“You couldn’t have known. I never told anyone.”
“I can get you all the help you need,” I said. “We’ve got counselors who deal only with this issue.”
She didn’t speak. I wanted to hold out the hope of psychological support but didn’t want to waste a minute of time in the search for Nik Blunt.
“Would you like me to do that?” I needed to get a conversation started with the suspect’s sister. I wanted to take her back up to the operations room with Yolanda and get her talking.
“There’s only one thing I need, and you can’t give me that.”
“What is it? I’ll certainly try.”
“I lost my family, Ms. Cooper. I lost my entire family because of Nik. You can’t do a goddamn thing for me.”
I walked away from the table, to the far end of the room.
“You’re right about your family. I can’t change that. But I can do things for other people, for people who don’t deserve to be damaged any more than you do.”
“Not my problem.”
“Would you mind getting one of the crime scene photos, Mike? I think the lieutenant has a folder of them. A picture of Corinne Thatcher is what I want.”
Mike nodded and left the room.
“I don’t want to see any pictures, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay with me, Zoya. I want you to look. I want you to pick your head up off this table and stop wallowing in your own misery. Tell us what you know about Nik and where he might be hiding. I’m not going to let go until you do that.”
“How would I know?”
“Have you ever met either one of the young women he killed?” I asked. “Or the young man? Did you recognize their names and their photographs in the papers?”
“I’m not interested.”
“Did you know any of them? Do you know if Nik knew any of them?”
“More stupid questions.”
“I’m going to keep asking them until I hit one you know the answer to. I’ve got friends out in this terminal. Great friends, who cover my back every day of the week. And I’m not going to let a single one of them get cornered by your brother.”
Mike returned to the room with three eight-by-ten photographs in his hand. I took them from him and laid them on the table just beyond Zoya Blunt.
“This is what we do for a living, Zoya. Day in and day out. We see people who’ve been violated in the worst possible ways, who’ve been butchered and battered and left for dead,” I said. “Take a look at this.”
She didn’t move.
I walked around her, so that her head—still resting on the table—was facing me. “Pick up your head, young lady,” I shouted in her ear.
Zoya’s head practically bounced off the table, but still she wouldn’t look at me.
“We know that Nik hears voices,” I said. I was hoping my bluff would work, counting on my intuition that the person Jean Jansen heard fighting with Lydia was Nik Blunt.
Her eyes opened and focused on me for the first time. My hunch was confirmed.
“Look at these photographs, Zoya.”
“No, no. You tell me what you know about the voices. How did you find that out?”
“We have a witness.”
“Then you don’t need me,” she said. “Tell me who the witness is.”
“Look at the pictures,” I said, grabbing the photos that showed Corinne Thatcher’s throat, sliced open from one side of her neck to the other. “Look at what Nik did to her.”
“I don’t want to look.”
I slammed my hand on the table, next to her ear. She sat upright. I wrapped one of my arms around her shoulder and held her in place, sticking the image directly in front of her.
Zoya Blunt gasped.
“We’re out of time,” I said, softening my voice. “What happened to the boy who loved to come to this terminal with his father, Zoya? How do we find him before he does this to someone else?”
She shook her head from side to side. “Nik could be anywhere. He doesn’t have a home.”
“Everything he’s been up to has been connected to Grand Central.” I didn’t need to point out that the bodies were piling up closer and closer to the main concourse to make my point. “If you tell me what you know about him, maybe that will help.”
She was silent.
“You say you want your family back,” I said. “What happened to everyone?”
“My father was an engineer, like his father before him. A hostler. You know what that is?”
“We just found out tonight.”
“We came here with him all the time, especially my brothers, but I loved it, too. More inside the terminal, and riding with my dad on the train. Not so much the tunnels and tracks.”
“I’m with you on that,” I said. “Tell me about your mother, Zoya.”
She exhaled and closed her eyes. “I’m named for her—Zoya. She—she had a lot of problems, too. Nik’s like her. A lot like her.”
“Was she from Russia?” Mike asked.
“What difference does that make?”
“Maybe none,” I said. “But one of the victims was an exchange student from Russia. Maybe there’s some—some cause that Nik believed in. That might have been the way they met each other.”
“No causes except himself. That’s always been Nik.”
“In what way is he like your mother?”
“I’m sure the men who worked with my dad will tell you anyway,” she said. “The mental illness. The voices. She heard them, too.”
I had handled cases with schizophrenics before, both as victims and as perps. I knew that in at least 10 percent of people with the condition, there is a first-degree relative—a parent, uncle, cousin—that the disease is most often inherited from.
“Was your mother ever diagnosed?”
“Pretty late in her life. But she was in denial. She blamed everything for the difficult life she’d had.”
“How was it difficult?” I asked. “In what way?”
“She’d grown up in Russia. Her family was very poor. They couldn’t feed all the children, so they actually encouraged her to leave. To emigrate here. She met my father, which is the only good thing that ever happened to her.”
