He nodded and said nothing. Sophie was a nice enough girl, but she was part of what his ex-wife diplomatically called the fast set.
“We’ll talk over the weekend, Georgie,” he had promised.
“It’s Georgianna now, Dad,” she reminded him, with another roll of her eyes. She was grateful that they’d had the foresight to give her a suitably dramatic name. She could imagine it emblazoned on a Broadway marquee or engraved in a Hollywood star. She was annoyed that they never used it.
They reached her school.
“Goodbye.” She had blown him a hasty kiss before she turned and brushed past him, darting up the stairs to the door.
“Bye,” he’d answered, watching her, a flash of purple and gold and black in the swirling snow. The school’s motto hovered over her image. Consectatio Excellentiae. The pursuit of excellence. Then she disappeared into the building, other kids crowding behind her, gossiping and talking and laughing.
He remembered thinking how in another eight hours, she’d emerge the same way, and his heart would bounce that funny way it always did every time he saw her.
Except nothing had gone as planned.
He’d seen her for the last time.
His worst nightmare had become reality.
He clutched his fingers to his heart and prayed Eve would figure it all out.
HOURS 15 AND 16
10:14 p.m.
We have just received word from the New York FBI office announcing that the hostage crisis has ended.
We repeat, the hostage crisis that has gripped New York City has been resolved.
Early reports indicate that six lives have been lost. Their names are being withheld pending notification of family members.
The identity of the man responsible is being given by unofficial sources as Captain Sean Sullivan—a police officer recently suspended while under investigation by Internal Affairs. We have no information as to what may have motivated Captain Sullivan to commit the terrible acts of today.
Stay tuned. The mayor and governor will be holding a joint news conference soon with the police commissioner and FBI director to give us more details…
Chapter 84
Sirens filled the air. The Cathedral swarmed with different operations teams. Not just FBI, but NYPD. FDNY. Homeland Security. HRT. Bomb Squad. EMS.
The former hostages were being checked.
The Cathedral was being secured.
Snow fell harder. As though Mother Nature was desperate to cover all traces of the day’s violence with a coat of white. As though that would restore the holiday spirit—and help people forget.
Eve had been among the first to rush to the bell tower room, with Haddox and Eli close behind. They waited on the landing outside. But Eve wanted to see inside.
Inside the room where Sean Sullivan lay dead.
It was odd, not having seen the shots that ended Sean’s life. She had heard them, though.
She felt relief that the remaining four hostages had survived unharmed—though her emotions were mingled with regret. She knew that Sean Sullivan had given her no choice. And yet…
What had he wanted, really? Not absolution. Not understanding. Not even justice.
The great injury of his life had been done at the hands of a Church teacher. Yet he had focused on questioning individual witnesses in a minor case. One that never seemed to have affected him deeply. Because if it had, surely he would have asked different questions. Made different plays.
During their long verbal dance, only twice had Eve felt the genuine ring of truth.
Once when he had spoken of the abuse he suffered as a child.
Again, when he talked about his daughter. Whatever had damaged him, his love for his daughter seemed unfeigned. Something true and untainted. If he had brought her to the Cathedral, then he would have kept her in a space he was certain was safe. A place where, whatever happened, she would survive, unharmed.
A forensic tech was working over Sullivan’s body, bagging specimens of evidence. Eve watched, but her mind was spinning elsewhere.
“We need to organize a search,” she said abruptly. “Mace, we need to check the Crypt as well as both Towers. García, I want to clear the Parish House and Cardinal’s Residence. Eli, can you make sure we’ve missed nothing on the main floor and choir loft?”
Haddox brushed the snow off his jacket. Donned a pair of latex gloves. “I’ll see what I can do with the different phones he used.” He reached up to grab a shopping bag full of mobile units that Eve passed down. It had been found next to Sullivan’s body.
“We need to send officers to check his home as well,” Eve said.
The forensic tech finished with the phone Sullivan had been holding when he was shot. “Want this, too?”
Eve took it, passed it to Haddox, thinking that for all the scientific advances designed to help solve the tough cases, sometimes you still couldn’t understand human behavior. It wasn’t something that could be quantified, no matter how rigorous your analysis of call patterns or social networks or money-spending habits. Stolen weapons didn’t explain it. Nor did a series of dead hostages. Sometimes you just couldn’t figure out who someone was.
He’d done monstrous things. But was he a monster?
He’d been a father who loved his child.
A husband who—at one point—had loved his wife.
A man who had found life was hard. Who couldn’t make his car payments. Or fix his teenage daughter’s pain. Or even put his belt on with the engraved initials right-side up.
“You need anything up here before we go, Eve?” Eli asked.
She was only half listening.
The belt.
The realization danced at the edge of her mind for several seconds before taking hold. Several seconds during which she noted other things.
Small things.
Like the way he had organized his supplies so they flowed back to front. His drink was to the left. The half-eaten granola bar was on the left side of a plate. The cellphone he had been using had fallen to the ground on his left. He’d been looking out the louvers, but the dust was smudged only on the left. He’d set up two laptops—on his left—to monitor activity from the cameras he had strategically placed inside and outside the Cathedral.
