Navaratna
Warren Van Rensselaer, a reclusive billionaire art collector and world traveler, sat in the living room of his Manhattan high-rise penthouse, admiring the original Picasso he had recently purchased from Sotheby's while accompanying his wife on a shopping trip to London. Dinner was about to be served, and a bottle of Cheval Blanc was chilling on ice, awaiting Malee's return from Bergdorf Goodman.
I wonder what's keeping her? he thought as he glanced at his Patek Philippe wristwatch. She ought to have been home by now.
He was curious but not concerned. The exquisite Mrs. Van Rensselaer was a woman who could protect herself. Assuming his wife was simply caught up in traffic, Warren picked up a magazine off the coffee table and began to read. He was only two paragraphs into the article when his cell phone rang.
The caller introduced herself as a nurse from New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
"A woman was brought in to our emergency room with no identification, but this telephone number was found in her cell phone contacts under the word home."
Warren's thoughts immediately went to his wife.
"Is she all right?"
"I'm afraid I can't give that information over the phone. You'll have to come down to the hospital."
"I'll be right there," he cried and then signaled for his chauffeur to bring the car to the door.
As he rode in the back seat of the late model Rolls Royce, Warren wondered what could possibly have happened to Malee to send her to the hospital. Had she been involved in a car accident? Had someone attacked her? Worried about his wife's wellbeing, he nervously drummed his fingertips on the leather armrest.
The chauffeur pulled up to the emergency room entrance, intending to get out of the vehicle and open the door for his employer, but Warren had opened the back door and exited the car before the Rolls came to a complete stop.
"My name is Warren Van Rensselaer," he told the nurse at the reception desk. "I received a call ...."
"Examining room three, second door on your left," the woman replied.
There were no doctors, nurses or medical technicians hovering around the bed. The patient was the only one in the room. A petite woman, she seemed like a small, helpless child in an oversized bed surrounding by monitors and hooked up to tubes and IV drips.
Malee, a native of Thailand, turned her head and faced her husband, and Warren felt his heart sink in his chest. Her long, thick, luxurious black tresses had turn into sparse clumps of white matted strands that looked more like cotton batting than human hair. Her formerly flawless alabaster complexion resembled parched vellum. It was as though she had aged a century or more since he had seen her at breakfast.
Humphrey Sandoval, a young doctor not long out of medical school, walked into the room and inquired, "Are you the patient's grandson?"
Still bewildered by his wife's altered appearance, Warren made only a slight movement of his head, one the physician took for an affirmative answer.
"I'm afraid you grandmother is a very sick woman," Dr. Sandoval announced in a soft, consoling voice, trying to perfect his bedside manner. "To be perfectly honest, she hasn't long to live. It appears as though, due to her advanced age, her major organs are shutting down. Is there anyone you need to call? Family members that need to be notified? Perhaps a clergyman?"
"I can't believe ...," Warren managed to utter.
The doctor was surprised at the desperate, doleful look in the young man's eyes. Surely, he knew the old woman could not live forever.
"Well, you don't need to do anything right this moment. I'll leave you alone with your grandmother for now. If you need anything, just see the nurse at the desk."
This can't be happening! an inner voice screamed in Warren's head.
Somehow he managed to walk across the room to his wife's bedside and look down at the tiny, withered figure. What had happened to the young, beautiful, seductive woman he knew and loved?
As the monitors sang a harmony of electronic beeps and blips, Malee's lips moved.
"It's gone."
Those two words, barely audible and spoken with great difficulty, was all the explanation her husband needed. Hope, mixed with a sense of urgency, flooded over him. He briefly took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze.
"Don't worry, my darling. I know what to do."
His cell phone was out of his pocket as he exited the room, and he was already calling his chauffeur as he stepped out into the hall.
"Mr. Van Rensselaer," Dr. Sandoval called. "Is something wrong?"
Warren was in too great a hurry to answer him or even to acknowledge his presence. His beloved Malee's life was in danger, and he was the only one who could save her.
