Terminal City (Alex Cooper)

by Linda Fairstein

  When we reached Grand Central, it took all three of us to carry the dinners into the Grand Hyatt entrance on the Park Avenue Viaduct, where my escorts left their patrol car, into the lobby and through one of the hidden hallways that fed onto the main concourse of the terminal.

  The summer rush hour was winding down. There were certainly fewer commuters than there had been at this hour just the night before.

  And there was a noticeable increase in uniformed officers on patrol. Not as many in view as Scully led me to believe would be on site, but perhaps that would come later. It could take hours to bring in all the manpower that the various agencies had promised to deliver.

  “Dinner is served,” I said, leading my cops into Don Ledger’s office.

  “You can throw out your Chanel No. 5, Coop, ’cause you’ve never smelled better,” Mike said. “Good thinking.”

  “Spread it around, Rocco. I’ve got a dozen meals, and the portions are huge. Where’s Mercer? I got the zucchini just for him.”

  “He’s back upstairs in the situation room. Scully wants us to run the PD part of the operation from there.”

  “It’s the best control position for the whole terminal. Good idea.”

  “C’mon,” Mike said. “Grab some meals and let’s feed him.”

  “Ready.”

  He pointed to the two officers who had come in with me. “Chow down, guys. As soon as Blondie has finished her dinner, the lieutenant would like you to take her out to Douglaston, to Detective Wallace’s house.”

  “We’re cleared to stay with her the whole night.”

  “No need for that. Wallace’s wife is home. She’s a detective, too. Just hang out here for an hour or so, and we’ll get you on your way with your dangerous cargo. Just a warning, guys: She attracts whackjobs.”

  “I really do,” I said. “Help yourselves to some dinner. See you in a bit.”

  We left the cramped office, carrying two bags of food out onto the concourse and across to the elevator that was out of sight, at the bottom of the ramp on the far side of the information booth.

  The automated voice—even fresh at the end of a long working day—reminded travelers again to take all their belongings and to say something if they saw something. I was getting sick of her telling me to mind the gap.

  Mike dangled a large key ring in front of my face. “Keys to the kingdom, Coop.”

  “Nice score.”

  “Rocco got a set for Mercer and for me. Must be fifty keys here.”

  “Marked?”

  “Of course. You think I’d have to guess which one to use if I needed to get into one of these places in a hurry?” He handed me the plastic bag while he fumbled for the key to the elevator with the unlisted seventh floor.

  We snaked our way through the labyrinthine corridors lined with steam pipes, a far cry from the gleaming pink Tennessee marble of the concourse.

  The door to the situation room was open. Rocco had called up to Mercer and Pug, who were expecting us. They had turned on the bank of televisions, setting each to a different channel so that they could stay on top of any news developments.

  “Welcome back, Alex,” Mercer said. He didn’t often appear to be restless, but this evening he was. He had opened the blind that separated the room from the operations command next to it, leaning against the large window, looking back and forth between the screens showing all the train traffic and the monitors displaying local news. Fourteen men were still at their posts, tracking the trains coming and going from the terminal.

  “Traffic slowing?” Mike asked.

  Mercer nodded his head. “I’m not going to be happy till they shut this place down.”

  “So you know?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Scully talked to Rocco about it before he even got to City Hall. Less than seven hours to go, then we get in and give this station a clean sweep.”

  I was unloading the plastic containers of lukewarm food, setting places at the conference table with paper toweling for place mats. “I’ve brought a little something to get you through the night. Take a break, guys.”

  Mike was already gnawing on half a loaf of Italian bread as he fiddled with one of the televisions. “I hope the rain holds out till after the game,” he said. “The Yankees really need this one.”

  “It’s terribly humid,” I said.

  “You timed this right, Coop. Six minutes to the Trebek finale.”

  Pug, Mike, and I sat at the table, but Mercer’s eyes were riveted on the men running the trains.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I keep thinking of 9/11.”

  I had been a young prosecutor the day the Towers fell, watching from my office window as every man and woman in uniform ran south, so many selfless first responders racing to a certain death. Mike had been one of the lucky ones, coming to my home that night, mourning the loss of friends of a lifetime.

  “I was in Harlem that morning,” Mercer said, pointing into the operations center. “Somehow, the guys who worked where those men are sitting now stopped every train coming in this direction from north of 125th Street—wherever they were on all those miles of track—reversed their courses, and then sent all the passengers back to outlying stations.”

  “The bridges and tunnels were shut down immediately,” I said. “The only way out of Manhattan was the railroad.”

  “That’s the last time this terminal was evacuated. They just loaded up the trains that were here—pulled every car out of the yard—and sent them on their way. People trying to get as far away from this city as they could.”

  “Don’t get all heavy on me, dude,” Mike said. “These guys can still get it done, worst-case scenario. They control seven hundred and ninety-five miles of track from that little room next door, Mercer. They can stop a train on a dime—no matter what stretch of rail it’s on—and they can empty this terminal whenever they need to.”

  “Not if they don’t have any outbound trains, Mike. Not in the middle of the night.”