In fact, Sean’s final hours in this room had been spent only on the left-hand side of the room. Eve knew that because the right side was still coated in a thick layer of dust.
“You want this, too? I’ve dusted it already. I found it in his breast pocket.” The tech handed Eve a small flash drive.
Automatically, she passed that over to Haddox.
She gazed at the crossbeam. And the single item that was the exception to everything else she’d noticed.
That was where Sean Sullivan’s sniper rifle lay. Smack in the center. Neither right nor left.
A distant memory from her own days at Quantico became a thought. “García—the best snipers are usually right-handed, correct?”
“Most of the time, sure. Because sniper rifles are built for right-handed people. But it’s really more about which eye is dominant, not which hand is dominant.”
“Does it usually correspond? So right-handed people are right-eye dominant, and vice versa?”
“Again, usually. Why?”
“Can you look at that rifle and tell whether it’s set up for a right-handed or left-handed person?”
García received clearance from the forensics tech, who had already dusted the rifle for prints. He lifted it down. Looked it over. “Remember, there’s no such thing as a left-handed rifle. But I can say, this particular rifle was set up with a scope mounted for a right-handed person. Wasn’t Sullivan right-handed?”
“You know,” Mace suggested, “maybe Sullivan was ambidextrous. My left-handed layup is every bit as good as my right.”
“Sniper shooting is a whole different game,” García said.
“I agree.” And Eve explained what she had noticed. The catalog of clues that had suggested Sul
livan had been left-handed. She said: “I don’t think Sullivan was the shooter.”
At first, nobody questioned her.
Then Mace erupted. “Are you telling me I shot dead a man who wasn’t a killer?”
“Sullivan was the Hostage Taker.” García matched his anger. “You heard him when we entered the room. He was right on the phone, talking to you, Eve.”
“We’ve got four hostages who now swear he was the man responsible,” Eli reminded them. “They all positively ID’d his photo—and testified how this man hauled each one of them into the confessional, making them admit the worst things they’d ever done.”
“We got our guy. Stopped his vigilante justice mission. So how come you don’t think he shot that sniper rifle?” Mace was furious.
García’s eyes were pure ice. “You think I’ve got all the answers? Maybe he had help. Maybe he forced one of the hostages.”
“You think he forced one hostage to shoot another? With the kind of aim only an elite sniper can brag about?”
García took a step forward. The space in the tower was already tight. His movement made it tighter. “Calm down and stop your whining. So what if he wasn’t the shooter? He was involved. He terrorized hostages. He almost certainly stole the explosives that still threaten this Cathedral. So you shot a bad cop. What do you care?”
“I ain’t trigger-happy. I’ve got a thing about killing guys for shit they didn’t do.”
It was like watching a lion face off against a hyena. Until Eve stepped between them. “Everyone needs to calm down. This is my case. The kill shot was my decision. This information complicates everything but changes nothing.”
Haddox had something in his hand; he held it up, like an offering. “Turns out we have another complication.”
Chapter 85
Back at the MRU, Haddox believed he had untangled the complication.
Eve had spent hours trying to figure out why Sean Sullivan was not worth trusting. Problem was: She was looking in all the wrong places. She believed that people’s communication style—everything from their facial expressions and body movements to their tone of voice and choice of words—betrayed what they really meant.
What Haddox trusted was bits, bytes, and data. People lied, but their digital fingerprints always betrayed them. It was all pretty simple. And today he was convinced that they’d find the answers they were looking for on the flash drive found in Sean Sullivan’s breast pocket. He told Eve as much.
She agreed. “Not because I think data has all the answers, though.”
“Then why?” He shoved the drive into his secure machine. Touched a few keys to begin running the background diagnostics.
“Because it was important to him. He kept it right next to his heart.”
There were two files on the flash drive. One was a .JPEG image. Its time stamp was forty-eight hours old. It was a digital copy of a scrap of paper.
What are you guilty of?
I already know.
View the files on the enclosed flash drive. They will apprise you of the situation and what you personally have at stake.
Your first instinct will be to call the police.
DON’T.
“I’m confused,” Eli said. “Did Sullivan send this—or receive it?”
“Just wait,” Haddox replied. “And keep an open mind.”
“But Sullivan was the police,” Eli mumbled.
Your next impulse will be to call a friend.
That would be unwise.
“Let’s see the file,” Eve directed. She crouched close beside him.
The time stamp read 15:53 hours. The date was two days earlier. The girl was sitting on a bed. She wore skinny jeans, a red cardigan, and socks with glitter sparkles on them. Her hands were tied behind her back. Her feet were bound in front of her. A long stretch of duct tape covered her mouth, stretching all the way around her long chestnut hair.
“Georgianna,” Eve breathed. “This was taken right after she disappeared from school.”
“This is what Sean Sullivan personally has at stake,” Haddox told them. “Assuming we believe he was the recipient of the note, not the sender.”
There was no audio on the drive. Just a second image.
