KD bent over and with his gloved hand lifted a stick of dynamite from a cardboard box between the two sets of tracks. It was about eight inches long and one and a half inches in diameter, wrapped in a waxed paper that seemed to be oil-stained from the nitroglycerin inside.
“We’ve got some detonating cord in the mess,” he said. “It was probably laced through the sticks of dynamite. All on its way to the lab.”
Mike looked around at the remaining piles of debris. “So what do you want these guys to do?”
“Shovel it onto the car and take it to the conveyor belt,” KD said, his annoyance obvious in his tone. “I just don’t want them hosing it down yet, destroying any evidence.”
Mike nodded to Teddy, and the men resumed their work.
KD stood next to the second muck car, running the beam of his flashlight back and forth along its length as the rubble was thrown onto it. Something glinted from the ashes and he called out for the guys to stop.
“What is it?” Mike asked, stepping forward to watch as KD picked up the object.
“Looks like a belt buckle.” He held it up for us to see, a silvery metal clasp with bits of shredded leather extending from its sides.
“Give me that light again,” Mike said, pulling a pair of rubber gloves from his rear pocket and practically sticking his nose into the soot-filled car. “Right here.”
KD focused his powerful beam over Mike’s shoulder, as I squatted beside him.
I covered my mouth with the plastic mask that hung around my neck as I stared at the thick, white finger that sat atop the pile.
“Bag it, KD. It’s no bomb that ripped that digit off,” Mike said. “Look at it, Coop.”
He scratched the ashes away from it, exposing the tip of the dirt-encrusted nail down to the beefy knuckle that had caught his attention.
“What do-”
“Too even. Damage from an explosion would be much more ragged. My money’s on a serrated knife,” Mike said. “Somebody sliced this guy’s finger off while he was still breathing. Sawed it off like a hunk of steak.”
14
“What do you figure, Mercer?” Mike asked. “You think the minute she’s through making love, Coop gets out of bed and heads for the locker room?”
Mercer was pouring drinks in my den as I walked in from the bedroom. I had changed into a collared T-shirt and jeans and was toweling off my wet hair. “Clean is good, Mr. Chapman,” he said. “I wasn’t down in the shaft half as long as you two and I can’t wait to get that smell out of my nose either.”
“You take more showers than any broad I know. Don’t you like it with a little dirt on your uniform, like you just stole second, sliding into base? Be a little daring?”
“I’m taking a break from daring for the long weekend. What did the ME say?”
“Ah, Ms. Cooper is going into her Vineyard tranquillity mode. A walk on the beach, late-afternoon massage, sunset swim. Enough to make you forget the island of Manhattan is about to implode. You remember the drill, don’t you, Mercer?”
“This is all about Joan’s wedding, guys. It’s not too late to change your minds. I can make room for you at the house.”
Joan had come to know Mike and Mercer almost as well as I did. And although the small guest list was a mix of her family and friends, she had sincerely wanted them there with us. Mike was still trying to cope with Val’s sudden death when the invitation came and told Joan that he didn’t want his mood-gloomy and remote-to put a pall on her happiness. Mercer wouldn’t think of going without Mike.
Mike steered the subject back to the water-tunnel death investigation. “Dr. Kestenbaum says antemortem amputation. Hemorrhage in the adjacent tissue. Believes it’s this one,” he said, flexing the first knuckle next to his thumb. “Duke Quillian-that’s a confirmation on the DNA from the mobile lab-was alive when that finger took a walk from the rest of his hand.”
“Any prints on file?” I asked.
“Nope. Never been collared.”
“You figure how we missed a connection to Brendan yet?”
“I’ve been going over and over the possible links all day, since I heard the news. It intrigues me as much as it does you. But there’s not even one damn phone call that suggests that the brothers talked to each other in the last year.”
“Any word on the tire iron?” I asked, sitting on the sofa with my Scotch.
“Like the proverbial hound’s tooth, Alex,” Mercer said. “Nothing on it.”
