Terminal City

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.

“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.”