Reliquary

by Douglas Preston

  At first, it sounded like a distant train, screeching into a station. But then, as Trumbull listened, he realized what the sound was: a distant, drawn-out scream, strangely distorted by the echoing tunnel, wafting faintly through the windows.

  “What the hell—?” Kolb said, sitting forward. The youth’s eyes popped open, and the late-night waitress suddenly became alert.

  There was an electric silence while everyone waited, listening. No other sound came.

  “Christ, Bill, you hear that?” Kolb asked.

  Trumbull said nothing. There had been a robbery, maybe a murder. Or—perhaps worse—a gang, working its way down the stalled train. It was every subway rider’s worst nightmare.

  “They never tell you anything,” Kolb said, glancing nervously at the loudspeaker. “Maybe someone should check it out.”

  “Be my guest,” Trumbull said.

  “A man’s scream,” Kolb added. “It was a man screaming, I swear it.”

  Trumbull glanced out the window again. This time he could make out another figure moving along the far track, walking with a strange rolling motion, almost a limp, as it approached them.

  “There’s somebody coming,” he said.

  “Ask him what’s going on.”

  Trumbull moved to the window. “Hey! Hey, you!”

  In the dimness beyond the train, he saw the figure stop.

  “What’s going on?” Trumbull called out. “Did someone get hurt?”

  The figure began moving forward again. Trumbull watched as it went to the head of the next car forward, then climbed up onto the coupling and disappeared.

  “I hate these TA assholes,” Kolb said. “Bastards make forty grand a year and don’t do shit.”

  Trumbull walked to the front, looking through the window into the next car forward. Its lone occupant was still there, now reading a paperback book. Everything was quiet once more.

  “What do you see?” Kolb whined.

  Trumbull returned to his seat. “Nothing,” he said. “Maybe it was just some transit worker yelling to a buddy.”

  “I wish they’d just get moving,”the waitress suddenly said, her voice tight with nerves. The youth in the heavy coat was slumped motionless in his seat, hands shoved in pockets. I’ll bet he’s got his hand on a gun, thought Trumbull, uncertain whether the thought made him anxious or relieved.

  The lights blinked out in the forward car.

  “Oh, shit,” Kolb said.

  A loud thump came from the darkened car, causing the train to shudder as if something heavy had been slammed against it. The thump was followed by a strange sighing sound. Trumbull thought of air being released from a wet balloon.

  “What was that?” the waitress asked.

  “I’m getting the hell out of here,” Kolb said. “Come on, Trumbull. The Fifty-ninth Street station can’t be more than a couple blocks back.”

  “I’m staying right here.”

  “Then you’re an idiot,” said Kolb. “You think I’m just gonna wait here for some gang to come busting through that door?”

  Trumbull shook his aching head. The thing to do was stay put and stay calm. If you got up and called attention to yourself, the only thing you did was make yourself a mark.

  There was another sound from the dark car, like rain pelting against metal.

  Cautiously, Trumbull leaned forward, looking ahead toward the darkened car. Immediately, he saw that the window was splattered from the inside with something like paint. Thick paint, running down the window in black clots.

  “What is it?” Kolb cried.

  Some kids were vandalizing the car, splashing paint around. At least, it looked like paint, red paint. Maybe it was time to get the hell out, and before he had even articulated the thought he was up and running for the rear door of the car.

  “Billy!” Kolb was on his feet following.

  Behind him, Trumbull heard something slamming against the forward door, the shuffling patter of many feet, and then the sudden screaming of the waitress. Without stopping or looking back, he grabbed the handle and twisted it, throwing the sliding door open. He jumped across the coupling and wrenched open the door to the rearward car, Kolb right behind him, muttering “shit, shit, shit,” in a dull monody.

  Trumbull had just enough time to notice that the last car was empty before the lights went out in the entire train. He glanced about wildly. The only illumination came from the faint, infrequent lights of the tunnel, and the distant yellow glow of the 59th Street station.

  He stopped and turned to Kolb. “Let’s pry open the rear door.”

