Nik Blunt grabbed the neck of the minute hand—which was longer than he was tall—and hoisted himself up on it, swinging his other leg out onto the granite base of the sculpture. He appeared, again, to be fearless.
When he came to rest on the foundation of the sculpture, he balanced himself by grasping a piece of the granite, his cheek resting against the bottom of the clock.
Within seconds, he started to take in his surroundings. When he changed the angle of his head—looking to the right—we locked eyes immediately.
Nik Blunt laughed. “You must be a cop.”
I couldn’t speak. I shook my head violently from side to side.
“You’ve got the vest,” he said, stepping closer to me and extending his right hand in my direction. “And that desperate look about you.”
I was above him now, slowly working my way up the pediment of the sculpture. He didn’t appear to have a gun—or at least not one in his hand. I had no idea how many rounds of ammunition he’d already discharged in his spree.
I reached into my jeans’ pocket. The small Swiss Army knife that I had taken from Zoya was closed, but with the nail of my forefinger, I pulled at the notch in the tiny blade and opened it. I doubted it was even two inches long.
“Not so fast, girl,” Nik Blunt said as he reached up and grabbed my left ankle. “Another notch for my dead cop belt. Ladies’ day. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
I shook my leg and broke loose. He was not quite close enough to get a good hold on me.
There was a cornice of the pediment over my head. I reached for it with my right hand—the one holding the tiny, red-encased blade—and then passed it to my left hand, clinging to the wet granite with both of them.
Nik Blunt swiped at me again, and this time connected. He was holding the leg of my pants with his right hand. He repeated his mantra. “My good fortune, Officer. It’s ladies’ day.”
I looked down at him. I held the knife tightly in my hand, then leaned over and swiftly plunged the tip of it into the skin of his wrist.
He recoiled in pain, the knife sticking in place.
Blunt swiveled, trying to flick it off his right hand, still clutching a piece of the granite carving with his left.
As he turned his head away from me, the night sky blazed with floodlights. The snipers in the building across the street opened fire, five or six of them at once.
I shuddered and clutched at the granite as tight as I could, praying the bullets wouldn’t miss their mark.
Blunt stretched out his hand to reach for my foot again—to take me down with him. Blood gushed from his mouth as he tried one last time to speak.
I kicked him away, grasping at the stone hem of Minerva’s robe to keep my balance. I didn’t know how many times Nik Blunt had been shot by the sharpshooters, but I had no doubt that he was dead before he hit the street.
FORTY-EIGHT
“Ladies’ day, my ass,” Mike said.
He and Mercer were standing at the base of the pediment, as soaking wet as I was. Each of us was holding on to some decoration on the enormous statue. I was too shaken to try to climb down and into the terminal again. I didn’t trust my own footing.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Mercer said. “I’m going to step back inside, through the clock.”
“Please don’t. You’re the only one who keeps me calm.”
“I won’t leave you until Emergency Services sets up out here. Mike and I—”
“Sorry, but Mike makes me too nervous.”
“What?” Mike said. “Stick with me, kid. I’m going to break into that Shake Shack and make you a great big chocolate—”
“Don’t tell me what you’re going to do. Get me down off this roof now.”
“They’ve got rappel ropes and a harness, Alex,” Mercer said.
“Are you crazy? I’m not rappelling anywhere.”
“Just a precaution. I told them you’d feel more secure that way.”
“I almost died. Nothing’s going to make me feel secure tonight.”
“How about if I put some brandy in the shake?” Mike asked.
“Stop talking to me. Mercer’s trying to explain what I have to do.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” Mercer said. “You know these guys are the best.”
Emergency Service cops talked jumpers off bridges and saved people trapped in elevators. They plunged into the Hudson River after boats overturned and dragged folks out of burning cars. I had seen dozens of rescues on the news, but I still didn’t want to be their next guinea pig.
“I must have to do something. That’s what scares me. I’m tired and wet and cold and terrified.”
“You can just stand where you are,” Mercer said. “They’ll wrap you up and take you in. They’ll carry you.”
“With my luck the ropes will break.”
“They hold water buffalo, Coop,” Mike said. “You’ll be fine.”
“Please make him wait inside.”
Mercer waved a hand at Mike.
“You’d have a quicker time of it,” Mike said, “if you got one of those animal tranquilizer darts. She’ll be easier to move if she’s not croaking at you.”
Mike disappeared through the large circle on the clock face. Mercer stroked my shoulder and counted the minutes with me until the Emergency Service cops reached my side.
FORTY-NINE
Power was restored in Grand Central Terminal shortly after 1:00 A.M. Nik Blunt had indeed tampered with the red button that controlled the power and the rails. It took an electrical crew more than an hour to undo the problem.
Most of the officers—city, state, and federal—were doing damage control and cleanup of the concourse by the time I reached the stationmaster’s office to see Commissioner Scully.
