Blood Oath

by Linda Fairstein

  “And Corliss?” I asked.

  “It seems to be that whatever his faults—and who knows how he really feels—that relationship, her first since Zach raped her, was completely consensual.”

  I slumped against the wall and rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “Poor, poor Francie,” I said.

  I looked up, thinking I had heard a noise in the corridor above me, but I was just nervous and on edge.

  “How do you know this?” I asked.

  “You’re slow, Coop,” Mike said. “You didn’t even ask me the good news. We’ve got Zach Palmer in custody over at the Nineteenth Squad, and he’s squealing like a stuck pig.”

  “Squealing—why?”

  “You didn’t think he was a stand-up guy, did you?” Mike says. “He’s blaming everything on Josie Breed. Zach Palmer says silencing Francie—and Lucy—and you—was all Josie’s idea. Zach says she’s a natural-born killer.”

  I rested my head back against the wall.

  “Hang tough, Coop. I’m close,” Mike said. “I’m really close.”

  I wasn’t imagining it this time. There were footsteps above me. I heard them, and they vibrated down the stairwell wall. The pounding began again on the door to the Nurses’ Residence two flights up.

  “So is Josie Breed,” I said. “So is she.”

  FIFTY

  I couldn’t speak any lower than I was speaking. “The basement, Mike. Billy told me there’s a basement.”

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  “I’m going to the basement. Come get me there,” I said. “Find me. Find out where it lets out at the end and meet me there.”

  “Don’t go down, kid!” Mike screamed at me. “Cell phones don’t work in there, because of the old iron foundation of the hospital building. Stay where I can hear you. Stay where I can talk you through this.”

  I wanted to listen to Mike. I wanted him to know how much I needed him to get to me.

  But the time for talking me through this escape was over, and I pressed the button that ended our conversation.

  Josie Breed had stopped pounding on the door through which Lucy and Billy had fled to the safety—I hoped—of the security office. She must have realized that the adjacent door—not even knowing I had used it to exit—was possibly an alternate route that would get her there.

  There was silence around me for almost a minute. Then I heard a couple of steps, and the sound of the heavy metal door creaking open above me.

  My tracker entered the stairwell and stood still at the landing on the top, as though listening for anything that revealed the presence of another human.

  I stopped breathing. I didn’t move a muscle.

  I looked down and saw that the bare lightbulb overhead had cast my shadow onto the dull gray paint of the hospital floor.

  Josie Breed must have seen it, too. When she put her foot on the first step of the tall staircase, I heard the sound of the release of a round into the chamber of her handgun. I knew I was alone in what seemed like the most isolated place in New York City, in the company of a stone-cold assassin, who had me clearly in her sights.

  FIFTY-ONE

  I pulled open the entrance to the basement door and started to run.

  My eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness around me, and I could see the seemingly endless stretch of pipes—water, heat, air-conditioning—painted red and yellow and blue to differentiate them.

  There was nowhere to go but straight ahead, and Josie would be right behind me in a matter of seconds.

  I saw the break in the pipes to my left—the one Billy told me led to an even more desolate hole deeper in the ground, and now obsolete.

  I had three or four seconds to make the choice to enter it or not. I used one of them to look at my cell phone, and saw that it had no bars. Mike must have been right. I could think of a better use of the device that might even buy me some time.

  I leaned over and placed my phone on the floor, and then slid it forward with one long stroke, so that it went thirty or forty yards down the passageway, careening off the sides with a noise that sounded like the discharge of a cannon in an enclosed space.

  Just as I put my hand on the door leading to the sub-basement and stepped through it, Josie Breed entered the main basement area that I had just traveled through.

  I held my hand against the heavy door so that it closed behind me without a sound.

  She must have assumed the noise she heard—the phone traveling through the tunnel ahead of her—was my flight route. I could hear her walk past the sub-basement door, following the path of my abandoned phone.