“Don’t take it too personally, kid,” Mike said, switching the channel from the news to the final few minutes of Jeopardy! “That was just a get-out-of-our-hole signal to all of us interlopers.”
“Those hogs don’t want us down there,” Mercer said. “It’s like they think they’re going to handle this entire investigation themselves. What happened in Water Tunnel Number Three stays in Water Tunnel Number Three. No one we talked to saw people near the shaft at the time the damn thing fell, there’s no video cameras on top, and the cops were all so busy keeping the reporters out of the yard that they weren’t any better at figuring what went on.”
“We’ve got subterranean jurisdiction, don’t we?” Mike asked, restoring the sound with the clicker just as Alex Trebek turned to the big board for the last question.
“Battaglia? If there was an intergalactic crime and a light beam from another planet bounced off the sidewalk in Manhattan, he’d claim jurisdiction. Six hundred feet down? Not an issue.”
“I’m counting on it. Nothing worse than finding a suspect, convicting him of the bombing, and watching while some legal asshole takes this all the way to the Supremes claiming we got no standing south of the subway system. Those are your people, Coop. That’s what they do with a friggin’ law degree.”
“Feathered Friends,” Trebek said. “We haven’t seen this subject in a while, gentlemen. Feathered Friends.”
“I’m out,” Mike said, getting up and walking toward the kitchen. “I’m a city boy. The only bird I know is the pigeon. DNA all over my car and occasionally on the top of my head.”
“Twenty bucks,” I said. “Everybody plays.”
“Speaking of birds, you got anything to eat? Cheese and crackers?”
“Not even that. Sorry. I’ll order in from P. J. Bernstein’s whenever you’re ready.”
“Known as the Lord God bird for its stunning plumage and great wingspan, it was thought until recently to be extinct,” Trebek read aloud from the square blue answer board.
Two of the contestants couldn’t even fake their expressions into a bluff. The third scrawled a short answer on his screen.
“You got it, Coop?” Mike asked, leaning in the doorway of the room.
“Not a clue.”
“Peking duck,” he said.
“Great wingspan and stunning plumage?”
“Not Trebek’s bird. The question is, what do I want Mercer to buy me for dinner?”
“You two need to get a little more religion in your lives,” Mercer said as Trebek subtracted two thousand dollars from the winnings of the Nashville firefighter who had taken a stab at the dodo. “What is the ivory-billed woodpecker?”
“The Lord what?” Mike asked. “You bird-watching on the side?”
“You have to know the swamps and tupelos of Alabama,” Mercer said. “My granny Wallace told me all about it when I was a kid. Got its name ’cause that’s what folk use to cry out when they saw the creature. She had a stuffed one in the attic that she got at a flea market, used to scare me half to death. Lord God bird is right.”
“You can do better than dinner from the deli, can’t you now, Mercer? Shall we upgrade to Chinese?” Mike asked.
“Fine with me,” Mercer said, and I opened the drawer of the side table to find the Shun Lee Palace menu.
Mike’s beeper vibrated on the bar as I took a food order from each of them. There was no point in placing it until he returned the call. He stepped into the living room and came back several minutes later.
“Don’t light any candles or
dust off the crystal, Coop. I’m out of here.”
Mercer was on his feet at once. “Where to?”
“Westchester County Sheriff’s Office. Two guys were picked up an hour ago at the Kensico Dam,” Mike said. “It’s a major stop on the Croton Reservoir system that brings water to the city. Used wire cutters to get through the chain-link fence.”
“Sandhogs?” I asked.
“Hardly. Saudi nationals. One of them had a map of the entire system, right down to the hole on West Thirtieth Street.”
“Explosives?”
“No sign of any blast equipment on or around them, and the driver who was waiting for them got away. They’re not talking, but someone called in an anonymous tip fifteen minutes ago. Says the men were planning a chemical attack-dumping a bacterial pathogen in the New York City water supply.”
