The Intercept

by Dick Wolf

  “Dead in the park?” said Fisk, jotting it down. “Who found the body?”

  “Didn’t get that part. That time of night in Central Park, you probably don’t wanna know.”

  Fisk hung up. Before he could call the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, the overnight coroner rang through to him.

  “I just heard,” said Fisk. “You have pictures?”

  “Not for a while now. Backed up. Three suicides, a motorcycle accident, and an overdose.”

  Fisk knew he’d have to appear in person to make the positive ID anyway. “On my way right now,” he said.

  Fisk called Dubin from the cold basement on First Avenue near Thirty-second Street, beneath the pavement of the East Side.

  “It’s her,” he said.

  Dubin said, “You’re sure?”

  “DNA will confirm, but”—Fisk again looked at the dead eyes staring out of the head protruding from unzipped plastic—“it’s her. Strangled in Central Park. Time of death, approximately twelve hours ago.”

  “Murdered? Christ.”

  “Nothing found at the scene.”

  “Christ,” said Dubin again, with more emphasis this time. “Where does it end?”

  “With whoever killed her, maybe.”

  Dubin said, “Cameras in the park? I’m assuming there’s zero witnesses.”

  “Cameras take time. The One World Trade Center dedication starts in two hours.”

  “You still think it’s that?”

  “I can’t imagine what else it could be.”

  Dubin said, “Am I missing something? About how all this makes sense?”

  “Same thing we’re all missing. There’s a piece we haven’t seen yet.”

  “Goddamn it. Next step?”

  Fisk shook his head, at that moment the only living person in an overlit room of seven corpses lying on seven stainless steel tables. “Call off the bint Mohammed alert. Raise the threat level.”

  Dubin said, “Raise it to where? We’re already doing traffic checkpoints looking for car bombs. We’ve got men with automatic weapons stationed all over lower Manhattan. We towed away parked cars all day yesterday. Rounded up undesirables midweek. We’re running random bag searches, radiation detectors. And a cell phone blackout starting at eight A.M. down around Ground Zero.”

  Fisk waited patiently for him to finish the list. “If this is about the boom, one pound or thirty isn’t going to matter to that building. The target isn’t the structure itself.”

  “It’s something to do with the ceremony,” said Dubin. “Terrorism is theater. And the curtain rises in two hours.”

  Chapter 66

  At 6:30 A.M., the heroes were loaded into the Suburbans in the VIP parking garage beneath the Hyatt, their motorcycle escorts’ engines burbling outside the already-raised chain-link gate.

  Secret Service agent Harrelson was back with them today. He came up to DeRosier and Patton after spending some time with his finger pressed against the radio in his ear. “We gotta get moving,” he said.

  Patton hung up his phone. “Still nothing.”

  “Her cell?” said DeRosier.

  “What?” said Harrelson.

  Patton said, “Gersten, the other detective. Can’t raise her.” To DeRosier, he said, “I tried the room phone a couple of minutes ago.”

  DeRosier needlessly checked his watch. If The Six didn’t get down to Ground Zero in time, it was their jobs. “Maybe she got hung up in the lobby, getting coffee?”

  Harrelson shook his head. “We’ve got a specific window for penetrating the security bubble downtown. We miss it, we’re fucked. All of us. So we’re not gonna miss it.”

  DeRosier said to Patton, “I’m not getting written up because she decided to sleep in. When did she leave the bar last night?”

  Patton shook his head. “She wasn’t there when I left. But I don’t remember her saying good night either.”

  “Ask Jenssen,” said a voice from the lead Suburban.

  The Intel detectives turned. The rear window was halfway down, and DeRosier looked inside and saw Joanne Sparks sitting forward in her seat, her head in her hands. Hungover.

  “What’s that?” asked DeRosier.

  “Ask Mr. Sweden where Gersten is.”

