Next of Kin Read online

  They’d been pursuing a serial killer who struck every ninety days. The Gazette had begun printing the image of a digital clock on its front page, providing a countdown until the next killing. The Gazette had referred to the gimmick as the “Death Clock” and to the case as the “Death Clock Murders.” Buddy had been lead detective, publicly excoriated every ninety days until he’d discovered the killer’s identity. Yet he hadn’t enjoyed the praise.

  Because he’d killed a young girl.

  Twelve years old.

  Long dark hair.

  Blue eyes.

  Shivering with fear.

  He’d cornered the killer in a four-room apartment in Harlem. The killer had taken the girl hostage and positioned himself across the small living room from Buddy.

  Lauren was tall for her age, about the height of the killer who was hiding behind her. The killer had his left arm around the girl’s chest. His right gripped a KA-BAR straight-edged knife.

  Buddy held his Glock steady, but he had no clear shot. He needed to buy time.

  So he looked at the girl and spoke gently, soothingly. “Would you tell me your name?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lauren.”

  “Hi, Lauren,” he said. “I’m Buddy. Hang in there. You’re going to be okay.”

  He kept the Glock trained on the killer’s hairline and waited for the killer to become annoyed or distracted.

  Lauren was crying and shaking as the edge of the knife blade came to rest against her throat. Her eyes on Buddy, she said, “Okay.”

  The killer had a smug smile on his face, as though he was enjoying their stilted conversation. Yet he didn’t move from behind Lauren, didn’t take the risk. He was in control.

  Buddy knew he had to change tactics. He addressed the killer, hoping Lauren would move just enough for him to have a shot. “Put down the knife,” he said calmly, firmly. “There’s no way out. You have no choice, and you can’t run. So let’s end this now. Peacefully. Don’t hurt Lauren. She’s a nice girl. She’s got nothing to do with you and me.”

  The killer laughed. Loudly, sneeringly.

  Buddy watched as the killer’s right hand tightened around the knife handle and pulled the silver blade into Lauren’s neck. The blade broke her skin, drew a thin line of blood.

  Lauren started screaming.

  Buddy needed to act. He looked her in the eye and yelled, “Lauren, get down!”

  She tried, but the killer was too strong. Her head dropped slightly, giving Buddy a partial shot at the killer’s eyes and forehead.

  Buddy pulled the trigger.

  But as he did, the killer drew the knife across her throat.

  She jerked her head up, away from the blade.

  And Buddy’s shot went through her left eye.

  Seeing what he’d done, he froze.

  The killer reacted first. Lunged at Buddy with the knife. Knocked the Glock from his hand.

  Buddy toppled over backward and gripped the killer’s hand that held the KA-BAR.

  They grappled on the floor, the killer with the weapon and the advantage. The killer shoved his knee into Buddy’s chest. Buddy couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t hold the knife away. It got closer and closer as the killer pushed the blade’s point down toward Buddy’s face.

  And then Vidas, who’d hurried to the scene to provide backup, rushed into the house. He launched himself from the adjacent kitchen, tackled the killer, and suffered a nearly fatal wound to the stomach.

  Buddy didn’t remember the next month. He was suspended, investigated, cleared. He stayed by Vidas’s hospital bed until his partner could get out of it. Mostly he hated himself. For taking risks, for failing Lauren, for the loss her parents had to live and die with. He considered giving up as he’d given up the piano. Going away somewhere. But he didn’t. Turned out he needed the job more than it needed him.

  Buddy drank half his beer. The alcohol made him less angry with himself. “Yeah, it was my fault.”

  “We can’t work miracles.”

  “It wasn’t a miracle. It was a mistake.”

  Vidas nodded. “And everyone makes them. Stop beating yourself up over it.”

  Buddy drank the rest of his beer and put a twenty on the table.

  Vidas finished his beer.

  Buddy stood and walked toward the door, Vidas following him. He was angry with Vidas for offering advice, angrier with himself for the mistake he couldn’t forget or forgive.

