Terminal City

by Linda Fairstein

  “The tobacco trade is really dangerous over there,” Mike said. “Talk to me about NorthStar, Zoya. I know Coop wants your family history, but we’ll work backwards for that after we find Nik.”

  “All he ever told me is that it was top secret work,” she said. “Look, Detective, I’m pretty sure that was delusional, too. He tried to get into the army after the car wreck. Tried really hard to enlist, but by then we all knew he was hearing voices. No one would have him. Except this NorthStar operation, whatever it is.”

  The detective who had taken over the loudspeaker was ramping things up a notch. “Attention, Metro-North riders. The last trains have left the station. We are closing for emergency repairs. Anyone refusing to leave the concourse will be escorted out by force and arrested for the crime of trespass. Step lively. Find your local bus, hail a taxi, start walking to Fleetwood—it’s only fourteen miles away. This station is closed for business till further notice.”

  “You’re doing well, Zoya,” Mike said. “I’m going to see if there’s anything my boss needs for a few minutes. If you can think of anyplace here, somewhere Nik would feel safe and could hide out for the night, that’s our most urgent need at the moment.”

  “He can hide out anywhere in this terminal that he wants to, Detective Chapman. Nik has the keys to every room in this building.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  “Where did he get those?” Mike asked. “How’d he do that?”

  “Like I told you, my father worked here for more than thirty years. Look at any of the old-timers and see what the key rings look like, hanging from their belts.”

  Don Ledger had made that point to us.

  “Over time, the supervisors would give my father access to anything he needed. Elevators to get upstairs, lounges to rest in, emergency backup in case there were problems in the basement.”

  “I can understand that,” I said, “but they must have taken them back. You don’t retire with keys to the workplace. Nobody would let that happen.”

  “My dad never retired, Ms. Cooper. He had a heart attack on his way home. He got off the subway near our house, complaining of chest pains as he climbed the stairs from the platform. Then he collapsed on the street and died right there.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “A neighbor who was on the train with my father came to the house to get us. Left him with a couple of strangers. Nik ran out and got to Dad first, even before the ambulance arrived.”

  Zoya Blunt took a breath and a drink of water.

  “We met the ambulance—my mother and I did—at the hospital. Nik rode with his body. After we said good-bye and the paramedics went to give her his belongings, Dad’s wallet was missing. Mom got all up in their faces and accused them of stealing from him. Nobody gave any thought to his keys.”

  “But it was Nik?” I said. “At least, that’s what you think?”

  “He never admitted to stealing money, but it would be just like him,” Zoya said, wiping a tear away. “A few days later, after the wake and after all the guys from Metro-North had paid their respects, Nik began to wear the key chain on his belt. Out in the open, everywhere he went. Thirty, maybe forty keys on it. I never gave it any thought, to tell you the truth. He idolized my father, and I figured it just made him happy to feel like maybe he’d be following in his footsteps. I didn’t care if the bosses at Grand Central had the damn keys or not. Wouldn’t make any difference to them. Now, I think they were . . .”

  “What?”

  “Like trophies, you know? Like a sign that Nik could go anywhere my father had been,” she said. “Only he knew he wasn’t a fraction of the good person Dad was. Nothing like him.”

  Yes, Mike and I knew about saving trophies.

  “You must know this whole terminal the way Nik does,” Mike said. “Did he have a secret spot? We’ve shut the place down now. The FBI was able to get a photograph of him from NorthStar a few minutes before you got here. The cops will find him if it takes all night.”

  “I’m trying to help you. Really I am.”

  “Try harder.”

  “We always played in the ticket booths when it was slow in the middle of the afternoon,” she said.

  “Not a very good place to hide. They were occupied all day, till fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Well, there’s a basement. Some kind of stuffy old place that I didn’t like to be in.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “He found that.”

  “The older he got, the more he liked creepier parts of the terminal, like the tracks and tunnels.”