“Why do you say that? She had three children, too—that must have been a happy thing.”
Zoya Blunt sneered at me. “My father was a rock. Just a good solid guy, who loved his family, loved his work. Married my mother before she went crazy, he used to say. The kids? Yeah, we made them both happy at first, but I can’t really remember a time that Nik wasn’t a problem.”
“A problem in what way?” Mike asked.
“Hard to know where to start. Nik was a wild child. A daredevil, a fighter. My dad wanted the three of us to go to college. Nik’s really smart. I mean scary smart about some things. He got into a good school on Long Island—but he was drinking and smoking pot—and dropped out the first semester.”
“Did he have an influence on your other brother?” I said, thinking of the middle child.
“You think,” Zoya said, sarcasm dripping from her tongue, “that killing him was a bad influence, Ms. Cooper?”
That answer got Mike’s full attention. “Nik killed your brother? How’s he been this violent but never arrested?”
“If you want to know what broke my mother’s heart, it was the night five years ago when Nik was twenty-four. He got my brother drunk, stoned—whatever it was—then put him behind the wheel on the Long Island Expressway and passed out on the backseat.”
Zoya Blunt paused.
“The car skidded on black ice and was crushed against a tree on the side of the road. My other brother—who was really a sweet kid, like my dad—was killed instantly. Of course, Nik was thrown clear.”
“It’s always that way,” Mike said.
“It’s why I never went to college. My dad had already died of a heart attack a few years before that. My mother cracked up, and I was left to stay home and take care of her.”
“More than any teenager should have to cope with,” I said.
“Yeah. I didn’t do it very well.”
“Nik’s violence,” Mike said, “when did that all surface? Did schizophrenia cause your mother to be violent?”
“Never,” Zoya said. “My mom lost touch with reality. She’d watch television and think that characters on a show were sending messages to her, you know? She had delusions all the time, so she wasn’t able to function outside the house.”
“That’s what trapped you at home with her?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Were there ever delusions about politics?” Mike asked.
Zoya looked at him, giving the question some thought. “Actually, yeah, there were. She used to have all these crazy thoughts that were about people she knew back in Russia. That they were trying to make her do things. Nightmares about her childhood there.”
“Was her family persecuted for political beliefs?”
“Depends on who you asked. When my mom started losing it, she claimed that was the case. That we’d all be killed—back in her hometown and here—because of political beliefs, from back when the Soviet Union broke up,” Zoya said. “But my father told me none of that was true. I never knew if he said that just to keep me from being frightened, or because it was a fact.”
“What did he think?”
“What my dad thought, Detective, is that my mother’s family were a bunch of thugs. Gangsters was the word he used. That what they did was smuggle tobacco in from Kyrgyzstan, and not one of them knew the first thing about politics. They weren’t dissidents; they were thugs. And anything else she thought about her relatives was a total delusion.”
“The tobacco trade is really dangerous over there,” Mike said. “Talk to me about NorthStar, Zoya. I know Coop wants your family history, but we’ll work backwards for that after we find Nik.”
“All he ever told me is that it was top secret work,” she said. “Look, Detective, I’m pretty sure that was delusional, too. He tried to get into the army after the car wreck. Tried really hard to enlist, but by then we all knew he was hearing voices. No one would have him. Except this NorthStar operation, whatever it is.”
The detective who had taken over the loudspeaker was ramping things up a notch. “Attention, Metro-North riders. The last trains have left the station. We are closing for emergency repairs. Anyone refusing to leave the concourse will be escorted out by force and arrested for the crime of trespass. Step lively. Find your local bus, hail a taxi, start walking to Fleetwood—it’s only fourteen miles away. This station is closed for business till further notice.”
“You’re doing well, Zoya,” Mike said. “I’m going to see if there’s anything my boss needs for a few minutes. If you can think of anyplace here, somewhere Nik would feel safe and could hide out for the night, that’s our most urgent need at the moment.”
“He can hide out anywhere in this terminal that he wants to, Detective Chapman. Nik has the keys to every room in this building.”
THIRTY-NINE
“Where did he get those?” Mike asked. “How’d he do that?”
“Like I told you, my father worked here for more than thirty years. Look at any of the old-timers and see what the key rings look like, hanging from their belts.”
Don Ledger had made that point to us.
“Over time, the supervisors would give my father access to anything he needed. Elevators to get upstairs, lounges to rest in, emergency backup in case there were problems in the basement.”
“I can understand that,” I said, “but they must have taken them back. You don’t retire with keys to the workplace. Nobody would let that happen.”
“My dad never retired, Ms. Cooper. He had a heart attack on his way home. He got off the subway near our house, complaining of chest pains as he climbed the stairs from the platform. Then he collapsed on the street and died right there.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“A neighbor who was on the train with my father came to the house to get us. Left him with a couple of strangers. Nik ran out and got to Dad first, even before the ambulance arrived.”
Zoya Blunt took a breath and a drink of water.