  As they stood in the vestibule buttoning their coats, Buddy said, “I’m sorry. That’s still a raw nerve.”

  “I get it,” Vidas said. “But it’s not going to happen again. Not with the boy.”

  In that moment Buddy realized he’d been connecting Ben with Lauren. He was trying to save him where he hadn’t been able to save her—trying to protect Ben even to the point of taking custody of him and having him move into the apartment he shared with Mei. That he was already failing in this duty put him on edge. But it would also make him work harder.

  He held open the door for Vidas. They stood for a moment out on the sidewalk in the cold.

  “Good night,” Buddy said.

  “Good night, boss.”

  Vidas patted his upper arm in support, walked to the corner, and climbed into one of the waiting taxis.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Two Rottweilers.

  As Ward’s chauffeured car pulled up to the mansion’s front door, Ben noticed these immediately. A pair of the immensely powerful black-and-mahogany dogs with big heads and muscular shoulders stood on either side of the drive. The dogs were leashed, he was relieved to see. Two men dressed in black each held a leash. In the car’s headlights Ben could see the dogs panting, their breath silvery puffs in the frigid air.

  When the Range Rover came to a stop, Ward opened his door, came around the back of the car, and opened Ben’s door. Ward reached in, picked him up as he’d done outside the Carlyle Residences, and held him close.

  For a moment Ward paused and turned to his driver. “That’s it for tonight, Brick,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow if we need anything.”

  Brick nodded and pulled the Range Rover into the garage. Moments later he drove away in a small Volkswagen.

  Ward carried Ben up to the front door. Lights shone on the house’s exterior, and Ben thought it looked like a giant white cube. He’d been to many large houses, but this one seemed to weigh less, as if it might rise above the ground and hover.

  An older gray-haired woman dressed in black opened the door. Ben guessed this was Ward’s mother. The woman’s face was gaunt and severe, but she smiled and said, “Hello, Ben. My name is Rose Gallatin. I’ve prepared a tub of warm water for your feet.”

  He tried to say thank you but only heard himself murmur inaudibly. He felt his eyes closing. He tried to keep them open and to stay alert, yet somehow the warmth of Ward’s house, the lateness of the hour, and the low voices of Ward, Mei, and the older woman soothed him.

  He awoke once, just briefly, and found himself in a large bathroom with cream-colored stone floors. Mei was holding his right foot over a tub of soapy water and using a large clear plastic cup to pour water over his foot. He raised his left foot and saw that it was dry and already bandaged.

  Ward was kneeling beside him, fastening a rubber bracelet around his right wrist.

  “You’re awake,” Ward said. “Good. Pay attention, okay, Ben? This panic bracelet is a tracking device connected to my phone and my computer. I can look on the screen and see exactly where you are. And it has an important feature.” Ward lifted Ben’s wrist and rotated the rubber bracelet, revealing a smooth square red button. “See this red area here?” Ward asked.

  Ben tried to answer, but he just wanted to sleep.

  “Ben,” Ward said. “Ben! ”

  Ben jerked awake.

  “This is very important,” Ward told him, his voice no longer soothing but louder and hard-edged. “Do you see this red square on the bracelet?�
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  Ben looked from Ward’s face to his wrist. He saw the red square on the bracelet and nodded.

  “Speak out loud,” Ward ordered. “Do you see it?”

  “Yes,” Ben answered.

  Ward said, “It’s an alarm. If you feel you’re in danger, if anything doesn’t seem right, you press the button. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “So let’s test it. Would you go ahead and press the red button?”

  Ben decided that maybe he didn’t like Ward. The handsome man, despite being related to Buddy, seemed stern and severe. Kind but at the same time mean. Buddy was gruff but kind. Hard but soft. Ben couldn’t explain it, but he preferred Buddy and hoped that soon he could be back with Buddy and Mei. But this preference didn’t mean he didn’t trust or respect Ward. He did. And so he moved his left hand, extended his index finger, and pressed the red button on his bracelet.

