“Who are you?” Ledger called out again.
And just as loud, Mercer yelled for the man to stop.
But the heavy door slammed shut behind him and I was frozen in place, sweat dripping from my pores.
Mercer jogged to the door and pushed on it. “It’s locked.”
“Can’t be,” Ledger said. “The lock’s on the other side.”
Mercer threw his body against the exit, but it didn’t give. He twisted the knob and thrust at it a second time. “It won’t budge.”
“Then he’s barricaded it from the outside,” Ledger said. “He’s locked us in.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Don Ledger was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He had undone his necktie and unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt. Not only was he terribly overheated, but he also had a chronic heart condition and was experiencing palpitations.
I was crouched in front of him, wiping his brow with Mercer’s handkerchief. His distress had put my own concerns in perspective.
“We’ll be fine, Mr. Ledger. It’s just the heat and the lack of fresh air. The guys will have you out of here in no time.”
“Water,” he said. “Do any of you have water?”
“We didn’t bring any, sir. Would there be any around?”
“I don’t know. I—I haven’t been down here in months.”
Mike and Mercer had taken turns manipulating the doorknob and trying to dislodge it, but something was holding it in place.
Cell phones were useless. M42 was too far underground and encased in solid steel foundations to get any service. The cords to the receivers of the two in-house phones that were attached to the wall near the exit had been sliced and rendered useless.
“How long till someone misses you, Mr. Ledger?” I asked.
“Nobody misses old men like me. They’ll think I’ve wandered off to cool down in some bigwig’s air-conditioned office.”
Mike was jogging away from me, down the long row of machinery. I assumed he was looking for something he could use as a battering ram, or some other way to contact the world above us.
“Are you okay if I leave you for a couple of minutes?” I asked Ledger.
He held one of his hands out to me. “Do what you have to do, young lady.”
I gripped it tightly and forced a big smile. “Somebody must have to oil one of these converters every now and then. We just need to breathe deep.”
I stood up and watched for a few seconds as he put his hand on his chest, as though to measure his own heartbeats. Then I walked to the next aisle of supersized devices and got out of sight of Ledger before starting to trot in pursuit of Mike.
He heard me coming and turned around to wait. “How’s Ledger?”
“Scared more than anything, I think. He’s anxious and very dry, and he’s mostly feeling guilty that he led us into this desolate basement.”
“There’s a secretary up there, in the office next to his. I’m hoping she starts missing him soon.”
“Then I suppose I should be grateful you flirted with her.”
Mike wiped his forehead with the back of his hand before running his fingers through it. “A little bit long in the tooth for me, but she liked the blarney. I got there before Ledger got in. She clearly has a soft spot for him.”
“Are we screwed here?”
“D’you see the size of this place, Coop? It’s not like we’re going to run out of oxygen.”
“But—”
“I’m just going up and down the aisles to see what’s around. I’m not expecting anything lethal,” Mike said, holding on to my elbow as though to steady me. “Look, I know you’re claustrophobic, and I wish—”
“I feel like I’ve been sealed into one of the pyramids,” I said, trying to make light of the situation.
“You picked a place that might actually hold all of your worldly goods, babe. Smart move. You can stack all your boxes of shoes over in that corner. And if you play your cards right, you could go across the River Styx after a three-way with Mercer and me.”
“My dream come true, Detective Chapman. Till then what do we do?”
“You’re doing it. Keep Ledger preoccupied,” Mike said, turning away from me, “and see whether Mercer needs anything.”
I started back toward the door. Mercer was pounding his large fist against it from time to time and yelling at the top of his lungs every minute or so. I didn’t think there would be anyone or anything out there to hear him, except for a passing track rabbit.
I took my position again next to Don Ledger. I started to tell him stories about adventures that Mercer, Mike, and I had been through together—lighter ones than murder—and how they had always managed to get me out in one piece.
Almost ten minutes elapsed before Mike shouted to me from the farthest corner of the room.
“Hold your calls, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.”
“I’ll be right back, Mr. Ledger. Mike must have found something.”
I sprinted in the direction of Mike’s voice and saw him kneeling at the end of the first row of antique converters. As I got closer to him, I noticed a dark blanket spread out on the floor. Mike pulled a pair of vinyl gloves out of his pocket and put them on.
“Looks like we’ve got a nester,” he said.
The blanket was doubled over to create a makeshift sleeping bag.
“I can’t imagine anyone getting in here.”
“We have a Houdini on our hands, Coop,” Mike said, lifting a corner of the blanket with two fingers. “He got a steamer trunk packed to the gills with a body in and out of the Waldorf, probably knows these tunnels better than the rats, worked his way onto a private varnish to murder another vic, and knows as much about M42 as Nazi saboteurs. That should limit the cast of characters.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What?”
“The piece of paper under the edge of the blanket, Mike. See it sticking out from underneath?”
He reached for the small gray card that almost blended in with the concrete flooring. He flipped it over and we could both see the photograph of the dead girl on Big Timber.
