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“You’re on,” I said.
Now, this was how detectives were supposed to operate.
As soon as I hung up, I called out, “Harry!”
Chapter 87
Daniel Ott got lucky and saw the grumpy barmaid leaving The Queen’s Castle not long after lunch. It was days like this, when he found someone truly deserving of his attention, that he was glad he was so careful. As long as he could maintain his cool, he knew he could do this indefinitely.
He followed her for a few blocks, then saw her go into an apartment building. A few minutes later, someone opened the blinds in the corner apartment on the third floor. Ott smiled. He calculated how much time he wanted to spend with this barmaid. He’d already decided that if anyone else was home, he’d take them down with her.
He reached down and touched the work pouch on his belt. It had a knife, some zip ties, and a pair of gloves. He also had a seven-inch steel rod. He had wondered what it would be like to drive the rod through someone’s temple. Or maybe hold it over her chest and let her contemplate what was about to happen. Power surged through him when he was deciding how someone might die.
He pictured this woman on the floor of her apartment, duct tape wrapped around her mouth. Ott could sit on top of her as long as he wanted before he attacked her eye. Before he taunted the police by mixing her blood with the blood from a previous victim. He couldn’t remember anyone he’d looked forward to dealing with more than this barmaid. It was as much for her behavior and attitude as it was about his leaving a legacy here in New York.
If that happened with the help of a foolish copycat, so be it. CNN was already talking about him. He couldn’t imagine the coverage when yet another body landed in the morgue. By then he would be back in Omaha, recharging before he went out into the world again.
His phone rang in his pocket. He casually picked it up without taking his eyes off the apartment. Even as he heard his younger daughter’s voice say, “Hello, Daddy!” he never stopped staring at the apartment.
He said, “Hello, my angel.”
“When are you coming home, Daddy?”
He could hear his wife prompting his daughter. He said, “Soon, my angel, soon.”
“Are you almost done in York City?”
Ott heard his wife correct her.
&
nbsp; The little girl repeated, “Are you almost done in New York City?”
“Yes, little angel. I only have one more job to complete.” He smiled.
Chapter 88
It didn’t take me long to schedule a team meeting in the Gramercy Park area at the Thirteenth Precinct, the closest precinct to the hotel where Daniel Ott was staying.
All the homicide detectives with cases related to this killer were here: Terri Hernandez, looking like an athletic college student even with her heavy ballistic vest; Javier Tunez, reviewing case details on his phone; Dan Jackson, a mountain in his tactical gear; Raina Rayesh, focused and going through notes.
And all of us were wearing our blue NYPD raid jackets. We detectives were going by the book today.
We also had a uniformed sergeant and five uniformed patrol officers. This was a newer tactic we’d used in the last few years. People got so concerned about the chance of someone impersonating a detective, having a uniformed officer with us often helped. Harry Grissom had arranged for that. The big sergeant was named Mike Sadecki. He looked like he shaved with a machete. I was glad to have him with us.
“We’re not here to do anything fancy. Some of us will stay outside in case he runs. We’ll all stay on channel 3 on our radios,” Harry explained. “We got no warrant. We just want to get eyes on this guy. Talk to him for a few minutes without worrying about dealing with the district attorney or anything like that. If we got a warrant, we couldn’t talk to him, because it’s assumed he’s represented. That’s just stupid local DA policy.”
Raina Rayesh asked, “How sure are you about this guy?”
I answered that. “If he’s not our suspect, there are a lot of coincidences. His work schedule puts him in three different cities during three corresponding murder sprees.” I distributed printouts of his driver’s license. “He’s about five foot ten, very average-looking. No one ever seems to notice him.”
Twenty minutes later, we had developed a simple but effective plan: Harry, Raina, and I would walk into the hotel lobby with Sergeant Sadecki.
The hotel was six stories tall and tucked between two fifteen-story buildings, its exterior so bright and cheerful that it looked out of place in the city. This wasn’t a Ritz-Carlton or even a Marriott. This was the kind of place a family traveling on a budget stayed—or where a company put up a worker on extended assignment.
There were two clerks behind the counter but no one else in the plain, practical lobby. I walked toward a middle-aged woman with neatly tied-back brown hair who looked to be the senior clerk, but she turned away and disappeared into a room behind the front desk. That left a young, hipster-looking dude with mismatched earrings and hair that looked like it hadn’t been combed in a couple of days.
The young man looked up at the uniformed sergeant and me. We stepped all the way to the counter so we could look over into the space behind it.
