Central Park Guillaume Musso (read along books .TXT) 📖

of them had sounded remotely like these two muggers.

Following a hunch, she took her iPad from the car’s trunk.

“What kind of phone do you have, kid?”

She listened to his reply and connected to the manufacturer’s website. She then asked the teenager to give her his username and password.

Once she’d done this, the app allowed her to access the user’s e-mails and contact list as well as the phone’s location. Jodie knew how to do this because she had used the same technique six months earlier for personal reasons. In the space of a few minutes, she had been able to trace her boyfriend’s visits to another girl’s apartment, giving her proof of his infidelity. Now she touched the screen to start the tracking process. A blue dot flashed on the map. Assuming the site was working properly, the kid’s cell phone was currently halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge!

Optimistic thoughts were chasing away her bad mood—finally, she had a chance to work a real investigation.

Theoretically, she ought to broadcast this information on the NYPD radio frequency so a Brooklyn patrol could arrest the suspects. But there was no way she was going to just hand this case over to someone else.

She glanced at the Dunkin’ Donuts. Still no sign of Mike Hernandez.

Oh, well…

She got behind the steering wheel. At just that moment, her partner came out the door. “Quick! Get in the car!” Jodie called to him.

“What’s going on?” he asked, climbing awkwardly into the passenger seat.

“I’ll tell you later. Let’s go!” And she set off for Brooklyn, siren screaming.

The former working docks jutted out into the East River.

The Mini reached the end of Van Brunt Street, the main road that crossed Red Hook. Beyond that point, the road gave way to a fenced-off industrial wasteland that opened directly onto the docks.

Alice and Gabriel parked next to a broken sidewalk. Still hobbled by their handcuffs, they exited the car through the same door. The sun was shining brightly, but an icy wind roared at their faces.

“Damn, it’s cold here!” the pianist grumbled, lifting his jacket collar.

Gradually, Alice began to recognize her surroundings. The rugged beauty of the industrial landscape, the disused warehouses, the strange choreography of the container cranes, the freighters and barges sharing the same stretch of water. It was like the end of the world here, the ferry foghorns barely even audible.

The last time she’d been here with Seymour, the district was still struggling to recover from the ravages of Hurricane Sandy, when the basements and first floors of buildings located too close to the water had been flooded. Today, thankfully, it looked as if most of the damage had been repaired.

“Nikki Nikovski’s studio is in that building over there,” Alice said, pointing at an imposing brick construction that, to judge from its silos and chimney, must have been a major factory during Brooklyn’s industrial golden age.

They headed toward the building, which faced out to sea. The docks were practically deserted. No tourists or joggers here. There were a few little cafés and stores lined up on Van Brunt Street, but none were open yet.

“So who is this woman?” Gabriel asked, stepping over a sewer pipe.

“She was a famous model back in the nineties.”

The pianist’s eyes lit up. “Really? Like a fashion model?”

“Doesn’t take much to get you excited, does it?” Alice said reprovingly.

“No, it’s not that,” he said irritably. “I’m just surprised by her career change.”

“Anyway, her paintings and sculptures are beginning to get shown in galleries.”

“So your friend Seymour is a contemporary-art enthusiast?”

“Yeah. He’s a collector, in fact. His father passed the passion on to him, and he got a large inheritance that has allowed him to pursue it.”

“How about you?”

She shrugged. “Art? It means nothing to me. But to each his own—I’m a collector too, in a way.”

“Oh yeah?” He frowned. “And what do you collect?”

“Criminals. Murderers. Killers.”

Having reached the former factory, they stood in silence for a moment before noticing that the iron door that barred access to the first floor was not locked. They went inside, entered the cage of an elevator that looked like it had once been used to transport cargo, and pressed the button for the top floor. The cage opened onto a concrete platform that led to a metal fire door. They had to ring the bell several times before Nikki opened it.

A long leather apron, thick gloves, earmuffs, a face protector, black sunglasses. The ex-model’s attractive figure was completely hidden behind this metalworker’s outfit.

“Hello, I’m Alice Schafer. I think my friend Seymour—”

“Come in, quickly!” Nikki interjected, taking off her mask and glasses. “I’ll warn you now: I couldn’t care less what kind of shit you’re in, I just don’t want to be mixed up in it. I’ll get you out of those handcuffs, but after that you have to go. Understood?”

They nodded and closed the door behind them.

The place looked more like a blacksmith’s workshop than an artist’s studio. Illuminated only by daylight, it was a vast room, the walls covered with the widest range of tools imaginable: hammers in all sizes, soldering irons, blowtorches. Outlined against the fiery embers glowing red in the hearth of the forge were an anvil and a poker.

Following Nikki, they walked across the untreated floorboards and wound their way between the various metal shapes that filled the space—purple and ocher silk-screened monotypes shining on steel, rusted iron sculptures with sharp edges that threatened to split open the ceiling.

“Sit there,” the artist ordered, pointing at two battered chairs.

Eager to be free, Alice and Gabriel sat on either side of a workbench. While Nikki screwed a saw disk to an angle grinder, she told them to trap the handcuff chain in the jaws of a vise. Then she switched on her machine, which vibrated with an infernal noise, and approached the two fugitives.

The disk went through the chain in less than three seconds, and a few blows from a pointed chisel broke the handcuff ratchets.

At last! Alice sighed, massaging her raw, bloody wrist.

She started to