  DeRosier and Patton exchanged looks, then went and did just that. Patton tapped on the closed window of the second Suburban, and it was lowered. Journalist Frank sat with his head tipped back, sunglasses on. Maggie Sullivan sat on one side of him, Magnus Jenssen on the other.

  “Mr. Jenssen?” said Patton.

  “Yes?” answered the Swede, looking apprehensive.

  “We’re wondering, do you know what time Detective Gersten left the lounge last night?”

  He thought about it, then slowly shook his head. “She left to take a call on her telephone at one point. I never saw her come back. I left a short time later.”

  Patton and DeRosier nodded, backing off. “Okay. Just wondering. Not a problem. Thanks.”

  They stepped away, not wanting to get the group riled up over nothing. Harrelson looked over at them from the first vehicle. They nodded to him.

  DeRosier said, “I’ll call Fisk en route, let him know.”

  Patton climbed into the front passenger seat of the second Suburban. From the back, Maggie asked him what was wrong.

  “Nothing,” he answered. “Just looking for Detective Gersten. Could be she went in ahead of us,” he lied.

  Agent Harrelson climbed into the middle row, sitting in front of Jenssen. As they pulled out of the garage, Jenssen eavesdropped on Harrelson’s coded exchanges with the Secret Service detail at the first checkpoint.

  Except for the missing Gersten, everything was going according to plan.

  Chapter 67

  Fisk zoomed up FDR Drive and was on the Queensboro Bridge on his way to Queens when DeRosier finally reached him. “Gersten didn’t make the trip.”

  Fisk said, “What? Why not, what’s wrong?”

  “Don’t know. What’s wrong is she was a no-show. We couldn’t wait. Not answering her phone.”

  Fisk was not expecting this. He tried to think of the last time he spoke with her. “Nothing happened overnight?”

  “No. Nothing to speak of.”

  Fisk knew she wasn’t one to oversleep. “No word at all?”

  “Nada.”

  “You knock on her door?”

  “Couldn’t. No time. Didn’t realize she wasn’t coming down until too late. And this leg of the journey is the Secret Service’s show.”

  “Okay. So you guys are gone.”

  “We are in the chute.”

  “No worries. I’ll follow through. You guys got the update on bint Mohammed?”

  “Another dead Muslim,” said DeRosier. “Not the kind of pattern you want to see on a day like this.”

  “Listen, stay alert, okay? Look sharp.”

  “You think The Six are at risk?”

  “Somebody on that dais is. You and Patton have a privileged vantage at this thing. I don’t know what we’re looking for, but chances are you’ll be in the best position to see it.”

  “Shit. All right. You got it.”

  Fisk rang off. Trying her cell was the most obvious first thing to do. His call went right to voice mail.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Where are you? Call.”

  He hung up and checked his call register, remembering trying her once late last night, getting her voice mail. That was at 12:13 A.M.

  No call back from her. No text. No nothing.

  Not that unusual, the gap in communication. But now it formed an inconvenient hole in time.

  He tried his own apartment landline. Covering every base.

  After four rings, voice mail.

  “Hey. It’s me. Trying you here. Give me a call.”


  He was off the bridge, and now faced with a decision. Either go back to Intel, make one last run at his rakers for street information, and keep waiting for Gersten to announce herself. Or check on her back at the hotel.

  It went without saying that he truly had no time for this errand. But in the end, the two choices melded. There was that little voice inside of him saying that the two were related.

  Fuck it, he thought, hating to give in to the paranoia. He switched on his grille flashers and banged a U-turn.

  Fisk dodged a few early Sunday travelers towing suitcases to the reception desk, making his way to the row of a dozen golden elevator doors. One opened to his right and he pushed inside, half expecting to find Gersten exiting, instead making way for an attractive woman with a Prada shoulder bag who glared at him with the hard-edged confidence of a hooker on her home turf.

  The doors opened on the twenty-sixth floor. Fisk turned left into the hallway, and realized that he did not know Gersten’s room number. He ducked into the hospitality suite and found a woman clearing away food-stained dishes. He asked her if she knew anything about the room arrangements on that floor, and she answered him in a dialect of Spanish that Fisk did not understand.