“We met the ambulance—my mother and I did—at the hospital. Nik rode with his body. After we said good-bye and the paramedics went to give her his belongings, Dad’s wallet was missing. Mom got all up in their faces and accused them of stealing from him. Nobody gave any thought to his keys.”
“But it was Nik?” I said. “At least, that’s what you think?”
“He never admitted to stealing money, but it would be just like him,” Zoya said, wiping a tear away. “A few days later, after the wake and after all the guys from Metro-North had paid their respects, Nik began to wear the key chain on his belt. Out in the open, everywhere he went. Thirty, maybe forty keys on it. I never gave it any thought, to tell you the truth. He idolized my father, and I figured it just made him happy to feel like maybe he’d be following in his footsteps. I didn’t care if the bosses at Grand Central had the damn keys or not. Wouldn’t make any difference to them. Now, I think they were . . .”
“What?”
“Like trophies, you know? Like a sign that Nik could go anywhere my father had been,” she said. “Only he knew he wasn’t a fraction of the good person Dad was. Nothing like him.”
Yes, Mike and I knew about saving trophies.
“You must know this whole terminal the way Nik does,” Mike said. “Did he have a secret spot? We’ve shut the place down now. The FBI was able to get a photograph of him from NorthStar a few minutes before you got here. The cops will find him if it takes all night.”
“I’m trying to help you. Really I am.”
“Try harder.”
“We always played in the ticket booths when it was slow in the middle of the afternoon,” she said.
“Not a very good place to hide. They were occupied all day, till fifteen minutes ago.”
“Well, there’s a basement. Some kind of stuffy old place that I didn’t like to be in.”
“Yeah,” Mike said. “He found that.”
“The older he got, the more he liked creepier parts of the terminal, like the tracks and tunnels.”
“He was allowed to go there?”
“Depends on what you mean by allowed. My father used to let us ride with him sometimes when he drove the engines to the roundhouse. I could pull the whistle, the boys could take turns sitting on his lap. As Nik got older—and like I said, he was a daredevil—he’d jump down and take off into the tunnels. My father didn’t want him to get hurt, of course, but by the time Nik was a teenager and tough to control, Dad figured it was just safer to teach him his way around. All the guys had kids who wanted to hang out in the train yards. It was one of the best perks of a job that didn’t pay very much.”
“Attention Nikolay Blunt!” Both Zoya and I started at the sound of her brother’s name. A new speaker had taken over the microphone. “My name is Keith Scully, and I’m commissioner of the New York City Police Department.”
Zoya balled the handkerchief in her fist and pressed it against her mouth.
“We know you’re inside this terminal. We know you’ve killed three people this week. We know what you look like,” Scully said. “We intend to find you before you find us. I’ve got SWAT teams from several police departments, federal agents, United States Army troops, and dogs that will run you to the ground no matter what corner of this building you’re cowering in. Time to surrender, Mr. Blunt. Time to surrender.”
“Does he have guns, Zoya?” Mike asked.
“Probably so, Detective. I really don’t know. My father didn’t like guns and wouldn’t
have ever had one in the house because of my mother’s illness.”
“They must have trained him with guns—probably automatic weapons—to go abroad for NorthStar. When you saw him—other than that last time . . .” Mike said, leaving out the word “rape.”
“He had a gun that night. He didn’t threaten me with it. But when he took his clothes off, I saw that he had a gun, and he had a lot of ammunition.”
“Do you know what kind of gun?”
“I’m not familiar with guns, Detective. Nik had a gym bag, too. I have no idea what was in that, either. I was afraid it was more weapons.”
“Did he talk about the gun?” I asked. “Why he had it with him?”
“I asked him why he did. You have to understand how terrified I was about everything that was going on that night. I was—I was distraught.”
“We wouldn’t have expected you to be anything else,” I said.
“He told me it was because of voices. He told me that there were—I know this sounds absurd—that there were two people living inside him. Nik said he was torn between the two people. That one was beginning to issue orders to him, commands to do things,” Zoya Blunt’s head rolled forward. “That’s the one who made him rape me.”
“Did Nik tell you why he was commanded to hurt you?”
“My mother was from Chechnya, Ms. Cooper. You know Chechnya?”
“I just know it’s a republic of the Russian Federation. I know there are Chechen rebels and that there have been lots of terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Chechnya. Is Nik involved with them?”
Zoya dismissed me. “Maybe one of his voices gets messages from the rebels. Not my brother. He was talking all kinds of nonsense that night. About my mother’s relatives in Chechnya, about human right violations, about . . .”
Mike’s antiterrorist antennae had been raised again. “Are you Muslim, Zoya?”
She glared at him. “That would make this easy for you, wouldn’t it, Detective? Nik could be some kind of Islamic jihadist.”
“Easy isn’t the issue,” Mike said. “It may explain why he’s on this rampage and how big a stage he’s looking to set.”
Terminal City (Alex Cooper) Page 30
