She glanced over her shoulder to see him leaning against her minuscule breakfast bar. “He was one of my professors at Cornell. We stayed in touch. He does the weather on AM/USA.”
“I know who he is.” He paused. “If you don’t mind me asking, how close are you?”
What is it with guys? She set the small sack of coffee back in the fridge and put her hands on her hips. “Excuse me? Of course I mind. What kind of a question is that? We just met. I barely know you and you’re asking me about my private life?”
He had the sense to look slightly embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’m not asking because I’m trying to pry, Kate. He used to work for the government, doing weather research, before he started teaching. I just thought he might have given you some insight into the storms.”
“I know he was at NOAA when it started, but he never talks about that.” She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “His only real input on my paper was to tell me not to write it.”
“Why?”
“He said it would make me the poster child for the whack-jobs of the world. Unfortunately, I think he’s right. The abstract of the paper was only put up on the conference Web site a few weeks ago and I’ve already gotten a few dozen requests for full copies. Very few of the requestors’ e-mail addresses end in ‘.edu,’ if you know what I mean.” She finished pouring water into the reservoir, flipped on the coffeemaker, and turned to face him. “So why don’t you tell me why you’re really here, Jake? You could have asked me about Richard over the phone.”
He met her eyes and they stared at each other for a few minutes. Then he shrugged, so she braced herself for a lie.
“You’re right. I have other questions that I didn’t want to ask you over the phone.” He hesitated for a few seconds. “I was at work all day yesterday until I left to come up here. Can I take a shower before we talk?”
Twenty minutes later, he was clean, she was dressed, and they were taking their first steps onto the Brooklyn Bridge to watch what Lower Manhattan does between downpours when there was a mandatory evacuation on. His idea. The man was clearly a lunatic.
“How come no one is on the road?”
“It’s six thirty on a Sunday morning. They just got home,” she muttered.
“There’s an evacuation order.”
She looked at him. “It’s not for everyone, just people who live on the beach, like my parents.”
“Why aren’t you helping them move?”
“Because they’re not up yet. Then they have to go to Mass. Then they might start thinking about it.” She shrugged. “This is New York. People don’t get freaked out by the big things. The bagel shop not opening on time? Now that could start a riot.”
“There’s a Category 5 hurricane less than a thousand miles away.”
She shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. It never tasted as good out of a travel mug as it did out of a real one.
“Enough chitchat. I want to know what’s going on,” Kate said flatly.
“I can’t tell you everything—,” he began.
“Why not?” she demanded.
He looked at her in surprise. “I was going to explain, okay? Let me talk.”
She rolled her eyes and took another sip of coffee.
“I can’t tell you everything because I don’t know everything. Here’s what I can tell you. I work for a government agency as a forensic meteorologist. My interest in the storms we’ve discussed has to do with ongoing weather research.”
He can’t lie worth a damn. She looked at him. “We covered this the other day, Jake. What kind of research?”
He was beginning to look pissed off, although it could just be that he was cranky after no sleep. “Would you quit interrupting me?”
“Well, cut to the chase. You started asking weird questions about those storms the minute I finished giving my paper. And now you land on my doorstep with a fistful of questions. If you were trying to get into my pants, I’m guessing you would have taken a different approach. So what gives? And no more lies. You are a really bad liar,” she finished bluntly.
He choked on his coffee, and when he could finally speak his voice was still a little rough.
“I want to know what you know about Carter Thompson and Richard Carlisle.”
She frowned. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who’s asking for favors here. A little less attitude would work about now,” she snapped.
“You think I’m copping an attitude?”
“You really came up here to talk about Carter and Richard?” She shook her head. “Okay, fine. The truth is that I don’t know anything more about Carter than anyone else does. He’s a public figure that I’ve seen from a distance a few times at company events. I’ve never spoken to the man.”
“Never?”
“No. Yes. I mean, never. I know he’s heard of me because he was pissed off when I misjudged those storms. And I sent him a copy of my paper—”
“When?” Jake demanded.
“What’s with you? I sent it to him the night before I left for the conference.”
“Has he contacted you about it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t been home long enough to check my e-mail since I got back from D.C.”
“Let’s go and check.”
“Let’s not.” She folded her arms across her chest and refused to budge. “I want to know what this is all about or I’m going to call the cops.”
His eyes widened. “The cops? Why the hell would you call the cops? You think I’m—”
“What I think is that I met you Friday at a conference. You spook me down there, then you’re on my doorstep at six o’clock Sunday morning not sounding any more sane than the yahoos who send me e-mails from addresses like [email protected]. You say you work for some government agency as a forensic meteorologist. Okay, maybe you do, but what do I know from that? It could be the Office of Federal Sewer Research.” She shrugged. “And now you’ve got me standing on a high bridge over deep water presumably because you think my apartment is bugged or something. You tell me what I’m supposed to think, Jake. Better yet, just tell me what the hell is going on.”