“Shit,” Mike said. “Lydia Tsarlev. Nineteen years old. Student ID from Westchester Community College.”
It was becoming harder to breathe by the minute.
“These assholes really like their souvenirs, don’t they?” He got to his feet and put his arm around my shoulder, staring at the picture as we headed back to Mercer. “They really like their trophies from a kill.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
It was almost eleven o’clock when I heard banging and scraping against the metal door. It was Pug McBride’s voice calling for Mike that first penetrated the space.
“You inside there, Chapman?”
Mercer was still beside the door. “We all are. Open up.”
I helped Don Ledger to his feet, and we waited as the objects wedged under the doorknob to prevent it from moving—which turned out to be lengths of old steel railroad ties—were dragged aside and one of the workmen with a skeleton key unlocked the door.
As hot and steamy as the tunnel area surrounding the staircase was, it was refreshing after the stillness of M42.
“Everybody okay?” Pug asked.
“Get a bus to take Mr. Ledger to the ER, will you?” I asked. There were EMTs and firemen who worked inside the terminal who could carry him up the winding staircase and load him into an ambulance. He needed to be checked out. “He needs water as soon as possible, and I think we all do.”
“Good work, Pug,” Mike said, patting McBride on the back. “I keep telling Rocco you’re going to find a real perp one day, if you keep looking hard enough.”
“You were easy. I just followed the scent of your vodka through the station.”
“Odorless, Pug. That’s why
I drink the stuff.”
“And that’s why I’m such a brilliant detective. Caught the teeniest whiff of it and dogged it through the entire terminal.”
“Thanks, Pug,” I said. “Another hour and I would have melted.”
“You already look like you did,” he said, giving me the once-over.
“How’d you find us?” Mercer asked.
“One of the summer interns overheard Ledger talking. Said he was taking some cops down to M42. I got kind of antsy when we got a hit on the dead girl’s ID at about nine this morning. Didn’t get an answer from Mike when I called his cell to let him know, and then Rocco couldn’t bring up any of you on your phones, so he sent us here to look.”
“Lydia Tsarlev,” Mike said.
Pug’s entire face screwed up in puzzlement. “You got a TV set in there but no cell service? You know her name already?”
Mike took the girl’s ID out of his pocket and held it up to Pug McBride’s face. “I just told you her name, didn’t I? Now let me out of here. Whoever was using this as his crib has at least a two-hour jump on us.”
Mike started up the spiral staircase, but Pug was pulling at his shirt.
“You sat on this information since last night?”
“Don’t be a jerk, Pug. I just found it inside this basement,” Mike said, taking the steps two at a time. “Scully’s got to saturate the terminal with uniforms. Get Crime Scene in here to dust for prints and pick up the blanket for trace. Meet you in Ledger’s office.”
“I’ll stay put till the guys come for Ledger,” I said.
Mike called down over the railing. “This entire area—M42 and whatever abuts it—has to be secured, Pug. Nobody gets access unless they’re cops. And nobody touches nothing.”
“I’m taking orders from you, Chapman?”
“For now you are. And keep your eye on the blonde. She’s as fragile as an old rotary converter.”
“Yeah, she looks like she got hit by a bus,” Pug said.
It was only minutes until four men from the Grand Central fire station clambered down the staircase. Don Ledger tried to insist that he walk up under his own steam, but two of them managed to lock hands and carry him, despite the steepness of the steps and the great height. A wheelchair was waiting for him at the elevator landing, and by the time we emerged on the lower concourse, the ambulance crew had taken him out.
Mercer and I were on our way to regroup with Mike in Ledger’s office.
“Give me five minutes,” I said.
“Not alone.”
“Then come along.”
He followed me up a ramp, past Posman bookstore and a doughnut shop, to a small Banana Republic in the retail area of the terminal. I bought a shirt for each of us to replace the ones we’d been wearing, which were soaked with perspiration.
“You think I smell bad?” Mercer asked when I handed my money to the cashier.
“I know you do. And I can’t stand myself this way. There’s a bathroom in the stationmaster’s suite. You can either shower or just clean up a bit.”
We walked back to Ledger’s office, where Mike had taken over the man’s desk and mouthed to us that he was on the phone with Rocco Correlli. I took the shirts out of the bag and he gave me a thumbs-up before slamming down the receiver.
“Here’s the deal,” he said. “Scully’s calling in every unit he can get. NYPD, Metro-North, National Guard, US Army, feds, state troopers. You name ’em, we’ll have ’em.”
“When?” Mercer asked.
“He can’t control that, but he said we’d be seeing a flood of cops. He’ll divert a lot of details from the four-to-twelve shift, and then more at midnight.”
“I thought Grand Central closes its doors at two A.M.,” I said.
“It does. The plan is to get as much law enforcement in here as a presence as soon as possible. Uniforms and guns everywhere.”
“That won’t catch the killer,” Mercer said, “but it will comfort the commuters.”
