The Green And The Gray

12

The Crime Scene Unit's floodlights threw multiple shadows in front of him as Fierenzo walked across the courtyard and stopped by the freshly gouged hole in the bricks. "Here?" he asked.

"No, here," the cop walking beside him corrected, pointing to a spot three feet closer to the low wire fence. "I saw her lying right here."

Fierenzo looked at the mangled bushes alongside the building. A squirrel might be able to hide in there, but not a teenaged girl. "And then she got up and went where?"

"I don't know," the cop said, carefully filtering most of his frustration out of his voice. "And she only got halfway up before I got the spotlight on the scene."

"What about the older woman?"

"She was over there," the cop said, pointing at a group of squashed bushes just in front of the tree with the broken limb. "I saw her, too, before we got the spot going."

Fierenzo looked around. Two women vanished into thin air, one of whom had allegedly been shot and killed.

Only there was no body, no blood, and no bullet. She and the girl had both disappeared, as had the two men Whittier had been babbling about when he and Powell arrived. There was, in fact, nothing to prove this whole thing was anything other than a hallucination or a hoax.

Except, of course, for the shattered bricks and the broken tree limb.

He stepped over to the limb. This wasn't some delicate little branch a careless ten-year-old might break if he put his weight on it. It was long and healthy and two inches in diameter, the kind of limb you would normally take off with a chain saw.

But this one hadn't been chainsawed. The cut was rough and compressed, like someone with immense upper-body strength had taken a slightly dull axe to it.

In fact, it rather reminded him of the much smaller gashes he'd seen on the trees at the Whittiers'

place.

He crouched down beside the downed limb, glowering with frustration. It had taken them over an hour to track down the cabby who'd brought Caroline Whittier and the girl here, and as a result they had arrived only minutes before the incident. If the cabby had given him the right address in the first place, he and Powell might have been in position to witness the incident themselves instead of being two buildings up the street looking at mailbox names.

But they only had what they had. Glancing around, he started to stand up.

And paused. From this angle, and this elevation, he could see something he hadn't noticed before.

Etched across several groups of the bricks were long, narrow cracks. Stress lines, apparently, only they weren't centered on the hole that had been blasted in the brickwork. Instead, they were radiating outward from a spot near the low wire fence. "Where did you say the woman was lying when you came around the corner?" he asked the cop.

"Right about there," the other said, pointing to a spot a foot away from the center of the crack system.

"Thanks," Fierenzo said, straightening to his feet. Retracing his steps across the courtyard, he crossed the street, making his way through the line of neighborhood gawkers gathered on the far side. The cop standing guard on the building door let him in, and he trudged his way up the stairs to the third floor.

Powell answered his knock. "Anything?" Fierenzo asked.

The other shrugged. "They've given a statement," he said. "Doesn't make any more sense than what they'd already told us downstairs."

The Whittiers were sitting side by side on the couch, Caroline nursing a cup of tea as another cop stood watch against the opposite wall. "Mr. and Mrs. Whittier," Fierenzo said as he crossed the living room and sat down in a chair facing them. "I'm Sergeant Thomas Fierenzo. You and I talked earlier this afternoon, Mr. Whittier."

Whittier's lips compressed briefly. "Yes."

"Let's start with Melantha," Fierenzo said. "I want her full name, and where exactly she is."

The Whittiers glanced at each other, and the husband give a microscopic shrug. "We think her name's Melantha Green," Mrs. Whittier said, her voice tight. "And we don't know where she is.

When I looked for her after the police arrived, she was gone."

"What about you?" Fierenzo asked, shifting his gaze to Whittier. "Did you see where she went?"

Whittier shook his head. "I noticed her a few feet away from Caroline as I was running up," he said.

"But I was concentrating on my wife."

"Did you see her get up or start to crawl away?" Fierenzo persisted. "Do you remember which direction she was facing? Anything?"

"All I remember is seeing Caroline's coat on the ground."

"Where was she hiding when the two officers came to your apartment Wednesday night?"

