TWENTY-EIGHT
It was almost eleven o’clock when I heard banging and scraping against the metal door. It was Pug McBride’s voice calling for Mike that first penetrated the space.
“You inside there, Chapman?”
Mercer was still beside the door. “We all are. Open up.”
I helped Don Ledger to his feet, and we waited as the objects wedged under the doorknob to prevent it from moving—which turned out to be lengths of old steel railroad ties—were dragged aside and one of the workmen with a skeleton key unlocked the door.
As hot and steamy as the tunnel area surrounding the staircase was, it was refreshing after the stillness of M42.
“Everybody okay?” Pug asked.
“Get a bus to take Mr. Ledger to the ER, will you?” I asked. There were EMTs and firemen who worked inside the terminal who could carry him up the winding staircase and load him into an ambulance. He needed to be checked out. “He needs water as soon as possible, and I think we all do.”
“Good work, Pug,” Mike said, patting McBride on the back. “I keep telling Rocco you’re going to find a real perp one day, if you keep looking hard enough.”
“You were easy. I just followed the scent of your vodka through the station.”
“Odorless, Pug. That’s why I drink the stuff.”
“And that’s why I’m such a brilliant detective. Caught the teeniest whiff of it and dogged it through the entire terminal.”
“Thanks, Pug,” I said. “Another hour and I would have melted.”
“You already look like you did,” he said, giving me the once-over.
“How’d you find us?” Mercer asked.
“One of the summer interns overheard Ledger talking. Said he was taking some cops down to M42. I got kind of antsy when we got a hit on the dead girl’s ID at about nine this morning. Didn’t get an answer from Mike when I called his cell to let him know, and then Rocco couldn’t bring up any of you on your phones, so he sent us here to look.”
“Lydia Tsarlev,” Mike said.
Pug’s entire face screwed up in puzzlement. “You got a TV set in there but no cell service? You know her name already?”
Mike took the girl’s ID out of his pocket and held it up to Pug McBride’s face. “I just told you her name, didn’t I? Now let me out of here. Whoever was using this as his crib has at least a two-hour jump on us.”
Mike started up the spiral staircase, but Pug was pulling at his shirt.
“You sat on this information since last night?”
“Don’t be a jerk, Pug. I just found it inside this basement,” Mike said, taking the steps two at a time. “Scully’s got to saturate the terminal with uniforms. Get Crime Scene in here to dust for prints and pick up the blanket for trace. Meet you in Ledger’s office.”
“I’ll stay put till the guys come for Ledger,” I said.
Mike called down over the railing. “This entire area—M42 and whatever abuts it—has to be secured, Pug. Nobody gets access unless they’re cops. And nobody touches nothing.”
“I’m taking orders from you, Chapman?”
“For now you are. And keep your eye on the blonde. She’s as fragile as an old rotary converter.”
“Yeah, she looks like she got hit by a bus,” Pug said.
It was only minutes until four men from the Grand Central fire station clambered down the staircase. Don Ledger tried to insist that he walk up under his own steam, but two of them managed to lock hands and carry him, despite the steepness of the steps and the great height. A wheelchair was waiting for him at the elevator landing, and by the time we emerged on the lower concourse, the ambulance crew had taken him out.
Mercer and I were on our way to regroup with Mike in Ledger’s office.
“Give me five minutes,” I said.
“Not alone.”
“Then come along.”
He followed me up a ramp, past Posman bookstore and a doughnut shop, to a small Banana Republic in the retail area of the terminal. I bought a shirt for each of us to replace the ones we’d been wearing, which were soaked with perspiration.
“You think I smell bad?” Mercer asked when I handed my money to the cashier.
“I know you do. And I can’t stand myself this way. There’s a bathroom in the stationmaster’s suite. You can either shower or just clean up a bit.”
We walked back to Ledger’s office, where Mike had taken over the man’s desk and mouthed to us that he was on the phone with Rocco Correlli. I took the shirts out of the bag and he gave me a thumbs-up before slamming down the receiver.
“Here’s the deal,” he said. “Scully’s calling in every unit he can get. NYPD, Metro-North, National Guard, US Army, feds, state troopers. You name ’em, we’ll have ’em.”
“When?” Mercer asked.
“He can’t control that, but he said we’d be seeing a flood of cops. He’ll divert a lot of details from the four-to-twelve shift, and then more at midnight.”
“I thought Grand Central closes its doors at two A.M.,” I said.
“It does. The plan is to get as much law enforcement in here as a presence as soon as possible. Uniforms and guns everywhere.”
“That won’t catch the killer,” Mercer said, “but it will comfort the commuters.”
“Exactly. The only reason the terminal shuts down between two and five thirty A.M. is that it prevents the place from becoming a homeless shelter again. Gets everybody to clear out. So that gives us an opportunity to have investigators from any or all of the agencies go through here with a fine-tooth comb.”
“If we haven’t put our hands on the killer by midnight, they can penetrate every crevice of the terminal and the tunnels.”
“From what we’ve seen,” I said, “that doesn’t even seem remotely possible. Each level leads to another level beneath or above it, or a tunnel that leads to another part of Terminal City or a wheelhouse or a room that isn’t on the blueprints.”