He looked partly mortified and partly angry, but mostly he just looked like he didn’t know what he was supposed to say. Kate didn’t help him out.
Finally, he let out a deep breath. “I’ve been looking very deeply at those storms you profiled, Kate, as well as at a lot of other ones. There’s a signature to each of them that suggests that their escalation wasn’t natural, just as you imply in your paper.”
Something pinged in her brain and made her frown. “What kind of signature?”
He hesitated, which didn’t reassure her. “A heat burst.”
“I didn’t find anything like that. What kind of a heat burst?”
“I can’t tell you anything more about them. Not yet, anyway. But I came across some old research that suggests that Carlisle might know something about storms with similar escalation patterns.”
“He never said anything about that.”
“Not surprising. The research he was conducting wasn’t in the public domain.”
Everything he said generated more questions in her head and more churn in her stomach. “What does any of this have to do with Carter Thompson?”
“They worked together on the research.”
Kate frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. Both of their names are on the reports.”
“That’s weird.”
“Why?”
She took long sip from her coffee, unsure of what she should say without talking to Richard first. “I’ve been hanging out with Richard ever since he moved to the New York area ten years ago,” she said slowly. “We see each other at least once a month, and we e-mail and talk more often than that, and he’s never mentioned a thing about knowing Carter. Could there be another—”
“Kate,” Jake interrupted quietly, “it’s this Richard and this Carter. I’ve con
firmed it. I need to talk to Richard. Can you arrange it?”
She nodded slowly. “What about Carter?”
“I have to talk to him, too, but I’ll figure that out later.”
“What about the heat bursts?”
“I can’t say.”
She reached up to brush away some hairs that the wind was playing with. “No problem. I can probably figure it out myself anyway,” she said casually. “I mean, how many forms of heat could excite a storm cell? It had to be something natural, like maybe something metal on the ground that was radiating heat it had absorbed during the day. It wasn’t a bomb, because those you can’t hide. So what else could it be? If our government doesn’t know what it is, then it must be someone else’s machinery. Is it some Russian death beam from outer space? Oh, hell, Jake, just tell me who you work for,” she demanded. “Who am I going to tell?”
“I can’t tell you right now. Maybe later.”
Letting out an exaggerated, exasperated breath, she rolled her eyes skyward. “This is too weird. You can’t tell me now. What does that mean? You can tell me, but then you’d have to kill me? Come on, is it the CIA? FBI? DIA? Some other three-letter agency? What do you mean you can’t tell me?”
He said nothing and started walking back in the direction they’d come. Kate watched his retreating back as something teased at the back of her mind.
She broke into a run and grabbed his arm as she came alongside him. “It’s planes, isn’t it? You were asking me why I looked for planes in the area.”
“I’m not going to pursue this—”
“Could something on a plane do it? Zap a storm cell?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, this really got off on the wrong foot. I’m not saying I won’t help you. I will help you, Jake. But you have to level with me.”
“I told you, I can’t. Not right now. I need more information and more answers before I can tell you anything except hypotheses.”
“In that case, Carter might have more answers than Richard,” she blurted.
He stopped abruptly and she bumped into him. “Why?”
She took a step back and caught her breath. “Because he funds a research foundation for reforestation. One of the women at work mentioned it the other day. She’s researching him for a special assignment.”
He looked at her. “What are you talking about?”
“He funds a small research foundation that’s looking for ways to reverse desertification and the deforestation of tropical rain forests. Wouldn’t a large part of that rely on rainfall? He might be really up on this kind of research. I mean, all those storms had to do with unexpected, anomalous rainfall, right? If he knows who’s doing what in that sort of weather research, he might know who’s behind the storms. Or who could be.”
Jake’s eyes seemed to bore into hers. “Can I talk to this woman? The one who’s researching him?”
“If she’s around. I’ll call her later, when normal people are awake.”
They made the rest of the short trip back to her apartment in relative silence, reaching her block before the expected rain started to fall. Kate could practically hear the gears in Jake’s head turning and she knew it was going to be a while before he had anything coherent to say. He was probably like most guys: When he switched his brain into high gear, his ability to multi-task ceased to function.
Once inside her apartment, Kate picked up the remote and flicked on the TV set as she walked through the living room to her bedroom.
“I’m going to take a quick shower. Feel free to watch the Sunday ‘Grill the Hill’ shows if they haven’t all headed for high ground.” She caught his attention by waving the remote, then set it down on the coffee table in full view. “I’ll be out in ten minutes, and then I’ll want some answers. Real ones.”
CHAPTER 37
Sunday, July 22, 6:40 A.M., DUMBO, Brooklyn
Coming to New York was beginning to seem like a mistake. Kate was turning out to be somewhat of a pain in the ass with the dual bad habits of interrupting him mid-thought and asking too damned many questions. But the news about Carter’s research would probably provide some leads.
