Free One Cold Night by Katia Lief Page A

Susan’s soul had always feared she would lose Lisa and had tried to warn her. And now she was gone.

Chapter 7
    Wednesday, 3:48 a.m.
    Dave and Bruno stood in front of the newly varnished oak door beside which a bank of intercoms offered a button for each of the four apartments.
    “It’s the third floor,” Dave said.
    “I’m Russian, not blind.” Bruno pressed buzzer number three.
    Dave had never detested anyone as much. Bruno was six feet tall, about the same height as Dave, but with twice the girth and so much hot air he could have floated a blimp all the way up the Hudson. Dave was appalled in every way by this man: his arrogance, his lack of professionalism, his disrespect for Dave’s rank, even his head-to-toe black leather and that idiotic seventies cap. And Bruno wore cologne, lots of it; Dave had never trusted men who wore perfume.
    There was no answer, so Dave pressed the buzzer again. Without waiting, Bruno pushed it four more times in blunt succession and then crossed his arms over his chest. Dave got it, and stood back.
    As soon as he could get away from Bruno — oncethey had been upstairs and talked to the late-night horticulturist, if he or she even existed — Dave would call the night squad captain at his own precinct, the Seven-eight, and ask him to do a little research. If Bruno and Ramos were as hopeless as they appeared, Dave would pull strings to get another team assigned to the investigation. He would take it over himself if he had to, unofficially, since he was out of his jurisdiction. They had to find Lisa as soon as possible, before... He stopped that line of thinking, that bad cop-habit of dark expectation. They had to find her; that was all that mattered right now.
    “Answer!” Bruno stabbed the buzzer again. “It’s spicy cold out here.”
    “Listen,” Dave said. “I think I saw someone looking out the window. I’m not even sure. Maybe we should—”
    “Tonight your girl is missing in a mess of paint; you see someone watching out a window—”
    “Maybe.”
    “Maybe, schmaybe,” Bruno said. “On Monday me and Loopy are down here on a suspicious-person report and we don’t find any suspicious person. So now I’m a suspicious person. You got it?”
    “Monday?”
    Bruno nodded and banged again and again on the door.
    “A man?”
    Bruno nodded and banged.
    “And you never located this guy?” Dave asked.
    Bruno didn’t respond; the answer was obviously no. Now Dave understood why they had gotten here so fast after Officer Johnson had called them.
    Dave looked away. Fifty feet down, more policehad gathered in front of Susan’s shop and factory. An unmarked gray van from CIS — Crime Investigation Services — was parked haphazardly by the curb. In front of the shop’s door, a forensics technician in white rubber gloves was crouched down, carefully brushing powder over the knob and surrounding surfaces with what looked like a basting brush.
    Bruno took five steps back to look up at the third floor of the brick building where the unnaturally bright light still glared. In two angry lunges he was back at the door, pressing the buzzer over and over and over.
    Dave ground his jaw and kept silent. He watched the light, knowing what would happen next. And then it happened.
    “The light just went off,” Dave said.
    “Yeah, I knew the bastard had something to hide.” Bruno then stepped back and shouted in his deep bass voice, something in Russian that ended with at least one exclamation point.
    Dave walked away, back toward the shop and the police force he recognized. He thumbed a speed-dial number into his cell phone; there was no point waiting any longer to make that call to Sam Trachtenberg, the night squad captain of the Seven-eight. Sam was a good cop, a die-hard detective who could be counted on to gather accurate information, and he knew everyone.
    “Oh, yeah, their reputation precedes them,” Sam said with a bark of cynical laughter when he heard the names Lupe Ramos