* * *
Detective Stephen Marr walked into the police station, greeted his partner and mentally crossed off a running tally he kept in his head.
One less day until I can quit this hellhole and start collecting my pension, the forty-three-year homicide detective mused.
Although that day was still several years away, he frequently thought about it. At one time he was as much the dedicated public servant as young Brady Kinnear was now, happy to serve and protect and eager to right the wrongs committed in his New York precinct. But his years on the force—along with two failed marriages and mounting debt worsened by alimony payments to both ex-wives—had worn him down. He wanted nothing more than to turn in his badge and gun and begin life anew in a small, quiet town far from the Big Apple, a place where the most serious crime committed was a teenage girl shoplifting a tube of lipstick from the dollar store.
"You'd really want to leave the city?" Brady asked as the two detectives made their way to the latest crime scene.
"Sure would," Stephen replied.
"I can't imagine you living in some Mayberry town, working as a security guard at the local Walmart."
"No security job for me. Once I put in my twenty years, I want nothing to do with law enforcement or private security."
"What are you going to do with your time? Take up fishing? Play bingo?"
"Nope. I'm going to be a writer like Joseph Wambaugh."
"Joseph who?"
"Good God, Kinnear! Don't you ever read anything besides Playboy and Hustler?"
"Sure. I read Sports Illustrated, Car and Driver and TV Guide."
"What about books?"
"Not since I went to high school. Who's got time to read?"
"Let me enlighten you. Joseph Wambaugh was a former Los Angeles cop who later wrote such fictional and true-crime classics as The New Centurions, The Onion Field and The Choirboys."
"Funny, I don't picture you as a reader," Brady said.
"You should never judge a book by its cover—no pun intended."
"So that's what you want to do with your life: hole up in some boring little town and write books. I suppose they'll be about cops?"
"Of course. I intend to write—hopefully—a series of novels based on my own experiences with the NYPD."
"Am I going to be in the book?" the young detective asked excitedly.
"Sure. Why not?" Stephen laughingly replied. "Every good detective needs a bumbling sidekick."
When the two men arrived at the crime scene, they could briefly glimpse a body lying on the pavement in front of the entrance of an upscale restaurant, the kind of place that would cost them a week's salary to buy a steak dinner. No sooner did they exit their vehicle than a uniformed police officer hurried over to speak to them.
"What is it, Dorfman?" Stephen asked, seeing the man's excited state.
"We got a celebrity victim!"
"Ah, shit!" the detective exclaimed. "That means we'll have to deal with a heavy media presence, and no doubt we'll have the police commissioner and mayor on our backs until we solve the case."
"Who is it?" Brady asked, as the three men made their way through a crowd of forensic technicians, police officers and curious bystanders.
"D-Fy," Dorfman answered.
"Who the hell is that?" the senior detective asked.
"You never heard of D-Fy, the rapper?" his partner replied.
"A dead rapper? This just gets better and better. Is this another east coast-west coast gangster rap killing like Two-Pack and that other guy?"
Brady exchanged a humorous glance with the uniformed officer, and bit his lip to keep from laughing.
"Two-pack? Don't you mean Tupac?"
As Stephen tried to think of an appropriate riposte, a woman's shrill, banshee-like wail caught everyone's attention.
"Oh, no! Dwayne!" she cried.
Two policemen tried to restrain her before she could contaminate the crime scene.
"Let me go! Someone's killed my Dwayne!"
The stunningly attractive, ebony-skinned beauty looked as though she had just stepped out of a full-page fashion spread in Vogue. Her clothes were chic, and her body was bedizened with gold jewelry and a colorful array of gems.
Stephen stepped forward, taking control of the situation.
"Do you know this man?" he asked even though the answer was patently obvious.
"Of course, I know him," the young woman answered, exhibiting an attitude of condescension and aversion.
The detective wondered if her instant dislike of him was because he was (A) white, (B) not wealthy or (C) a police officer. He leaned toward (D) all of the above.