  At that moment the sound of a gunshot echoed crazily from the car they’d just left. As the shot died away, Trumbull thought he could hear the faint sobbing of the waitress end abruptly.

  “They cut his throat!” Kolb screamed, glancing over his shoulder.

  “Shut up,” Trumbull hissed. No matter what sound reached his ears, he wasn’t looking back. He ran to the far door and grasped the rubber flanges, trying to pry them apart. “Help me!” he cried.

  Kolb grabbed the other flange, the tears streaming down his face.

  “Pull, for Chrissakes!”

  There was a sigh of air and the door gave way, flooding the car with a suffocating, earthy odor. Before he could move Trumbull felt himself shoved aside by Kolb, who jammed through the opening and leapt onto the tracks. Trumbull tensed himself for the leap, then froze. Several figures were coming into focus out of the darkness of the tunnel ahead of them, shambling toward Kolb. Trumbull opened his mouth, then closed it again, swaying weakly in disbelief. There was something horribly wrong, something unutterably foreign, about the way the figures moved. He watched as Kolb was surrounded. One of the figures grabbed Kolb’s hair, jerking his head back, while a second pinioned his arms. Kolb struggled soundlessly in jerky pantomime. A third stepped forward from the dim shadows, and, with a strangely delicate movement, flicked his hand across Kolb’s throat. Immediately, a hose of blood jetted in the direction of the train.

  Trumbull shrank back in terror, falling to the floor and then scrambling to his knees, momentarily disoriented. He glanced back desperately at the car from which they’d run. In the darkness, he could see two figures crouched over the prone body of the waitress, working busily around her head…

  Trumbull felt an indescribable desperation suddenly pierce his gut. He turned and leapt out of the emergency door, stumbling onto the tracks, running past the figures hovering over Kolb, racing for the dim far light of the station. Dinner and beer came up together in a rush, decorating his legs as he ran. He heard sounds of pursuit starting up behind him, crunching and thudding footfalls. A sob escaped his lips.

  Then two more figures stepped out ahead of him on the tracks, cloaked and hooded, silhouetted against the distant light of the station. Trumbull stopped short as they began to move, loping toward him with a terrible speed. Behind him, the sounds of pursuit grew closer. A strange lethargy was turning his limbs to stone, and he felt his reason begin to give way. In a few seconds he’d be caught, just like Kolb…

  And then, in the brief flash of a signal light, he caught a glimpse of one of the faces.

  A single thought, clear and quite unmistakable, came to him through the haze of a night which had suddenly turned to nightmare. He realized what he had to do. Quickly, he scanned the tracks beneath him, located the yellow warning stripes and the bright clean rail, and thrust his foot beneath the shoe guard as the world dissolved in a flash of miraculous brilliance.

  = 37 =

  D’AGOSTA TRIED TO think of Yankee Stadium: the white orb of cowhide soaring through the blue July sky, the smell of grass newly ripped by a slide, the outfielder slamming into the wall, glove upraised. It was his form of transcendental meditation, a way to shut off the outside world and collect his thoughts. Especially useful when everything had gone totally to shit.

  He kept his eyes shut a moment longer, trying to forget the sounds of the telephones, the slamming doors, the frantic secr
etaries. Somewhere, he knew, Waxie was rushing around like a turkey in heat. Thank God he wasn’t within squawking distance. Guess he isn’t so sure about old Jeffrey anymore, he thought. It brought no consolation.

  With a sigh, D’Agosta forced his thoughts back to the strange figure of Alberta Muñoz, sole survivor of the subway massacre.

  He had arrived just as she was being brought up an emergency exit at 66th Street on a stretcher: hands folded in her lap, pleasant vacant expression on her face, plump and motherly, her smooth brown skin in stark contrast to the sheets around her. God only knew how she’d managed to hide: she had not uttered a sound. The train itself had been turned into a temporary morgue: seven civilians and two TA workers dead, five with smashed skulls and throats cut to the backbone, three others with their heads completely missing, one electrocuted by the third rail. D’Agosta could almost smell the lawyers circling.