"I don't know that, either."

Fierenzo looked at Powell. The other detective nodded fractionally and started for the door, gesturing to the cop standing by the wall. "Officer?"

The cop followed him out into the hall, Powell closing the door behind him. "All right," Fierenzo said, leaning back in his chair and eyeing the Whittiers. "It's just you and me now; and if you'd like, all of this can be off the record. Just tell me what happened."

"What do you mean?" Whittier asked cautiously.

"I mean all the strange things you've been afraid to tell anyone," Fierenzo said, studying their faces and trying to judge whether or not he was hitting anywhere near the target. "Melantha's habit of disappearing whenever cops show up, for instance. Or tell me about the people on your balcony this afternoon trying to break into your apartment."

That one got definite twitches from both of them. "Breaking in from the balcony?" Whittier demanded, frowning.

"They tried to hammer their way through the glass," Fierenzo said. "My guess is that they were scared away by the second group, the ones who came in through the front door."

"Wait a second," Whittier said, sounding thoroughly confused now. "Are you saying we had two different sets of intruders?"

"Three in through the front, two in from the balcony." Fierenzo lifted his eyebrows at the wife. "It was two people you saw up there, wasn't it, Mrs. Whittier?"

Whittier looked at his wife. "You saw someone on our balcony?"

"Yes, from Lee's," she said, an odd note of dread in her voice. "And yes, there were two of them."

"Who also apparently tried to chop down your potted trees," Fierenzo went on.

The reaction this time was pure surprise, with no guilt or hidden knowledge mixed in. "The trees?"

Whittier asked. "Why?"

"No idea," Fierenzo said. "Who's Cyril?"

The sudden change of subject caught both of them by surprise, and in the half second before they could cover it up, Fierenzo spotted the twin flashes of recognition.

Whittier tried the dumb approach anyway. "Cyril?"

"He called your apartment while we were there," Fierenzo told him. "He said that if you didn't return Melantha to him thousands of New Yorkers were going to die." He let his gaze harden. "I trust I don't need to tell you how we react to threats like that these days."

Whittier winced. "No, sir."

"Then tell me what's going on."

Whittier sighed. "Before God, I have no idea," he said. "Like we told the other detective, Melantha was handed over to us at gunpoint. We've been bouncing around like Ping-Pong balls in a hurricane ever since."

Fierenzo suppressed a grimace. Unsatisfying though the answer might be, Whittier's voice and body language were finally carrying the ring of truth. "And Cyril?"

"Melantha told me he was one of her people," Mrs. Whittier said, lifting her hands helplessly. "That's all I know."

"I get the impression he was involved with some agreement, too," Whittier offered. "But what agreement, and between whom, I don't know."

"Possibly with someone named Halfdan," Mrs. Whittier offered. "Melantha mentioned that name, too."

"What about the thousands of dead New Yorkers?" Fierenzo asked. "Any idea what he was talking about?"

The Whittiers looked at each other again. "Melantha told me the Greens and the Grays would all die if she didn't go back," she said hesitantly. "But I didn't think there were that many of them."

"The Greens, as in Melantha Green?" Fierenzo asked.

"Yes, though that might just be a coincidence," Mrs. Whittier said. "But then she said they all wanted her dead."

"Did Cyril say anything else?" Whittier asked.

"Nothing that made sense," Fierenzo said, deciding not to mention the references to Sylvia and Aleksander just yet. "We let the machine take the message. You can listen to the whole thing later if you want."

"So what happens now?" Whittier asked cautiously.

For a moment Fierenzo gave him what Lieutenant Cerreta referred to as the Official NYPD Stare. "If you mean are you under arrest, the answer is no," he said. "But this is not the end of this. If the girl shows up, or if you learn anything else, you will call me immediately. Understand?"

Whittier swiped the tip of his tongue across his upper lip. "Yes, sir."

Standing up, Fierenzo pulled out his wallet and slid out a card. "Here are my office and cell phone numbers," he said, handing it to Whittier. "Call me any time."