"Do you know who killed him or might have wanted him dead?"
"Isn't it your job to find that out?"
"Yes, but to do it effectively, we need to rely on people's testimony. Now, did you see who killed"—he stopped mid-question, unable to remember the rapper's name. He finally settled on the victim's Christian name—"Dwayne?"
"No. I was in the ladies' room inside the restaurant. Dwayne told me he'd meet me outside after he took care of the check. I stayed in the ladies' lounge to have a cigarette and touch up my makeup. I just came out now and found him—like that."
Detective Marr finally took a good look at the corpse. He was a young black man, roughly twenty-five years of age. In contrast to his girlfriend's designer clothing, Dwayne's attire looked like he had purchased it from a Kanye West yard sale. One thing the two lovebirds did have in common, though, was the bling. Dwayne wore diamond earrings beneath his Yankees baseball cap, gold chains around his neck, a diamond watch on his wrist and enough rings on his fingers to make Ringo Starr jealous.
"Well, I'd say it's fairly safe to rule out robbery as a motive," Stephen said to his partner.
"His ring!" the girlfriend suddenly cried. "It's missing!"
"Are you sure? I count five rings on his fingers."
"His Cubs ring isn't there. Dwayne was originally from Chicago," she quickly explained. "When the Cubs finally won the World Series last year, he had a ring made for himself, one identical to the rings the players were given. It cost him more than seventy grand. It was made of fourteen-karat white gold, and around the name Cubs spelled out in rubies, there were white diamonds and blue sapphires."
"Are you sure he had it on tonight?"
"I'm positive. He never took it off. He even wore it to bed at night."
Stephen was skeptical. He did not doubt that some people would kill to get their hands on a seventy-thousand-dollar ring; he just couldn't see them leaving the rest of the expensive jewelry behind. What self-respecting thief would walk away without taking the gold chains and the Rolex?
* * *
"Your grandmother's condition is stable for now," Dr. Sandoval informed Warren Van Rensselaer when he encountered him in Malee's room several days after she had been admitted. "She doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger."
"Good. When can I take her home?"
"I can recommend some excellent nursing homes."
"That won't be necessary. I'm quite capable of taking care of her myself."
"In my opinion, your grandmother needs professional care. Are you sure you wouldn't want to at least hire a private nurse?"
Warren, who did not have the time or the patience to argue with the doctor, thought the best course of action was to agree with him.
"I'll hire three; each will work an eight-hour shift. Thus, my ... grandmother will never be left alone."
"Let me just keep her here for a few more days so that I can run some more tests and analyze the results, and then I'll release her."
"When will that be?"
"Let's see. Today is Wednesday; I'd say Monday morning."
Monday morning—that would be the tenth day, Warren thought. Pretty good timing.
"That's fine. I can have all the arrangements made by then."
* * *
Hump Day. It was popular nickname given by America's Monday-through-Friday workforce to mark the midpoint of the workweek. Of course, for Stephen Marr and his partner, who worked on Saturday nights and sometimes Sundays, the term lacked significance. Hump Day was simply another way of saying Wednesday.
This particular Hump Day marked the fifth day of a killing spree which began when D-Fy was stabbed to death outside a restaurant in the Tribeca area of Manhattan.
"Five days ... five bodies," Stephen grumbled as he heard the news of yet another stabbing.
"How long do you think this will go on?" Brady asked as the two detectives drove to their fifth crime scene in as many days.
"Until we catch the bastard who's doing it."
As Stephen feared, members of the press, who had obviously been listening to the police scanners, were already there, waiting to interview him. Never one to kowtow to the media, he rudely pushed his way through the microphones and cameras, offering no comments in response to their questions.
The first four victims had been newsworthy: a rapper, a soap opera actress, a renowned plastic surgeon and the trophy wife of a real estate tycoon. When he saw the killer's fifth victim—a woman he recognized from his early days as a vice cop—he seriously wondered if there might be a copycat killer at work.