  Mrs. Muñoz was now up at St. Luke’s in psychiatric seclusion. Waxie had hollered and pounded and threatened, but the admitting doctor was unyielding: no interviews until at least six that morning.

  Three heads missing. The trails of blood were picked up immediately, but the hemoluminesence team was having a tough time in the labyrinth of wet tunnels. D’Agosta went over the setup once more in his head. Someone had cut a signal wire just beyond the 59th Street station, causing an immediate halting of all East Side express trains between 14th and 125th, leaving the one train trapped in the long approach to 86th Street. There they had waited, in ambush.

  The whole setup took intelligence and planning, and perhaps an inside knowledge of the system. So far, no clear footprints had been found, but D’Agosta estimated there had been at least six of them. Six, but no more than ten. A well-planned, well-coordinated attack.

  But why?

  The SOC team had determined that the electrocuted man probably stepped on the third rail deliberately. D’Agosta wondered just what a man would have to see in order to do something like that. Whatever it was, Alberta Muñoz might have seen it, too. He had to talk to her before Waxie got there and ruined everything.

  “D’Agosta!” a familiar voice bellowed, as if on cue. “What, are you frigging asleep?”

  He slowly opened his eyes, silently regarding the quivering, red face.

  “Forgive me for interrupting your beauty rest,” Waxie continued, “but we’ve got a tiny little crisis on our hands here—”

  D’Agosta sat up. He looked around the office, spotted his jacket on the back of a chair, grabbed it and began sliding one hand into an armhole.

  “You hearing me, D’Agosta?” Waxie shouted.

  He pushed past the Captain and walked into the hallway. Hayward was standing by the situation desk, checking an incoming fax. D’Agosta caught her eye and motioned her toward the elevator.

  “Where the hell are you going now?” Waxie said, following them to the elevator. “You deaf or something? I said, we got a crisis—”

  “It’s your crisis,” D’Agosta snapped. “You deal with it. I’ve got things to do.”

  As the elevator doors closed, D’Agosta placed a cigar in his mouth and turned to face Hayward.

  “St. Luke’s?” she asked. He nodded in response.

  A minute later, the elevator doors chimed open on the wide tiled lobby. D’Agosta began to step out, then stopped. Beyond the glass doors, he could see a crowd of people, fists thrust in the air. It had tripled in size since he’d arrived at One Police Plaza at 2:00 A.M. That rich woman, Wisher, was standing on the hood of a squad car, speaking animatedly into a bullhorn. The media was there in force: he could see the pop of flash guns, the assembled machinery of television crews.

  Hayward put a hand on his forearm. “Sure you don’t want to take a black-and-white from the basement motor pool?” she asked.

  D’Agosta looked at her. “Good idea,” he said, stepping back into the elevator.

  The admitting doctor kept them waiting on plastic chairs in the staff cafeteria for forty-five minutes. He was young, grim, and dead tired.

  “I told that Captain no interviews until six,” he said in a thin, angry voice.

  D’Agosta stood up and took the doctor’s hand. “I’m Lieutenant D’Agosta, and this is Sergeant Hayward. Pleased to meet you, Dr. Wasserman.”

  The doctor grunted and withdrew his hand.

  “Doctor, I just want to say up front that we don’t want to do anything that will cause harm to Mrs. Muñoz.”

  The doctor “nodded.

  “And you’re to be the only judge of that,” D’Agosta added.

  The doctor said nothing.

  “I also realize that a certain Captain Waxie was up here causing trouble. Perhaps he even threatened you.”

  Wasserman suddenly exploded. “In all my years working this emergency room, I’ve never been treated quite like that bastard treated me.”

  Hayward snickered. “Join the club,” she said.

  The doctor shot her a surprised look, then relaxed slightly.

  “Doctor, there were at least six, and probably ten, men involved in this massacre,” D’Agosta said. “I believe they’re the same individuals who killed Pamela Wisher, Nicholas Bitterman, and many others. I also believe they may be roaming the subway tunnels as we speak. It may be that the only living person who can identify them is Mrs. Muñoz. If you really feel that my questioning Mrs. Muñoz now will be harmful, I’ll accept that. I just hope you’ll consider that other lives might hang in the balance.”