"Yes, sir," Whittier said again, handling the card carefully.

"Then I'll say good-night," Fierenzo said, nodding to each of them. "I suggest you lock the door behind me."

Powell was waiting for him in the hallway. "You get any of that?" Fierenzo asked.

The other shook his head. "Not really. That door's pretty thick."

"To summarize: they don't know Cyril, they don't know where the girl went, and they don't know anything else."

"Did you tell them Umberto had matched Cyril's voice with the ringleader of his polite break-ins?"

"No, I thought we'd keep that to ourselves for the moment," Fierenzo said. "Because for all their wide-eyed surprise at the news that someone had tried to get into their apartment from their balcony, neither of them remembered to ask how someone could have gotten up there in broad daylight in the first place."

"So how does someone do that?"

"Damned if I know," Fierenzo conceded, heading toward the stairs. "But I'm pretty sure they do."

"You want to haul them in for obstruction?"

Fierenzo shook his head. "I'd rather put them on a leash and let them run."

"I doubt Cerreta will spring for the extra manpower," Powell warned.

"I wasn't planning to ask him," Fierenzo said as they headed downstairs. "I figured we could cover this ourselves."

Powell turned a dark look on him. "As in, there goes my weekend?"

"The blood of thousands of New Yorkers, Jon," Fierenzo reminded him.

"Easy for you to say," Powell grumbled. "With Claire and the girls gone, you can keep whatever crazy hours you want."

"Sandy will understand," Fierenzo assured him.

"Sandy's getting tired of understanding," Powell countered. "What the hell. We're starting right away, I suppose?"

"They're not going anywhere tonight," Fierenzo said. "If they really don't know where the girl went, they're bound to stick around at least until morning in case she comes back."

"And if she does?"

"She won't," Fierenzo said grimly. "Wherever she went, I get the feeling she didn't go voluntarily."

They crossed the entryway alcove past the duty cop and stepped out into the chilly night air. The CSU investigators were closing down shop, their lights switched off and being broken down. A

pickup truck with the Department of Parks and Recreation logo on the side was parked at the curb, and a pair of figures were dragging the broken tree limb toward it. "I still don't think we should let them out of our sight," Powell said.

"We won't," Fierenzo assured him. "I think I can find someone who'll baby-sit the building until we get back in the morning."

Even without looking, he could feel Powell's eyes on him. "You wouldn't," the other said. "Smith?"

"Why not?" Fierenzo countered, pulling out his cell phone. "He wants to be a detective. It's only fair that we show him what the job entails."

"I suppose you even have his number memorized?"

"Don't be silly," Fierenzo admonished him. "I've got it on speed-dial."

Roger locked the door behind the detective, fastening both the deadbolt and chain. Then he went through the apartment, making sure every window was locked.

Caroline was still on the couch, gazing into her teacup, when he returned. "How are you doing?" he asked.

She gave a little shrug. "Okay."

"How's your side?" he asked, his own chest throbbing a little harder in sympathy.

Another shrug. "It's okay."

With a sigh, he sat down beside her. "It's not your fault, Caroline," he told her quietly. "It really isn't."

"I'm the one who let her go into the courtyard," she said, her lower lip trembling visibly as she fought back the tears. "I could have said no, but I didn't. How can it not be my fault?" She shook her head. "That woman came straight out of the tree," she murmured with a sudden shiver. "I know you don't believe that part, but she did."

"Where she came from doesn't really matter," Roger said, ducking the implied question. Caroline had only been able to give him a quick summary before the cops marched them back to the apartment, and the mysterious woman and her baffling appearance had been one of the many things he hadn't understood. "My point is that if you had stayed inside, Melantha would have been here when my two gorillas showed up. There was going to be trouble no matter what you did or didn't do."

Caroline sniffed back some tears. "They must have followed the cab."

"We don't know that," he said, determined to snap her out of this quagmire of self-recrimination.

"Maybe they followed me."

"No, it was me," she insisted. "We saw them climbing our building, just as we were leaving Lee's."