"What makes you think this isn't the work of our guy?" Brady Kinnear asked.
"I didn't say it wasn't. It's just that this woman isn't in the same tax bracket as the first four victims."
"How do know that? Nice clothes, hanging out here in the wealthier side of town ...."
"I've met her before. She's what the French refer to as a demimondaine. She's an escort," Stephen further explained when he observed the blank look on his partner's face.
Brady chuckled softly so that no one beside his partner could hear.
"What do you know? A patriotic hooker."
"What are you talking about?"
"She's wearing three earrings going up the side of her left earlobe: one red, one white and one blue."
"I don't see why anyone needs three earrings in one ear. I swear I should have been a jeweler instead of a cop. Every one of our victims was wearing jewelry, especially D-Lay with his chains and rings and Rolex."
"D-Fy," Brady corrected him.
"Yeah, whatever."
When the detective stepped around the body to view it from the opposite side, his eyes went to her right earlobe. There were white and blue earrings but not a red one.
"Looks like she lost one," he said and then instructed the forensics team to be on the lookout for the missing earring.
"Maybe it's not missing," Brady offered. "Maybe she deliberately didn't put it on. She could have been making a fashion statement."
"Fashion statement!" Stephen grumbled as he headed toward what he assumed was the young woman's client for the evening. "She was a hooker, for Christ's sake, not a pop star."
* * *
The following day two additional detectives were assigned to investigate the murders, bringing the total to six. Stephen, the leader of the task force, held a meeting to bring the new officers up to speed.
"We have five victims. What have they all got in common?" he asked.
"They're all dead," Brady answered with a college frat boy grin on his clean-shaven face.
"Very funny! They were all stabbed through the heart with one blow in what the ME claims is a ritualistic form of killing. Despite the putative theft of ... Dwayne's"—he still had difficulty remembering the rapper's stage name—"Cubs ring, there is no indication these murders were prompted by financial gain."
"Is this the work of a serial killer?" one of the new men on the case asked.
"We don't like to use the 'S' word around here if we can avoid it. But, confidentially, it appears so. Frankly, we won't call a spade a spade until the press gives him, or her, a nickname."
"I'm surprised no one has come up with one yet," Brady added. "What do you think it'll be? I'm partial to Mack the Knife myself."
"So far," Stephen continued, ignoring his partner's jokes, "we have no witnesses, no fingerprints, no video surveillance, no DNA, etc., etc. In other words, we have no idea who we're looking for."
"Can we at least assume we're looking for a man?"
"I'm sure it takes a lot of physical strength to run a knife through someone's heart, but we can't rule a woman out."
"Have you found anything to connect the victims, or were they strangers to each other?"
"That's why we asked for additional help. We want you two to help conduct thorough background checks. We need to find out where these people ever worked, where they went to school, where they liked to eat, where they bought their groceries."
Just as the meeting broke up, Stephen received word: victim number six had been discovered.
* * *
Friday. The Monday-through-Friday workforce was in a TGIF mood, looking forward to the weekend. They could sleep late on Saturday and Sunday and not have to fight rush-hour traffic. For many, it had the added perk of being payday. For Stephen Marr, however, it meant one more murder to solve in a seemingly unsolvable case.
For close to a week, he had been reporting to work early and staying late. Eyes bloodshot, hair uncombed, face unwashed, he sat at his desk drinking his third cup of coffee in an hour to stay awake. Suddenly, the phone rang.
The caller asked for him specifically. When she identified herself, the name sounded vaguely familiar; but he failed to make an immediate connection.
"I don't know if this has any bearing on my sister's murder," the caller said.
Now he remembered! The woman was related to the second victim, the soap opera actress.
"Anything at all you might remember might prove to be helpful."
"Despite being an actress, my sister wasn't a wealthy woman. Living in New York is ... well, it's quite expensive. She wore a lot of costume jewelry, but there were two good pieces she owned: my grandmother's engagement ring and a sapphire tennis bracelet. You see, she was born in September, and the blue sapphire was her birthstone."
