Chase Read Free Page A

at the crime scene. “I thought it would be all right since they wanted to work on the other side of the site. Besides, the guy looks like he fell or jumped.”
    “Looks can be deceiving, Sergeant,” I said. “Please go out on the sidewalk and keep those people off my back.”
    “Hey, Mike. Long time, no see,” said a sharp crime-scene tech I knew, Judy Yelas, who was photographing the body. “What brings the legendary Major Case to the lowly West Side? I thought the Twentieth Precinct was handling.”
    “Me, too, until my boss called,” I said with a shrug.
    “Ah, I see. Orders from on high. Poli-tricks as usual,” Judy said, rolling her eyes.
    Poli-tricks was actually kind of right.
    As it turned out, Index House, the hotel beside the crime scene, kept appearing in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Open for only six months, it had received negative publicity for a couple of viral videos. One was of people having sex on a balcony. Another was of a famous NFL player drunkenly knocking out a woman in an elevator.
    It also turned out that the owner of the hotel was a wealthy political contributor and close family friend of the new governor. Now, the powers that be wanted to “figure out” this latest Big Apple hospitality fiasco as quickly and discreetly as possible.
    I don’t know about any of that wishful sort of political thinking. Nor, frankly, do I care. A person was dead, and I was available, so here I was.
    I came around the pile driver and squatted down on my heels to look at the body. The deceased was a tall, lean, dark-haired man in his early thirties, maybe. He wore a nice dark suit and was positioned lying on his back in a pool of blood, his face smashed up horribly.
    I took a few steps back, looked up at the hotel and unintentionally let out a whistle. He must have come down face-first and hit the metal pile driver on the right, which flipped him like a rag doll. I felt terrible for the guy. Like pretty much every other jumper I had ever dealt with, he seemed to have suffered a gruesome death.
    “Wallet? Phone?” I said to Judy.
    “None that I can see. I didn’t pat him down, though. Thought you’d want to.”
    I knelt beside him, pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, and went through the pockets of his pants and jacket. There was nothing. No wallet, no phone. Not even when Judy helped me turn him and look underneath the body.
    Didn’t make a lot of sense. Drunk? I thought. Suicide? But I let my conclusions slide for the time being, and snapped a few pictures with my phone of this poor citizen’s ruined face.
    “I’m done here, Judy,” I said, giving her my card. “When the medical examiner gets here, tell him this gentleman is good to go.”
    “That’s it, huh?” Judy said, smiling. “Love ’em and leave ’em? Mike Bennett, NYPD’s version of the Lone Ranger. Who was that masked man?”
    “Hey, feel free to take notes on what an efficient textbook investigation looks like,” I said with a wink. “Like you said, you’re dealing with the legendary Major Case.”

Chapter 3
    The first thing I noticed as I entered the stylish modern hotel off the 67th Street sidewalk were the two people talking by the front desk.
    One was a twenty-something white guy wearing an Arab keffiyeh scarf with his blue blazer. The other was an elegant middle-aged black woman in a plum-colored dress and pearls. They seemed to be arguing quietly, and the guy in the scarf was holding up his phone between them, right in the lady’s face.
    “Hi. I’m Detective Bennett. Are you the hotel manager?” I said to the woman.
    “Yes. I’m Amanda Milton,” she said pleasantly. I stepped between them, almost knocking the phone out of the guy’s hand.
    “And who are you?” I said to the guy curtly. As if I didn’t know.
    “Luke Messerly. From the New York Times, ” he said.
    “Could I talk to you for a sec, Luke?” I said. I steered him toward the front revolving door. “I just got here, buddy,” I said