Silent Mercy

by Linda Fairstein

  “Where have you been playing these last two weeks, Mr. Delahawk?”

  Mike had one foot on a rung of the metal stepladder that was suspended from the platform.

  “Manhattan. That’s no secret, is it? We’re still the greatest show on earth. Don’t you read the newspaper ads, Detective, or the theatrical reviews?”

  “Only the funny pages, sir,” Mike said, trying to swing himself another step up on the ladder. “I got no time for Broadway and I hate how you guys push those elephants around. I really do.”

  Delahawk called to someone behind him. A teenage boy appeared with a wooden footstool, scooted past the heavyset man, and jumped off the platform. He placed the stool underneath the stepladder, reached up a hand, and Mike had to move aside to let Delahawk onto the ground.

  “Now, what’s this about, Detective?”

  Mercer was walking alongside the train, around the bend, and briefly out of sight. He seemed to be counting the cars and using his great height to peer into windows.

  “I’ve got reason to believe that there might be evidence connected to the commission of a crime on board your train.”

  Mike sounded so tentative that even Delahawk caught it. “Rather vague, Detective. I’m betting the chief of police himself might have come out in full uniform to stop the circus, if you had legal grounds. No warrant?”

  “There’s an exception for an interstate vehicle traveling with land-roving mammals, sir. We’ve got joint jurisdiction with the ASPCA to board any moving conveyance en route out of the state. Ms. Cooper here is our legal expert. She’ll explain.”

  “This isn’t even your state.” Delahawk’s expression combined his annoyance with a touch of humor, recognizing Mike’s effort at complete overreaching.

  “Where are you off to this evening?” Mike asked.

  “Providence, Detective. I can’t imagine you’d want to be the cause of such disappointment to all the children there.”

  “Can’t get to Rhode Island without going through the Empire State. You kindly let us board right here, or you’ll be stopped by the police commissioner of the city when you cross over the Hell Gate Bridge.”

  The old red span that arched above the deadliest current in the East River had been built as the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge, the only way to link trains from Manhattan to the mainland, and to the Northeast Corridor route that led to New England.

  Fontaine Delahawk motioned to the teen who waited beside him and held out his hand as he put one foot back up on the wooden stool. He seemed to know the sound of brazen deceit when he heard one. “Have the proper papers, Detective. Will you do that?”

  “May we have a moment, Mr. Delahawk?” I asked as Mercer approached us.

  He turned to look as I spoke. “It’s almost five o’clock, young lady. Don’t play games with me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, sir. Where did your trip start, and how long ago?”

  “Sarasota, Florida. That’s our home. We left last fall, if it helps you to know.”

  “And did you travel through Georgia?”

  “Yes. We played Atlanta, of course.”

  “And you’d have dates? Exact locations the train parked?”

  “Certainly. We have to make those arrangements far in advance.”

  “And your performers, do they live on this train?” I asked, raising my arm to point at the length of this village on wheels.

  “Our artists, our stage crew, our mechanics. Two hundred and fifty of us. This is home, my dear. We’re not gypsies or carnies. We’re serious working people and this is our home for the better part of a year.”

  “I need to talk with the detectives, if you’ll allow me that, Mr. Delahawk. Perhaps I can persuade you to change your mind, to just give me five or six minutes.”

  “More likely for you than for your mates, miss,” Delahawk said as the teenager assisted him back onto the platform.

  “Thirty-five cars is what I counted,” Mercer said as the three of us took a few steps away from the train to talk. “Some with great big windows; looks like there are entire families living inside. Others are closed up, with scenery in them, maybe. Or animals.”

  “What do you want me to do here, Coop? I’m fresh out of bullshit for Delahawk. He’s got that takes-one-to-know-one style.”

  The whole picture of the killer, the combination of traits that fit his modus operandi was coming into focus for me. I kept my eyes on the locomotive and talked fast.

  “Get me on that train, Mike. That’s all I’m asking you to do. This killer could fly, just like your winged man in that stained-glass window he led us to. Come with me and I’ll show you how.”