On the way downstairs—by elevator, to avoid the glass catwalk—Mercer told me that Zoya Blunt had been rescued from the rear of the rooftop before I was brought inside. She had been taken to a hospital to be examined—for both physical and psychological injury. Beyond the scrapes and bruises she’d sustained in her effort to escape, the most profound effect of the evening was the emotional trauma she’d suffered in confronting the scale of her brother’s pathology and monstrous nature.
Mike was waiting for me with Keith Scully. He wrapped a blanket around me and brought me a steaming hot cup of tea.
“How do you feel?” the commissioner asked.
“Numb. Totally numb.”
“That was smart.”
“What?”
“Luring Blunt out on the roof so the snipers had a clean shot at him.”
“Smart?” I shivered uncontrollably as we talked. “Zoya and I were backed into a corner. She took the lead and I assumed she knew where she was going. Climbing out on the rooftop was never a part of my plan, but if it’s what kept me alive, I’m glad I did it.”
“I’m sure you would have liked the shots to have come more quickly,” Scully said, “but there were so many guys in camo tonight, they couldn’t be sure it was Blunt until he turned his head in the direction the snipers were aiming from.”
I’d have nightmares for months, I knew that. Any bad dreams about my fear of heights and falling would be trumped by all of the images of the night’s bloody deaths.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I reached for the tea, but my hand was shaking too much to hold it. “I didn’t just imagine that, did I?”
“Yes, Alex. Nik Blunt is dead.”
I thought of Corinne Thatcher first. Her slit throat was the earliest sign I’d had of this killer’s brutality.
“Has any more information come in?” I asked.
“Let’s get you dry clothes and something stronger than tea,” Scully said. “There’s plenty of time for questions tomorrow.”
“I want to know about the Thatcher girl first,” I sai
d. “Why did he target her?”
Keith Scully had been busy piecing the puzzle together in the short time he’d had, in preparation for the media assault that would follow in the morning. “The squad finally found her boyfriend in the DR.”
“Paco?” I asked.
“Exactly. The guy with the grudge against the president.”
“Because his brother lost both legs in Afghanistan, right?”
“Yeah,” Scully said. “Paco met Nik Blunt at the VA hospital.”
“The Veterans Affairs hospital?”
“Yeah. East 23rd Street. Paco was there taking his brother for treatment. Blunt was visiting a guy he’d worked with overseas. They both got to talking about political beefs. Paco figured Corinne might be an ally for Blunt because she worked with returning vets and their families. He connected the two of them.”
“Because she’d become disgruntled,” I remembered her parents saying to us.
The invisible strings that tied random people together weren’t so coincidental in the end.
“So he meets these girls—at least these two, that we know of,” Scully said. “At some point he gets bold enough to tell them he has a plan—”
“Do you know what plan?”
“No, but some kind of fireworks in the most public setting he can think of.”
“Grand Central Terminal. With the president on the horizon.”
“You know how it is, Alexandra. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry will come forward tomorrow with a sighting or story about an encounter they’ve had with the killer. A theory or a motive that the journalists and profilers will jump on. Bottom line? Nik Blunt’s a psycho. Meets these young women. Thinks they sympathize with him.”
“About a cause,” I said. “Only Zoya told us he’s never really had a cause, other than himself.”
“What sends him over the edge?” Scully asked rhetorically. “Maybe the moment finally comes for his big plan to be realized, and both women turn him down. He figures they know too much and might betray him. So the voices in his head tell him to kill.”
“The way he’s killed before—civilians in a village in Uganda. Maybe others,” I said. “It was so obvious to us all that he had to have done something as violent, as extreme, before these murders. But he had no criminal record in the States.”
“NorthStar will be answering for that.”
“I know where Corinne and Lydia wound up, Keith. But where did he meet with them? Where did he take them to drug them?”
“There’s a whole cache of materials in one of the little ‘caves’ in the tunnel,” Scully said, “near the Northwest Passage.”
“Surely neither one of these victims would have set foot in the tunnels.”
“I’m not suggesting that. But we found a lot of ammo in one of them, and a whole lot of journals with rants and diatribes. Some receipts from flophouse hotels he might have gotten them to visit, if they were bleeding hearts.”
“His cave in the tunnel,” I said, “is it anywhere near the one that Carl lived in?”
“Very close by. We’ll be working that area, too. Seems pretty clear he met Carl somewhere around the Northwest Passage—above or below the streets. And that he used Carl to do errands for him—probably like stealing the trunk from in front of the Yale Club.”
“So Carl became Blunt’s runner-boy, too.”
“Seems that way. When he got too nosy or too greedy, it must have been easier for Nik Blunt to silence him. Use Carl as part of the tease to get us agitated about the train terminal.”
“Carl was disposable,” I said.
Mercer came into the room. “Nan Toth just dropped off some dry clothes for you. She was watching on the late news, Alex. She said as much as you like shopping, she didn’t think you’d find anything open at this hour.”
“Thanks. It’ll feel good to change.”
“She also wants you to know that Evan went back to the judge on your cannibal cop case. Told him about the Raymond Tanner connection and what Tanner’s been up to.”
“He didn’t need to do that,” I said, massaging my temple with my fingers.