Feeling a headache coming on, Stephen rubbed his temples and wished the woman weren't quite so loquacious.
"My sister was very fastidious and always put things away. I found the ring in her jewelry box, but not the bracelet. I'm fairly certain she was wearing it when she was killed."
The detective reached for the file and quickly scanned the report. There was nothing in it about a bracelet.
"Thank you for the information," he said. "If it turns up, we'll be sure to return it to you."
A missing ring, a missing earring and now a missing tennis bracelet, he thought. It can't be about a robbery! The escort's earring was made out of coral. It couldn't have cost her much more than a hundred bucks.
It suddenly occurred to him that maybe it wasn't about the money at all. Many serial killers were known to take souvenirs of their victims, trophies of their kills. Some psychos kept heads and other body parts. Others stole underwear or shoes. Why not jewelry?
In late medieval Christianity, St. Michael became the patron saint of chivalry and is now also considered the patron saint of police officers. If that is so, the archangel was smiling down on Stephen Marr that day. Less than an hour after he spoke to the soap opera star's sister, he received word from the NYPD's Central Robbery Division that a homeless man had been arrested after trying to pawn some pieces of jewelry, one of which was a man's ring in which the word Cubs was spelled out in red stones. In all, there were six pieces of jewelry, including a thin bracelet with blue gems and one coral earring. In each case, there was a single stone missing from the setting.
Naturally, the suspect denied stealing the jewelry.
"I found them. I swear!" the toothless, unkempt wino cried when Stephen took him into the interrogation room.
"And where did you find such a valuable haul? Did the tooth fairy leave them under your pillow?" the detective asked, knowing that jewel thieves usually disposed of their plunder through reliable fences, not pawn shops.
"They were in a dumpster, wrapped up in a brown paper back that said Whole Foods Market on it. Honestly! I was just lookin' for something to eat."
"And you came across a small fortune in jewelry instead."
"I didn't know how much they were worth. I didn't know they were real diamonds and such. They were all damaged, after all. I figured I could pawn them and get a few bucks at best, maybe enough to buy myself a sandwich and a cup of coffee."
During his years on the force, Marr had developed a fairly accurate bullshit meter. He could usually tell who was lying and who was not. In this case, his gut told him the old wino was telling the truth.
"Hold him here for a while," he told Brady as he reached into his wallet and took out a twenty-dollar bill. "Get him something to eat. I'll be back for him later. I want him to show me where that dumpster is."
"Where are you off to now?" his partner asked.
"To question the victims' next of kin. I want to see if any of them can positively identify this jewelry as belonging to their relatives."
* * *
As Detective Marr had suspected, the jewelry found by the homeless man consisted of the soap opera star's tennis bracelet (missing one sapphire), the escort's earring (minus one of the red coral stones), one of the plastic surgeon's cuff links (less one emerald), a broken strand of pearls that belonged to the trophy wife of the real estate tycoon, D-Fy's World Series ring (sans one of the rubies in the word Cubs) as well as the anklet taken from the seventh victim from which one of the diamonds had been removed.
Knowing the bag of jewelry had to have been thrown into the dumpster by the killer, Marr and Kinnear paid a visit to the site where the homeless man found it.
"There's a Home Foods Market on the next block," the junior detective observed. "That's probably where he got the bag."
"Even better, there's a jewelry store across the street. Let's go see if this cache looks familiar to them."
When Detective Marr flashed his badge to the young woman behind the counter, she summoned the jeweler from the backroom.
"I've never seen any of these pieces," he announced and then examined them more closely. "However, the stones that appear to be missing ... it's just possible ...."
"What's possible?" Stephen asked.
"I had someone come in yesterday evening and ask me for a custom-made setting for a navaratna ring."
"I've never heard of that. What exactly is it?"
"Navaratna is a Sanskrit word meaning 'nine gems.' It refers to a piece of jewelry that incorporates nine different jewels."
"Any nine jewels?"