  “Well, try again to cozy up to chubby old Fontaine, ’cause he ain’t buying my cruelty-to-animals angle. You got probable cause or anything close to it besides your green-eyed intuition?”

  “I’ll sniff out probable cause. The smell of it on that cattle car is stronger than the stink of Secaucus,” I said. “Think about how the toddler found Naomi’s severed head in the church fountain. What drew her to it?”

  Mercer was in my corner. “A child’s backpack. A bright yellow backpack with cartoon characters and smiley faces. Like you’d take to the circus.”

  “Or buy at a concession stand. Or lose there in the crowd.”

  Mike was still mulling the whole situation over.

  “Delahawk’s probably glued to the second hand on his cheap watch while I try to twist your arm,” I said. “Go back to what Faith Grant described this morning. The man who stalked her went from walking behind her on the sidewalk of 122nd Street to coming directly at her—facing her—from across Claremont Avenue. He went up like a cat on that scaffolding, bypassing the streetlights below. I think he’s got Chat confused with Faith. He probably hasn’t seen her since the night in December at Ursula Hewitt’s play. That’s why he kept on walking past Faith with a simple ‘sorry.’ ”

  “He disappeared from your courtroom ‘like magic’ that day the bishop testified,” Mercer said, adding to my fuel. “Isn’t that what you told us?”

  “That’s exactly how Pat McKinney described it.”

  “I’ll get Manny Chirico checking those murders in Alpharetta, Georgia, and Wayland, Kentucky,” Mercer said. “See how the dates match up to when the circus came to a nearby town. I’m beginning to like the possibilities here.”

  “I know you wanted the killer to be an orangutan, Mike, swinging over the church gates,” I said, “but unless there’s one of those on board for an animal act, you better give me some cred. It’s totally logical. Think Poe, that’s fine with me. Think ratiocination.”

  He had both hands on his hips, working through my ideas as though they were starting to make sense.

  “Come with me, Mike.” I meant it both literally and figuratively. “Strong, fluid, graceful, agile. Gymnasts, trampoline artists, illusionists. What better candidate for our perp than a circus performer?”

  “A suspect with his own private rail car to take him away from the scene of his last crime—no flight in a stolen vehicle with bum tags,” Mercer said. “And the train puts him firmly in our territory when his spree begins. No lousy motel room to leave a record of your driver’s license or your timetable.”

  “But we don’t know what set him off,” Mike said. “We don’t know what he was doing here over the holidays, if he was actually the guy in the audience at Ursula’s play.”

  “Well, don’t you want to find out?” I was imitating Fontaine Delahawk, tapping the dial on my watch. “They’re going to ride on if we don’t bite this bullet now.”

  “What’s your gut, Mercer?” Mike asked.

  “Take Coop and go.”

  “Call Peterson first. Make sure he’s got a squad waiting in the Bronx, in case we catch a break and move this fast enough to offload there. He’d better have a couple of cars all along the route, if they can figure out what that might be.”

  “Probably parallels the Northeast Corridor passenger trains, on freight t
racks. New Rochelle, New Haven, New London, Providence,” Mercer said. “I’ll wait here until every one of these Angus trucks is opened. And yes, Alex, Nan and I will stay on top of the lady minister from Nantucket too.”

  “You going to try to sell this one to Fontaine?” Mike asked me. His words were almost drowned out by the double-blow of the whistle.

  I looked to the engineer and could see Fontaine Delahawk talking with him in the cab. Slowly, the great hulking locomotive belched its smoke into the air and like a sleeping beast, awakened and started to move.

  Mike pointed to the empty area from which Delahawk had earlier descended. We looked at each other and began sprinting toward the train. I beat Mike there, then reached out for him and pulled him with me onto the stepladder, holding on tight as we climbed up to safety on the platform of the rolling rail car.

  FORTY-ONE

  “STAND still. Don’t move a hair,” Mike said. He had opened the door of a coat closet in the front car, which seemed to be Delahawk’s office, directing me inside and pressing against me while the train lurched forward and picked up speed.