15
I had cleared security for the nine-thirty flight from La Guardia to Martha’s Vineyard. It was Friday morning-still no update from Mike-and although I had looked forward to my friend Joan Stafford’s wedding for several months, it was hard to think about anything except the events of the last twenty-four hours.
Most of the passengers in the lounge were watching the television monitor that was mounted on the wall. The same reporter who had covered the tunnel-explosion story, Julie Kirsch, was now on location on a thickly wooded hillside in Valhalla, the Westchester suburb in which Kensico was located.
“Too early to know yet,” Kirsch said, in response to a question that the anchor had posed. “New York City police officials have been working through the night with local authorities to get answers to some of those questions, but there’s just no way to say whether the two incidents are connected.”
Glancing at her notes, Kirsch went on, “While the threat of biological and chemical terrorism has been of great concern to the government, most experts are telling us today that the risk of individuals succeeding at some kind of deadly mass dissemination is quite small.”
“Why is that, Julie?” the studio voice interrupted.
“Simply because of the enormous volume of water that flows into the city from upstate. The counterterrorist agents I’ve talked to this morning agree that the toxic effect of the chemical would most likely be diluted by the billions of gallons before any real harm was done. I’d like to take the viewers back to the news of the grim discovery made inside the tunnel in Manhattan yesterday.”
Most likely were not the two most encouraging words I’d rely on before drinking from the tap in my apartment anytime soon.
Julie Kirsch’s cross-examiner pressed for more detail. “Before you do, would you tell us exactly what kind of agent might be used for such a chemical attack? We all recall the deadly sarin gas in Tokyo.”
“Well, I’ve been asked not to alarm our viewers unnecessarily,” she said, hesitating before she went on. “For example, one gram of typhoid culture dropped into a water system would have an impact roughly equal to forty pounds of potassium cyanide. Or, a person drinking a few sips of untreated water from a reservoir this size that had been contaminated by Salmonella typhi would become deathly ill.”
I was grateful when the U.S. Airways gate agent interrupted the news program with her boarding announcement.
The fifty-minute flight over Long Island Sound on the cloudless morning offered spectacular views of the seascape that was so familiar to me from years of commuting to my favorite retreat-the coastline of the North Fork, Montauk Point, the short hop to Block Island, and the descent to the Vineyard as the forty-two-seat turboprop crossed Cuttyhunk and circled the cliffs of Aquinnah.
My caretaker had parked my convertible at the airport, and I put the top down for the short ride to my home. The path curved alongside the bike trails that cut through the forests of West Tisbury, then climbed the gently winding slopes of Chilmark, lined with stone walls that had been built hundreds of years ago to separate each farmer’s land from the next.
I was so pleased to be hosting the wedding for Joan and Jim, even though it was a bittersweet reminder that my own engagement had ended so tragically shortly after I’d graduated from law school. Once it wouldn’t have been possible for me to think of standing on the site where Adam and I were to have been married and celebrating someone else’s happiness. But in the last couple of years, I had found solace and strength in great friendships, and fortitude from the experiences of the women who entrusted their lives to me every day that I went to work.
I parked next to the barn, pausing before going into the house, looking out over the meadow and the sea, a view that never failed to restore my spirit.
The answering machine was choked with messages. I kicked off my shoes, opened the French doors that led to the deck, and sat on the steps surrounded by pale blue hydrangea bushes while I played them back.
“It’s me. We got here last night. Call me the very minute you get in.” Joan’s voice was as vibrant as she herself had been ever since Jim had proposed.
Her second message asked whether I had room at my house for one extra guest, a friend of Jim’s who had, at the last minute, decided to make the trip from Europe.
There were the voices of the caterers and the florist, well-meaning mutual friends who didn’t want to miss any of the events that Joan had planned for the weekend, the photographer who was going to shoot the ceremony, and the captain whom Jim had hired to take his friends shark-fishing in the afternoon. An update from Max, at the office, was sandwiched in the middle.