"No, specific ones in accordance with several Asian cultural and religious beliefs. These include a ruby to represent the sun, a pearl for the moon, red coral for Mars, emerald for Mercury, yellow sapphire for Jupiter, diamond for Venus, blue sapphire for Saturn, hessonite for Rahu (the ascending lunar node) and cat's eye for Ketu (the descending lunar node). Such importance is given to this combination of nine gems that they are recognized as sacred and royal in almost all the countries of Asia. In Thailand, for instance, the navaratna is officially recognized as a national and royal symbol of the king. And according to Hindu astrology, these gems could potentially have positive or negative influences on human life."
"And six of the gems came from this jewelry here?"
"It would appear so. The customer brought six stones with him yesterday when he placed the order and told me he would bring in the other three on Monday. He was in a rush, you see, and wanted me to begin work on the setting and then have me put the last stones in while he waited."
"Do you have a name and address of this customer?"
"A name but no address: John Smith."
Stephen frowned, and Brady rolled his eyes.
"I don't suppose Mr. Smith gave you his phone number or credit card information?"
"No and no," the jeweler replied. "He paid in cash."
"Security video?"
"Come in the back with me. You can have a look at it."
Although the customer was not one immediately recognizable to the two detectives, the video image made it possible for them to issue a general description for their "person of interest." He was a white male, roughly six feet tall and weighs approximately one hundred eighty pounds. Twenty to thirty years of age. Full head of dark hair, not overly long. No facial hair. Expensive tailored suit. Wore a wedding ring on his left hand. Another ring on his right.
"Nothing remarkable about his appearance," Stephen said. "But you say he's supposed to come back Monday with the remaining three stones?"
"That's right," the jeweler affirmed.
Stephen removed one of his cards from his wallet and jotted his cell phone number on the back.
"You give me a call if you see or hear from him before then."
"And what if he doesn't try to contact me?"
"I'll be nearby Monday morning waiting for him to show up."
* * *
After leaving Sunday night's crime scene, Stephen and Brady—who were no longer on duty—stopped by a bar near the jewelry store and tried to drink away their guilt and frustration.
"Two more innocent people are dead just because they owned a particular piece of jewelry!" Stephen exclaimed and punctuated his sentence by downing a shot of Jack Daniels.
"We knew it was gonna happen," Brady groaned, "and we couldn't do a damned thing to prevent it!"
"Don't think it doesn't eat me up inside, but what could we do? Issue a public service announcement that the killer was after those three gemstones? If we show our hand, we'll have no way of catching him. If he doesn't know we're on to him, he might show up at the jewelry store tomorrow."
"And we could catch him red-handed."
"We're not going to try to take him there."
"No? Why in hell not?"
"We have no proof he's guilty of murder. Any halfway decent lawyer can make a case for reasonable doubt. Our wino found the pieces of jewelry in a dumpster. We need concrete proof that our killer didn't do the same with the loose stones."
As the two men stumbled out of the bar, Stephen stood on the sidewalk, looking up and down the street.
"The killer lives somewhere near here," he said.
"How do you know that?"
"Because he doesn't know we're wise to his motive, so there's no need for him to try to throw us off his track. He came home to this neighborhood after he killed number seven, probably got cleaned up and changed his clothing. Hungry, he stops at Whole Foods and gets himself something to eat. Then he goes into the alley with the jewelry and pries the gems he needs from their original settings. Since he has no need for the remains, he puts them in the empty brown bag and throws them away before he goes to talk to the jeweler."
"That Cubs ring alone cost seventy grand. Why throw it away?"
"Look around, Kinnear. This is one of the most expensive areas of Manhattan. If I'm right and our killer does live here, the monetary value of the jewelry means nothing to him."
"Then why not simply buy nine stones for his ring?"
"The medical examiner said the murders resembled ritualistic killings. Maybe there's a ritual involved with this ring. Who can tell with these crackpots? All that I know is that bright and early tomorrow morning before the jeweler opens his shop, I'm going to be parked out here in an unmarked car."