“Exactly. The only reason the terminal shuts down between two and five thirty A.M. is that it prevents the place from becoming a homeless shelter again. Gets everybody to clear out. So that gives us an opportunity to have investigators from any or all of the agencies go through here with a fine-tooth comb.”
“If we haven’t put our hands on the killer by midnight, they can penetrate every crevice of the terminal and the tunnels.”
“From what we’ve seen,” I said, “that doesn’t even seem remotely possible. Each level leads to another level beneath or above it, or a tunnel that leads to another part of Terminal City or a wheelhouse or a room that isn’t on the blueprints.”
“Losing heart, sunshine?” Mike asked. “It doesn’t sound like you.”
“Whoever this guy is, he’s done his homework. Wherever we go, he’s been there first. Yes, I’m demoralized by it.”
“And you’re sweaty, and maybe a tad hungover?”
“All of the above,” I said.
“So the manpower is the first order of business. Next is Lydia Tsarlev.”
“They’ve found her family?” I asked.
“No. It’s several of her classmates who called in. She’s an exchange student, here on some kind of visa. The lieutenant has a team going to White Plains to search her apartment. He needs to contact her parents, check her computer if there is one. Routine stuff.”
“How about Corinne Thatcher’s parents? Or her brother? I can get Ryan to work on that with your squad.”
“He’s on it, kid. Looking for any connection between the two vics. Where have you been all morning? In a black hole?”
“Very black. I’m about to clean up.”
“Before you hear the DNA results?”
“The lab got a match?” Somehow the adrenaline was pumping again.
“Not a perp, Coop. Not yet. Just case to case.”
“So the speck of blood on the curtain at the Waldorf wasn’t Corinne Thatcher’s after all?”
“All cred to Dr. Azeem and his fancy camera,” Mike said. “The killer must have cut himself.”
“And it matches some of the blood in the Big Timber train car?”
“Yeah. Case to case. Confirms the killer of both women is the same guy.”
“If you didn’t know any other way.” I crossed fingers on both hands. “Now tell me he’s in the data bank.”
“Weren’t you listening? There’s no profile for him in either the city or the state banks.”
“But they haven’t tried NDIS yet?” I asked. I was referring to the National DNA Identification System maintained by the FBI.
“Going in as we speak. Should have results later today.”
“It’s like Pug said when we were first at the Waldorf.” I was removing the tags from my shirt with renewed spirit and energy. “Nobody comes out of nowhere. Not with a killing style like this.”
“I’m with you, Alex,” Mercer said. “This bastard has killed before. He’s got to be high profile in somebody’s data bank.”
TWENTY-NINE
We had each cleaned up as best we could, put on our new shirts, and were back in Ledger’s office. Mike had brought in sandwiches, suggesting we eat now because there was no telling when we would have the chance again.
“Where to?” I asked.
“We’re going to the Waldorf.”
“Something breaking over there?”
“No, we’re taking the Terminal City path,” Mike said. “We’re going underground. We need to see if our perp could have found his way in through this route.”
“I’m assuming however we’re going is a path without a blueprint,” Mercer said. “There’s got to be a reason no one was aware of this connection.”
“Better than a blueprint. Hank Brantley, the cop whose specialty is the tunnel homeless population, is going to lead us th
rough.”
“So much for a fresh change of clothes.”
I was hungrier than I thought and washed down half a turkey sandwich with a full bottle of water. Brantley arrived within minutes, handed out our hard hats and flashlights, and we were ready to take off again.
He led us down to the gate on the lower level—number 100—which a Metro-North patrol officer was guarding.
“Same rules apply,” Hank said. “Stay close. Walk on the platform as far as it goes. It gets pretty narrow up ahead, and this time you will have a third rail off to the far side of the tracks. That’s what electrifies the trains. It’ll light you up pretty good, too, if you give it the chance.”
We headed down the first ramp away from the departure gate, a slight incline that took us away from the brightly lit terminal into the dark, subterranean maze of tunnels.
I would never get used to seeing people huddled in holes in the concrete walls or foraging for scraps between the railroad ties, but on this trip I was slightly less shocked than I had been a day earlier.
The live tracks were only a dozen feet away from our platform. As a train approached, headlights glaring through the arched openings in the wall between where we stood and where the train was slowing to a stop, I froze in place, unable to stabilize my footing. We were in a single row—Indian file, as Mike called it—with him behind Brantley, then me, then Mercer last in line.
“I can’t get you there myself,” Hank said. “It’s not exactly a straight line any longer, so I took a walk out just now and asked Smitty to meet us at the point this platform stops.”
“Great,” I said to Mercer as I flapped my arms to regain my balance. “What’s wrong with starting out up in the daylight on Park Avenue? Taking the Northeast Passage? I’m beginning to feel like a troglobite.”
Mike got half of what he heard right. “Troglodyte?”
“That’s you, Detective. Somebody whose thinking is out of step with the times. A throwback to Neanderthal thinking.”
“What’s the difference between bites and dytes?”
Terminal City (Alex Cooper) Page 22