“Give up the ghost, Mercer,” Mike said. “It’s dead.”
About two minutes later, as though suddenly resuscitated, the footage came on with perfect clarity.
Mike elbowed me out of the way. A couple had gotten on at the thirty-ninth floor and spent most of the ride down to the lobby kissing each other in the corner of the cab. “It’s not dead after all.”
“It never was,” Mercer said.
“Then how the hell do you account for three hours of a total eclipse, my friend?”
“The security camera was intentionally blinded, Detective Chapman.” Mercer pointed his forefinger at the light fixture above our heads and pretended to pull it like a trigger. “It was temporarily blinded by a laser gun.”
NINETEEN
Rocco Correlli moved us all into a slightly larger windowless room. The long table was half covered with trays of food that catering had sent down to the bleary-eyed detectives. The other half was covered with papers—police reports, hotel bills, records of the various tape recordings, and photographs of both victims and the antique steamer trunk. The tech guy loaded the software from the Towers surveillance equipment onto a larger computer at the far end of the room.
“How do you blind a camera?” Rocco asked.
“All too simple,” Mercer said. “Remember when that Russian oil billionaire had his yacht in the city last year?”
“Ivanovic? Vladimir Ivanovic?” Mike said.
“Yeah. Well, there were some people walking on the pier, up near the Intrepid,” he said, referring to the steamship piers along the Hudson River, on the west side of Midtown Manhattan. “One of them was a good friend of Vickee’s. They tried to take photos of the mega-yacht, but they couldn’t.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“First of all, his staff goes nuts when anybody gets too close to the boat. When the story hit the Social Diary,” Mercer said, referring to the hottest gossip page in town, “it said that Ivanovic actually installed antipaparazzi shields all over the yacht.”
“So what do they have to do with this?” Rocco asked.
“They’re lasers, Rocco. They sweep the area around the boat, and if anyone tries to take photos or videos, the lasers blind the cameras. The cameras simply can’t take pictures.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“Not for a second. You want to know how easy it is to do? For about twenty bucks—in case you’re not a billionaire with a yacht—all you need is a laser from an old DVD player, a lens you can focus, and a couple of double-A batteries.”
“What made you think of that?” Mike asked, gnawing on a turkey sandwich.
“Because it wasn’t the same as the other footage. It went completely white. It was never grainy or black. It didn’t look like it had been recorded over.”
“Does it mean our killer’s a high-tech operative?”
Mercer laughed. “Not really. Wouldn’t even need a second guy. It’s one of those things you can search online, like I did when Vickee told me the story about her friends’ attempts to take photos of the big yacht. Anyone can learn to do this—it’s even easier than surfing for cannibal codefendants.”
“But how?” Mike asked.
“The laser can be the size of a tiny flashlight,” Mercer said, looking at the elevator interior on the image frozen on the screen. “A piece of duct tape could hold it in place here.” He pointed to a spot on the elevator’s ceiling, directly opposite the surveillance camera. “All you need is a straight shot at the lens. The laser will actually cause some glare as it reflects off the end of the camera. Then—bam! The camera is completely disabled and the screen goes white.”
“But it recovered,” I said. “It started working again.”
“Some do, some don’t. But they’re out of commission for several hours, at least,” Mercer said. “That’s for sure.”
Mike pounded his fist against the wall. “So this adds another angle, doesn’t it? Plus our guys have to go back over every one of these tapes and see where else this happened.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Look, we know Thatcher was taken to the Towers, but how? Which way into the hotel is still the big question.”
“Excuse me.”
I turned around and saw a man in the hallway outside our room. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for Rocco Correlli?”
“I’m Correlli.”
The man in the khaki suit with the hint of a Southern accent extended his hand. “Branson. FBI. I’m head of the team that’s been sent in to work with you.”
“Work with us?” Mike said. “I don’t remember asking for help.”
I elbowed him in the side. Mike’s attempts at humor about the traditional NYPD/FBI tension on cases that were clearly within city jurisdiction wore thin at a time like this.
“That’s because we figured you’d have stopped watching cartoons by this time,” Branson said, pointing at the monitor, “and put your hands on a murderer.”
“So you’ve got it figured out?” the lieutenant asked, shouldering Mike out of the way.
“I don’t have any choice in the matter. We’ve been sent in to light a fire under your asses before the president arrives. I expect if we put our heads together, it’ll be easier to solve than most of what my guys spend their time doing,” Branson said. “I was told to ask for you.”
“Welcome to the Waldorf,” Correlli said, sweeping his arm down the length of the table. “Everything we’ve got is yours. We’ll bring your team up to speed.”
“Thanks. Commissioner Scully sent a summary of all the key points to my boss this morning.” Branson was sweating, too, but wouldn’t even loosen the knot in the rep tie that was tightly in place around his neck. “You find a connection yet between the derelict who was killed last night and the girl?”
Mercer shook his head.
“Nobody in his family was military?” Branson asked, stopping to pick up crime scene photos. “He wasn’t one of her flock?”
“The only living relative Carl Condon had seems to be an aunt in Minneapolis, tucked away in a nursing home,” Mercer said. “No link at all.”