  The doctor stared at him for a long time. At last, he managed a wan smile. “Very well, Lieutenant. On three conditions. I must be present. You must be gentle in your questioning. And you must end the interview as soon as I request it.”

  D’Agosta nodded.

  “I’m afraid you’ll be wasting your time. She’s suffering from shock and the early symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome.”

  “Understood, Doctor.”

  “Good. From what we can tell, Mrs. Muñoz is from a small town in central Mexico. She works as a child-care domestic for an Upper East Side family. We know she speaks English. Beyond that, not much.”

  Mrs. Muñoz lay in the hospital bed in exactly the same position she’d lain on the crime scene stretcher: arms folded, eyes staring vacantly into the far distance. The room smelled of glycerine soap and rubbing alcohol. Hayward took up a position outside in case Waxie showed up prematurely, while D’Agosta and the doctor took seats on either side of the bed. They sat for a moment, motionless. Then, wordlessly, Wasserman took her hand.

  D’Agosta removed his wallet. Sliding out a picture, he held it in front of the woman’s face.

  “This is my daughter, Isabella,” said D’Agosta. “Two years old. Isn’t she beautiful?”

  He held the photo, patiently, until at last the woman’s eyes flickered toward it. The doctor frowned.

  “Do you have any children?” D’Agosta asked, replacing the photo. Mrs. Muñoz looked at him. There was a long silence.

  “Mrs. Muñoz,” D’Agosta said, “I know you’re in this country illegally.”

  The woman quickly turned away. The doctor shot D’Agosta a warning look.

  “I also know a lot of people have made you promises they haven’t kept. But I’m going to make you a promise that I swear on my daughter’s picture I will keep. If you help me, I’ll see to it that you get your green card.”

  The woman did not respond. D’Agosta took out another picture and held it up. “Mrs. Muñoz?”

  For a long moment, the woman remained motionless. Then her eyes strayed toward the picture. Something relaxed inside D’Agosta.

  “This is Pamela Wisher when she was two years old. The same age as my daughter.”

  Mrs. Muñoz took the picture. “An angel,” she whispered.

  “She was killed by the same people who attacked your subway train.” He spoke gently but rapidly. “Mrs. Muñoz, please help me to find these terrible people. I don’t want them to kill anyone else.”

  A tear trickled down Mrs.
Muñoz’s face. Her lips twitched.

  “Ojos…”

  “I’m sorry?” D’Agosta said.

  “Eyes…”

  There was another pause while Mrs. Muñoz’s lips worked silently. “They came, silently… lizard’s eyes, devil’s eyes.” A sob escaped her.

  D’Agosta opened his mouth to speak, but a look from Wasserman restrained him.

  “Eyes… cuchillos de pedernal… faces like the devil…”

  “How so?”

  “Old faces, viejos…”

  She covered her face with her hands and let out a great groaning cry.

  Wasserman stood up, gesturing at D’Agosta. “That’s enough,” he said. “Out.”

  “But what did she—?”

  “Out now,”the doctor said.

  In the corridor, D’Agosta reached for his notebook, quickly spelling out the Spanish phrases as best he could.

  “What’s that?” Hayward asked, peering curiously around his shoulder.

  “Spanish,” said D’Agosta.

  Hayward frowned. “That isn’t like any Spanish I ever saw.”

  D’Agosta looked at her sharply. “Don’t tell me you habla Español on top of everything else.”

  Hayward looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “You can’t always roust in English. And just what is that crack supposed to mean?”

  D’Agosta shoved the notebook into her hand. “Just figure out what it says.”

  Hayward began examining it intently, moving her lips. After a few moments, she moved to the nurse’s station and picked up a phone.

  Wasserman came out, closing the door quietly behind him. “Lieutenant, that was… well, unorthodox, to say the least. But in the end I think it may prove beneficial. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” D’Agosta replied. “Just get her on her feet again. There are a lot more questions I’ll need to ask her down the road.”

  Hayward had hung up the phone and was walking back toward them. “This is the best that Jorge and I could do,” she said, handing the notebook back.