Red Alert: An NYPD Red Mystery
James Patterson
For Teresa Patterson, who keeps getting better and better and better
Prologue
13,000 Dead and Counting
ONE
There were only four words beneath the tattoo of the Grim Reaper on Aubrey Davenport’s inner left thigh. But they spoke volumes.
Death is my aphrodisiac
And nowhere in the entire city was her libido more on point than at the Renwick Smallpox Hospital, a crumbling three-story, U-shaped monster on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island.
Once a marvel of neo-Gothic architecture, Renwick was now a rotting stone carcass, the final way station for thirteen thousand men, women, and children who had died a painful death.
For the city fathers, Renwick was a historical landmark. For the urban explorers, it was New York’s most haunted house. But for Aubrey Davenport, it was a sexual Mecca, and on a warm evening in early May, she and a willing partner scaled the eight-foot fence, made their way into the bowels of the moldering labyrinth, and spread a thick quilted blanket on the rocky floor.
She kicked off her shoes, removed her shirt and bra, shucked her jeans, and stood there, naked except for a pair of aquamarine bikini panties.
Her nipples responded to the caress of a cool breeze that drifted over her breasts, and she inhaled the earthy scent of the decay around her, mixed with the dank overtones of river water.
She dropped to her knees on the blanket, closed her eyes, and waited for her partner.
She shuddered as he silently slipped the noose around her neck. His fingers were long and slender. Piano player fingers, her mother used to call them. Like your father has.
As a child, Aubrey wondered why a man blessed with the hands of a concert pianist never played an instrument, never even cared to. But somewhere along the way she came to understand that Cyril Davenport’s long, slender fingers made music of another kind: the crescendo of sound that came from her parents’ bedroom on a nightly basis.
Aubrey felt the rope pull tighter. Rope was a misnomer. It was a long strand of silk—the belt from a robe, perhaps—and it felt soft and smooth as he cinched it against her carotid arteries.
He took her shoulders and guided her body to the ground until her belly was flat against the cotton blanket below her.
“Comfy?” he asked.
She laughed. Comfy was such a dumb word.
“You’re laughing,” he said. “Life is good, yes?”
“Mmmmmm,” she responded.
“It’s about to get better,” he said, tugging at the waistband of her panties and sliding them down to her ankles. His fingers teased as they walked slowly up her leg and came to rest on the patch of ink etched into her thigh. His thumb stroked the shrouded figure and arced along the scythe that was clutched in its bony claw.
“Hello, death,” he said, removing his hand.
Crack! The cat-o’-nine-tails lashed across her bare bottom, burning, stinging, each individual knotted-leather strap leaving its mark. She bit down hard and buried a scream into the blanket.
Pain was the appetizer. Pleasure was the main course. Her body tensed as she waited for his next move.
In a single, practiced motion he bent her legs at the knees, tipped them back toward her head, grabbed the tether that was around her neck, and tied the other end to her ankles.
“Hand,” he ordered.
Aubrey, her right arm beneath her stomach, reached all the way down until her hand was between her legs.
“Life is good,” he repeated. “Make it better.”
Her fingers groped, parting the pleats, entering the canal, tantalizing the nerve endings. The effect was dizzying: the man with the whip, the foul-smelling ruins, and the inescapable presence of thirteen thousand dead souls.
He said something, but she couldn’t hear over the sound of her own labored breathing. And then—the point of no return. She felt the swell of gratification surging through her body, and with near surgical precision she gently lowered her feet toward the ground.
The silk rope around her neck tightened, compressing her carotid arteries. The sudden loss of oxygen along with the buildup of carbon dioxide made her light-headed, giddy, almost hallucinogenic. The orgasm came in waves. It left her gasping for air, but the euphoria was so powerful, so addictive, that she intensified the pressure around her neck, knowing she could go just a few more seconds.
If erotic asphyxiation were an Olympic event, Aubrey Davenport would have been a world-class contender. Her brain was just on the threshold of losing consciousness when she released the death grip, and brought her feet back toward her buttocks.
But the noose refused to relax. If anything, it felt tighter. Panic seized her. She thrashed, pulled her hands up to her throat, and clawed at the silk, fighting for air and finding none.
She never made mistakes. Something must have snagged. She reached behind her neck, desperately trying to find some slack, when her fingers found his hand. He jerked hard on the silk cord, and her arms flailed.
She slumped, too weak to struggle, all hope gone. Everything went black, and as the reaper stepped out of the darkness to claim her, tears streamed down her cheeks, because in the last seconds of her life, Aubrey Davenport finally realized that she didn’t want to die.
TWO
The Cotillion Room at The Pierre hotel bubbled over with New York’s wealthiest—including a few who were wealthier than some countries.
They were the richest of the rich, the ones who get invited to fifty-thousand-dollars-a-plate dinners when one of their own wants to tap them for a worthy cause. In this case, the charity with its hand out was the Silver Bullet Foundation.
The thirty-foot-long banner at the front of the hall proclaimed its noble mission: FIGHTING FOR THE LESS FORTUNATE.
The man in the black tie and white jacket busing tables in the rear had boiled when he first saw the sign. They haven’t done shit for me, and I’m the least fortunate person in the room.
They’re like swans, he thought as he watched them glide serenely from table to table: so elegant, so regal, but fiercely territorial and vicious when they feel threatened. And like swans, he observed, they are oh so white.
He counted half a dozen black swans among them, but for the most part, the people of color were there to serve. He fit right in.
With his shoulders slumped, his jaw slack, and a cheap pair of clear-lens nerd glasses to dial down the intensity of his piercing black eyes, he was practically invisible, and definitely forgettable.
The only human contact he’d had in the three hours since donning the uniform was with a besotted old patrician who’d slurred, “Hey fella, where’s the men’s room?”
Shortly after nine, the lights dimmed, the chatter died down, and the commanding voice of James Earl Jones piped through the sound system.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the cofounder and chairman of the Silver Bullet Foundation, Mr. Princeton Wells.”
The staff had been instructed to stop work during the presentation, and the busboy dutifully stepped into the shadows near a fire exit as Princeton Wells bounded onto the stage.
Wells was his typically charming, still-boyish-at-forty, old-moneyed self. And lest any man in the room suspect that someone that rich and that good-looking wasn’t getting laid, Wells kicked off the festivities by introducing his current girlfriend, Kenda Whithouse, to a captive audience.
Ms. Whithouse stood up, waved to the room, and threw her billionaire boyfriend a kiss. She was only twenty-three, an actress who was not quite yet tabloid fodder, but who clearly had the talent to fill out an evening gown. Those who knew Princeton Wells had no doubt that the gown would be lying crumpled on his bedroom floor by morning.