Music of the Night: Excerpt

Chapter 1

"Who'd want to kill a French horn player?" Detective Lieutenant Anna Salazar muttered to herself as she jogged up a short flight of steps and ducked under a strip of yellow police tape.

She started to flash her badge for the young police officer posted at the door of the crime scene but he waved it aside.

"You Detective Salazar?" the officer asked, blocking the doorway.

"Yep," Anna said.

"Man, I've heard a lot about you," the cop said.

"Oh," she said, blushing as she tried to slip around him.

Caught in the throes of hero worship, he didn't move.

"You figured out the Tatoo Artist Killer from the paintings he was copying onto his vics."

"That just pointed the team in the right direction," Anna said, looking over his shoulder for rescue from her partner Kevin "Mac" McKenzie. "A lot of good people worked on that case."

"I heard you caught a bullet and took the shooter down before you called for—"

"Hey, Salazar, you ever coming to work?" Mac said, finally taking pity on her.

"Sorry," Anna said with an apologetic smile for the young officer. "Mac's getting grouchy."

"Oh, right," the young officer said. He stepped sideways but turned to watch her all the way into the room.

"Thanks," Anna murmured to Mac. "I don't know where those stories come from."

"Face it, kid, you're a role model. You prove it can be done."

Anna just shook her head.

"I'm no different than anyone else."

Mac snorted.

Of course, one of the things he liked about his partner was her lack of conceit. She didn't understand why men sometimes acted like idiots around her and she didn't use it to her advantage. She insisted on solving her cases the hard way: with her brains and guts.

Originally, Mac had bitched big time about being assigned a rookie female partner, particularly one with big brown eyes and a smile that heated men up like Angelina Jolie's. He knew she had book smarts: she was Columbia Law before she quit to become a cop. It had taken about two days before he realized she had a core integrity like steel and she never gave up on a case. That was the other thing he really liked about her.

"What have you got on him?" Anna asked, interrupting his thoughts.

She stood beside the victim, a good-looking blond man with prominent cheekbones who was slumped forward on the piano bench with the side of his head resting on the keyboard. A black-edged hole at the base of his skull offered clear evidence of what had killed him.

"Alexei Savenkov. Age 39. Born in Russia, lived in New York City since age twelve. U.S. citizen. Top shelf French horn player," Mac said. "It looks like an execution. He was shot from behind at close range."

"In Carnegie Hall?" Anna said.

"Maybe someone didn't like the way he played Bach," Mac said.

"Why not just write a bad review?"

Anna flipped her long auburn braid behind her back as she leaned over the victim. She surveyed the body closely before she shifted her gaze to the police officer guarding the door. "Has anyone touched him since you got here?"

The young cop was still lost in his awe of the dark-eyed, long-legged detective so it took him a minute to register her question.

"Uh, no, no one. I didn't either," he stammered. "And the guy who found the body claims he only checked for a pulse."

"Someone searched his pockets after he died," Anna said, pointing to several folds of the expensive woven silk blazer lying at odd angles. "I wonder what they found. We have any witnesses?"

Mac flipped open his notebook to read from his notes.

"Witness one: Nicholas Vranos. He was meeting the victim here. He's a conductor. World class, evidently. Junior here says he's seen him on TV. Witness two: Jessica Strauss. She's a violinist who had an audition on the same floor. There's a cop in with each of them. We'll visit with Vranos first."

Opening the door the officer pointed to, Anna and Mac nodded to the policeman seated inside who quickly rose and left. The witness stood with his back to them, facing a window which looked out onto 56th Street.

Anna took in thick dark hair that grew over his collar, a black leather jacket outlining broad shoulders, and long, jeans-clad legs. When he turned at the sound of the closing door, she nearly gasped out loud. Anna had seen a lot of unusual people in her career with the NYPD but never had she seen such weirdly brilliant blue eyes. They were almost aquamarine, and she wondered if he wore tinted contact lenses. For a long moment, she couldn't focus on anything but those eyes. Nor did his gaze waver from her face. Mac moved a chair and the scraping sound brought her back to the task at hand.

"Nicholas Vranos? I'm Lieutenant Salazar with the NYPD and this is my colleague Lieutenant McKenzie. May we ask you some questions?"

"Of course," he said in an authoritative baritone. He had registered something that looked like surprise when he first turned but now his face was impassive. She sensed he was exerting a fair amount of effort to keep it that way.

"Shall we sit?" she asked, waving to the ubiquitous metal and vinyl chairs. This room lacked a Steinway, containing instead a Formica vanity and a large mirror surrounded by light bulbs.

"Certainly," he said, covering the distance to the chair in two strides. She found her gaze riveted on the fluid motion of his walk. To say he was magnetic was understating the truth; the rest of the room simply faded into insignificance around him.

When he sat, he stretched his long legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles, displaying a pair of black leather boots Anna suspected would cost her a week's salary. He crossed his arms as well and raised one of his dark eyebrows at her.

His body language was closed so Anna tried a softening approach.

"I understand you were friends with Mr. Savenkov," she said gently. "My condolences on your loss."

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

No sign of softening so far.

"I'm sorry to make you relive a distressing experience but would you tell me what happened today beginning at about three P.M.?"

The conductor glanced toward the window for a moment, and Anna heard the faint creak of his leather jacket as his weight shifted on the chair. He seemed to have forgotten Mac completely, turning his hypnotic blue gaze directly back to her without a glance in the other man's direction.

"I was bringing in my ex-wife's harp to hand it over to its new owner. While I was wrestling it out of the elevator, I saw a young woman walking down the corridor toward me, carrying a violin case. We said hello, a mere courtesy between strangers, and she continued down the hall past the elevator. I rolled the harp to the Maestro's Suite and locked it in. Then I checked my watch and realized it was time to meet Lexi... Mr. Savenkov... in the practice room. He had called me the night before, saying he had recently returned from Vienna and had something he wanted me to look at."

"And he wanted to show it to you here?"

"He said he needed to have a piano handy."

"Did he hint at what he had brought with him?"

"No." Vranos' lips curved in a faint smile. "Lexi likes to surprise people."

Anna could hear Mac's pen scratching on his pad of paper as the conductor paused, evidently lost in a memory of his friend.

"Please go on with what happened," she said quietly.

His smile vanished, leaving nothing but bleakness in its wake.

"I walked down the same corridor the young woman had taken, turned right, walked up a half flight of stairs. These hallways don't make a lot of sense since this back-stage space is made up of three buildings. Then I turned right again and walked to the room across the hall. The door was closed but not locked."

He stopped.

"I'm sorry to ask you to do this," Anna said.

At last he moved, waving his right hand in a gesture accepting the necessity of her question. She was surprised by the grace and eloquence of his motion until she remembered he was a conductor and regularly used his hands as a means of communication. His movement sent a thick strand of dark hair curving onto his temple. Anna fought a strange and unwelcome urge to lean forward and brush it back.

"I walked in and saw Lexi with his head on the piano and his eyes wide open," he said. "The angle of his neck and body was unnatural so I knew something was wrong. I was afraid he might have had a heart attack and dialed 9-1-1 on my cell phone as I walked toward him. Then I saw the bullet hole in the back of his head."

He pulled his legs in under the chair and leaned toward Anna. The blue of his eyes darkened as grief and anger vibrated through him.

"Lieutenant Salazar, Lexi was my closest friend. I want to know who murdered him and why."

"So do I, Mr. Vranos," Anna said. "That's why I'm a detective."

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