The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 11

Keith Converse felt as if he hadn't slept at all. He'd spent the evening alone, which hadn't been a good idea. He'd consumed almost half a fifth of scotch- and not the good scotch he and Mary had always saved for company, either. It had been the cheap stuff that he kept on hand for the days when he felt he just needed a drink after work. The whiskey was raw enough that until last night he'd never been able to swallow more than one or two, and usually he wound up pouring what was left of the second drink down the drain. But last night nothing had gone down the drain. He'd just kept drinking, hoping that the alcohol would eventually take away the image of the burned body he'd seen that day.

The body that everyone had told him was his son's.

All evening, as he sat in his chair sipping whiskey and trying to forget what he'd seen, what Mary had said kept recurring to him: "He's dead, Keith… Jeff's dead, and you've got to face it."

But all he saw, no matter how much scotch he forced down his throat, was that patch of unburned skin, the patch that hadn't been charred this morning, but was burned so badly by afternoon that no tattoo could have been seen even if it were there.

Sometime after midnight, he forced himself to go to bed, but the patch of unmarked skin hung in his mind's eye as if it were somehow lit from within. The patch of skin where a tattoo should have been.

As the sun came up, Keith finally gave up on sleep and rose to try to clear his head with a cold shower, his doubts having congealed into an absolute certainty.

The body they'd shown him wasn't Jeff's.

Then what had happened?

Was it a mistake?

Could they have shown him the wrong body?

Was it possible there had been another burned body in the morgue? While the coffeemaker did its work, Keith went into the tiny alcove off the living room that served as his office and logged on to the Internet. He ran the search every way he could, checked the archives of every news agency in the area. In the last week, only three people in all of New York had died in a fire.

Jeff and the two correction officers.

So they hadn't showed him the wrong body.

Then what was going on?

He drank three cups of coffee, the argument raging inside his throbbing head. Mary had to be right-he was just refusing to face the reality of what had happened, grasping at any straw, no matter how weak it might be. Face it, he told himself over and over again. But no matter how hard he tried, a voice inside him kept insisting that something was wrong, that it hadn't been Jeff's body he'd seen in the morgue, no matter how impossible that seemed.

Back in his truck, and back on the expressway, he headed once more to the city. This time, though, he didn't go to the Medical Examiner's office. He headed instead to the Fifth Precinct station on Elizabeth Street.

He parked in a garage on the block north of the precinct house and walked south on a sidewalk that was already crowded at nine a.m. Twin green globes marked the station. Aside from that, it was a nondescript, not quite white building distinguished only by double front doors that had been painted a shade of blue so washed-out that Keith wondered if the bureaucrat who had chosen it had been color blind, or-more likely-the city had gotten a deal on a batch of paint no one else would buy. The blue doors stood open, though, and he stepped through a small foyer and pushed through an inner set of oak and glass doors, automatically looking around for the metal detectors that had stood just inside nearly every public building he'd been in since the morning after Jeff was arrested. But there were only several neutral-gray desks-only two of which were occupied-and a few patrolmen standing around talking. Around to the right he found the long, ornately carved oak counter that was the nerve center of the precinct.

The desk sergeant listened to his request, his face impassive. "Lemme get this straight," he said when Keith was done. "You want to see the report on that wreck yesterday morning, the one up at Delancey and Bowery?" When Keith nodded, the sergeant frowned. "How come?"

Keith was ready for the question. "It was my son that died," he said smoothly, giving no hint that he had any suspicions that it might not have been Jeff at all. "I just want to know what happened to him, that's all."

The desk sergeant's gaze shifted to a pair of patrolmen who were just heading out the door. "Hey, Ryan-didn't you and Hernandez catch that mess yesterday morning?"

The patrolman came over, and Keith introduced himself. "I just wondered exactly what happened. My son…" He let his voice trail off, leaving the last words unspoken.

"It was his kid that died," the desk sergeant offered, his voice finally taking on a note of sympathy. "You want to tell him what happened?"

Johnny Ryan shook his head. "Not that much to tell," he said. "By the time I got there, the van was already burning. Some old wreck of a car had slammed into it."

"What about the driver of the other car? Wasn't he hurt?" Keith asked.

Ryan shrugged. "If he was, it sure didn't slow him down much. He was gone before anyone could even get a good look at him-but don't worry, we'll find him."

The other patrolman, whose name badge identified him as Enrico Hernandez, shook his head sourly. "Don't know how- the clunker'd been stolen off a lot out in Queens last night. We figure it was some kid out for a joyride, but without any witnesses…" He shrugged helplessly.

"But somebody had to have seen it," Keith pressed. "I mean, the middle of New York City-"

"You ever been over there at five-thirty in the morning? You could shoot a cannon down Bowery and not hit anything. Only people around at all were a couple of drunks, and neither one of ‘em will say a thing. First one says he was poking around in a Dumpster, and the other was sound asleep. Said he didn't even wake up until the thing blew up." Then, remembering who he was talking to, he tried to backtrack. "I mean-"

"So nobody saw it all?" Keith asked.

"That doesn't mean we're not still looking," Hernandez said, a little too quickly. "Look, we want to know what happened just as bad as you do. It wasn't just your boy, you know. That guy killed two correction officers, too."

But a prisoner on his way to Rikers Island doesn't matter, Keith added silently to himself. "You guys happen to remember the names of the drunks?"

"One of ‘ em was Al Kelly," Johnny Ryan offered, obviously relieved to at least be able to offer something-no matter how insignificant-to the man whose son had died yesterday morning. "Kelly's almost always around that corner. He's got gray hair-really long. Maybe about an inch taller than you. He usually wears three or four sweaters and a coat, and if he isn't drunk by ten in the morning, you got the wrong guy." He glanced at Hernandez. "You remember the other guy?"

"Peterson, wasn't it? Something like that. Don't remember ever seeing him before, but that doesn't mean he won't still be around." He turned to the desk sergeant. "Any reason why he can't see the report?"

The sergeant shrugged. "Not that I know of." He pointed to one of the desks. "Ask Sayers. Just tell him what you want, and he'll find it."

Keith turned back to the two officers. "There going to be anything in it you haven't already told me?"

"Not much," Ryan sighed, shaking his head. "I wish there was-I really do. And a couple of the guys upstairs are on it, so maybe we'll still find the perp, you know?"

"They here?" Keith asked. "The guys upstairs?"

The desk sergeant glanced at the board on the far wall, then shook his head. "Maybe a half hour or so. You can wait over there." He tilted his head toward a bench that sat against the wainscoting-painted the same ugly shade of blue as the outside doors-then picked up a phone that had started ringing. "Fifth Precinct, Sergeant McCormick."

"Maybe I'll come back later," Keith said.

But as he left the precinct, he was pretty sure he wouldn't be back.