The final call had come in moments before I arrived. My beloved college roommate and best friend, Nina Baum, had phoned as she boarded the 8 a.m. flight from Los Angeles to Boston. I hadn’t seen her in months, and as with Joan, I could confide in her about everything that was going on-or not going on-in my life. Nina confirmed that she’d make the connection to Cape Air and be with us by the time dinner ended. Her husband had a screenplay in production and couldn’t accompany her after all.
The phone rang as I walked into the kitchen to check the decorations and floral arrangements that had been set around all the rooms of the house.
“Why haven’t you called me?” Joan asked.
“I’ve only been here five minutes.”
“Do you believe this is happening?”
“I’m beginning to. Do you?”
“If I don’t drive Jim out of town first. I’ve got to come over. The poor guy is trying to write an article about an Iraqi insurgent who beheaded four hostages today, and between the spectacular view from our room and my constant chatter, he may just put himself on the next ferry off-island. Can you make him marry me in absentia?”
Jim Hageville-the groom-was an expert on foreign affairs whose syndicated column was the first opinion piece with which most intelligent readers started their day. Joan was an accomplished playwright and novelist who split her time between their homes in Washington and New York. She was known as well in both places for her salonlike dinner parties-mixing intellectuals, politicians, writers, and old friends like Nina and me-and for staying impossibly au courant on the social crimes of the rich and famous with whom she had been raised, while I covered the street-crime beat.
“Are you at the Outermost?” I asked, referring to the inn at which she and Jim were staying. “Come right now. I’ll put some coffee on.”
“Did you get my message about Luc?”
“Who’s Luc?”
“Jim’s friend. Maybe I forgot to tell you his name. Anyway, there are three weddings on the island this weekend-not a hotel room to be had. I’m desperate to find him a place.”
“Of course he can stay here, if he doesn’t mind being surrounded by women. Nina’s in the big guest room, Lynn and Cathy have the suite at the top of the stairs, so Luc can have the little bedroom overlooking the garden.” It was the room I’d been saving in case I had convinced Mike and Mercer to change their minds.
“I think he’d rather fancy those odds. What a relief, Alex. He won’t get in until tomorrow, I don’t think. Be there in ten
minutes, okay?”
I called Laura and she reassured me that the office was quiet. I filled the coffeepot and took the portable phone out on the deck.
I dialed Mike’s cell. He picked up on the second ring, so I knew he was neither in the water tunnel nor attending an autopsy. “What’s new from the chapel of love?” he asked.
“Joan’s wired. Very excited, as she should be. She’s on her way over and I’m going to try to distract her for the rest of the day. Tell me about last night?”
“Pretty scary scenario to see how close people can get to those reservoirs. These two guys they picked up are tough. Couldn’t get squat out of them.”
“You think they’re connected to the blast in the city, too?”
“I’m fresh out of crystal balls, sweetheart. Westchester’s holding them on a trespassing charge for now, while we try to sort it all out. And your trial slows down another step.”
“Why?”
“Duke Quillian’s funeral is set for Monday. Canonical law-can’t be done on Sunday and there just wasn’t any way for the family to get it together for tomorrow.”
“So I lose another day? How do you know? The judge’s secretary hasn’t even called Laura yet.”
“Lieutenant Peterson got the notification from the Corrections Department. Gave me the detail for two take-out orders. He’s letting your perp go for a visit to the wake on Saturday afternoon. Just the family-no outsiders. Back to the Tombs. Then we’ve got to take him to the funeral on Monday morning. Church and cemetery.”
“In shackles, I hope.”
“Temper, temper, Coop. That’s a photo op you don’t want your jurors to have-the graveside shot of the grieving brother in cuffs and leg-irons.”
“Well, doesn’t the lieutenant think somebody from the squad ought to be interviewing these siblings we didn’t even know Brendan Quillian had?”
“Nothing your buddy Lem Howell didn’t think of first. Not one of the Quillians has any interest in answering our questions. The only thing they claim is that little brother Brendan has been estranged from all of them for years.”
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