Inherit the Dead

hungover from not enough sleep. All night, his mind had been running through the case: from meeting Julia Drusilla to the drive out east to see Angel’s not-so-grieving father to speaking to Randy Hyde and Lilith Bates, and checking out the Memory Motel. At some point he had managed to make himself interesting enough to explain why that crazy Lilith Bates had been following him. Now, after meeting with Arthur Gawain, he was back in the city to meet his old friend at the 19th Precinct.
    Located on East Sixty-seventh on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the 19th Precinct serves one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the country. More than 217,000 people packed into approximately 1.75 square miles. Nearly twelve hundred per city block.
    All things being equal, more people means more policing. But not all populations are created equal. This one also happened to be one of the richest in the nation—the chosen locale for foreign consulates and ambassadors, the city’s most elite prep schools, and the kind of New Yorkers who believed that jeans were for south of Twenty-third Street. The only kind of “spree” going down in the 19th on a usual weekday morning would be of the shopping variety, committed onMadison Avenue by ladies in coats that cost more than Perry made in half a year.
    But just as not all populations are created equal, not every weekday morning was the usual. Perry had been on the job long enough to read the energy of a station. This morning, the house was hopping.
    Bumper-to-bumper squad cars lined the south side of Sixty-seventh Street, red lights flashing from the tops of the RMPs. Uniformed officers poured from the station to take their places behind the wheels of their radio motor patrol units. Others stayed busy filling the backs of two flatbed trucks with metal crowd-control barricades.
    Where was Watson? They were supposed to meet outside so Perry could skip the always-pleasant experience of announcing his always-memorable name at the front desk of his old precinct—not that he cared.
    He started to take in the action from the front of the neighboring building until he noticed the sign at the entrance: KENNEDY CHILD STUDY CENTER . Man alone outside a day care. Way to blend. He moved west and leaned against the side of the precinct’s brick exterior, pretending to fiddle with his phone like any other multitasking pedestrian.
    The experienced officers looked put out by whatever mission they were on, but comments shared among the rookies revealed their eagerness.
    Perry spotted Henry Watson hop out of an unmarked fleet car halfway down the block, easy to spot since Henry was a good head taller than everyone else. As he walked, Watson popped a white square of gum from a foil packet in his pocket.
    Perry called out to his friend. “And they said you couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”
    Watson caught Perry’s gaze and smiled, then flashed him five fingers as he pulled one of the uniformed officers aside. He needed five minutes.
    As Perry continued to listen in on the action, he started to piece together the reason for all the activity outside the precinct. For once, a protest that actually makes some sense. Protest scheduled for noon. Ninety-first Street outside the Russian Consulate. Hunter College sophomore. Body found in “the guy’s” bed last weekend. He’s some kind of attaché. Like a briefcase? No, numbskull—it’s some kind of diplomat thing. GHB, the date-rape drug, in her system. We can’t touch him.
    Only four syllables, but each one dripped from the young officer with anger. We can’t touch him. Perry knew the feeling. He’d felt it on the job more times than he should have, including on the case that first brought Watson and him together. Watson was working homicide in the Bronx, Perry in downtown Manhattan. Two different boroughs, two missing girls, two sets of grieving families. No reason to make the connection.
    The girls had been missing for more than six years when Perry got word: police in Portland, Oregon, had cleared four unsolved murders with a DNA hit. Now the defendant was ready to give up more names and dates. Girls in six states across the country—totaling either sixteen or eighteen. He wasn’t certain, but he knew it was an even number. He liked to kill in pairs.
    Among the names the suspect was dangling were Kerry Lighton, a struggling artist who painted by day and stripped by night, and Tonya Barton, a for-hire “escort” who