  Almost immediately he heard a siren sound coming from nearby. He watched as Ward removed a mobile phone from a small inner pocket of his suit coat and touched the screen to turn off the siren sound.

  Ward asked, “Do you see how it works?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have one, and I’m giving one to Mei as well. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Ben said.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Buddy saw what the hatchet had done.

  He rode the elevator to the apartment. In addition to the black fingerprint dust on the surfaces, he saw that the cab’s oak-paneled left side and rear remained intact, although there were drops of blood on the tiled floor. He knew that many of the drops had been taken up by CSU for analysis. But he didn’t need an analysis. He knew the blood belonged to Schmidt plus the two cops who’d died in the lobby downstairs. A shame and a waste and a dreadful injustice, but more motivation for him to crack the case.

  As if he needed it.

  Glancing up, he saw the brass-colored metal ceiling reflect his image back to him. He looked old and tired, but not as bad as the elevator door on the right side of the cab.

  The hatchet had cut through the oak paneling to the aluminum doorframe. The edge of the door was beaten, dented, and bent, exposing the locking mechanism and the wires that connected a plate on the door to the security switch—the switch that, when activated in one of the apartments, would prevent the door from opening at a particular floor. Bending down to look more closely, he saw the wires had been cut.

  The blows to the door and to the right side of the elevator, from which the door traveled when it opened, had been blunt and brutal.

  Fury, Buddy thought again. Same as at Camp Kateri. Same as in the case of Nan Sawyer.

  When the elevator reached the twenty-fifth floor, he pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster and gripped it tightly. Usually he’d have to hold his access card up to the disclike card reader inside the elevator cab. But now the door automatically slid open. He stepped into the apartment. Vidas and the search team had walked the entire building, and especially Mei’s rooms, and found almost nothing. Many prints in the elevator cab, as expected for something used by so many people. But would any of them be useful?

  Buddy gritted his teeth. “Mei’s apartment,” he said aloud. “My apartment. The fucker.”

  The black lacquered medicine cabinet had been pushed or kicked up against the wall where it had previously stood. The drinking glass he’d set on the cabinet before leaving earlier in the evening lay on the floor in dozens of pieces, the floor still damp from the water the glass had contained. The cabinet appeared to have sustained no damage, except its normally smooth top was caved in where the blade of the hatchet had come down with force. The top was splintered, mangled. The killer had left the hatchet, CSU had told him. They’d taken it for analysis but told him it was the kind of thing available in any hardware store. Carbon steel head with a three-and-a-half-inch blade, the entire tool no more than eleven inches in length.

  Glock in hand, Buddy went room by room, confirming that each was clear. The shock of the attack wore off, and he felt his chest turning hot. He realized how close the killer had come to Mei and Ben. The killer had been a minute, maybe less, from taking Mei away from him.

  Buddy pushed the cabinet in front of the closed elevator door, holstered the Glock, and walked out of the foyer and into the living room. He went immediately to the small bar in the corner.

  A large Jack Daniel’s—Mei’s favorite drink—eased his mind. He liked the way it warmed his throat and stomach. After pouring another, he went to the sofa and sat down heavily. He thought he’d never been so exhausted. He looked at his watch. Almost three. It was then he noticed Mei’s laptop.

  When he opened it, two names caught his eye: Brook and Auschwitz. Mei must have been reading up on Ben’s family.

  Scrolling up to the beginning of the Wikipedia article, he read the history of the Brook family. About the invention of the Brook Burn that dyed metals. About its use in the Wehrmacht’s machine guns, tanks, and submarines. About concentration camp labor, including labor from Auschwitz-Birkenau, used in factories that specialized in the Brook Burn.

  Then he read on:

  Gerhardt Bruch entered Hitler’s inner circle, dining often with Albert Speer, minister of armaments. It was at this time that Bruch, with his new travel permit allowing him to visit metals mines throughout the Reich and even into Switzerland, is believed to have secreted suitcases filled with Reichsmarks to several banks in Zurich. From August 1942 until April 1944, Bruch traveled monthly to Zurich, each time with suitcases filled with money. Financial analysts have calculated that in this way he moved at least $175 million—far more today if adjusted for inflation—into Swiss banks.