  He quickly went back down to the front desk. A young female clerk examined his shield and summoned security. A thin, almost frail-looking man who looked about twenty-five emerged from a door behind registration, wearing gray slacks, a blue blazer, and regimental striped tie. Fisk guessed that Sunday mornings were the training shifts for new hires.

  This guy had a clip-on ball microphone on his lapel, the black wire running from the back of his neck to an ear bud. He took a look at Fisk’s credentials a beat longer than he needed to, and pretended not to be intimidated.

  “What can I do for you, Detective Fisk?”

  “You have a master key, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Gersten, Krina. Twenty-sixth floor. Under her name, or maybe registered to NYPD or the mayor’s office.”

  The clerk found it and looked up. “Twenty-six forty-two.”

  “She didn’t check out, anything like that?”

  “No, sir. And the room hasn’t been cleaned yet.”

  “Last accessed?”

  “Last room card read was . . . twelve-oh-seven A.M., this morning.”

  “Let’s go,” said Fisk, starting back to the elevators at a brisk pace.

  The young security guard followed close behind. “Can I ask what this is about?”

  Fisk ignored the question until they were alone aboard an up elevator with the doors closed.

  “You know who is registered on twenty-six?”

  “Yes. The airline heroes. The Six.”

  “A detective assigned to their security detail is . . . is missing.” The word bumped Fisk. It was difficult for him to say. Was she missing? If Fisk walked into her room and she was sacked out in bed—who would be more embarrassed, Gersten or him?

  “When you say missing . . .”

  “I don’t know if she’s missing. She missed her ride this morning, I know that much. And I have very little time. So let’s go see, okay?”

  The guard picked up on Fisk’s anxiety and just nodded. As they watched the numbers rise, something occurred to him. “I have to let somebody know what I’m doing,” said the guard suddenly. “That okay?”

  Fisk nodded. “Sure.”

  The guard tilted his head toward his lapel mic. “This is Bascomb. I am keying into room . . .”

  “Twenty-six forty-two.”

  “Twenty-six forty-two. I am with an NYPD officer—I mean, detective—at his request.” Bascomb turned toward the corner camera. “Yes, George. I saw the man’s badge. Fisk. Intelligence Division. I’m not sure.” The doors opened, Bascomb following Fisk down the hallway. “I’ll let you know. Not at this time. I will advise.”

  At the door, Bascomb pulled out the master key card attached to his belt by a lanyard. He slid it through the slot, and the interior lock whirred, the light turning green. Fisk opened the door, Bascomb stepping back to allow him to enter first.

  Fisk stopped a few steps inside. He did a preliminary scan of the room, then realized he was looking at this as a crime scene.

  The bed had been roughed up, the pillows dented. It looked slept in. No lights on, windows closed, television off. No sign of a struggle or anything amiss. Just an empty hotel room.

  Still, Fisk had a tight feeling in his gut. A psychic scent. The feeling that something bad had happened here.

  Fisk took a few more steps inside. Bascomb appropriately hung back. On the dresser to Fisk’s left was a handful of change next to a half-empty bottle of designer water from the minibar. A metal corkscrew sat on the desk blotter.

  “You don’t have any gloves, do you?” Fisk asked, hating these words as they left his mouth. But he was a cop, and any enclosed space had the potential to become a crime scene. And too many cases were lost forever due to the arriving officer’s clumsy first steps.

  “No,” said Bascomb, a note of worry in his voice.

  “Fuck,” said Fisk, more about the general situation than the lack of gloves. “Do me a favor, Bascomb, and stay right where you are, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  Gloves or no gloves, Fisk went to the dresser. He opened the six drawers one at a time. Gersten’s underwear and two unopened packages of panty hose lay in the first one. A sweater, a folded white blouse, and a pair of blue jeans lay in the second. The rest were empty.