  I bent my head and started placing one foot ahead of the other along the claustrophobic subterranean path that Billy had described to me. It was an airless and dank tunnel, more than a century old. When I put my hand on one of the old pipes to steady my way forward, it felt as though a century’s worth of cobwebs had accumulated here since John D. Rockefeller created his visionary scientific institute, and they were now all sticking to my skin.

  There were occasional sounds, mostly coming from the basement above me. Perhaps it was Josie Breed as she walked, or the antiquated pipes that rumbled and shuddered as I made my way forward.

  I couldn’t tell the direction in which I was headed. The tunnel went straight for at least one hundred yards, then took a dogleg curve to the left, before twisting and turning in shorter fragments. I was still somewhere under the original institute buildings, I assumed, but with no idea where—or how—this would turn out.

  There seemed to be no breaks in the line of pipes as far as I had come, and no obvious egress from this stale tube.

  Suddenly the noise of running footsteps overhead began—a single set—and it sounded like a wild horse that was thundering toward its master.

  Something must have convinced Josie that my phone was just a diversionary tactic—maybe no footprints in the dusty basement above me?—and she was doubling back to figure out which way I had gone.

  I cringed when I heard the subbasement door open behind me, far enough back and around too many bends in the passageway to offer a line of sight from Josie Breed to me, but it was clear I was no longer alone.

  “Alex Cooper!”

  Josie’s voice reverberated through the tunnel and bounced off its walls and ceiling as though she had blasted my name through a megaphone.

  I quickened my pace and kept on slinking ahead, unintentionally crunching an occasional cockroach with my sneakers.

  “Alex!” Josie shouted. “Lucy Jenner! You’re dead to me.”

  Maybe she hadn’t figured out that Lucy had been taken to a safer place by Billy Feathers. I had no intention of answering her, no intention of letting her hear the desperation in my voice.

  I hadn’t expected a gunshot, not until Josie was close enough to aim her weapon at me. But she fired a round against the side of the tunnel to put the fear of God in me—and then a second one for good measure. As I listened to them ricochet off the concrete walls, I knew she had succeeded in her goal.

  There were no bends in the passageway. Everything was at right angles, and each time I got close to the last part of a length of pipe, it looked like I had reached a dead end.

  Every twenty or thirty feet, there was a recess built into the tunnel sides, each one large enough to step into and stand back inside, to be flush against the pipes that snaked along the wall. Once or twice I thought of doing that, but knew that once Josie Breed overtook my position, I would be no match for her gun if I tried to mount a struggle.

  So far, by staying in the center course of this narrow track, each right or left turn had given me new hope of outrunning the madwoman who was giving chase.

  I figured I had run more than half a mile, not round and round like a gerbil on its miniature treadmill but twisting through the underbelly of the original buildings, the three that fronted on the East Ri
ver: Rockefeller Hospital, the Nurses’ Residence, and Founder’s Hall.

  There had to be a point at which this tunnel once met the East River, where dangerous materials had been offloaded onto barges that carried them away. I had to be close.

  It was time to take another chance.

  “We’re almost there, Mike,” I screamed, knowing that Chapman was nowhere close to me and not able to hear this, but hoping that it would fool Josie Breed into thinking that he actually knew my whereabouts, and that he, too, was armed—and dangerous. “Lucy’s up in front of me, okay?”

  I paused, then added, “Josie Breed’s behind us and she’s got a gun.”

  Josie bought the story. She started talking straight to Lucy Jenner, not to me. My imaginary running buddy was her first interest.

  “Lucy! Lucy Jenner,” Josie yelled. “I’m here to rescue you from Alex Cooper, girl. Zach wants to make it all right with you. He doesn’t want Alex using you, you understand? Zach wants to take you with him—take you somewhere you can be together, like it was before.”

  Suddenly, I was brought up short. I made a right turn and there was nothing in front of me but an impenetrable stone wall. Huge boulders were piled tightly against each other, permanently held in place by mortar that had sealed up all the cracks that once existed.