  “He was allowed to go there?”

  “Depends on what you mean by allowed. My father used to let us ride with him sometimes when he drove the engines to the roundhouse. I could pull the whistle, the boys could take turns sitting on his lap. As Nik got older—and like I said, he was a daredevil—he’d jump down and take off into the tunnels. My father didn’t want him to get hurt, of course, but by the time Nik was a teenager and tough to control, Dad figured it was just safer to teach him his way around. All the guys had kids who wanted to hang out in the train yards. It was one of the best perks of a job that didn’t pay very much.”

  “Attention Nikolay Blunt!” Both Zoya and I started at the sound of her brother’s name. A new speaker had taken over the microphone. “My name is Keith Scully, and I’m commissioner of the New York City Police Department.”

  Zoya balled the handkerchief in her fist and pressed it against her mouth.

  “We know you’re inside this terminal. We know you’ve killed three people this week. We know what you look like,” Scully said. “We intend to find you before you find us. I’ve got SWAT teams from several police departments, federal agents, United States Army troops, and dogs that will run you to the ground no matter what corner of this building you’re cowering in. Time to surrender, Mr. Blunt. Time to surrender.”

  “Does he have guns, Zoya?” Mike asked.

  “Probably so, Detective. I really don’t know. My father didn’t like guns and wouldn’t have ever had one in the house because of my mother’s illness.”

  “They must have trained him with guns—probably automatic weapons—to go abroad for NorthStar. When you saw him—other than that last time . . .” Mike said, leaving out the word “rape.”

  “He had a gun that night. He didn’t threaten me with it. But when he took his clothes off, I saw that he had a gun, and he had a lot of ammunition.”

  “Do you know what kind of gun?”

  “I’m not familiar with guns, Detective. Nik had a gym bag, too. I have no idea what was in that, either. I was afraid it was more weapons.”

  “Did he talk about the gun?” I asked. “Why he had it with him?”

  “I asked him why he did. You have to understand how terrified I was about everything that was going on that night. I was—I was distraught.”

  “We wouldn’t have expected you to be anything else,” I said.

  “He told me it was because of voices. He told me that there were—I know this sounds absurd—that there were two people living inside him. Nik said he was torn between the two people. That one was beginning to issue orders to him, commands to do things,” Zoya Blunt’s head rolled forward. “That’s the one who made him rape me.”

  “Did Nik tell you why he was commanded to hurt you?”

  “My mother was from Chechnya, Ms. Cooper. You know Chechnya?”

  “I just know it’s a republic of the Russian Federation. I know there are Chechen rebels and that there have been lots of terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Chechnya. Is Nik involved with them?”

  Zoya dismissed me. “Maybe one of his voices gets messages from the rebels. Not my brother. He was talking all kinds of nonsense that night. About my mother’s relatives in Chechnya, about human right violations, about . . .”

  Mike’s antiterrorist antennae had been raised again. “Are you Muslim, Zoya?”

  She glared at him. “That would make this easy for you, wouldn’t it, Detective? Nik c
ould be some kind of Islamic jihadist.”

  “Easy isn’t the issue,” Mike said. “It may explain why he’s on this rampage and how big a stage he’s looking to set.”

  “We’re Christians, Detective Chapman. My mother’s family was Muslim, as much of that region is, but she was raised without any formal religion—like a lot of thugs—and converted to Catholicism when she married my father.”

  “Has Nik ever been back to Russia? To Chechnya?”

  “Not so far as I know. I mean, I don’t know what this NorthStar thing is about. Could he have gone there with that group?”

  “Let me see if the lieutenant has gotten through to anyone at NorthStar,” Mike said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “While you’re at it,” I said, “see if anyone has found out what part of Russia the third victim’s family lives in. Lydia Tsarlev. Maybe she’s Chechen. And I want to see a photo of Nik, okay? Bring me a copy of what the feds came in with.”

  Mike left the room.