“I’m going to go look for some more of the surveillance videos, Rocco,” Mike said. He was stuffing his pockets with chocolate chip cookies and brownies.
“I hear they’re all blank,” Branson said.
“Some blank. Some blind.”
Branson dropped the photos back on the table and looked over at Mike. “The difference being . . .”
“Oh, Lordy. This is going to be a steep learning curve. Loo, you want to fill him in? Coop and Mercer and me, we’re on a roll.”
I hadn’t realized we were rolling. Murder wasn’t the feebies’ strong suit, but maybe fresh, intelligent eyes would be a help.
Rocco hadn’t realized we had a moving plan, either. But he knew Mike bolted at the thought of being under the thumb of the feds. “Still trying to figure which way the Thatcher broad was brought into the hotel?”
Mike nodded. “I want to recheck the cameras from the garage and the various loading docks. Commercial entrances. I want to see if the sequences on any of them went blind.”
“That should be easy to establish,” Branson said.
“How so?”
“I’ve got two agents up on the street now.”
I could see Mike starting to steam.
“Scully’s report says the trunk Thatcher was probably brought here in was found discarded in the Northwest Passage to Grand Central. Am I correct?”
“Yeah. But that’s over on Madison Avenue and 47th Street. That’s a long chance to take, carrying a drugged vic through the city streets.”
“But there’s a Northeast Passage, too,” Branson said. “And it’s just a corner away from here on Park. Park and 48th Street. It runs parallel to the tracks, all the way to the train station.”
I was looking back and forth between Mike and his newfound nemesis.
“I assumed you’d already been focused on the hotel
entrance nearest to that point,” Branson said.
“We don’t assume anything we can’t prove. We’ve got nothing to connect Corinne Thatcher to the train station,” Mike said.
“Except another corpse who happened to live in a train tunnel and a neatly drawn set of tracks on her ass,” Branson said, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
Mike was not in the winning position. He was running his fingers through his hair and searching for a clever rejoinder, coming up short.
“C’mon, Mike. Branson’s making a valid point,” I said. “Let’s recheck the entrances on that side of the hotel.”
“Do you mind, Lieutenant, if we do a sweep of the Towers?” Branson said, turning to Rocco Correlli. “The Secret Service will be moving some of the president’s top aides in on Saturday.”
“We’ve got it covered,” Rocco said. “But feel free to check it out.”
“In fact, I found some old dresses that J. Edgar left in one of the closets when he stayed here,” Mike said. “Your men should feel right at home.”
“Curb your immaturity, will you please?” I whispered to him. “Let’s get on our way.”
Agent Branson took the high road and didn’t even glance at Mike. “I understand the Service will be responsible for the living quarters here, and you’ll have the lobbies and doors.”
“That’s the way it usually works,” Rocco said. “We lead the motorcade back and forth from the United Nations and bring POTUS in from the heliport.”
“Heliport?” Branson said. “Not happening this trip.”
“The commissioner briefed me yesterday. The president’s flying in from the national park to JFK, then a chopper to the East River heliport.”
“He changed his mind last night. The president has decided to do an old-fashioned train ride, like a whistle-stop tour, so he can cross through more than a dozen states and shake hands off the back of the caboose.”
“Amtrak’s Empire Builder,” Mercer said. “Picks it up in Glacier National Park in Montana. Very smart. Gets him through scores of small towns with endless meet and greets—people who’d otherwise never have a chance to see the man.”
“But it’s not an election year,” Rocco said.
“Every congressman from here to Missoula will be hanging out for a photo op,” Branson said. “Good for the party operatives. Tough for the Secret Service.”
“Where does the Empire Builder stop?” I asked.
“Chicago,” Mercer said. “Then they’ll have to cobble together something else to get him here.”
“It’s been cobbled,” Branson said. “A series of private trains running through Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania, all put together by the secretary of transportation and the Homeland Security people. You think you guys can keep the bodies out of this hotel and away from the tunnels? Is that too much to ask?”
“I’m kicking right in, Rocco. You need me, I’ll be doing overtime at the Oyster Bar. Two dozen Katama Bay bivalves, straight from Martha’s Vineyard. That’ll be our Saturday night soiree, Coop. Some chilled vodka, some chardonnay. We’ll be making it safe for POTUS.”
“That’s fine with me, Detective,” Branson said. “So long as you don’t screw it up. The president arrives in Grand Central on Sunday at five P.M.”
TWENTY
“I accept.”
“What?” Mike asked.
“Dinner at the Oyster Bar on Saturday night. It’s the prettiest room in the city. Those gleaming cream-colored tiles, that—”
“You’re on.”
“Do I have to wear a hard hat?” I asked.
“Not if you leave your hard head at home.”
I smiled at Mike. “I thought things would be different when you got back from the trip. I wasn’t counting on a double homicide to get in the way of seeing you again.”
“Neither were the vics, kid.”
I caught myself, still uncertain about why Mike had lied to me. “Or your mother’s health.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the monitor. “She’s coming along fine.”