  It rattled me when Mercer, who was usually the epitome of grace under pressure, became unnerved. And he caught my reaction to his gloom as soon as he looked over at me. I had plated some food but was too nervous to eat.

  “I’ll feel better after I get something in my stomach,” he said, trying to cheer me, I was sure. “You too, girl. Then I’ll send you on your way.”

  Having not had any dinner and with the drink having gone to my head, I took a few bites and worked my way through a salad. When it was time for the Final Jeopardy! question, Mike turned the volume up on Trebek.

  “That’s right, ladies and gentleman. Tonight’s topic is nicknames. Famous nicknames.”

  “Is this still your game, Chapman?” Pug asked.

  “Yeah. You in for twenty?”

  “I have trouble playing bingo. I’ll just watch.”

  Mike had devoured his veal parm and taken half of mine. “Easy category. Could be anything.”

  Mercer and I agreed. We continued eating through the commercials and talked about what had happened in my absence.

  Trebek noted that each of their pens was down, and he stepped back to allow the answer to be revealed: IN PHYSICS, SUBATOMIC PIECES THAT GIVE MASS TO ENERGY, FORMALLY KNOWN AS HIGGS BOSON.

  “Physics?” I said, stymied by the unfamiliar words. “If I’d known that was the category, I wouldn’t have bet a nickel.”

  “If you hadn’t stopped for a cocktail without bringing me a roadie, I might have left you off the hook.”

  “Cocktail?” I could see the contestants struggling to write down a response.

  “You are such a bad liar, Coop. And Scotch isn’t a fraction as odorless as vodka.”

  “Why, you know the answer?”

  “Course I do.”

  “Mercer?” I asked.

  “No clue.”

  “W
hat is the God particle?” Mike said.

  “What about God?” Pug asked. “And mass? It’s a religious thing?”

  “Not even close, Pug. It’s not that kind of mass, if you get my drift. And the nickname using God, well that’s just ironic.”

  I was watching Trebek confirm Mike’s answer.

  “I thought a bosun worked on a boat,” Pug said. “Wish I had a cocktail, too.”

  “Different kind of boson.”

  “There’s a really good wine store right off the concourse downstairs,” I said. “I could go down for a couple of bottles.”

  “We’ve got a long night ahead,” Mike said. “I’ll pass for now.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about physics. How’d you get that right?”

  “’Cause this stuff fascinates me. This guy Higgs? Super-brainiac. He’s a Brit.”

  “Oh, I guess you met him on your extended vacation abroad.”

  “No fair, Coop. I told you there’s an explanation.”

  “So, Higgs?”

  “Came up with this theory fifty years ago, explaining how particles smaller than atoms got mass, traveling through a field.”

  “What field? Where’s the field?”

  “The Higgs field. You can’t see it, Coop. He named it fifty years ago, but nobody found proof of it till 2012.”

  “Like a field in his backyard?” Pug asked. “A football field?”

  “Stay tuned, Pug. I’ll get to you next.”

  “You can’t see the field?” I asked.

  “You’re yawning at me in the middle of a Higgs boson moment, Coop? Didn’t they teach you at Wellesley how rude that is?” Mike said. “Anyway, you may be able to see the field briefly, but it’s so unstable that it disappears.”

  “Like you this summer. Unstable and disappearing.”

  “I’ve got one word for you, Coop,” he said, changing the channel from Jeopardy! to another news network. “Limerence. It explains everything.”

  “Lay off her, Mike,” Mercer said. “Why don’t you hit the road, Alex?”

  “I will in a few minutes.”

  “So I got hooked on Higgs, which led me to the string theory.”

  “As night must follow day, I guess.”

  “Hey, you know how strongly I feel about coincidence? That there’s no such thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, string theory is like a genius’s way of ordering the universe the same way I happen to think, okay? Simple as that.”

  “The string theory says there are no coincidences?”

  “No, no, no. It says all objects are comprised of vibrating filaments—strings. That the entire universe is made up of all these invisible strings, holding it together.”

  “Really?” I said, pushing back my chair. “I’ll never drink again. This is so weird. I can’t see these strings, either, can I?”

  “They’re subatomic, Coop. Smaller than the size of an atom. They’re everywhere, and of course you can’t see them. But they’re the reason that nothing is random. All this energy is connected. There is no such thing as coincidence.”

  “So will you guys think I only put in half a day if I call it a night now?” I asked. “I feel more useless than a subatomic particle.”

  “I’ll walk you down,” Mercer said.

  “Imagine, guys. I used to complain because Mike wouldn’t talk about anything except murder. In hindsight that was pretty stimulating compared to physics.”

  “It’s all connected to this pattern, Coop. There’s a relationship here we just haven’t made yet.”

  “Strings?”

  “Make fun of me, kid. None of what’s been going with these homicides is coincidence.”

  “I get that, Detective Chapman. Where’s the string that ties all this together?”

  We’d been talking so loudly that we didn’t hear footsteps approaching the room. There was a knock on the door before Rocco let himself in.

  “We got a game changer, guys,” he said, dropping a stack of papers onto the table with each hand. “We got a name.”

  It was as though an electrical charge raced through the room, slicing the tension and exhaustion, filling the space with energy.