  I was running my hands up and down the cold boulders. Rock U was perfectly named. I was caught between a solid wall of rock and the maniac hunting me down.

  On either side of the wall were two of the recesses—each about a foot deep—the kind that had dotted the wall of the entire tunnel.

  I felt inside each of them for some means of egress. There had to have been a way out of this lifeless tunnel when it was first constructed.

  “That’s a lie, Lucy,” I said, turning my attention back to slowing Josie down. “Zach’s been arrested. He was picked up at the entrance gate on York Avenue when Josie faked her way into the hospital.”

  I paused, but Josie’s footsteps kept coming toward me. “Zach gave her up in a heartbeat,” I said. “He told Mike that it was Josie who killed Francie Fain, and Josie who murdered another agent in the hospital tonight.”

  Josie Breed stopped in her tracks. She was still a hundred feet or so behind me, if I had to guess the distance. But her movement had ceased. It was dead quiet in the tunnel.

  I felt around on the stone wall again, higher first, standing on my toes, and then bending over to feel around the bottom.

  My hand came to rest on a series of metal latches—five or six of them—attached to a steel plate two feet wide by two feet high on the bottom half of the rock wall. It had to be the hole through which hazardous materials were once evacuated from the hospital grounds.

  I dropped to my knees and started pulling at the bolts. They were rusted and covered in mold. I pulled my sweater off over my head and covered my fingers with it. They were already bleeding from my efforts to wrench the latches free.

  “Lucy?” It was Josie Breed. “Can you hear me?”

  I muffled my mouth with the sweater and raised my voice a register and answered, “Yes.”

  “You’ll be okay, Lucy, whatever happens,” Josie said.

  “Stay by me, Lucy,” I said. “Mike’s got our backs.”

  I had opened each one of the bolts, and now I started pushing against the metal plate but not moving it.

  I sat on the ground and faced the wall. I lifted my legs and kicked against the metal. By the third kick, I thought that I could smell a whiff of fresh air over the stench of the mold, and maybe even a hint of the water’s scent from the river.

  “Come right ahead, Josie,” I said. “I’ve got a handful of syringes, filled with monkeypox virus.”

  “You’re crazy, Alex,” she said, sort of snorting as she tried to sound tough. “I’ve got a gun. And I don’t even know what monkeypox is.”

  “I don’t know how many bullets your gun holds—maybe six, maybe nine,” I said. “And it reloads every time you fire it. So let’s see. You fired two into the head of an agent, in the bathroom, and two a few minutes ago in the tunnel. Who knows how many before that. So are you ready to bet your next two or three against a deadly pox? Miss hitting Lucy on your first try and get only me? You’re taking a chance, Josie. I wasn’t Zach’s victim, but Lucy was—so you need to get Lucy, or Zach’s still going down for a very long time.”

  I could hear Josie Breed start to walk again, coming toward me, slowly and surely.

  I took one of the saline syringes out of my pocket. I got back on my knees and turned my body. Glass syringes didn’t exist anymore. I would have to crack one of the plastic casings to make my threat seem real.

  I broke off the end of the saline syringe and threw it like I was launching a small missile in Josie’s direction. I heard it land against the wall and splinter.

  “There’s your first dose of the pox, Josie. The droplets are flying out of that broken syringe and it’s all around you,” I called out. “There’s no cure for it yet, but if they can find one anywhere, you’re in the right hospital.”

  Josie was backing away now, that much was clear from the sound of her steps. “You’re crazy, you know that? You can’t kill me with some made-up pox.”

  “It’s not made up, Josie,” I called out. “It’s a slower death than your nerve agents, but there’s no antidote. Try not to breathe it in.”

  “You’re breathing it, too,” she shouted.

  “I’ve got a mask on,” I said. “No pox for me.”

  I didn’t think I had stopped her, but I had slowed her advance and given her something to think about.

