“The plates? The license plates can be traced.”
“Mercer had those removed while the vehicle was still smoking.”
Battaglia’s dangerous world was closing in around me. I took a few deep breaths and tried to think clearly.
“So these kids just get lucky? They happen to come along when Mike and Mercer and I leave the restaurant and part ways, heading for our cars?” I said. “Mike always swears there are no coincidences in policing.”
“There aren’t,” he said.
“If I hadn’t stepped out of the car to see what you were looking at,” I said, letting all of this sink in, “I’d have lit up the night sky, along with all the empty cardboard coffee cups that you litter your car with.”
“Fact,” Mike said. “That’s a fact.”
“So I’m just supposed to believe these thugs had the good fortune to come along at the moment they did, capitalizing on the fact of your flat tire?”
“The truth of it is, Coop, that those bikers were waiting for us since I parked the car and we went into Primola,” Mike said. “They had you in their sights. Me too, I guess.”
“And the flat tire is the coincidence they needed. The one that defies your theory,” I said.
“Not on your life, Coop,” Mike said. “It’s the bad guys who made the tire flat while you were chowing down on your pasta primavera.”
“They what?” I looked from Mike’s face to Keith Scully.
“That tire was slashed by a knife, babe. Intentionally maimed. My car couldn’t have rolled to the next corner, there were so many cuts in the rubber,” Mike said. “And I’m the fool who insisted you stay by my side.”
THIRTY
“Things have changed, Alex,” the commissioner said. “So my setup has to change too.”
“I get that.”
“It’s all moved so much faster than we expected, and it was never my plan to put you in harm’s way.”
Keith Scully had walked me away from Mike, into a corner of the hallway.
“You didn’t do that,” I said, although now I kept rethinking why I had been left so exposed in the days since Battaglia’s murder.
“I have to move you out of the city,” Scully said. “There’s no way to ensure your safety here.”
“I’ll go to Martha’s Vineyard,” I said, anxiously looking over his shoulder at the nurse who was waiting for Mike to roll up his shirtsleeve for his injection. “We’re good there.”
“I can’t let you go to your own home. That wouldn’t be smart.”
“But with Mike—”
“Not with Mike,” Scully said. “I’ve got to do something about him, too.”
My heart was racing and my head pounding. “Together, though, right? He and I will be together?”
“For tonight, yes.”
“Look, Commissioner,” I said. “I’ll do anything you want me to do, as long as you don’t cut me off from the people I need.”
“The first thing you’re going to do for me is call your parents,” he said. “They’re in the Caribbean?”
“Yes.” They had retired there several years ago, and now I was especially glad they were on an island at a distant remove from my work.
“Reassure them that you’re fine and that I just need to send you underground for a few days.”
“I don’t have a phone,” I said, pointing at the nurse with the needle. “I need Mike.”
“Use mine,” Scully said, pulling it out of the breast pocket of his suit.
“They’ll freak out if that’s the message,” I said, trying to think of something else to say to my family.
“Suit yourself. I’ll get on the phone with them myself if that helps.”
“It won’t. It might even make matters worse.”
Once a marine, always a marine. Scully’s armor didn’t crack. “Then you’ll call Catherine Dashfer. Tell her the same thing,” he said. “Need-to-know basis only, among your office buddies, but assure her that you’re fine. Tell her the explosions scared you.”
This was going in a dark direction. Whatever the newly improvised plan was, I knew I wasn’t going to like it.
Mike was walking toward us, rolling down his sleeve and buttoning his shirt at the wrist. He stopped three feet away and just stared at Scully and me.
“Where are we going, Commissioner?” I asked.
I’d known Keith Scully for so long, before he had rocketed to the top of the department, that I usually called him by his first name. When he went into full commando mode, I used his title.
He reached for my arm again, but I pulled back.
“Three Sisters Hospital, in Westchester,” he said. “Just for a night or two.”
“A psych ward? A psych ward run by nuns?” I said, putting my finger between my teeth to stop myself from screaming at the police commissioner. “It’s not me who’s crazy this time.”
“It’s not about crazy, Alex. It’s about safe.”
“I’ve been there, Commissioner,” I said, practically foaming at the mouth. “We had to put one of my witnesses in Three Sisters when she had a breakdown. It’s a nuthouse, with padded walls and wrist restraints.”
“I’m not committing you, Alex,” Scully said, laughing at me. “I should have made that clear.”
“Make it clear to my family and friends, then, will you?” I asked. “When people find out about this—when some rag reporter figures out that’s where you’ve warehoused me for the weekend and the story goes viral—the lede in the papers will be that I’ve lost it.”
“If you calm down and let me finish, Alex—”
“Finish what?” I asked, motioning to Mike. “You’ve got to hear this, Mike. The commissioner thinks I should be at Three Sisters. He thinks—”
Scully lifted his hand like it was a stop sign and Mike didn’t move.
“The plan is, Alex, that an hour from now—after you’ve settled down and had a chance to make your calls—you’ll leave this hospital.”
