Burn by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson [Patterson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, Thriller
Amazon: B00HQ2MXH8
Goodreads: 20318201
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Published: 2014-09-25T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 58

Back outside on the street, a burly Asian patrol sergeant hurried up and told me Detective Williams was looking for me. He quickly led me north up Trinity and then turned left onto an extremely narrow street called Emeric J. Harvey Place.

In the middle of the alleylike street, we stopped before a brick warehouse that looked old enough to have rented a storage locker to Alexander Hamilton.

“He’s waiting for you up top,” the First Precinct sergeant said, thumbing at the building’s old-fashioned tilting fire escape, which had been lowered to the sidewalk.

I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves before I climbed up the rickety ladder and the zigzagging cast-iron stairs to the seven-story warehouse’s roof. Off the roof’s terra-cotta rim, there was a clear view of the new World Trade Center’s busy construction site. Too bad I wasn’t there to sightsee. Across the tar paper and around the base of a rocketlike wooden water tank, I found Williams standing in the open doorway of the interior stairs.

There was a pile of clothing, green coveralls and traffic vests and yellow hard hats, piled at his feet.

“Security guard just called it in,” Williams said. “They must have come up here, lost the outfits, and then went down through the interior of the building and out the front door looking like anyone at all.”

“Tell me there’s a building security camera?” I said, toeing one of the helmets.

Williams shook his head.

“Disabled since yesterday. Looks like they had a good escape route already worked out. I hate to admit it, but these guys are good.”

Back down on the street, there was now another cluster of newsies on the north end of Trinity Place setting up cameras on tripods behind the crime scene tape. A quick-thinking female talking head from NBC turned and knifed a microphone at my face as Williams and I passed.

“Detective, does this robbery look like it’s related to the string of heists in Brooklyn and Connecticut?” she said.

“Too early to tell,” I said.

“Do you have any leads so far?”

“No comment,” I said as I passed by, and almost kicked myself when I realized that with my luck, they would probably edit out the word comment.

The only good news was the sight of the newly arrived CSU van in front of the store. Inside, Manhattan South Evidence Collection Unit detective Stacy Bergen was on her hands and knees on the carpet examining the cases and shattered glass fragments with a burning white high-intensity light.

“Anything, Stacy?” I said.

“No blood so far,” Bergen said. “Which is surprising, because some of the holes in these cases are very jagged. I’m not holding my breath for getting any prints. They had to have been wearing thick work gloves.”

I was just about to tell her about the find on the roof when my phone rang. It was my buddy Arturo Lopez from the Harlem squad.

“Mike?” Lopez said, out of breath. “Did you hear about Holly Jacobs? EMTs are rushing her over to the Harlem Hospital Center as we speak.

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