In that one, the girl was lying down. The sun cast a shadow on her figure.
A crisscross image. It reminded Haddox a little of the Holy Cross. It also reminded him of the bars of a jail cell he’d once had the misfortune to sit in.
“Go back to the message,” Eve directed.
Be assured of three things:
1. I don’t hurt those who do as I ask.
2. I won’t kill the undeserving.
3. Obey my demands, and I will protect what you hold precious.
“Annie Martinez didn’t do as he asked. According to the hostages, he made them confess their worst—and those he eventually killed ‘deserved it’ from his point of view.” Eve was thinking aloud.
“It’s like he thinks he’s being reasonable.” Eli shook his head.
“That’s always the key,” Eve said. “It doesn’t matter if someone’s reasoning would seem preposterous to ninety-nine percent of the world’s population. When you understand how that single person justifies their actions, then you’ve taken a major step toward understanding their motive. Haddox, was there any evidence of this in Sean Sullivan’s email accounts—either as sender or recipient?”
“None whatsoever,” Haddox confirmed. “I think we can assume this was a personal delivery.” He clicked over to his diagnostic report. “The time stamp is accurate. The file was generated from pictures uploaded from Georgie’s own computer via the public Wi-Fi at Bryant Park.”
“Where, with the Christmas shops all over the park, they get several hundred thousand visitors every day,” Eli remarked sourly.
“Let’s focus on what we can assume.” Eve pushed her hair behind her ears. “If Sean Sullivan did receive this message, how does that explain his actions—from around fifteen-fifty-three hours, day before yesterday, when Georgie disappeared from school?”
“We assume the flash drive was delivered to Sullivan almost immediately,” Eli said.
“So what does he do?” Eve thought aloud. “He searches frantically—but can’t find her. Then he receives instructions. He had no choice but to follow them. With his daughter kidnapped, he is completely under the Hostage Taker’s control. Doing whatever he’s told—even before he shows up at Saint Patrick’s. Starting day before yesterday, the instant he learned Georgie had been taken.”
“First things first,” Haddox said. “I’m putting out an Amber Alert for Georgianna Murphy now.”
But there was no separate bulletin issued for her abductor. He was still unknown.
—
“Why Sean?” Haddox wondered. “If you’re the puppetmaster pulling the strings, why not handle things yourself?”
“Because you might end up dead,” Eli pointed out.
“Because your real goal is something else,” Eve said. “And the hostage-taking is just the means to an end.”
“He was also the perfect scapegoat—for the hostage-taking and the weapons theft,” Eli added. “Problems at home. Problems at work. A history of theft. Everyone would believe he’d done this because he was desperate and losing control of his life.”
The alarm on Haddox’s computer station beeped. It was eleven o’clock.
Outside, snow was falling fast, and church bells were tolling. It sounded like the Angelus. Had someone on staff been allowed back inside the Cathedral? Or was one of the Feds a good Catholic?
Haddox watched as Eve followed the sound over to the window, apparently lost in thought. The bells were ringing the Siren’s song of normalcy. A promise that the world was right again—or as right as it ever could be. Floodlights once again bathed the Cathedral in hues of magical yellow and blue. Saks to the South was a fairy-tale concoction of red and gold, lit up again by seventy-one thousand lights. The Olympic Tower to the north shone a brillian
t white.
The bureaucratic show where credit and blame would be sorted had already begun. A press conference was slowly taking form. A select few news organizations had been invited to return to Rockefeller Center. The mayor was standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue, microphones in his face and news crews trailing him with a camera. Traffic was still blocked within a two-mile radius, but forensics was working double-time to process the evidence. The mayor had already announced that he intended to reopen traffic by morning rush hour. This was the holiday season in New York, and that meant opening access to the thousands who flooded the city’s sidewalks and shops—and the cabs and buses who shuttled them down Fifth Avenue.
The mayor walked over to the rescued hostages, who had apparently received their medical clearance—standard procedure after a crisis. The mayor paid particular attention to Penelope Miller, whose arms never left her son, Luke. Cops and security personnel surrounded them all. Doing their jobs, eyes alert for anything amiss.
Not fifty feet away, NBC had set up a tent where any of the witnesses who wished would be interviewed, together with a police officer who had to be the designated NYPD spokesperson.
It always amused Haddox how spokespeople were chosen based on who was the most media-savvy. Rather than who actually understood the information to be conveyed.
Eve turned back to the computer station. “Tell me again about that case—the one tangentially linking Sean Sullivan with the witnesses.”
“Not much to tell. It was July. The Bryant Park subway station. A woman was mugged. She suffered injuries and died. They never caught the guy responsible.” Haddox clicked on the keyboard, pulled up the file. “Three witnesses on our list are confirmed to have been present. Each was interviewed. Based on the officer’s notes, we believe Cassidy and Luis were also there. But they either gave false names or the interviewing officer made a mistake taking their names down.”
“Why were two ambulances sent to the scene?” Eve asked.
“Where do you see that?” He squinted.
“Down here.” She pointed to a scribbled sentence in the Notes field.
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