“With Mike, right?” I said, my eyes darting back and forth between Scully’s face and Mike’s.
“Yes, with Mike.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Okay. What else?”
“There’ll be a van waiting outside the hospital, by the driveway on Seventieth Street.”
“The rear door,” I said.
“Yes,” Scully said. “You’ll be wheeled out on a gurney and—”
“I’m fine, Keith. I really am.” He was my friend at this moment, not the commissioner. I knew he’d respond to me if I leaned on our old relationship. “No gurney.”
“I know you’re fine, Alex. I counted on that,” he said.
This time he took hold of me by both arms and stopped my fidgeting with his tight grip.
“What then?”
“You’ll be on a gurney, wheeled out to the van,” Scully said. “It’s the medical examiner’s morgue van, Alex.”
I shuddered and twitched, but Scully kept his hands on me.
“I don’t want people to think you’re crazy, Alex. I want them to think you’re dead.”
THIRTY-ONE
“What does one wear to one’s own autopsy?” I asked. “Are they letting me keep my clothes on for the ride downtown?”
Mike and I were sitting in an empty hospital administration office about one hundred yards down the hallway from the ER.
“You’re doing well, kid. You took it like a champ.”
“Remind me what choice I had,” I said.
We had made the calls to my parents, both brothers, Catherine—and I threw in my two best friends, Joan and Nina, as well. No details offered.
“Vickee’s meeting Mercer at your apartment,” Mike said. “She’ll pack up what you need for the next few days.”
“How about your stuff?”
�
�They’ll get that, too.”
“I’m not going out in a body bag,” I said. “I can’t cope with that.”
“Scully knows. You’ll be under a sheet.”
“Is there press outside?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, but with the commissioner’s car here, I’m guessing he wants someone to notice.”
It was almost one in the morning when Scully came inside to tell me that an unidentified woman had expired just minutes earlier.
“That’s me? Unidentified?”
“For the time being,” Scully said. “The story we’re giving out is that an unidentified woman—burned beyond recognition—was collateral damage in the Upper East Side explosion. Possibly homeless, because she was in the middle of the street. Not inside the car.”
“A bag lady, Coop. Suits you to a tee.”
“That way,” Scully said, “we can vamp about how long it’s going to take to get a match to her DNA if she’s not known to us.”
“But the bad guys,” I said. “What will they think?”
The police commissioner hesitated. “They might hope you’re the dead woman, or they might think the bikers screwed up. If it keeps them from looking for you for a few days, I’ll breathe more easily.”
“So will I.”
“Take off your shoes, Alex,” Scully said. “I’ll have the nurses put them in a bag. The shoe shapes would be obvious under the sheet. And when I leave the room, strip down to your underwear, okay?”
“But there’s a sheet,” I said. “Isn’t that enough?”
“There’ll be two sheets, in fact, just to be safe. You’ll just need to hold your breath for thirty seconds while they roll the gurney out to the van.”
“Promise me one thing,” I said. “Tell me it’s not the van they transported the district attorney in, is it?”
“Get real, Coop,” Mike said. “What’s the difference?”
“It spooks me.”
“I’ll be with you,” he said.
“That spooks me, too.”
“Thanks for all this, Alex,” Scully said. “You’ll be in good hands, and by the time you’re back at home, I’ll get a department phone for you. I don’t care that Prescott wants you to go shopping at your local AT&T store. I need to get you something that can’t be traced and that only comes directly to me. Just give me a few days.”
The only thing missing from his farewell remarks was a “semper fi.” He turned away and closed the door behind him.
A few minutes later, after knocking, two morgue attendants wheeled in the ME’s gurney. They left the room while I stripped down to my bra and panties. I climbed on and lay down, letting Mike drape my body with two white sheets. They were stamped in green ink with the words PROPERTY OF THE NYC MEDICAL EXAMINER on the border.
“Are you going to be okay when I cover your face?” Mike asked. He was stroking my hair and bent over to kiss me on the forehead.
I bit my lip and nodded. He kissed me on the mouth and I responded, clutching at his hand. Then he broke away and pulled the sheets up over my face and head.
The morgue attendants came back in and told me to brace myself for the short ride on the gurney. They led me out of the room and down the hallway. I was breathing normally, but careful not to move.
The double outer doors swung open automatically. Several nurses flanked us—at least, I assumed they did because I heard Mike and the attendants thank them as I felt a blast of cold air when we left the hospital corridor.
“Run silent, run deep,” Mike said. I knew he was referring to one of his favorite World War II movies. I was supposed to be the American sub turning off its engines to pass beneath the Japanese warship. No sound, no movement, no sign of life.
I could hear Keith Scully’s voice, maybe fifty feet away. He must have been talking to reporters.
There was a short passage from the hospital exit to the van. My ride stopped abruptly as the two men opened the rear doors of the morgue vehicle. They each took a side of the metal bed and lifted it, collapsing the base, which held the wheels, and shoving the entire contraption—with me aboard—into the van.
