The Jake Helman Files Personal Demons Read Free Page A

palms like a basketball. The bright light emanated from inside the bag—from
her
—but Byron seemed blind to it. He stepped toward the bureau as if carrying a fragile antique. Shannon focused on the briefcase as they approached it: inside it she saw the bloody knife and the camera. Her panic multiplied a thousandfold.
    Not in there!
Stopping at the bureau, Byron set the bag inside the case, fitting it snug in a compartment. Smiling down at her, he closed the lid like that of a coffin. The bag flattened out and Shannon sensed it expanding on the sides. Her light filled the interior of the case, spotlighting the candy-colored blood on the knife’s blade. She heard two clicks as Byron latched the tabs, then felt vibrations as he thumbed the combination locks, entombing her.
    A scream welled up inside her, unable to escape.

2
    J ake Helman stood on the sidewalk of West Forty-fifth Street, in the upscale Manhattan neighborhood formerly known as Hell’s Kitchen. The current residents preferred to call the area Clinton or Restaurant Row, but to Jake it would always be Midtown North, one of the precincts below Fifty-ninth Street that comprised Manhattan South. He lit his second consecutive Marlboro to steady his nerves, but the nicotine only added to his edge. Less than one hour into his shift, the rising sun restored color to the faded urine and vomit stains on the gray concrete, the remains of smashed pumpkins rotting near his feet.
    Jake hated Mondays, especially during morning rush hour. The neighborhood yuppies moved like lemmings to the nearest subway station, casting sideways glances at the police activity on the block. Jake stood rigid in a cascading river of khaki slacks, designer sunglasses, and cell phones. Inhaling cigarette smoke, he tensed his muscles beneath his three-quarter-length black leather coat, and the tide of corporate hucksters parted around him like the Red Sea around Moses.
    The pulsating strobes of three Radio Motor Patrol cars and one Emergency Services ambulance parked along the one-way street splashed garish red and blue light on the residential buildings. The doors of the white radio cars bore the NYPD’s motto in sky blue lettering: COURTESY, PROFESSIONALISM, RESPECT. Jake had parked his unmarked Chevy Cavalier up the block, behind the EMS bus. Uniformed police officers stood outside the apartment building behind him and along the curb before him, controlling the crowd.
    Across the street, behind a chain-link fence, schoolchildren chased each other around a playground, their joyful shouts rising above the traffic noise coming from Eleventh Avenue. Jake watched them with bleary eyes. After two years of marriage, Sheryl wanted a baby. He had shared her desire at first, but he had only been in the Special Homicide Task Force for one year then, a rising star on the prestige team. After three years in the unit, he knew firsthand that terrible things happened to children in the boroughs of New York City. Sheryl wanted to move from their one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, in the One-Nine Precinct, to Long Island, where she believed the suburbs offered relative sanctuary from the city’s brutality. They had begun saving money for a down payment on a house, but Jake knew that children were vulnerable to predators in even the most mundane settings. His mind reconstructed the image of a photograph he had spent countless hours studying: a school portrait of a six-year-old girl named Rhonda Kelly, whose own father had—
    Stop it
.
    The image faded, receding into the dark corridors of his mind. His knees shook as he sucked on the cigarette; at thirty-two, he felt more like fifty.
    “You Helman?” a female voice said behind him.
    Jake turned toward the brick building. Two paramedics emerged behind the patrolman stationed at the front door: a Chinese man with spiky black hair and acne-scarred cheeks, and a short black woman with relaxed hair. Jake recognized them from other homicide sites, but did