  I sat down again, facing the rock wall, and lifted both legs. I thrust them forward with every ounce of energy left in my body.

  The metal plate gave way with a huge bang against the rock wall outside, below it. The noise echoed throughout the tunnel, and the cool night air rushed in behind.

  Josie Breed must have heard the loud crash of the metal and felt the infusion of oxygen. I took advantage of that to let her think I had gotten Lucy out of harm’s way.

  “You’re free, Lucy!” I shouted as loud as I could. “Run, Lucy. Good girl! Keep running. I’m right behind you.”

  But instead of sliding out through the opening, I got to my feet and pressed myself into the recess to the left of the stone wall. I pushed myself so far back in that the row of pipes was pressing into my back and thighs. I hoped that Josie would be looking straight ahead at the hole in the wall when she reached this point, not to either side.

  Once more, Josie screamed Lucy’s name as she started to walk in my direction. “Don’t go, Lucy! Don’t go!”

  Josie Breed was running now. I pulled another syringe out of my pocket and removed the plastic cover from the tip of the needle.

  I held my arm over my head, knowing I would only have one chance to strike at Josie Breed, before she turned her gun on me.

  When she got close to the exit hole—maybe ten feet away from me—Josie dropped down to crawl forward, almost flat on the ground, propelling herself ahead with her arms. Like me, she was probably assessing the means of getting out of the tunnel as fast as she could.

  She was directly below me—on a path to her escape—when she noticed my feet off to the side of the hole. She had been creeping along with her gun in her right hand.

  She gasped and looked up at me, shifting her weight to her left hand so that she could lift her gun and aim it at me. “Liar! You’re a goddamn liar!”

  I lunged at Josie Breed while she tried to stabilize herself. I stabbed her in the back of her neck with the syringe—as deep as it would go.

  She howled like a wounded animal, dropping the gun and putting both hands to her neck to grab my weapon and try to remove it.

  As she fumbled with the needle—which I had jammed in—and as she writhed in pain, I reached down to pick up her gun from t
he tunnel floor and stuck it securely in the rear waistband of my jeans.

  “Help me,” Josie said, grabbing at the needle over and over again, but unable to dislodge it. “Help me, please!”

  I straddled her body and pinned both of her arms behind her back, tying them together with my sweater and knotting the sleeves three times. She wasn’t going anywhere with the syringe in her neck and her arms restrained.

  Then I pushed Josie’s body to the side and sat down, leaning back with my feet in front of me. I slid forward, letting my legs drop over the side of the open hatch. I pulled myself up and ducked my head through the opening.

  Ten feet beneath me was the solid seawall that protected the island of Manhattan from the roiling waters of the East River. Reinforced concrete—almost two feet thick—covered the debris that had once been, before the Bristol Blitz, the homes and churches and schools of an English city.

  I twisted around and gripped the metal bolts that were secured ages ago into the rocks of the tunnel’s foundation. My legs swung free while I summoned the courage to let go with my hands, and then I jumped off, landing on the concrete seawall beneath me.

  The light of the hunter’s moon, gleaming off the river, had guided me safely out of the tunnel that I feared would be my burial chamber.

  FIFTY-TWO

  I sat on the wall for fifteen minutes to steady myself.

  By then, Mike and three uniformed cops—each with a large flashlight—had summoned officers to stop traffic on the FDR Drive. The four came charging over the lanes of the highway to help me down from my perch.

  “You like it when you don’t listen to me and you’re still right, don’t you?” Mike said, tousling my hair and kissing me on top of my head.

  “I wasn’t out to prove a point, Detective,” I said, pressing my hand into his as we crossed back to the other side. “I didn’t have a lot of choices.”

  “Seems like you made at least one good one.”

  “By the way, Josie Breed is right overhead,” I said to Mike and the other cops, handing them her gun. “Sorry about getting my prints all over this, but I was kind of self-absorbed, trying to get it away from her.”