“You’re good, babe,” Mike said. “Stay down.”
He hoisted himself up and one of the men slammed the doors. There were no windows on the side panels, of course, so it seemed doubly dark inside.
Mike waited until we moved out of the driveway and up the short block, turning south on York Avenue to ride downtown to the morgue, before he lifted the sheets.
“You can open your eyes now,” Mike said.
“I really don’t want to.”
There were too many ghosts who had taken this bumpy ride. I had no desire to check out my grim surroundings.
“What did Scully say?” I asked.
“Nothing more than he told you,” Mike said. “He was just creating a diversion to keep the press with him while we slipped you out.”
“No photographers?” I asked.
“A couple. I saw some flashes go off, but they were at long distance.”
It took only eight or nine minutes to get to the morgue. There was a long bay large enough to accommodate the vans. I could feel the motion as the driver made a U-turn and backed us in, then down the slight incline that led right to the doors of the basement morgue, while Mike covered my head again—just to be safe.
I was unloaded as quickly as I had been loaded. Doors slammed behind us and I figured we were in the private space that was reserved for the recently dead.
Mike lifted the sheets from my face and put my clothes on the table next to the gurney.
“Turn off the Stryker saw,” he said, smoothing out my hair while he had a conversation with an imaginary pathologist. “Looks like I’ve got a live one.”
THIRTY-TWO
“What happens now?” I asked.
We were back in the ME’s conference room, where Jaxon Stern had first interrogated me less than four days earlier. It was three A.M. and I was slumped across the table, my head resting on my arms, too tired to think straight. A suitcase with my clothes and toiletries was in the corner. Vickee had delivered it to the local precinct, as the commissioner had directed, and a uniformed cop brought it here.
“You leave for Three Sisters,” Mike said. “Scully just wants to give it enough time to make sure any reporters who might have followed the van down here have left.”
“Is Mercer taking us?”
“Nope. Too obvious,” Mike said. “There’d be no reason for him to come to the morgue.”
“Who?”
“Lieutenant Peterson,” Mike said. “Ray lives in Westchester County. It makes sense for him to stop by here to check on the body of a Manhattan North homicide victim before he heads for home.”
Ray Peterson was one of my heroes. A smart, steady, old-fashioned detective who had long ago earned his grade as lieutenant by combining his experience and intelligence with cutting-edge technology to run the best homicide squad in the country.
“When do we go?”
“Soon, Coop, very soon,” Mike said. “One more thing, kid, and I don’t want any theatrics on account of it, okay?”
“I feel it coming,” I said, without even picking up my head. “I’m going solo.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“To a nuthouse,” I said. “To a nunnery.”
“Good for all that ails you, as my mother would say.”
“Who’s going to be there for me?” I asked.
“Jimmy North,” Mike said, referring to one of my favorite young guys on the squad. “And Kate. Kate Tinsley.”
I opened my eyes and glared at Mike, but didn’t pick my head up. It seemed too heavy to lift.
“She’s got a pipeline to Jaxon Stern,” I said. “I don’t like that.”
“We’re doing it Scully’s way,” Mike said. “He think
s it would send some kind of signal if I disappeared at the same time you did. He wants me in the city and at work.”
“Kate? How about her?”
“I told the commissioner about Jaxon Stern and what his problem is,” Mike said. “Kate didn’t do you any harm, kid, and Scully really needs to keep one of his people in the mix. Someone who’s been in on all the task force meetings since the first night.”
“I’m too whipped to fight my own battles,” I said, pulling myself up and shaking my head to wake myself up. “How are we going to stay in touch?”
“There are real phones at Three Sisters,” Mike said. “I can call you in your room. Three or four days; that’s all it’s going to be.”
Ray Peterson knocked on the door before he walked in. He slapped Mike on the back and clasped both his hands over mine.
“You hanging in, Alex?” he asked.
I nodded. “Thanks, Loo.”
“Glad to have your company going home,” he said. “Chapman tell you we think it’s best if you lie down on the backseat for the ride? I’ve got a pillow and a blanket, so maybe you can nap on the way.”
“Good to go,” I said. “Want to give us a minute?”
Mike was lacking the gene for empathy, but I had known that for more than a decade. “No long good-byes, Coop,” he said, wrapping his arm around me and leading me out of the room.
“I’ll back my SUV into the bay,” the lieutenant said. “You can tuck Alex in. Looks pretty quiet outside.”
I crawled onto the rear seat a few minutes later and curled up for the forty-five-minute ride. Somehow, the motion of the car helped knock me out and I dozed for the last half of the journey. Peterson had to wake me up when we reached the psychiatric hospital—founded in the 1960s by three nuns who worked with emotionally disturbed patients.
Sister Louise ran the facility. She was out on the lawn in front of the main building by the time I was awake. It was pitch-black but I could make out the large yellow neo-Victorian house that I had visited years earlier, which I remembered as set on a beautifully landscaped hilltop that looked more like a Swiss canton than a piece of suburban New York.
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