"Me, too."
"No, I need you to go to the district attorney and ask for a search warrant. I'll phone in the address to you once I've trailed the killer."
With barely three hours of sleep, Detective Marr sat in the passenger seat of a black Ford Escape at seven in the morning, watching every pedestrian who walked past the jewelry store even though it would not be open until nine. As the minutes ticked by and the hours slowly passed, the detective fought off exhaustion, hunger, thirst and the need to pee. Finally, at eleven o'clock, he saw the dark-haired young man from the security video enter the shop.
Pulse racing, Stephen picked up a pair of binoculars and peered through the display window. He saw the customer remove a small envelope from his jacket pocket and hand it to the jeweler. The jeweler then took the envelope to the backroom while the customer waited in the shop. After forty-five minutes, he returned with the completed ring. The suspect then removed a large wad of cash from his pocket and handed it over. Moments later, the tall, dark-haired man slipped a blue velvet box into his pocket, exited the jewelry store and got into a waiting Rolls Royce Phantom.
This is it! Stephen thought as he started the Escape's engine and pulled out into traffic behind the Rolls.
As he had suspected, the vehicle did not travel far, remaining in the same neighborhood where the jeweler, the dumpster and the Whole Foods were located. The chauffeur pulled up to the entrance of a luxury high-rise apartment building, and the uniformed doorman opened the door to the back seat.
"I got you now!" the detective exclaimed, reaching for his cell phone to call Brady Kinnear and give him the suspect's address.
In the process of retrieving his partner's number from his contacts, Marr's fingers froze on the iPhone's keypad when he saw a second passenger emerge from the Rolls.
Who the hell is that? he wondered when he saw a frail, white-haired woman—quite possibly the oldest person he had ever seen—enter the building, clinging onto the suspect's arm.
Several thoughts raced through Stephen's mind: nine murders, nine stones. The ring is complete.
Theoretically, the old woman ought to be safe. But if the man was a deranged killer, she might be slated to be his next victim. Instinct kicked in. With no time to waste looking for a parking space, he threw the gearshift into park, turned off the engine and removed the keys from the ignition. Leaving the car in the middle of the road, he jumped out of the Ford and sprinted across the sidewalk, ignoring the objecting doorman as he entered the building.
"Hold it right there!" he shouted.
The young man and the old woman turned in his direction. Standing in front of the elevator doors, they were the only two people in the lobby other than the detective.
"You're under arrest for the murders of D-Kay"—damn it! He got it wrong again!—"and ...."
His mind went blank, unable to remember the names of the other eight victims.
After a quick glance at his elderly companion, the young man reached into his jacket pocket.
"Freeze!"
The suspect paid him no mind. Believing the killer was reaching for a weapon, the detective took aim and fired.
"Warren!" the old woman cried as the young man fell to the ground.
Unperturbed, he took his hand out of his pocket, opened the blue velvet box and removed the navaratna ring.
Stephen was stunned. He had shot the suspect in the chest from the distance of only a few feet. How was he still alive? As he continued to watch, the man put the ring on the old woman's finger. The white hair immediately turned black, the wrinkles on the skin faded away and her spine, which had moments earlier been hunched over, straightened.
Warren Van Rensselaer stood up, apparently unharmed, and took Malee in his arms.
"My darling!" she cried. "I knew you would save me."
"Just as you saved my life back in Thailand."
After their brief embrace, the couple turned toward Stephen Marr.
"I shot you; you should be dead! And you," he said turning toward Malee. "I don't know what the hell is ...."
"Why don't you come upstairs, Detective?" Warren calmly suggested. "I'll explain everything to you."
Despite the obvious danger, Stephen accompanied the two in the elevator up to the penthouse.
"Drink?" the killer offered.
The detective nodded his head.
"Who are you?" he managed to ask after downing it in one swallow.
