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Tapell before she called him.

     

    H e was dragging the man by his feet, blood trailing behind like a comet, just visible in the darkness. The body was heavier than he’d anticipated, considering that half the man’s guts were ten feet behind him in the middle of the alley.
    It had to be discovered soon. Not two days from now, when some street cleaner felt ambitious and went into the alley behind the Manhattan office building, or some crack addict needed a place to shoot up.

    He took his time arranging it so that one of the man’s legs peeked out of the alleyway just enough to catch a passerby’s attention, though they’d probably think it was some homeless person and keep on walking.

    Under the jumpsuit, sweat from his armpits was dripping down his sides, and his hands were damp under the gloves.

    Somewhere a dog was barking. Odd, he thought, in this part of the city, mainly offices, all shut down for the night. He checked the time. It would be several hours before any of them opened for business.

    He unwrapped the still-wet canvas he’d brought with him, and arranged it beside the body. Or should he figure out a way to get it on the alley wall? He wasn’t sure about that part. Did it matter? He studied it a minute—a still life of fruit in a blue-striped bowl—then nudged it with his gloved hand a bit closer to the dead man’s head.

     

    Y ou know I don’t want to hear this, Dominic.” The phone felt hot against Tapell’s ear. “You’re supposed to keep your union members happy, remember? That’s why I put you in the job.” Clare Tapell regretted the statement the second the words had left her mouth. She sighed into the phone. “Look, Dom, I’m sorry. But I don’t need this. Not now. I just can’t have a police strike. And it’s illegal, remember? Besides, the mayor is threatening to trim the budget, again, which sure as hell means less money for police. You just can’t let it happen.”
    The chief of police listened a moment, stared at the framed photos on the walls beside her desk, one of her shaking hands with the mayor, the new conservative mayor, who she was pretty sure did not care for her, a black woman, and a liberal, heading up New York’s police force and coming up for reappointment. No, she did not need a strike, something to prove she could not control her people. Damn it.

    She listened another moment, then reiterated her demands—that the union head stave off even the threat of a police walkout—then spent the next two hours calling every precinct chief in all five boroughs, stroking each of them as best she could, flipping through files to find names of their wives or husbands and children to add that personal touch.

    No way Clare Tapell was going to let this job slip through her fingers after one term. She’d fought too hard and too long, and damn it, she’d given up a personal life for it, not that anyone cared about that.

    What they cared about was today’s report in the Daily News . The new statistics were in, and crime had gone up two percent, which had everything to do with a slowing economy and fewer cops, not to mention losing some of her best men and women on 9/11. She was still waiting for that promised federal money to replace them, and it looked as though it was never going to come.

    On top of everything, that damn Post story.

    A serial killer in the Bronx? Jesus.

    When McNally said the words— serial killer —she hadn’t thought much of it. The man was a decent cop, a dedicated lifer, for sure, but no genius. But when Brown said it she knew she had to pay attention.

    Tapell popped a couple of Rolaids into her mouth.

    For the moment she put aside thoughts of federal funding or a police strike or even her reappointment, and called Kate McKinnon Rothstein, though she knew Kate would not appreciate her call.

    Tapell squeezed the plastic cap onto the Rolaids container thinking that she knew Kate about as well as she knew anyone. The problem was that Kate knew