Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

She stopped. She did a double take when she saw the wig. But by then he was too close, and it was too late.

Berger pulled the knife from the sheath at his back. It was a shining machete-like military survival knife with a nine-inch blade. Rambo would have been proud.

“Yell and I’ll carve your fucking eyes out of your skull,” he said as he bunched her bathing suit top at her back like puppet strings. He hauled her the quick twenty steps to the loading dock by the building’s rear even faster than he had visualized. He dragged her into the space between the dock’s truck-size garbage compacter and the wall. A little plastic chair sat in the space next to the dock. It was probably where the building’s janitor fucked off, he thought.

“Here, have a seat. Get comfy,” Berger said, sitting her down on it hard.

Instead of taping her mouth as he had planned, he decided to go ahead and start stabbing her. The garbage stench and the buzzing of the flies were too much for him.

The first quick thrust was to her right shoulder. She screamed behind his cupped hand and looked up at the windows and back terraces of her twenty-story building for help. But there were just humming, dripping air conditioners and blank, empty panes of glass. They were all alone.

She screamed two more times as Berger removed the knife with a slight tug and then thrust it forward into her left shoulder. She started to weep silently as her blood dripped to the nasty, stained cement.

“There, see?” he said, patting her on the cheek with his free bloody hand. “It’s not so bad, right? Almost done, baby. In a minute, we’ll both be out of this stinking hole. You’re doing so fine.”

Chapter 14

STILL AT MY DESK LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON, I’d spent the last two hours scouring the NYPD and FBI databases for any open cases involving the name Lawrence. Though there were quite a few, not one of them seemed to have anything to do with explosives or serial bombings. My eyes felt like blown fuses after I’d sifted through case after irrelevant case.

I glanced up from my computer at the cartoon on the wall of my cubicle, where two cops were arresting a guy next to a dead Pillsbury Doughboy. “His fingerprints match the one on the victim’s belly,” one of the cops was saying.

If only I could catch a slam dunk like that, I thought, groaning as I rubbed my tired, nonsmiling Irish eyes with the heels of my hands.

Scattered around the bullpen behind me, half a dozen other Major Case detectives were running down the lead on the European explosive and questioning potential witnesses and library staff. So far, just like me, they had compiled exactly squat. Without witnesses or likely suspects to connect to the disturbing incident, I was betting it was going to stay that way. At least until our unknown subject struck again. Which was about as depressing as it was gut-churning.

It was getting dark when I finally clocked out and drove back to the Point. Fortunately, most of the traffic was in the opposite lane, heading back into the city from Long Island, so I made decent time for a change.

My gang had quite a surprise for me as it turned out. It started innocently enough. Trent was sitting by himself in the otherwise empty family room when I opened the front door.

“Hey, buddy. Where is everyone?”

“Finally,” Trent said, putting down the deck of Uno cards he was playing with. He lifted up my swim trunks sitting on the couch beside him and tossed them at me.

He stood and folded his arms.

“You need to put these on and follow me,” he said cryptically.

“Where?” I said.

“No questions,” Trent said.

My family was nuttier than I was, I thought, after I got changed and let Trent lead me down the two blocks toward the dark beach. Down toward the water’s edge, I saw a crowd beside a bonfire. The

Black Eyed Peas song “I Gotta Feeling” was blasting.

“Surprise!” everyone yelled as I stepped toward them.

I staggered over, unable to believe it. All my guys were there. They’d brought out the grill, and I could smell ribs smoking. A tub of ice and drinks and a tray of s’mores sat on a blanket. A Bennett beach party was in full swing.

“What the heck is this? It isn’t my birthday.”

“Since you couldn’t be here for a day at the beach,” Mary Catherine said, stepping out of the shadows and handing me a gigantic Day-Glo blue plastic margarita glass, “we thought you might like a night at it. It was all the kids’ idea.”

“Wow,” I said.

“We love you, Dad,” Jane said, dropping a plastic lei around my neck and giving me a kiss. “Is that so surprising?”

“Oh, yes, Daddy-Waddy. We wuv you so much,” said Ricky, tossing a soaking-wet Nerf football at my head. I even managed to catch it without spilling a drop of booze.