When she finished, Rivera leaned back, his chair giving an annoying squeak. “Where’s Brooker now?”
“He didn’t say. I have his cell-phone number—”
“Good. Call him. Get him in here.”
“He’s solid, Mike.”
“Maybe.” He glanced down at the picture on his desk, but his face remained expressionless. “I don’t like putting Bobby Tatro and Ethan Brooker together and coming up with you as the common denominator.”
Juliet got to her feet. “Neither do I.”
“And let’s get looking for this Tatro character.”
Tony Cipriani poked his head in through the door. “Sorry to interrupt. Juliet, I’ve got a Vermont state trooper on the phone. He says it’s important. Something about your niece.”
Juliet jumped to her feet, and Rivera waved her toward the outer office. When she picked up the phone at her desk, Joshua, seething, told her about the cheerful, cryptic message his daughter had left on his voice mail. “It’s been over an hour. She said she’d be just an hour or so late and there’s no sign of her. Juliet—”
“I haven’t heard from her.”
“Damn it.”
But she heard the concern in his voice. As out of patience as he was with Wendy, he didn’t want anything to happen to her. “Maybe she forgot something at my apartment. I’ll run up there and check, okay? You’re still in Katonah?”
“I’ll stay here until I hear from you.”
Juliet tried to grin. “Don’t bite the steering wheel in two.”
When she hung up, Tony Cipriani and Mike Rivera both were frowning at her. She rubbed the back of her neck, awkward at having family complications interfere with her workday. What was Wendy up to this time? Juliet quickly explained the situation. Cip, for whom teenagers were still a mystery, offered to go with her, but she shook her head. The last thing she wanted was a fellow deputy mixed up in a family matter.
Rivera cut her loose to go find her niece. “The kid probably got a wild hair to see the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan,” he said. “Teenagers and impulse control, you know?”
“I’m beginning to,” Juliet said.
“Take the time you need. Escort Miss Wendy back to her father if you have to.”
When she arrived at her building, Juliet forced herself not to charge inside like some kind of wild woman. She’d had to fight off her own guilt. She’d believed her niece capable of getting to her father on her own. She’d put her on the train at Grand Central and waved her goodbye. She’d trusted Wendy not to get off until Katonah.
Muttering to herself about the difference between independence and responsibility and courtesy, Juliet pushed open the glass door to the lobby, faintly surprised that Juan hadn’t beaten her to it.
She slowed her pace once through the door. He didn’t seem to be around at all. If Wendy had forgotten something, she’d have had to get the keys from him. “Juan?” Juliet walked back behind the stairs to the tiny room he used as an office and a place to lock up bags, hold packages for people.
She knocked on the door, calling him again. When there was no answer, she tried the knob—the door was unlocked. Maybe he’d just run to the bathroom. He should have locked the office, but Juliet wasn’t about to rat him out. She pushed open the door, just to make sure he wasn’t in there with headphones on or passed out drunk or ill, although he’d so far proved himself ultra-responsible and in good health.
The door struck something—his foot—and Juliet immediately saw that he was sprawled facedown on the floor. “Juan!” But she took in the blood pooling on the polished floor, the unnatural angle of his neck, and even as she grimaced at the certainty that this friendly man was dead, murdered, she drew her Glock.
Tatro.
In all likelihood, Juan—she didn’t even know his last name—was dead because of her.
Knowing she couldn’t think about that now, Juliet got her cell phone out of her jacket with her free hand and hit the automatic dial for Tony Cipriani’s direct line.
“Cip—it’s Juliet. I’m in the lobby of my apartment building. My doorman’s had his throat slit.” She pushed back her emotion and focused on what she had to do. “It can’t have happened that long ago.”
“I’m on my way. I’ll notify NYPD.”
“Rivera—”
“He’s standing right here. I’m handing him the phone. I’ll use another line.”
No matter how long she stayed in law enforcement, Juliet doubted she’d ever get used to what horrors some people inflicted on their fellow human beings for profit, revenge, fun—or the plain old hell of it.
She glanced at the elevator and saw the light above it indicating it was on her floor.
Not moving.
“Wendy. Oh, God.”
“Longstreet?” It was Rivera’s voice.
“I can’t wait for Cip or NYPD, Mike. I think Tatro’s in the building. He could be in my apartment. If my niece is up there—”