“I had hoped we could fly up to the Vineyard for the weekend.” There wasn’t a more romantic place in the world.
“Hold that thought. I’ve been dreaming about fried clams at the Bite and a steamed lobster courtesy of Larsen’s.”
I’d been dreaming about a bottle of cabernet in front of my fireplace on an early fall night. But all that would have to wait.
We were back in our video cubicle, trying again to examine footage from the hotel entrance closest to the Northeast Passage. After leaving Correlli and Branson, I had been drafted to help interview two of the housekeeping employees who had become hysterical during questioning, fearful that they were being targeted as subjects of the investigation.
Mercer was talking to a police inspector in the Dominican Republic about looking for the family of Corinne Thatcher’s ex-boyfriend, and reporters were texting me furiously because David Drusin had given his spin on the Gerry Dominguez arrest—and now my “cannibal cop” phrase was gaining tabloid traction.
“We should have some word on Paco and his whereabouts by tonight,” Mercer said. “What’s next on your list for me?”
“I’d say we got thirty-two hundred employees upstairs waiting to be interviewed,” Mike said.
“Sounds like a job for some rookie looking for a gold shield. Get me out of this dungeon.”
“It’s almost four o’clock,” I said. “We need to find a link between Thatcher and Carl Condon.”
“The Real Time Crime guys have run them six ways to Sunday and come up cold,” Mike said. “That one’s going to take detective work. Pounding the pavement.”
“Starting now?”
“I’m good to go,” Mercer said. “Get a jump on the morning.”
We told Rocco we were leaving. Two of his men, he told us, were working with Corinne Thatcher’s brother. No one had come up with her laptop and cell phone, and the brother was trying to reconstruct contacts of both friends and professional associations for the detectives.
“Where are you off to?” I asked.
“I want to eyeball some of the garage workers,” Mike said.
The Waldorf’s parking garage was on the 49th Street side of the building. If Branson and the feds were correct, that was closest to the Northeast Passage, which they assumed had been the killer’s point of entry.
“It’s been done,” Rocco said. “Every shift has been interviewed.”
“Not by me,” Mike said.
“Like you know something my squad doesn’t. Get real, Chapman.”
“Crack how the girl got in and we’re halfway home,” Mike said, looking over at me. “You and Mercer with me?”
“I’m in,” I said. “Beats facing the music with Battaglia.”
The three of us made our way upstairs and found a cushy trio of armchairs in the main lobby in which we sat to make our calls. Mike checked in at Manhattan North with his lieutenant Mercer called the SVU to report on the day and learn whether there was any news, and I avoided Laura—and the stack of messages she had undoubtedly been collecting from a district attorney who didn’t like to be ignored—by calling Nan Toth.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Still at the Waldorf. Nothing’s coming together the way we need it to.”
“Same on this end.”
“Raymond Tanner?” I asked. “Any sign of him?”
“Zero,” Nan said. “There must have been a plan. Evan and I went up to talk to Judge Aikens. He’s peeved, to say the least. You can’t micromanage this one, Alex. You can trust Evan to keep his eye on the case and on the players.”
“Thanks. And if you don’t mind calling Laura, please tell her I’m keeping her honest. She can say to Battaglia she hasn’t heard from me since I left the office.”
I waited for Mike and Mercer to finish their calls. When I looked up after checking my texts, I saw Rocco Correlli sprinting from the basement stairwell toward the exit door that led to the garage.
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“Rocco! What’s the rush?”
“I was chasing after you guys,” he said, stopping to catch his breath. “I figured you were outside in the garage.”
The three of us were on our feet, phones off, as we walked to meet him.
“Something clicked?” I asked. “Progress?”
“Only if you think bad things happen in threes.”
“Another?”
“Corpse. Yeah. Another dead girl.”
“Where is she, Rocco?” Mike asked.
“On a train.”
“Subway or commuter train?” Mike said. “You talking homicide?”
“I’m talking a broad with a slit throat, naked and apparently sexually abused. Train tracks marked on her thighs and tail. She’s in a railroad car, Chapman. Some kind of private railroad car, sitting on an abandoned set of tracks right the fuck next to Grand Central.”
TWENTY-ONE
“The feds found her,” Rocco Correlli said. “They were doing a sweep in advance of the president’s trip.”
The four of us were on Park Avenue, walking to the glass-sided entrance of the MetLife Building on 45th Street, headed for the tall escalators that led down to the main concourse of Grand Central.
“I didn’t know there was any such thing as a private railroad car,” I said, waiting for the traffic light to change.
“That way of travel is mostly a thing of the past,” Mercer said, “but there are still scores of old cars—antiques—that are in private hands.”
“And they just sit in the tunnels?”
“No, no. Amtrak actually lets the owners—or renters—travel on certain routes, for a hefty fee. There are some real beauties, and as long as you’ve got a siding—a short piece of track that connects to the main rail—you can pretty much travel around the country in one of these.”
“What do you know about the girl?” I asked Rocco.
“Pretty much like Corinne Thatcher’s situation. No clothes, no phone, no computer, no personal belongings. Her ID is the first mystery we have to solve.”
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