Silent Night

FIFTEEN

As luck would have it, Tibbs lived just around the corner from Kruger. The journey only took Marquez and Jorgensen a couple of minutes.

Unlike Kruger’s building, this one had a reception and they walked over to the counter, Marquez showing the guy behind the desk her badge and telling him the reason they were here. The man said he hadn’t seen Tibbs this morning, which meant he was probably upstairs. As a precaution Marquez asked him for a key-card, which he agreed to provide on the condition that he join them. Marquez understood. Scams like this would be a dime a dozen across the city, thieves coming up with elaborate ways to get access to someone’s apartment. If he came with them and watched their every move, his ass would be covered.

He walked around the desk to join the two cops, passing Marquez the key-card. She took it, then turned to Jorgensen.

‘Save you another doorframe.’

Together, the trio headed for the lifts. Two of them were already open and they rode one up to 13. Once the lift arrived they stepped out and the guy from the reception led them down the corridor. Soon they came to a halt outside a varnished wooden door, 13 E.

‘Dr Tibbs?’ Marquez said, knocking. ‘NYPD. Open up please, sir.’

Nothing.

‘Dr Tibbs?’

Nothing.

She took the key-card and slid it into the lock, opening the door.

The moment she pushed it back, all three saw that Dr Tibbs was indeed inside the apartment.

And he wasn’t going anywhere.

He was laid out in the living area, a strip of duct tape across his mouth. He’d been shot a number of times, twice to the sternum, twice to the head, blood pooled around him and four empty shell casings lying in the red. As the hotel worker covered his mouth and stared in horror, Marquez and Jorgensen simultaneously drew their side-arms and moved into the apartment, their weapons up.

But just like Kruger’s, the place was empty.



Although the Counter-Terrorism Bureau standard-issue Ford Explorer had no light on the roof, it had blue and red lights behind the front and rear fenders. When activated, they sent a clear message to other drivers: get the hell out of the way. Taking the FDR, Josh roared downtown, weaving in and out of traffic as they moved at a controlled but furious speed. He swung off the highway to the right onto South Street and screeched to a halt at the South Street Seaport, alongside Pier 17.

Being the focal point of the entire area, the Pier had been transformed in the 1980s from an old fish market into a three-storey glass pavilion shopping centre, surrounded by a wooden boardwalk and promenade that looked out over the East River. It was one of the busiest shopping areas in Manhattan and also one of Archer’s favourite spots to spend his days off. He used to come down here with Katic and her daughter. It had something for everybody. The shopping centre on the Pier was an assortment of different stores, bars and restaurants, some of which served arguably the best seafood in the city. A large pirate ship was docked beside the Pier, acting as a great tourist attraction and entertainment for kids, a number of tour guides dressed up as pirates adding to the spectacle.

Beside the ship, a brass band and group of carol singers were standing on the promenade with their backs to the water. The choir was singing as a crowd watched, people stepping forward to slip money into donation boxes collecting for charity. As he slammed the car door and moved onto the boardwalk, Archer recognised the carol. It was an old classic. Silent Night.

Josh joined him, both of them looking at the Pier. A second ESU and CRT team were already here; the music was serving as a distraction, so not many people had noticed the quiet but efficient evacuation beginning around them.

Cursing, Josh pulled his cell, calling Shepherd.

‘Sir, we’re here. Where the hell are we looking?’



Given that the Seaport was merely a stone’s throw from Wall Street, the waterfront primarily catered for the wealthy. A number of stores had set up shop here in order to cash in on all that money. One of them was a trendy clothing brand which had worked increasingly hard for a number of years to establish itself as a provider of top-tier casual wear. Much of their clothing was slim or muscle-fit, a deliberate ploy to discourage anyone who was overweight wearing their stuff, and each article cost anywhere from forty to over a hundred bucks. You almost had to earn the right to wear their clothes. However, such design and marketing strategies has succeeded in giving the brand a certain image and prestige and their garments were popular, particularly with teenagers and young adults.

The store was about twenty five yards from the Seaport and the water. Inside, the manager liked to keep the lights low and the music thumping. Given that it was a week before Christmas the place was doing a brisk trade. They had eight very busy employees assisting customers and processing sales, all of them wearing store-brand polo shirts and jeans. The tills were working flat out and the clothes were flying off the shelves. One of the employees, a twenty two year old NYU student working at the store over the Christmas period to earn some extra money, was carrying some fresh merchandise from the storeroom out back. He laid out an assortment of shirts and jeans, draping them across a wooden stand and adjusting them neatly as he had been taught, displaying the items to their best advantage. As he was finishing, he caught a familiar whistle coming from the second level. He looked up and saw a colleague motioning for him to come and help her.

He quickly headed up the stairs. By the time he got there she’d already moved back to her position behind one of the tills, but he could see why she’d called him. There was a long queue of customers waiting to be served in front of her and the line was growing.

But as he walked over to log in to the till beside her, something caught his eye.

A white shopping bag was sitting on the floor by a table stacked with merchandise to his right. It was unattended. Someone must have put it down to check out some clothing, then walked off and forgotten it. It happened all the time.

He went over to retrieve the bag and put it aside for collection when the forgetful customer had realised what they’d done. But as he bent down to pick it up, he looked closer and frowned. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him in the low lighting of the store.

Some kind of yellow gas was seeping out of the bag.