“Losing heart, sunshine?” Mike asked. “It doesn’t sound like you.”
“Whoever this guy is, he’s done his homework. Wherever we go, he’s been there first. Yes, I’m demoralized by it.”
“And you’re sweaty, and maybe a tad hungover?”
“All of the above,” I said.
“So the manpower is the first order of business. Next is Lydia Tsarlev.”
“They’ve found her family?” I asked.
“No. It’s several of her classmates who called in. She’s an exchange student, here on some kind of visa. The lieutenant has a team going to White Plains to search her apartment. He needs to contact her parents, check her computer if there is one. Routine stuff.”
“How about Corinne Thatcher’s parents? Or her brother? I can get Ryan to work on that with your squad.”
“He’s on it, kid. Looking for any connection between the two vics. Where have you been all morning? In a black hole?”
“Very black. I’m about to clean up.”
“Before you hear the DNA results?”
“The lab got a match?” Somehow the adrenaline was pumping again.
“Not a perp, Coop. Not yet. Just case to case.”
“So the speck of blood on the curtain at the Waldorf wasn’t Corinne Thatcher’s after all?”
“All cred to Dr. Azeem and his fancy camera,” Mike said. “The killer must have cut himself.”
“And it matches some of the blood in the Big Timber train car?”
“Yeah. Case to case. Confirms the killer of both women is the same guy.”
“If you didn’t know any other way.” I crossed fingers on both hands. “Now tell me he’s in the data bank.”
“Weren’t you listening? There’s no profile for him in either the city or the state banks.”
“But they haven’t tried NDIS yet?” I asked. I was referring to the National DNA Identification System maintained by the FBI.
“Going in as we speak. Should have results later today.”
“It’s like Pug sa
id when we were first at the Waldorf.” I was removing the tags from my shirt with renewed spirit and energy. “Nobody comes out of nowhere. Not with a killing style like this.”
“I’m with you, Alex,” Mercer said. “This bastard has killed before. He’s got to be high profile in somebody’s data bank.”
TWENTY-NINE
We had each cleaned up as best we could, put on our new shirts, and were back in Ledger’s office. Mike had brought in sandwiches, suggesting we eat now because there was no telling when we would have the chance again.
“Where to?” I asked.
“We’re going to the Waldorf.”
“Something breaking over there?”
“No, we’re taking the Terminal City path,” Mike said. “We’re going underground. We need to see if our perp could have found his way in through this route.”
“I’m assuming however we’re going is a path without a blueprint,” Mercer said. “There’s got to be a reason no one was aware of this connection.”
“Better than a blueprint. Hank Brantley, the cop whose specialty is the tunnel homeless population, is going to lead us through.”
“So much for a fresh change of clothes.”
I was hungrier than I thought and washed down half a turkey sandwich with a full bottle of water. Brantley arrived within minutes, handed out our hard hats and flashlights, and we were ready to take off again.
He led us down to the gate on the lower level—number 100—which a Metro-North patrol officer was guarding.
“Same rules apply,” Hank said. “Stay close. Walk on the platform as far as it goes. It gets pretty narrow up ahead, and this time you will have a third rail off to the far side of the tracks. That’s what electrifies the trains. It’ll light you up pretty good, too, if you give it the chance.”
We headed down the first ramp away from the departure gate, a slight incline that took us away from the brightly lit terminal into the dark, subterranean maze of tunnels.
I would never get used to seeing people huddled in holes in the concrete walls or foraging for scraps between the railroad ties, but on this trip I was slightly less shocked than I had been a day earlier.
The live tracks were only a dozen feet away from our platform. As a train approached, headlights glaring through the arched openings in the wall between where we stood and where the train was slowing to a stop, I froze in place, unable to stabilize my footing. We were in a single row—Indian file, as Mike called it—with him behind Brantley, then me, then Mercer last in line.
“I can’t get you there myself,” Hank said. “It’s not exactly a straight line any longer, so I took a walk out just now and asked Smitty to meet us at the point this platform stops.”
“Great,” I said to Mercer as I flapped my arms to regain my balance. “What’s wrong with starting out up in the daylight on Park Avenue? Taking the Northeast Passage? I’m beginning to feel like a troglobite.”
Mike got half of what he heard right. “Troglodyte?”
“That’s you, Detective. Somebody whose thinking is out of step with the times. A throwback to Neanderthal thinking.”
“What’s the difference between bites and dytes?”
“Troglobites are animals who spend so much time in caves that they’re practically blind, but their eyes adapt to seeing in the dark.”
“Bite me, Coop.”
“I would, but you’re walking too fast.”
Our presence in the tunnels, now at least one city block away from the terminal, had stirred up some of the population. Heads poked out above us and below. Huge rats—seemingly unafraid of us—played on the tracks while roaches the size of small rodents crunched under Hank Brantley’s feet.
Smitty, the former mayor of the Grand Central tunnel system, was waiting for us in the shadows of an enormous steel girder. I figured we were somewhere near 45th Street, in our slow trek north of the terminal.
