Free Die for You by Lisa Unger Page B

their weapons, and stepped carefully inside. They went through the apartment, room by room, checking closets, making sure the place was empty. When they were sure it was, they holstered their weapons. Jesamyn called for uniforms and a crime-scene team.
    The stunning duplex with its hardwood floors and high ceilings, gleaming gourmet kitchen, second-floor master bedroom suite, had been trashed. Furniture was slashed, drapes shredded, shelves dumped, pictures shattered. Grady could see that two computer CPUs—one in the upstairs office off the bedroom and the other at a desk in the kitchen downstairs—were gone, monitors left with cords cut, just like at Razor Tech. A file cabinet hidden inside a closet stood completely empty, drawers gaping like mouths. In the master bathroom, someone had dumped a bottle of red nail polish over a framed black-and-white photo of Isabel Raine walking on the beach with a big dog and two kids. The polish was not quite dry.
    Back downstairs, Grady surveyed the living room. Somehow the damage inflicted seemed angry, frenetic. A row of family photos had been swept from a shelf and stomped upon, cushions had been slashed, bleeding white stuffing. A chinz couch had been scribbled on with indelible marker. It seemed a lot more personal than the damage done in the office space.
    As Grady stepped further into the room, he heard glass crunching beneath his feet. He looked down to see a ruined photograph of Isabel and Marcus Raine. She had her arms wrapped around his neck, her head thrown back in laughter, while Marcus stared directly at the camera, his eyes serious, his smile just a slight turning up of the corners of his mouth. The frame had been stomped on, the glass directly over Isabel Raine’s face was smashed. But Marcus Raine’s face, somehow, was untouched.
    Jesamyn came to stand beside him. “Wow,” she said, looking around the wreckage. “Someone’s angry.”
    He gazed at Isabel’s smashed image. “Very,” he said. “Very angry.”
    “So how’d they get in?”
    They looked at each other.
    “One of the doormen,” said Breslow, answering her own question, as they moved quickly from the apartment. Grady paused to lock the door behind him as Jez moved down the hall to call the elevator.
    “The six P.M. to six A.M. guy hadn’t shown up yet when we arrived,” said Crowe as the doors shut and the elevator moved down the shaft. “That polish in the bathroom was still wet. They were here during Shane’s shift.”
    “Twelve-hour shifts?” mused Breslow. “Is that legal?”
    “I don’t know,” said Crowe. “I guess that’s the job. You do it or you don’t.”
    “Who signs on for twelve hours of catering to rich people, letting in their maids, accepting packages, dry cleaning?”
    “The doorman gig; it’s like a thing , you know. An identity. A history of service.”
    “Service to the rich? No thanks.”
    Crowe didn’t think their job was that different. Protect and serve. Not just the rich, no, but the rich always wound up getting the best service—the fastest response time, the most respect—didn’t they? Even from the cops. If your brother plays golf with the senator, then people care when your daughter gets raped or your wife mugged. In the projects, girls are raped, people robbed every day. It doesn’t make the news. Sometimes the uniforms don’t even show. When they do, their disdain, their apathy is apparent. Not always, but often enough. He worked the South Bronx for years; he knew how those guys felt about the perps, and the vics, too. Attitudes were very different in Midtown North, where the rich lived and worked.
    Charlie Shane was gone when they arrived back in the lobby. His replacement was a skinny, disshelved-looking guy with a five o’clock shadow and an untended shrub of dirty-blond hair.
    Crowe pulled out his notebook and flipped through a couple of pages to find the guy’s name. He wrote down everything in his notebook—details, thoughts,