  Once it became clear that the war was lost, and German forces began their retreat from France, from the Low Countries, from Russia and North Africa and Italy, Bruch used his travel privileges a final time. He hired a private plane to take him and his wife and son on a daring flight to Zurich, where the Bruchs would live until immigrating to the United States in 1949.

  After settling in Manhattan, Brook—having changed his name to the English equivalent—and his son, Walter, founded Brook Instruments Inc., building it into the third-largest privately held company in the United States. The Brook family, headed by Walter Brook’s four sons, is estimated by Forbes to have a net worth of $24 billion.

  A success story, Buddy thought. A story of opportunity seized and a narrow escape. The story of a family starting over—albeit with nearly $200 million—in America, the land of opportunity. But this success story angered him. The Brook family’s wealth and position were built on theft and slavery, on the ashes of those who perished at Auschwitz.

  He closed the computer, stood, and walked to the windows overlooking the park. He saw the string of lights over the footpaths curving through the darkness. So few lights in the seemingly endless gloom. He sighed wearily. His mind felt as thick as the murk outside. His body ached. In his tiredness he tried to connect Gerhardt Brook’s mercenary behavior in the 1930s and 1940s to the murders committed more than seventy years later, but he couldn’t do it.

  Turning from the windows, he left the living room, padded slowly along the hallway to the bedroom, and lay on the bed. He didn’t undress or pull down the duvet. He reached over to the night table and shut off the light. Then he lay in the darkness, listening for someone to break through the elevator door, hearing only his breathing. In the silence his mind wandered. His body grew heavy, and now his bed rested on a melting sheet of ice. The ice cracked slowly, audibly. There wasn’t anywhere for him to go. There was no help to be had. And then the ice broke and the bed fell into the depths, the ocean’s cold enfolding and drowning him. He tried to breathe, but it was impossible. So he allowed the water to bear him downward to the center of the earth. The frigid emptiness calmed him, lulled him into an endless sleep. Yet he resisted just for a moment. He looked out into the darkness, and was comforted by the Glock in his right hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

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nbsp; Mei took off the panic bracelet.

  She stood in the guest bathroom across the hallway from the room where she’d sleep. After stepping out of the Ugg slippers she’d been wearing since her escape at the Carlyle, she took off her bathrobe, hung it on a hook to the side of the door, and turned on the shower. For a long time she stood under the hot water, trying to wash off the fear and anxiety of the past several hours. Calm—that was all she wanted right now. It was twenty minutes before she could think of the attack on her home as the past rather than the present. At last she could breathe more easily, relax a little. She stepped out of the shower, dried herself with one of the white towels on the vanity, and brushed her teeth. Then she put on her panties. A small digital clock embedded in the mirror showed the time: 3:04 a.m.

  Switching off the light, she opened the door and went across the hallway toward the bedroom. Sensing someone near her, she looked up and to her left.

  It was Ward. He was coming toward her. He stopped.

  She saw that he was wearing boxer shorts and nothing else. His body was toned and muscular. His shoulders were broad. His hair was slightly disheveled. He gave her an embarrassed smile. Holding up the book he was carrying and a drink in the other hand, he said, “Had to get a drink and a book from my library across the hall. Sorry, Mei.”

  She held her breath, unable to speak. Instead she crossed her arms over her bare breasts and continued into the bedroom, closing and locking the door behind her. Only then did she exhale. And understand how nervous she felt. And how tired. She climbed into bed and tried to put the image of the handsome Ward out of her mind. She hoped he hadn’t seen much of her and that the light in the hallway was dim. She told herself it didn’t matter. He was Buddy’s half brother and would never be closer to her than that.

  As she drifted off to sleep, she remembered that she’d left her panic bracelet in the bathroom.