Silent Night by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online Page A

information. He had let the higher-ups know exactly what he thought of Siddons’s “decision” to surrender. “It’s an out-and-out crock,” he had barked. “We tie up acouple of hundred cops till one-thirty or two in the morning, and he’s halfway to Canada or Mexico before we find out that he’s made us look like a bunch of fools.”
    Finally the deputy police commissioner in charge of the manhunt had snapped, “All right, Jack. We know what you think. Now let’s get on with it. There’s been no sign of him around his sister’s place?”
    â€œNo, sir,” Jack Shore had said and hung up, and then he and his partner, Mort, had gone to visit Cally. When they got back to the van, Shore again reported in to headquarters. “We just were back to Hunter’s apartment, sir. She’s fully aware of the consequences if she helps her brother in any way. The baby-sitter dropped off her kid as we were leaving, and my guess is Cally’s in for the night.”
    Mort Levy frowned as he listened to his partner’s conversation with the deputy police commissioner. There was something about that apartment that was different from the way it had looked this morning, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Mentally he reviewed the layout: the small entryway, the bathroom directly off it, the narrow combination living room–kitchen, the cell-like bedroom, barely large enough to hold a single bed, a cot for the little girl, and a three-drawer dresser.
    Jack had asked Cally if she would mind if they looked around again, and she had nodded assent. Certainly no one was hiding in that place. They had opened the doorto the bathroom, looked under the beds, poked in the closet. Levy had felt unwilling pity for Cally Hunter’s attempts to brighten the dismal flat. All the walls were painted a bright yellow. Floral pillows were randomly piled on the old couch. The Christmas tree was bravely decorated with tons of tinsel and strings of red and green lights. A few brightly wrapped presents were placed under it.
    Presents? Mort did not know why this word triggered something in his subconscious. He thought for a moment, then shook his head. Forget it, he told himself.
    He wished Jack hadn’t bullied Cally Hunter. It was easy to see that she was terrified of him. Mort hadn’t been in on her case, which had been tried over two years ago, but from what he’d heard, he believed that Cally honestly thought that her troublesome kid brother had been in a gang fight and that the members of the other gang were hunting him.
    What am I trying to remember about her apartment? Mort asked himself. What was different?
    They were normally scheduled to go off duty at eight o’clock, but tonight both he and Jack were going back to headquarters instead. Like dozens of others, they would be working overtime at least until after midnight Mass at the cathedral. Maybe, just maybe, Siddons would show up as he had promised. Levy knew that Shore was aching to make the arrest personally. “I could spot that guy if hewas wearing a nun’s habit,” he kept saying, over and over again.
    There was a tap at the back door of the van, signifying that their replacements had arrived. As Mort stood up, stretched, and stepped down onto the street, he was glad that just before he left Cally Hunter’s apartment, he had slipped her his card and whispered, “If you want to talk to anyone, Mrs. Hunter, here’s a number where you can reach me.”

8

    T he crowds on Fifth Avenue had thinned out, although there were still some onlookers around the tree in Rockefeller Center. Others were still lined up waiting to see Saks’s window display, and there was a steady stream of visitors slipping in and out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
    But as the car she was in pulled up behind the squad car where Officer Ortiz and Michael were waiting, Catherine could see that most of the