Hank handed him a small plastic bag. “Three sandwiches and sodas and a carton of cigarettes. We appreciate your help.”
“The platform ends up ahead about fifty feet,” Smitty said, now leading our pack.
An outbound train made so much noise as it passed by us that I couldn’t hear what Hank said back to him.
“What happens when the platform ends?” I called out.
“We go the rest of the way on the tracks,” Smitty said, “but it’s a dead line. No trains running on it these days. It only goes so far as the siding up by the hotel you’re going to.”
“That makes no sense,” I said to no one in particular.
The walkway ended abruptly. There were two large steps down to the tracks. I didn’t question Hank Brantley, who seemed to have complete faith in Smitty.
Three men and a woman were sitting on the old rail ties in our path, playing cards and drinking beer. They greeted Smitty and expressed surprise at seeing the rest of us.
I flinched as a locomotive, which seemed to be heading in our direction, rounded the corner on an adjacent track as it slowed on its final approach to Grand Central.
Smitty turned to face us, making sure we all made it past the cardsharps.
“You heard about the other body they found last night?” Mike asked him.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the third rail, which was painted a bright neon orange and was painfully close to the trail we were taking.
“Yeah.”
“You know anything?”
“Like I told you, Mr. Detective, it’s not good to know too much down here. Private railcar, dead girl, big commotion. Anything that brings the man into the tunnels is a bad deal for us. We try not to bring trouble on ourselves.”
“That’s two bodies in as many days, Smitty. Must be some kind of talk.”
Smitty started to cough, grabbing his chest as he did. “Not so much. She wasn’t one of us, is all I know. The whole NYPD wouldn’t be taking such an interest if she was.”
“Not true. Carl came from your world.”
“So-so.” Smitty spat across the tracks, dislodging a gaggle of roaches. “Half up, half down.”
“You’ll let Hank know if you start getting information?” Mercer said. “We can pay you for it. Feed you and your sources.”
Smitty laughed. “That’s a whole lot of food you’d be haulin’ in. All I know so far is that the young lady here, she gave Dirty Harry a pass.”
“I—I didn’t really do—”
“You’re down with me, Ms. Detective. He didn’t hurt her.”
I was rethinking my own decision to tell the cops not to bother with Dirty Harry. My sympathetic instinct for a mentally ill man had overruled my usual concern about thoroughness.
Smitty had stopped talking and moved on his way again. We all had our flashlights on, stepping carefully on the tracks that skirted the active train line.
I thought of both young women, Corinne Thatcher and Lydia Tsarlev, and wondered whether they had been subjected to the torture of spending time in this underground hell. It was truly an inferno in this part of Terminal City. Filth and stench, rodents and insects, the mad and the disenfranchised, all dancing around a third rail that supplied a constant flow of electricity to the hundreds of trains coursing through here every day. The throbbing vitality of Grand Central and its busy concourses was turned upside down in this strange underbelly of Manhattan.
The path forked once more, and we again took the western route, separating slightly further from the incoming and outgoing commuter trains.
We trudged on, occasionally rattling some living thing—large or small—that got out of our way.
“What’s that?” I heard Mike ask, as he came to a standstill almost half an hour after we had started our exploration.
He moved to the left, one foot underneath the track and the other on one of the old ties on which we’d been walking. Then he reached back to grab my hand and move me forward so I could see—and Mercer behind me—what was directly in front of us.
“It’s a railroad car, Detective,” Hank Bra
ntley said.
“I can tell that for myself.”
The enormous, windowless train looked like an armored tank on steel wheels. It was dark green, like a military vehicle, old, and covered with layers of dust.
The tracks on which we were walking had broken ties and didn’t appear able to support the weight of this mysterious train.
Mike approached it, running his hand across the side of it as though to remove a layer of grime. “It’s a relic, isn’t it? It must have been sitting on this siding for decades.”
“That’s because it was built for just one man, Mike.”
“The armored train?”
“The armored train and the special siding here. Track sixty-one.”
“Who was the man?”
“The president of the United States.”
Mike whistled. “Well, if he’s counting on this to spirit him out of Manhattan in case of a terrorist attack, he’d better send in a team to spiff it up. This iron horse isn’t about to make a run, Secret Service be damned.”
“Not for this president,” Hank said. “This train was designed for Franklin Roosevelt, during the Second World War. And so was this secret entrance to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.”
“We’re right below the Waldorf?” Mike asked. “And there’s a secret entrance?”
Hank pointed to an unusually narrow elevator shaft. “Terminal City ends here.”
THIRTY
“This was originally a spur that ran below an old warehouse and a railroad power plant,” Hank Brantley explained. “Those buildings were torn down to be replaced by a luxury hotel to anchor the terminal.”
“The Waldorf-Astoria. The Manhattan White House,” Mike said. He had disappeared out of sight, making his way around the presidential train.
There was a small platform between the train and the elevator shaft. Smitty sat on the edge of it, taking in all the conversation while eating one of his sandwiches.
Mike returned to the front of the machine and climbed the three steps to the door. He pulled on the handle, but it didn’t move. “Hank, how fast can you get someone to open her up?”
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