  “Yes!” Mike shouted at top volume. “What’d you get?”

  “A hit on the DNA from NDIS.”

  “He’s in the national data bank?” I asked.

  Rocco Correlli pressed the fingers of his right hand onto one of the piles of paper. “Yeah, they just faxed the results up to me via the stationmaster. Maybe you can walk us through this.”

  “Happy to,” I said, my heart pounding as the adrenal started to pump. “What’s his name?”

  “Nicholas,” Rocco said. “Nicholas Blunt. Twenty-nine years old.”

  “We’re out of here,” Mike said, holding out his hand. “You got addresses? Let’s get this motherfucker off the street.”

  “No address.”

  “Can’t be.”

  “It is, Chapman. At the moment, that’s what it is. No current address.”

  “Do we just go back to figuring how he chose his victims,” I asked, “or is there any reason to connect him to Grand Central? To think he’s targeting it?”

  “Every reason to connect him,” Rocco said.

  Mercer didn’t move a muscle. His left shoulder was against the window over the operations room, his eyes fixed on the men inside. “Why’s that?”

  “Blunt grew up here, according to the stationmaster. I mean right here, in this terminal. His father was a hostler.”

  “Hustler?” Mike said. “What difference does that make?”

  “I didn’t say hustler. It’s hostler—with an o.”

  The four of us looked at Rocco with blank stares.

  “His old man drove the locomotives from their platforms out to the roundhouse. Turned them around, tuned them up, and brought them back for the next part of the trip. That’s all he did, every day of his working life.”

  “You mean he was an engineer?” Mike asked.

  “Hostlers never leave the station. They’re engineers, but all they work on are trains in the rail yard. Grand Central was his life.”

  “And his son?” I asked.

  “Nicholas Blunt grew up in this place. Every minute he wasn’t in school, he was hanging out with his old man. He knows more about this terminal and each piece of track that runs in and out of here than anyone on the planet.”

  “Sometimes I hate it when I’m right,” Mike said.

  “Scully’s on his way up with the city head of the FBI,” Rocco said. “They won’t wait till two A.M. to close Grand Central. We’ve got two hours to get everyone out of here, best we can.”

  “It’s not possible,” I said.

  “It better be, Alex. By ten tonight, we’re in lockdown.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “Let’s get Coop on her way,” Mike said.

  “I’d like her to tell me what this DNA stuff means first, okay? There’s pages of it,” Rocco said. “Then the guys can take her out of here.”

  “I’m not going. I know these cases as well as anyone.”

  “No time to get stubborn,” Mercer said.

  “Let’s see how this develops. I’ve still got my uses, don’t I?” I smiled, trying to diffuse the tension.

  “Then get an officer up here, Loo,” Mike said, turning to me. “And you do have your uses. Loop in the Thatcher family, then we’ll get you a laptop and you can be our researcher on whatever comes up.”

  “Oh, great. You’re looking for the killer, and I’m in charge of Google Alerts?”

  “You stay close to anyone who’s got a badge and a gun, okay?”

  Rocco seemed surprised. “No heat?”

  “I’ve never had a gun, Loo. Fortunately, Battaglia doesn’t believe
in letting his legal staff carry. I’d probably have taken Mike’s head off by now.”

  Each of the men had tried dialing out on his cell—Mercer to update his boss at the Special Victims Unit, Mike to check in with his lieutenant at Manhattan North, and Pug to notify his team who were still hunkered down at the Waldorf.

  “There’s no reception here,” Rocco said, pushing the spider-phone toward Mercer. “It’s built like a bunker on purpose. You’ve got a couple of different landlines to use.”

  Mercer had one hand on the receiver. “Do we have a plan, Loo? Are you going with Blunt as a person of interest?”

  “What’s his criminal history?” Mike asked, pointing to the sheaf of papers that Rocco Correlli had passed to me. “How can he be in the data bank and not known to the department?”

  “Too many questions at once,” I said, pulling my chair closer and starting to plow through the information about Nicholas Blunt. “He’s not KTD because he’s never been arrested.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “The match isn’t arrest-based. That much is clear.”

  “Case-to-case?” Mike asked. “DNA from semen in an unsolved rape?”

  Rocco was talking over my head. “Person of interest is an understatement. We’ve got his blood on the curtain at the Waldorf and in the sink on Big Timber. Alex, can we call him a suspect? It’s okay legally?”

  “Go for it, Loo. I don’t care if you tag him as the perp. As long as the public puts a name and face to the guy who’s running around out there, and they understand that he’s horribly dangerous,” I said, scrutinizing the FBI lab records. “It’s not seminal fluid. The DNA came from a swab. From saliva.”

  “An investigation?” Mike asked. “What state?”

  “Not an investigation. Voluntary. It’s connected to some kind of job he was working about three years ago.”

  “Keep reading.”

  “NorthStar. That’s the name of the company that submitted the sample,” I said. “The DNA report itself is not very complicated, Loo. The paperwork is thick because it’s all the lab notes confirming the matches. All they need is the headline you got. The blood found at two of the crime scenes belongs to Nicholas Blunt.”