“Good thing he did. The judge was pretty outraged. He’s got your cannibal wearing an ankle bracelet from now till the case goes to trial, restricted from leaving home and lots of other tightened-up rules,” Mercer said. “And the judge signed a subpoena to dump Dominguez’s cell phone to try to track down Tanner.”
I picked my head up and smiled. “Not that I don’t like your hospitality, Mercer, but it would be awfully nice if they nailed Tanner before I hit retirement age.”
“I’ve got some pull with the commissioner,” Mercer said, pointing a finger at Keith Scully. “He might free up some manpower now to get your man.”
“Count on it,” Scully said. “You’ll be in charge, Detective Wallace. Pick your own team and get it done.”
“There’s still so much to figure out about Nik Blunt,” I said. “Look at the resources you had to marshal to solve these crimes. Not to mention the follow-up everyone will be doing.”
Scully patted me on the back as he stood up to leave the room. “These crazies are self-radicalizing, Alex. But we’ve got to spend just as much time running down every one of them as we do a terrorist threat. Mike’ll tell you more about that, I’m sure.”
I looked up at Mike, sad that I had been so distrustful. “Sorry, Detective. I didn’t mean to doubt you.”
“As long as you didn’t doubt that I was trying to get a crew up to the top of the terminal to bring you and Zoya down.”
“Well, I did wonder a bit,” I said, drawing the blanket tightly around my shoulders. “You just wouldn’t let go of the loudspeaker, would you?”
Mike cocked his head and looked at me, to see whether I was serious. “I thought you’d like the sound of my voice, wherever you were. And I’m impressed you figured out my mythological clues. Jeez, kid—any rookie can run up all those flights of stairs. I wanted to save my strength for you.”
“I did like hearing your voice, Mike. Just not so far away.”
“Blunt had actually booby-trapped some of the stairwells, Coop. NorthStar tricks, I guess. I had every faith in you till the troops got there.”
Mercer was still holding the clothes that Nan had sent over to me. “These are for you, Alex. Mike will take you out to shower and change. There’s a special train set up by gate 100. Let’s get you warm and dry before we take you home. Your teeth are chattering.”
“A special train? I’m too tired for a pajama party, even on steel wheels. Just take me home, guys. I’ll stop shivering if you let me go home.”
“The president insists, Coop.”
“The president of the United States?” I said, mustering a laugh. “Really? I’m way too stressed out for your sense of humor. Unless there’s a bar car on this special train.”
“There’s all the bells and whistles you can handle. POTUS wants to thank you for making the terminal safe for his arrival.”
FIFTY
“Why is this train here?” I asked. I had showered and was warming up, sitting in a gleaming silver railroad car that was parked next to the track, adjacent to the terminal, where Big Timber had been.
“Consider it like Air Force Two, Coop. The president’s been whistle-stopping on his main machine, which consists of four cars for his entourage and staff. This is the fifth piece, which is actually brought into Manhattan whenever POTUS stays at the Waldorf. It backs up to Roosevelt’s armored car, in case there has to be an emergency evacuation from the city.”
“And tonight?”
“The head of the Secret Service saw Mercer and the guys bringing you down from the roof. Scully told them who you are. They thought you needed some TLC.”
I was dressed in a white robe with the presidential seal on the pocket, part of the guest accoutrements of this elegant private varnish
. There was a complete setup of personal items in the lavish bathroom, where I had showered and washed my hair.
A waiter had served me a Dewar’s and offered a sandwich. I curled my feet up beneath me and settled on the sofa next to Mike.
“Is the president going ahead with his plan to ride into Grand Central tomorrow evening?”
“Apparently with more purpose than before. He’ll meet the families of the cops who were killed. The Thatchers and the Tsarlevs, who are being flown in from Russia, too. He’ll make a speech about the need for vigilance on the part of every citizen and express his gratitude for the work of law enforcement and first responders.”
“That’s such a good thing for him to do. Pay respect to those who lost their lives this week and restore confidence in the use of this great terminal.”
“You feeling any better?”
I nodded. “It’s crazy to be so chilled in the middle of this heat spell.”
“It’s your emotional thermostat that’s out of whack. Getting drenched—and frightened near to death—while you were on the run from a maniac just topped it off.”
“Thank you, Dr. Chapman. And who do you think has been fiddling with my thermostat this last month?” I asked. “Please don’t tell me I have to spend another week with Vickee and Mercer till somebody puts the cuffs on Raymond Tanner.”
“Nope. You’re no longer banished to Queens.”
“How’d you take care of that?”
Mike took a slug of his martini and then grinned at me. “I’m taking you home tonight. I’m staying with you until—”
“You’re what?” I was flushed with embarrassment, or perhaps excitement.
“I said I’m—”
“I mean, after all the horrors of this week,” I said, playing with strands of my wet hair, “and the way things have been between us lately, it doesn’t seem the best moment to try to put this together.”
“I need to fix that, Coop. I need to start working on that as soon as possible.”
“But tonight?” I picked up my Scotch, my hand shaking, and tried to move it to my mouth.
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