Jake picked up the TV remote and, out of habit, flicked through the channels until he reached the Weather Channel. One of the network’s severe-weather experts, a college friend, was on the air. Jake brought up the sound as he watched the on-screen mouse draw a circle punctuated with arrows that pointed counter-clockwise around a decent-sized patch of red that was tracking the eastern coastline of the U.S.
“—escalated rapidly overnight after it entered the Gulf Stream and has continued to travel in a northerly direction parallel to the coast. Right now Simone is centered one hundred and ten miles off Richmond, Virginia. The National Hurricane Center upgraded it from a Category 4 to a Category 5 overnight. The sustained winds have been measured at one hundred and fifty-five miles per hour, and the storm has a tight, well-developed eye wall, as you can see here on the screen. Jim?”
The camera cut to one of the anchors, who sent a grave look into the camera. “Thanks, Paul. As we continue our coverage of Hurricane Simone, we offer our condolences to the families of the twenty-two people whose deaths have been attributed to the storm, and urge residents in areas that could be affected to take necessary precautions and seek shelter. While the storm hasn’t made landfall yet, low-lying areas along the coast from the Florida Keys to the Outer Banks have suffered extreme damage from the wind and the storm surge. Washington, D.C., is under mandatory evacuation and the New York City and Long Island emergency management agencies have issued mandatory evacuation orders for people living in Zones One and Two, and voluntary evacuation orders for persons living in Zone Three and other near-shore areas. Coastal residents from Connecticut to Boston should be prepared for severe winds, high tides, and storm surges that could exceed ten feet. We’ll be right back with more coverage of Hurricane Simone.”
Jake hit the Mute button and stared at the time-lapse image of the storm that played over the channel’s storm logo before the commercials started. The escalation was impressive, but it wasn’t outside the parameters of normal. That didn’t mean it was normal, he thought wryly, because the bastards could have scaled back their dirty tricks. He hadn’t had time to start looking into it before leaving D.C. and he itched to open his computer now but knew that would only prompt more questions from Kate. He’d already endured enough of those in the last half hour. Besides, the data wouldn’t go away. As soon as he got the answers to his questions and could off-load Kate he’d be on his way back to Washington, where he could download everything and take a look.
He stretched out on Kate’s couch, cruised the channels for more storm coverage, then folded his hands under his head to watch the damage.
Dressed but with her hair still wet, Kate had come out of her bedroom to find the television on and Jake stretched out on her couch, sound asleep.
Why is it that guys always look so harmless when they’re asleep? Even the jerks who barely know you but barge in anyway without a good reason?
Rolling her eyes and still unsure of what to make of the situation, she shook her head and walked toward the kitchen to refill her coffee mug. After a quick glance at the clock, she reached for her phone. Her father would be up already. She’d have to dump Jake somewhere and get over to her parents’ place to get them to a shelter. Ridiculous as it seemed, she knew they’d never leave their apartment on their own, even though they lived only two blocks from the beach. Her father would want to face down the storm and her mother would break out her favorite Rosary and put scapulars on the both of them. None of which was likely to deflect 155-mile-an-hour sustained winds or twenty-foot storm surges.
The low voice from the television caught her attention. “And now, in a breaking story, we go to Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where meteorologist Richard Carlisle was found dead in his yard earlier this morning—”
Certain she hadn’t just heard what she’d thought she had, Kate swung h
er head around, her eyes riveted to the TV screen.
Richard’s face smiled at her from a frame to the left of the anchor’s blond hair.
The words she heard couldn’t possibly be real.
“—Carlisle’s body was discovered at two o’clock this morning by Greenwich police, who’d been called to his property by a neighbor’s complaint of a barking dog. They are treating the death as a homicide. Carlisle, who lived alone in an exclusive beachfront area of Old Greenwich, was a respected figure in the weather community and a beloved television personality. He was sixty-six. We turn now to another breaking story, this time in the Middle East, where overnight—”
The mug slipped out of her hands and shattered at her feet. She barely registered the sound or the sensation, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Jake leap from the couch where he’d been sleeping seconds before. An instant later, he was standing beside her.
“What’s wrong?”
She turned her head to look at him, the motion seeming to take forever until she focused on his face. “She said he’s dead,” she whispered. The harsh, strangled voice didn’t sound like hers. “Isn’t that what she said?”
“Who’s dead? I think you should sit down. Be careful. The floor is full of broken glass,” Jake said quietly, taking her hand and tugging her gently toward the couch.
“He can’t be dead.”
“Here.”
She felt Jake’s hands on her shoulders, pushing down, and then her knees bent and she half-fell onto the cushions. She stared up at him, feeling unlike herself, feeling like time had become viscous. Feeling like she had when she’d watched the towers fall. It couldn’t possibly be real.
“Why would they say he was dead? Turn to a different channel. I want to hear it when they say it’s a mistake.”
“Who did they say is dead?” he asked again, his voice gentle as he crouched in front of her, his eyes probing her own.
She stared at him. “Richard. They said Richard is dead. They’re treating it as a homicide.”
His eyes widened and he got to his feet. “Kate, stay there. I’ll get you some water.”
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