be plenty of time for you and Tommy Boy to help," Salvi said, patting Jojo on the knee, much the way he"d pat a dog on the head. "But for now, don"t think. I know exactly how to handle it."
Chapter 51.
"I"m driving," Kylie said when we got back to the car.
"As long as you asked so sweetly, sure," I said, tossing her the keys. "Just try to remember that it"s a Ford, not the Batmobile."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means I don"t want to go on another suicide run like the one you did up Park Avenue on Monday."
"I"ll drive like a little old lady," she said. "Just like you do."
She made a U-turn, drove to the top of Harold Avenue, and turned left onto Broad.
"I think you"re right," I said. "The two guys who took Rachael were waiting at the house before she got home. This is a quiet little town. Liz said she kept checking her rearview, and at three in the morning there"s no way anyone could have followed her without being seen."
"So how did they know where Rachael was going?"
"It would be easy if they"re real cops."
"You and I are real cops," Kylie said. "We didn"t know."
"But we could have found out easily enough. Just call a friend at corrections or the DA"s office. That has to be where the leak came from."
"So between the two agencies, how many people do you think knew enough to disclose the undisclosed location?"
"A lot more than I feel like tracking down," I said, "but right now, it"s the only lead we"ve got."
My cell rang. "It"s Cates," I said, and picked it up.
"Where are you?" she said.
I told her.
"I need you and MacDonald ASAP," she said.
"We can be back in the office in-"
"I"m not in the office," she said.
She told me where to meet her.
"What"s going on there?" I said.
"Just get here," she said, and hung up.
"What was that about?" Kylie said. "You didn"t even fill her in on what we just figured out."
"She didn"t ask. I think she"s got something more important to deal with."
"Like what?"
"Like she didn"t say. She just wants us to meet her in Queens."
"What"s in Queens?" Kylie said.
"Silvercup Studios."