"They were climbing?" Roger asked, frowning. "You mean the outside?"

She nodded. "And Melantha called them Grays."

"Grays," Roger murmured. The Greens, and the Grays. This was starting to make an unpleasant sort of sense. "What did they look like?"

"I don't know," Caroline said. "They seemed short and squat. Sort of like the way you described our visitor last night."

Roger nodded. "And like the two who shot at me just now."

Caroline looked up sharply. "They shot at you?"

"With a gun that appears from nowhere and fires invisible bowling balls," he said, gingerly rubbing his sore chest. "Knocked me straight across the room."

"Let me see," Caroline said, hurriedly setting down her cup and unzipping his jacket. "You didn't tell me you were hurt."

"It's nothing," Roger assured her as she got through the jacket and started on his shirt buttons. "Like I said, it was like getting hit with a bowling ball."

"Well, there's no blood, anyway," Caroline said, peering through the gap she'd opened. "There's going to be some bruising, though."

"That I can live with," he said, buttoning up the shirt again. "I'm just glad the things weren't on whatever setting blows off tree branches."

Caroline caught her breath. "Is that what happened?"

"What else?" he said. "I wasn't outside in time to see the branch go, but I did see the woman get slammed into the tree. It was exactly what happened to me, only worse."

"Maybe that's what happened to Melantha, too," Caroline said. "Oh, Roger, what are we going to do?

She trusted us, and we've let her down."

"I don't know," Roger said, taking her hand as he fought back his own gnawing sense of guilt.

Maybe if he hadn't been so intimidating—maybe if Melantha had felt free to tell them the whole truth

—this could have been avoided. But it was too late. Now, most likely, the story was lost to them forever.

Unless...

Letting go of Caroline's hand, he got to his feet. "Where are you going?" she asked as he headed across the living room.

"Fierenzo said we had a message on our machine," he reminded her, picking up the handset and punching in their number.

Caroline came up beside him as the answering machine picked up. Roger punched in the retrieval code, then switched to speakerphone so they could both hear. "Hello, Roger, my name is Cyril," an unfamiliar voice said. "I understand you spoke to Sylvia at Aleksander's this morning..."

They let the message run to the end. Caroline gave a little shiver, Roger noticed, when he came to the part about the blood of thousands of New Yorkers.

"... I hope you'll do the right thing, and that we'll see you and Melantha here soon," the voice concluded.

There was the click of a disconnect. "Lovely," Roger growled. "Nothing like a little veiled threat to

—"

"Hello, Roger, my name is Aleksander," a new voice unexpectedly came on. "I wanted to apologize for not being here when you came by this morning. Sylvia told me about your conversation, and I sense her zeal may have skewed your perception of us. I'd like to make that up to you, as well as give you the complete story before you make any decision on what to do with Melantha. You'd be more than welcome to come back here; alternatively, there is one of your own who's familiar with the situation."

Roger felt his throat tighten. One of your own?

"His name is Otto Velovsky, and he lives in the apartment building across from Jackson Square,"

Aleksander went on. "Please go and listen to him. I don't exaggerate when I say that the fate of the entire city may hang in the balance."

The disconnect click came again, and this time it was followed by silence. Roger waited a moment to make sure there weren't any more messages, then clicked off his end of the connection. "Where's Jackson Square?" Caroline asked.

"No idea," Roger said. "Do you know if the Youngs have a good city map?"

"Should be here," Caroline said, pulling open the telephone stand drawer.

The map was indeed there, tucked beneath a small stack of notepads and pencils. They took it back to the couch, and for a minute searched through it in silence. "There," Caroline said suddenly, pointing to a spot in the West Village near 14th Street and Eighth Avenue. "One of those little neighborhood pocket parks."

"Right," Roger said, nodding as he studied the area. It wasn't too far from a little Italian place he'd taken Caroline to a couple of times before they were married. "Did he give an address? I don't remember hearing one."

"We can look him up in the phone book," Caroline said. "I wonder who he is, and how he fits into this."

