Worst Case (Michael Bennett 3)

“Now, I want you to take a little test,” he said as he filled the bucket. “The subject is water. Did you know that one-point-one billion people worldwide lack access to fresh drinking water? That’s a lot of folks, wouldn’t you say? Now, my question is this: How much clean water does it take to wash your Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt and Dolce and Gabbana jeans?”

I am having a nightmare, Chelsea thought, staring at the man as he turned off the tap and stepped back, holding the heavy bucket easily in his left hand.

I am Alice, and I have dropped down the rabbit hole and eaten the wrong slice of cake.

Chelsea finally lowered her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said in an almost whisper.

Without warning, the man grasped the bottom of the bucket and swung it forward. The water that hit her full in the face was frigid. If she thought she was cold before, she was out of her mind. She was Arctic Sea–cold now. Deep space–cold.

“It takes forty gallons!” the man in the ski mask screamed. “In the villages of rural Cambodia and northern Uganda, two to three hundred people struggle daily to share one hand pump in order to get the water they need to survive. Families die for water. The only time you give it the foggiest thought is when a waiter asks you if you want yours sparkling or not!

“Now, question number two: How many thousands of children die every day throughout our world from water-related illnesses, like cholera, dysentery, and hepatitis?”

Chelsea was no longer listening. She was too cold to hear, to think. It was like a glacier was moving through her body now, petrifying her muscles and tendons and bones. It would reach her heart soon, she thought, and the cold would make it seize up like a frozen engine.

The man went back to the sink with the bucket. He began whistling the theme from final Jeopardy! as he squealed open the tap again.

Chapter 20

A MIGRAINE HEADACHE woke Emily Parker at the ungodly hour of six a.m. Now that’s what I call a wake-up call, she thought, wincing as she sat up. She’d been suffering from migraines on and off ever since she was in college. The pulsating, stabbing sensation was always in the same place, above her left eye, as if something were trying to dig its way out of her skull with an ice pick.

Sometimes it was so bad, it made her vomit. Sometimes, for some inexplicable reason, it made her extremely thirsty. Before he left, her New Age husband, John, had suggested that it was the price for her investigative skill, the price for her ability to make intuitive leaps that saved people’s lives.

Or maybe it was the stress brought on by my no-good husband, she wished she could tell him now.

She found her bag and fished out an Imitrex, her headache prescription. Swallowing it dry, she saw a flashing image of Jacob Dunning dead in the South Bronx boiler room.

What was she still doing here? she thought. Her boss told her to hang tight up in New York, at least until the results from the medical examiner were in, but she wasn’t sure. Thirty-five was definitely too old for this shit in the Bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. She found herself missing her cozy beige cubicle and cinder-block walls. Or maybe she should get out altogether and try to get a teaching job. Something that coincided with Olivia’s schedule. Give some fresh, young world beater the chance to go after these monsters, deal with these poor families.

She was shaking another Imitrex into her palm when her cell went off.

“Hey, it’s Mike,” Bennett said. “Sorry to wake you up.”

She found herself smiling. His calm voice was like a lifeboat against the nauseating waves of tightness in her skull. She remembered dinner, his crazy kids. At least that had been fun.

“Tell me something good, Mike,” she said. “The media coverage jogged someone’s memory?”

“I wish,” he said. “I just got off the phone with my boss. Looks like we got another missing kid. Her name is Chelsea Skinner. She’s seventeen, and her father is the president of the New York Stock Exchange. Friends let her out of a cab on the corner of her street early this morning, but she never made it home.”

“Already? My God! Even for a serial, that’s unbelievably fast to do it again,” Emily said. “Should we head to the family’s residence?”

“No,” Bennett said. “Schultz and Ramirez are already on their way. Our presence has actually been requested at the task force meeting they’re putting together down at headquarters. I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty so we can get our game faces on. You like lox on your bagel? I don’t think the Jewish deli I go to has grits, but I can ask. What are grits, anyway?”

“Tell me, Mike,” Emily said with a smile. “Are all New York cops wiseasses twenty-four/seven?”

“Just the good-looking ones with double-digit kids,” Bennett said. “See you in a few hours, Agent Parker.”

Chapter 21

THE TASK FORCE meeting was at a brand-new section of One Police Plaza’s tenth floor. They must have pulled out all the stops with Homeland Security money, because it looked like a war room out of Hollywood.

There were brand-new flat-panel monitors everywhere, state-of-the-art telephone and radio com hookups, and huge PowerPoint screens covering one of the large space’s long walls. You could still smell the chemicals in the new carpet. Or maybe that was just the shoe polish that glossed the expensive wingtips of all the high-powered attendants.

The mayor was back early, I noticed, with our old pal Georgina Hottinger hovering around him like a scavenger fish around a shark. They were busy conferring with police commissioner Daly and his contingent of white-uniform-shirted chiefs. There was even a group of healthy-looking guys with executive hair whom I could only assume were colleagues of Emily’s.

Emily went over to powwow with the other Fibbies a moment after we entered. I made myself busy by taking out my cell phone and checking for any updates.