  “How long?” I mouthed to Mike.

  He held up five fingers and whispered, his lips against my ear. “He obviously gave the engineer the signal to start running. He’ll either ramble back and check on his charges, or he’ll settle down in his office, in which case we’ll already be out of the rail yard and on the live tracks.”

  I closed my eyes as the train swayed around a curve and tried to keep my balance by holding Mike’s shoulder.

  “What is it with the eyes, Coop? The onions? I shouldn’t have had that second sandwich.”

  I shook my head, unable to get the vision of Faith’s sister out of my mind. “Chat. It’s Chat. Not knowing where she is or what condition she’s in. How did I ever let that fragile girl walk away this morning?

  “You can’t go there, kid. We didn’t know then what we know now. We’re pulling out all the stops to find her. Stay cool. Wrap your mind around P. T. Barnum.”

  “There’s a sucker born every minute, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “He never said that, Coop. Some guy said it about one of his exhibits. The Cardiff Giant. Remember him?”

  Mike was trying to keep me calm. He could read me as well as anybody. He was so close to me he could probably hear how fast my heart was pounding.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s hope our perp stays away from Grace Church.”

  The elegant Episcopal landmark on Broadway at Tenth Street was, like St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the old smallpox hospital on Roosevelt Island, another stunning design of the architect James Renwick.

  “I give up,” I said.

  “Built with stone cut by the inmates at Sing Sing and shipped down the Hudson. That’s where Barnum held the wedding of Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, his two dwarfs, in 1863. Bet there’s not a true Barnum scholar on this whole train.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know?” I asked. He had managed to draw a smile from me. “That’s right. Barnum called Tom Thumb a general, didn’t he? A four-year-old general. Of course you’d know about him, even if it was only a stage name.”

  The train had suddenly gone from a slow canter to a noticeable trot. We were on the straightaway now and moving at a good clip.

  I could hear Fontaine Delahawk’s voice as he reentered the car. He stopped close to where we were hiding, wheezing until he finished a violent coughing spasm. The teenager who had helped him off the train must have been his assistant. The older man again barked orders, telling someone—presumably that same kid—that he was going back to his room to await dinner.

  “I’ve always wanted to come out of the closet. Too bad there’s nobody here to see me,” Mike said. “How about you?”

  He reached behind his back and twisted the handle on the door. The large office was empty, except for the sound of the steel wheels.

  It was smartly outfitted in the finest of wood finishes. And like a fancy yacht, everything was built into the walls of the windowless car so that it would be difficult for objects or furniture to be dislodged by the motion of the rocking train. There were several desks and a row of filing cabinets. Brass fittings were mounted on every drawer, more likely to secure them in place than to protect from intruders—like the two of us.

  “Snap some photos, will you, Coop?” Mike asked. “We may need to come back to this later on.”

  He waited until I aimed my phone for a few shots, then pulled back the heavy arm of the car’s exit as we made our way carefully onto the next platform.

  There was a single door on the right-hand side of the long car. On the wall adjacent to it, a small whiteboard was affixed, and someone had written eight names—many of them foreign-sounding—in alphabetical order. The men and women who occupied this suite were a mix of Italian and Spanish, Russian and Czech, French and Hungarian, with a couple of Americans thrown in.

  Mike opened the door and we entered. Directly opposite was a small cubicle—like a tiny college dorm room with a bed, dresser, and desk—occupied by a striking, raven-haired woman dressed in a sweatsuit. I’d guess she wasn’t much older than twenty-five.

  “Hey, guys. What’s up?” she asked. Her back was supported by three pillows, none of which disturbed the well-lacquered beehive updo atop her head. She was balancing a hardcover astrology book on her knees. “Who are you?”

  She seemed amused and curious about our presence, not concerned.

  Mike showed her his shield and identified himself.

  “Awesome!”

  “We’re with Missing Persons, Ms. Cooper and me. We’re looking for a young woman who went missing.”