"You can call me Warren," the young man said, pouring his guest a second glass. "It's not the name I was born with, but that hardly matters. And this is my wife, Malee—which, by the way, is her real name. We met in Thailand back in ... when was it? 1964? '65?"
"Impossible! That was more than fifty years ago! You can't be more than thirty."
"I was a chopper pilot during the Vietnam War. I crashed just north of Bangkok. I was certain I was going to die. Over seventy percent of my body was burned, and I had so many broken bones I couldn't count them all. I lay for two days in agony—with nothing to eat or drink—just waiting .... If I'd had a gun, I would have ended it and put myself out of my misery, but I was unarmed. Then she appeared."
He turned and affectionately squeezed his wife's hand.
"She put this ring on my finger"—he showed the detective a ring with nine gems—"and I was instantly healed. It was a goddamned miracle!"
"How can a ring ...?" Stephen began.
"My wife is a descendant of a line of ancient Thai kings. She knows how to wield the power of the navaratna. Although I was reported as missing in action, I've been living right here in Manhattan, under several different assumed names, for the past half century. I must admit, I've done pretty well for myself in all those years."
Stephen looked around the apartment at the Picasso and other priceless paintings, the hand-woven Aubusson and Savonnerie carpets, and the antique Louis XIV furniture that was reported to have once graced Versailles.
"You got all this by wearing a ring?" he asked skeptically.
"It's a little more complicated than that. The ring must be made for the individual who is to wear it. Most importantly, the stones must be harvested correctly."
"What does that mean?"
Van Rensselaer walked to the sideboard, opened a drawer and removed an antique knife. It had a thin blade, like a stiletto; it was made of gold, and its hilt was decorated with nine jewels.
"One stone, one sacrifice."
"But if you and your wife already had rings back in Thailand, why murder these nine people here in New York?"
"Because my poor Malee was mugged and her ring stolen right off her finger. Once it was removed, she began to revert to her actual age. I had to do something. Only a new ring could save her life and return her to me. Now that you know our story, I'm curious as to what you intend to do."
"I'm a New York City homicide detective. I could arrest you for murder."
"And I'm a very wealthy man who can hire the best defense attorney money can buy. You have no witnesses, no fingerprints, no DNA and a motive that most people won't believe. Do you really think I'll spend any time behind bars? In all likelihood this case will never even make it into a courtroom."
"You've got me there, Warren," the detective agreed. "My other option is to let you go, which I'm inclined to do—for a price."
Warren and Malee looked at each other and smiled. They had learned in their many years together that there was little that money could not buy.
* * *
"It's not your fault that our suspect lost the tail," Brady Kinnear told his partner. "How can you hope to follow a car in Manhattan?"
"I should have caught him!" Stephen insisted. "He was right there across the street from me! I was on him for nearly an hour and then lost him as he headed to the financial district."
"At least the murders have stopped. And who knows? We still might find the guy eventually."
"You maybe, but not me. I handed in my papers this morning."
"You quit the force?" Brady cried with disbelief.
"Next Friday's my last day."
"What about your pension? What about retiring after you put in your twenty? You've only got a few years left. What happens to your dream of writing books?"
Stephen shrugged and replied, "Maybe once I get situated I'll find that nice quiet place to live and then write those books. Until then ... who knows?"
* * *
Two weeks after Stephen Marr turned in his badge and service revolver, on the banks of Switzerland's scenic Lake Lucerne, within sight of the fourteenth century Chapel Bridge, the body of an American tourist was found, stabbed in the heart with a thin, narrow-blade knife. When it was learned that her sapphire necklace was missing, Swiss police assumed the motive for the killing was robbery. Although they would pursue the investigation, the case would eventually go cold.
Meanwhile, at the Bahnhof Luzern railroad station, the former New York City homicide detective was enjoying a Swiss chocolate bar. He glanced at his newly purchased Rolex and smiled. In ten minutes time he would board a Railjet train for Innsbruck, Austria where the second of nine gems waited to be harvested.
When it comes to bling, D-Fy can't compete with S-Cat.