  Zoya had her elbows on the table, her face in her hands. “I don’t ever want to see him again, Ms. Cooper. Not even a picture.”

  “You don’t have to look at this one. It’s for me to get an image of Nik.”

  “We look a lot alike. He’s taller than I am—maybe about your height. But we’ve got the same hair color, the same shape nose. We both resemble my mother.”

  “She must have been very pretty,” I said.

  “It’s hard for me to remember her before she deteriorated so badly. The madness altered everything, even her appearance.”

  I thought I’d change the subject. “I spent some time in the tunnels this week. I don’t know how anyone finds their way around down there and stays safe. Not to mention how much all the rodents spooked me.”

  “It was the same for me. I was never tempted to get off the trains and walk around. The rats never bothered Nik, though. He actually had two in his room when he was in high school.”

  “Pets?” I couldn’t conceal my disgust.

  “Yes,” Zoya smiled. “But he didn’t get them from the tunnels. He bought them in a shop, mostly to keep my mother and me from snooping in his room. And it worked fine. Nik used to call them the lazy man’s dogs.”

  “I can’t believe pet shops sell rats. That never occurred to me.”

  “It wouldn’t matter what they sold, Nik came home with some creature every time he had the chance. Gerbils, turtles, parrots, rabbits. My parents wouldn’t let us have cats or dogs, so Nik made do with everything else. I should have known he was crazy when he wanted rats. But he was totally an animal lover. I don’t think it ever bothered him to watch someone beat the guts out of another person, but talk about shooting a rat with a BB gun? Nik would make sure, one way or another, that it never happened.”

  I thought of Lydia Tsarnev and the Animal Liberation Front. Was it possible that Nik had met her through an underground resistance group that trumpeted illegal means of saving animals by destroying government and private property? And that the reason he had confronted her in her apartment was to enlist her to his new cause, his apparent sudden interest in Chechen human rights violations?

  “Have you ever heard of the Animal Liberation Front?” I asked her. “Is it the kind of organization Nik might have belonged to?”

  “Get it through your head, Ms. Cooper. My brother Nik isn’t a very social person. I don’t think he belongs to groups and parties and liberation fronts, whatever—”

  She looked up when the door opened and Mike reentered the room, handing me a Xerox of a photo of Nik Blunt.

  “—whatever they are,” she said, finishing her sentence. “My brother Nik is a lone wolf. That’s what he’s always been.”

  “Any sign of him yet?” I asked Mike. “Any response to Scully’s ‘give it up’ message?”

  “Yeah, there’s a sign of him all right. They just found two pipe bombs, planted directly underneath Big Timber. That fancy old private varnish was about to be blown to bits.”

  FORTY

  I left Zoya Blunt with Yolanda Figueroa, the Metro-North policewoman, and hurried out of the office with Mike, jogging down the staircase to the lower concourse. All the shiny black wrought iron departure gates were closed and locked, except for the one farthest off to the eastern end of the terminal.

  The officers were from so many different commands that the mixes of uniforms and military outfits and agents in suits was almost overwhelming.

  Rocco Correlli and Keith Scully were standing with several men I didn’t recognize. Mike elbowed through the group, and I followed in his wake.

  “I thought she went home,” Scully said to Mike, pointing at me.

  “May I speak for myself, Commissioner? I’m working for you.”

  “Coop’s good,” Mike said. “She’s getting nuggets out of the Zoya girl.”

  “Pipe bombs,” Scully said. “Now I’ve got to clear cops out of here while the dogs nose around to see whether there are any more.”

  Pug McBride was walking around the circumference of Big Timber. “I think it was just a subterfuge.”

  “Big word, Pug.”

  “I don’t even know what it means, Chapman. It’s what the Bomb Squad guys said.”

  “Are they here?” I asked.

  “Been and gone. Took out the first two bombs that were under this train and they’re being bused up to Rodman’s Neck,” Rocco said. “We’ve obviously engaged Mr. Blunt, but he planted blanks this time.”

