Terminal City

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 said. “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.”