"I'm more worried about that 'one of your own' comment," Roger said. "It sounded really strange."

"And the woman by the tree told me to leave Melantha to her own people," Caroline said slowly.

"Roger... these aren't just two ethnic groups, are they?"

He shook his head. "No ethnic group I've ever heard of can climb walls or pop out of trees."

"Trees!" Caroline clutched suddenly at his arm. "Roger—if that woman could come out of the tree, maybe Melantha went into it."

"Oh, damn," Roger muttered as a cluster of mismatched puzzle pieces suddenly fell into place.

"That's how she disappeared Wednesday night. She just popped into one of the orange trees." He snorted under his breath. "I can't believe I'm saying this."

"Never mind that," Caroline said, jumping up and starting across the living room. "Come on."

"Whoa," Roger said. "Where are we going?"

"To the courtyard, of course," Caroline said, scooping up her coat from the chair where she'd draped it. "We have to see if Melantha's in that tree."

"With the cops still out there?"

Caroline froze with one arm halfway into its sleeve. "Oh. No, I guess not."

"Definitely not," Roger agreed, trying to think it through. "And even after they leave, it might not be a good idea. If the woman's still out there, and if she didn't see where Melantha went, that might give her away."

"I don't know," Caroline said, her eyes going strangely distant. "She looked awfully dead to me."

"Then where did the body go?" Roger countered. "Besides, even if she's not there, there may be more of her people around."

"Or the men who shot you," Caroline agreed with another shiver. "Did I tell you they can turn invisible?"

Roger felt something catch in his throat. "No, you did not," he said, trying hard not to yell. Of all the things to forget to tell him—"How do you know?"

"The Grays on the building today did that," Caroline said. "You could see them moving against the wall, but only because they were moving. Once they stopped, it was like they weren't even there."

"Terrific," Roger said, looking surreptitiously around the room.

"But they weren't completely invisible," Caroline added. "You could still see their shadows."

"Really," Roger said, a spark of an idea finally coming to him. "Wait here."

He found the hefty four-cell flashlight the Youngs kept on hand for power outages and went through the apartment again, sweeping the light across walls and ceilings and looking for unexplained mansized shadows. To his relief, there weren't any. "Looks clear," he reported as he returned to the living room.

"I hope so," Caroline said. "What now?"

Roger looked out the window. The extra lights that had been set up around the park had been taken apart and were being loaded into their van. "There's nothing we can do until morning," he said. "We don't know who's going to be watching, and even if we find Melantha we haven't got any place to run but back here. We've already seen how vulnerable this place is."

"But we can't let her stay out there all night."

"We're assuming she was inside one of your orange trees all night and most of the next day," he reminded her. "She ought to be able to hold out until morning."

"I suppose," Caroline said reluctantly. "What then?"

"We'll call a cab," Roger said. "Once it's standing here with the engine running, you'll go over to the tree and see if you can get her to come out. If she's there, and if she answers, we can hopefully all be on the FDR before anyone can stop us."

He looked out the window again. "If so, then you two can hole up in a hotel somewhere while I go talk to this Velovsky character and see how much of this mess he can clear up."

Caroline sighed. "I just wish there was more we could do."

"Me, too," Roger said. "But I don't know what else to suggest."

"I know," Caroline said reluctantly. "Could we at least...? No, never mind."

"What?" he asked. "Come on, tell me."

"Could we at least use the hide-a-bed here instead of one of the bedrooms?" she asked hesitantly. "I know she was watching when I did the code downstairs. That way, if she gets into the building but can't remember the apartment code, we'd hear her knocking."

"Sure," Roger said, suppressing a grimace. He never slept well on hide-a-beds, and Caroline knew it.

But aside from that, it was a good idea. "Go get our stuff and I'll get the bed set up."

"Okay." To his mild surprise, she leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. "Thank you."

"No problem," he assured her.

And besides, he thought as he stacked the couch cushions against the wall, no matter where they settled down for the night, he wasn't going to sleep well.