  “Blanks?”

  “Al-Qaeda has an online program. ‘Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.’”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m afraid so. Blunt must have downloaded the instructions, Alex, but didn’t have time to make these operative. It would have been pretty tough for him to get past all the devices inside the terminal that sniff for explosives, not to mention this slew of dogs we’ve assembled.”

  “How did you find these,” I asked, “if not dogs?”

  “Trainmen were readying to move Big Timber on its way. Spotted them on the tracks.”

  Pug pulled up a snapshot on his cell. “Bits and pieces from old clocks, a rope line of Christmas tree lights, scrapings from match heads, and leftovers from a hardware store. My tenth grader’s more dangerous than this with his chemistry set.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Scully looked grim as he turned away from the platform. “I’ve got too many men inside there to take chances that Blunt’s not luring us in towards bombs that actually work. We’ll clear some of the guys out to the street for a while and leave the K-9 patrols to go through the place.”

  Mike and I started to retrace our steps as I told him what Zoya Blunt said about Nik after he left the room.

  “I can buy the lone-wolf thing,” he said. “I’ve just spent a month studying terrorists and this doesn’t fit any of the patterns.”

  “But the feds—?”

  “The FBI defines terrorism as having political motivation. That’s it. It’s the Arab Spring; it’s Hezbollah; it’s what’s happened in Syria. Domestic terrorism,” Mike said, “is more likely a result of psychopathology than politics.”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  “John Hinckley tried to assassinate a president of the United States, not because of Reagan’s political views, but to impress Jodie Foster. Think of the Boston Marathon bombers.”

  I couldn’t remember any day, since 9/11, that I had been so heartbroken and felt so helpless as when I watched the aftermath of the bombing on television. Many of my Vineyard friends were running that race, and I scoured the crowd looking for familiar faces. The random loss of life—and the horrific injuries—were devastating.

  “The Russian-born brothers who thought they were jihadists?”

  “There’s not a shred of evidence that they were, Coop. They were rampage killers, is all. Losers. Mega-losers. They could have just as easily targeted a shopping mall or a crowded movie theater as they did the marathon.”

  Mike still wore his Bost
on Strong T-shirt to Yankees games and cheered the great victory—despite his fierce spirit of rivalry—of the Red Sox winning the pennant the year of the bombing.

  “And we don’t have many shopping malls in Manhattan,” I said.

  “So why not Grand Central Terminal?” Mike asked. “The world’s sixth-greatest tourist attraction. That ought to call a bit of attention to himself.”

  We had crossed the lower concourse and mounted the staircase, headed back to the stationmaster’s office. At the top of the steps, we came to a standstill.

  Scully must have given orders to move scores of the officers back out onto the streets while the K-9 teams sniffed for traces of explosives. Cops were trying to find their partners, National Guardsmen were looking to regroup with their teams, military men and women were using walkie-talkies to communicate. The terminal floor looked like rush hour on steroids.

  “So Scully doesn’t want to alert Nik Blunt that he’s worried about the possibility of more bombs,” Mike said, shaking his head. “He’s not announcing the orders to evacuate on the loudspeaker. He’s just creating a little chaos.”

  “You don’t approve.”

  “I don’t. My bet is Blunt is in a position to be watching all this from some secluded vantage point that he knows far better than we do.”

  I scanned the enormous space. I took in the entire concourse, which was slowly emptying of its uniformed crowd. I looked above us, both east and west, to the massive walls of windows—towering sixteen stories over the terminal floor—and remembered the walkways that connected them to offices in each corner of the building.

  “Bombs?” I asked.

  “I don’t think there are any more. I think it’s part of Blunt’s mind game with us.”

  “But the Boston Marathon brothers—”

  “They actually had a mother with a kitchen, Coop. A place to put their bombs together. This hump lives on the street. Or in a tunnel, right near the mole he killed.”