The Night Watcher Read Free Page B

building. Whoever used Danner as kindling put a lot of other tenants in peril. I’d like this one cleared from the books as soon as possible.”
    Before Vandervoort gets back, Stack thought. He said, “We’re canvassing the building, and we’ll talk some more to the doorman, but so far nobody’s been much help. A search of the apartment didn’t turn up anything that seemed relevant. No drugs, no names of known felons in Danner’s address book. The techs say there was nothing unusual on his computer: some business correspondence; some downloaded soft-core porn; a stock and bond portfolio worth about a quarter of a million.”
    “Soft-core porn?”
    “Nothing that’d move you, unless you like to watch bare-breasted women operating jackhammers.” Stack was pretty sure he heard Rica roll her eyes. “There were no messages on his answering machine. Gold cuff links and a gold chain in a dresser drawer in the bedroom, and Danner was wearing a Rolex when he burned. It doesn’t appear the apartment was burglarized, but since we don’t know exactly what Danner might have had in there, we can’t be sure. His lady love, Helen Sampson, is going to look around the place with us today, take an inventory, and see if anything might be missing.”
    “Good,” O’Reilly said. “You two keep me posted.” He stood up, signaling the end of the conversation.
    “Will do, sir,” Stack told him. He and Rica stood also.
    As they stepped into the hall, Stack closed the door behind them.
    “What the hell was all that about?” Rica asked beside Stack, as they were walking back toward the squad room. “Does he think we’re just wandering around with our thumbs up our asses?”
    “He might,” Stack said, “but what I think it was really about was O’Reilly wishing he were Vandervoort.”
    And where, Rica wondered, is that going to take us?

FOUR
    June 1997
    Vernel Jefferson had screwed his neighbor’s ten-year-old daughter. He’d been arrested twice before for child molestation, never for anything violent done against an adult. Sweating like Niagara there in the dark tenement hall, Rica didn’t think she’d need her gun. Her partner Wily Stanford was at the other end of the hall, knocking on Jefferson’s apartment door so he could arrest him. Jefferson figured to cave like most child molesters and come along quietly, especially since he was in his sixties and only slightly over five feet tall. Rica the rookie cop was breathing hard, nervous, but she figured this was nothing she couldn’t handle.
    The tenement hall smelled like a blend of every cooking spice known to man, with an underlying stench of stale urine. There was a single dim overhead lightbulb halfway down the narrow hall. Stanford, at the distant end of the hall, was a barely visible figure despite his six-foot frame.
    Rica heard him knock on the door again, louder. “Mr. Jefferson, open up! This is the police!”
    There was no way out of the fifth-floor apartment except through Stanford or down the fire escape. Another uniformed cop was waiting down at street level if Jefferson decided to bolt that way. Rica was insurance in the unlikely event the little pervert would somehow manage to get past Stanford.
    Another apartment door opened near the middle of the corridor. A dark woman with cornrow hair stuck her head out and peered up and down the hall. When she looked Rica’s way, Rica silently motioned for her to get back inside. The woman nodded, drew back out of sight, and the door closed. Stanford pounded on Jefferson’s door now, impatient. It was damn near the end of the shift.
    Rica tightened her perspiring grip on her baton as she watched Stanford hoist his huge foot with its size-twelve shoe and prepare to kick in the door.
    At first she thought the explosion was the sound of Stanford’s foot shattering the door, incredibly loud. When she saw Stanford hurled back against the wall, she thought she might have heard a shot. Then she realized the sound