A Soldier's Revenge: A Will Cochrane Novel Read Free

the hotel, the room occupant was an English guy called Will Cochrane.
    Both detectives wondered if he was a pro who didn’t care whether the world knew he’d gone mad.
     
    T he taxi dropped me outside the Holiday Inn Express in Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia. When the car was out of sight, I turned away from the hotel, walking through the city, which was wet and cold despite the last vestiges of summer lingering in the air. I stopped by an ATM, withdrew the maximum limit allowed by my bank, and moved on until I found a cheap hotel on Spruce Street, near the center of the city. After paying for a room up front in cash, I went to my room and held my head in my hands while sitting on the bed. It seemed only minutes ago that I’d sat on my Waldorf bed and stared at my bloody hands.
    Traveling between New York and Philadelphia had kept me preoccupied with the urgency of fleeing and hiding. My next destination was eight hundred miles southwest, the home of twin ten-year-old boys. They were the reason I was in the States. Their parents were friends of mine and had been murdered. I’d planned to adopt the boys and start a new life in America. After months of preparation, today I was supposed to visit a law firm in NYC to sign adoption papers. I’d intended to have a new life, give the boys the security and love they so needed, start working as a teacher at their school, and be a parent. Their father was a former SEAL who’d worked with me. Many times he’d saved my life. It was my duty to look after his remaining family.
    I opened the encyclopedia and reread the note. Tomorrow I’d get a copy of the Washington Post and scan the classifieds section. Focus on that, I told myself. The note had been written by the murderer, of that I was in no doubt. I’d know what my opponent was made of in a few hours. If he revealed his hand and implicated himself, I’d mail the Post and encyclopedia to the feds, telling them I was an innocent man who couldn’t give himself up just yet.
    I clung to the hope that it would pan out that way.

CHAPTER 2
    A t seven fifty-five the following morning, Painter and Kopa ń ski walked quickly across the Waldorf Astoria’s palatial lobby, focused but tired. The night had been intense and sleepless.
    Despite the early hour, the hotel was brimming, much as it would have been when the occupant of room 1944 escaped. But today, approximately forty people in the hotel weren’t guests or staff; they were journalists, some homegrown, broadsheet and tabloid, others representatives of foreign press organizations. All of them were heading to the lobby-level Empire Room, where Lieutenant Pat Brody of the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information, was about to read verbatim what Kopa ń ski and Painter had written an hour earlier.
    Kopa ń ski had wanted to stage the NYPD press briefing somewhere more public in the hotel. News coverage of the briefing needed to show the hotel in order for the crime to become real in people’s minds and for potential witnesses to unlock vital information hidden in their memories.
    Journalists agreed, though for different reasons. This was hot press material, not because there was yet another killing in New York, but because it had taken place somewhere as swanky as the Waldorf. They wanted the Q&A to be held in front of the hotel or in the lobby. Understandably, hotel management didn’t take kindly to the prospect of their hotel being advertised as the site of a brutal crime. They insisted on a discreet meeting room so the press briefing wouldn’t scare off guests.
    Brody took the podium. Journalists were in their seats in the Empire, lined up, chomping at the bit. Painter and Kopa ń ski stood at the back of the Edwardian room, eyeing its crystal chandeliers, drapes surmounted by gold swags, ceiling spot lamps, and brown carpet in the pattern of a maze.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.” Brody was in uniform; he had been on the force for twenty