  It was a long-standing police department tactic. People were always much more willing to cooperate to find someone who may have just run away than become ensnared in an ugly murder investigation.

  “You think she’s with us? No way.”

  “Mind if we talk?”

  “Sure. Mr. Delahawk says—”

  “Yeah, we met him on the way in.”

  She leaned over and patted the end of her bed, and Mike sat down, motioning me to the desk chair. “I’m Kris. Kristin Sweeney.”

  Not from the long line of European circus families, I guessed, as so many of the performers with foreign names might be.

  “You a Cowboys fan?” Mike asked. There was a poster over the bed of the Dallas football team, autographed by many of the players.

  “Can’t grow up in Spur, Texas, and root for anyone else. I was a cheerleader for them before I took this job.”

  “Awesome,” Mike said, smiling back at Kristin, and I knew he meant it sincerely. “Hard act to follow. What are you now? A lion tamer?”

  She giggled, pushing the book aside and wrapping her arms around her knees. “I’m a stunt rider. Bareback, acrobatics, leap through fiery hoops. All that kind of stuff.”

  “I’ll have to buy a ticket for tomorrow’s show,” Mike said. “I’ve spent most of my life trying to find a girl who can jump through fiery hoops. How long you been with the circus?”

  “I joined up last fall, in Florida. Had to go to school all summer before that. Circus school.”

  “Have any new girls been around lately?”

  “New girls? Doing what? I mean we always bring on some locals—you know, as ushers or ticket takers. But I don’t have anything to do with any of them.”

  “I wouldn’t think so, you being a pro and all.”

  I might as well have been on another planet. Mike seemed totally taken with his Dallas cheerleader. Maybe it was the bareback thing.

  “There must be lots of guys hanging out at the stage door for you, Kristin.”

  “Yeah, if you’re into twelve-year-olds,” she said with a laugh. “Not so much as you’d think.”

  “And girls, looking to hook up with guys?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Anyone been coming around named Naomi since you’ve been at the Garden?”

  “Nop
e.”

  “Ursula? Or Chat—short for Chastity?”

  “I’d remember that one for sure,” she said. “Are all these girls missing? That’s so weird. But then, my mother warned me that New York was like that.”

  “Not usually. Not with me on the job.”

  “People always joke about running away to join the circus, but that’s not how this works, Mike. There’s all kinds of training before anyone gets hired. We don’t pick up any strays along the way. We’re a family, is what we are.”

  “Tell me about this family, Kris. We got a long ride ahead of us tonight.”

  “You both coming to Providence?” she asked, shooting me a sidelong glance.

  “Yeah. What should we know?”

  Kristin Sweeney was practically gushing now. “So, think of this as an apartment building. Like, thirty-five stories tall, except it’s horizontal. The only thing we don’t have is a zip code.”

  And, I guessed, a police department.

  “Doesn’t look like you have any privacy,” I said. “Eight of you to a suite? No bathroom?”

  “There are just a few cars like this. Works fine if you’re single, like I am.”

  “Who gets to ride the train?” Mike asked.

  “The artists, of course. Cooks and stagehands and prop guys. Mechanics and electricians. Elephants, horses, wild animals. The costume lady and all our glitz. Cast and crew, Detective. We’re all here.”

  “Some of the rooms are larger?”

  “Yeah. Some of the couples have their own little apartments. They bring their kids along, or their in-laws. Flat-screen TVs and toilets and all that. Kitchenettes, which is something I miss a lot,’cause I enjoy cooking. The rest of us eat in the Pie Car. That’s what it’s called, but it’s really a diner. Mr. Delahawk even has an electric fireplace in his suite.”

  “You like this kind of life?” Mike asked.

  “I like it fine, for now. Better than what was waiting for me home in Spur after my cheerleading days were over. Better than circus life used to be, moving from hotel to hotel, always packing and unpacking. I’ve made friends here. I said it’s like family, right? Well, for me it’s better than hanging with most of my family.”