  Fisk found her carry-on suitcase in the closet, closed but unzipped. He pawed through it quickly, finding nothing of note.

  He walked to the side of the bed, studying the carpet for signs of disturbance or staining. Nothing.

  On the nightstand was the usual iPod dock and digital radio combination alarm clock. He opened the drawer in the nightstand, finding a Bible and various table tents advertising hotel services. He had seen Gersten do that before, gathering up the triangle brochures upon check-in and stuffing them into a drawer, out of sight. Seeing this familiarity gave Fisk a burst of optimism.

  Inside the bathroom, he found a stack of fresh towels on the rack. No used ones on the floor. Clean water in the bowl. He recognized the flowered pouch Gersten used for her cosmetics and toiletries.

  No puddles of water on the counter, the sink, the shower floor. Everything was dry. The bathroom showed no sign of having been used that morning.

  That was troubling. Where would she go without washing her face or her hands first?

  Fisk came back into the main room, avoiding Bascomb’s curious gaze. Fisk decided to change it up for a moment, focusing on what he had not yet found.

  Her shield. Her weapon. Her phone.

  He pulled his cell and checked for messages from her. He dialed her again, hoping he would hear a ring if her device was somewhere in the room.

  No ring. And the call went right to voice mail.

  He put away his phone. His hand was shaking a little. He stood still in the center of the room. He didn’t want to give in to panic, but this wasn’t right. He had no evidence of foul play—none whatsoever—but Gersten was no flake.

  He had always considered the fact that, in their line of business, he might have to face something like this someday, a professional incident that would cross into personal territory.

  Don’t get ahead of yourself. He forced himself to think like a cop.

  Was this connected to everything else that had gone on that weekend? It had to be. This was too large of a coincidence.

  But—as with everything else—how? What was the link? Was there something about this antiterror case that could have blown back on Gersten? Was it indeed a threat to The Six? Had she discovered something last night?

  No—she would have followed up on it. She would have taken
it to him, to Intel. She would not have gone off half-cocked. Unless . . .

  Unless she had stumbled upon it unknowingly.

  Fisk turned to the security guard standing just inside the closed door. “Bascomb. Here’s what’s going to happen. I need you to alert your security group to initiate a search of the entire hotel. Start with the construction areas and any closed floors. This is going to mean inconveniencing people. This is a New York Police Department detective you’re looking for. Have your group dial 911 as well so we can get some uniforms in here.”

  Bascomb nodded and turned to his microphone. Fisk gave him a brief description of Gersten to repeat.

  When he finished, Fisk said, “Now you and I are going to open every door on this floor and check every room.”

  Chapter 68

  Traffic heading south through Manhattan was horrible, even with NYPD motorcycle escorts. The gridlock was such that there was nowhere for them to go. Nothing to do but wait for the clots to work themselves through.

  They crawled down Seventh Avenue past Penn Station, affording everyone a look at the still-closed block on West Twenty-eighth where the terrorist Baada Bin-Hezam had been gunned down.

  Then past the Fashion Institute, across Twenty-third, across Fourteenth, into Greenwich Village where Manhattan Island narrowed into the thumb of the old town. As they left behind the cool shadows of the midtown skyscrapers, the heroes became aware of the magnificence of the morning. The sky was Magritte blue, almost fairy-tale perfect. Sidewalk pedestrians wore sun hats, ball caps, and shorts, watching the Suburbans roll by with cups of iced coffee in their hands.

  They crossed Houston Street, moving toward Canal. They rolled past a massive electronic checkpoint, demarcated by tactical operations vans, a generator truck, and rows of screening stations. People waited calmly in line, as though having taken a special vow of cooperation that morning. Despite the heat and the long wait time, no one appeared to be complaining.

  Once gates were moved and the Suburbans were inside the security perimeter, movement was easier. They rolled along an open lane toward the staging area for the ceremony near Trinity Church at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street.