Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

She was pale and had white-blond hair and a Marilyn Monroe or Madonna look. Even with most of her face beaten black and blue and her neck swollen and purple, she’d obviously been quite attractive. Now she was naked and dead and tossed like so much trash among the construction site’s drywall screws and spackle-flecked-compound buckets.

“Let me guess. This fits with the Joel Rifkin profile somehow,” I said.

Emily was already on one knee, reaching into her bag, flipping through her stacks of photocopied research.

She tore out a sheet.

“Rifkin’s second victim was beaten and strangled.”

“Check,” I said.

“The dismembered body parts hidden in buckets of concrete.”

“This isn’t technically a bucket, but a pretty reasonable facsimile.”

“Reasonable?” Emily said as the sound of hammers rained down from above.

Chapter 89

THE HOTEL’S SECURITY CAMERAS turned out to be a gold mine.

Standing in a cramped, broiling basement security room, Emily and I watched a computer screen, where Apt, in living color, casually walked with the dead girl through the Carlyle’s lobby.

“You grinning son of a bitch!” I said, clinking the screen with my finger.

Apt was wearing an expensive-looking polo shirt and jeans, dressed elegant casual, summer suave. He had on a chunky gold wristwatch. We’d already spoken to the clerk, who said Apt had paid for his $2,000-a-night suite in cash. Watching him head for the check-in desk, I thought Apt’s overall demeanor seemed calm, self-confident, not out of place in the slightest in the insanely expensive hotel. The fucker.

The best video footage of all came from the camera in the corridor outside his room. At three a.m., a difficult-to-make-out man carrying something large wrapped in a sheet walked toward the rear service elevator.

“So he did her in the room, then,” Emily said, nodding.

I nodded back.

“It still boggles my mind that he would take the time to prepare a batch of concrete in the basement and lay her in it. Imagine, you’re down in that pit in the middle of the night. He even took the time to trowel it smooth and seamless with a craftsman’s pride. I can see why this guy was a commando. He must have antifreeze for blood.”

After we obtained copies of the tapes, we went up to the eleventh-floor room Apt had rented out. There was lavish furniture everywhere, an antique rolltop desk, a cream-colored sectional, gilt-frame mirrors. The window of the sitting room had an incredible view to the south, the Met Life Building on Park and the Chrysler Building.

We found the hooker’s bag behind the chic sectional. Among a plethora of interesting trade equipment was a wallet with a New Jersey State driver’s license. Wendy Shackleton.

“Do you think Jersey Girl Wendy here crossed Berger somehow, too?” I said. “Or is Apt maybe starting his own Dead People Club now? Branching out?”

“My money’s on Berger,” Emily said.

The CSU team was already in the bedroom. They’d found a bloody chair leg and blood spatter on the sheets and headboard of the bed. One of the techs told us they’d also found textbook-quality fingerprints on the chair leg.

“He’s getting sloppy?” I said.

“No,” Emily said, staring at the blood on the graphic canvas over the California King sleigh bed. “I’d say it’s more that he just doesn’t care if he leaves evidence. His main concern and number-one priority was staging the body, turning it into a copy of Rifkin’s second victim. The girl was just his project material, modeling clay, oak tag.”

We stared out the window as the techs clicked their cases shut, getting ready to leave. As we watched, the sun came out from behind a passing cloud and turned the Chrysler Building’s iconic spire to molten silver.

“Not bad digs for a boy from coal mine country,” Emily said.

“Berger transformed the lad,” I said. “It’s your classic rags-to-riches-to-mass-murderer story.”

“What now?” Emily said as we kept standing there.

“How about we both resign, and I call room service for a bottle of champagne?”