Worst Case

Chapter 36

“DAD, DON’T TRIP, and whatever you do, please don’t drop it!” Jane called after me as I zombie-shuffled over the curb toward Holy Name’s auditorium, bearing the awkward display boards.

Though the science projects were officially completed, this next stage was like on the Food Network show where the contestants have to move their cakes to the judging table.

Only I had to do it six times, and there would be no chance for a $10,000 check.

Once everything had been safely transported, I started to relax, though when I passed a blood pressure cuff on one of the gymnasium’s many displays, I was tempted to test mine.

I walked Chrissy to her kindergarten class’s door. She pulled away from me as I went to give her a hug.

“Not here, Daddy. They’ll say I’m a baby,” she told me.

But you are a baby, I thought.

“Can’t we at least shake hands, Miss Bennett?” I said. She gave me a quick, businesslike pump and bolted off without looking back. I smiled from the door as she linked arms and began whispering in earnest with one of her classmates. The kids were all growing up so quickly.

Thank God I, miraculously, wasn’t aging with them.

I was coming down the school’s front steps when I noticed that I hadn’t turned on my phone after charging it. No wonder my morning had been filled with peace and quiet.

Uh-oh, I thought. In the past twenty minutes, there had been two messages from my boss and four from Emily Parker. I called Emily back first. She was cuter.

“What now?” I said.

“The Fox Channel. Turn it on.”

I ducked into Holy Name’s rectory, adjoining the school. Mrs. Maynard, the parish secretary, looked up from stuffing envelopes at her desk.

“Father Bennett is still saying the eight o’clock, Mike,” she said to me.

“Is he? Could I borrow your TV?” I said, going into the lounge beside her without waiting for an answer.

“Live Breaking News,” said the text in the corner of the local Fox Channel’s screen. Across the bottom I read, MEDIA BARON’S SON MISSING. There was a shaky aerial shot of a college campus, probably taken from a helicopter. I recognized the granite dome of Columbia ’s Low Memorial Library. Police were laying tape by another campus building while a growing crowd watched.

“No,” I said into my phone as I finally made out what the police were cordoning off. The camera had zoomed in on an empty wheelchair.

I felt like borrowing the rosary beads around the crucifix on the wall beside the TV. He’d taken another kid? This horror was nonstop. Was that the point? Damn it, this was all we needed!

“Where are you now, Emily?” I said as I hit the street.

“Running to the subway. Columbia ’s uptown, right?” she said. “Don’t bother picking me up. I’ll meet you there.”

Chapter 37

“WHERE TO, MIKE?” Mary Catherine said as I hopped back into our van. “Starbucks? That diner on Eleventh? No, how about we score a couple of warm H and H bagels and eat them in the park? I’m famished after that all-nighter.”

“Change of plans, Mary Catherine,” I said. “Another kid just got kidnapped. I have to head over to Columbia yesterday.”

Mary Catherine’s eyes lit up as she revved the engine. She was a notorious lead foot.

“Hit the lights, Starsky. I’ll get you there in no time.”

On our way to Columbia, I called Chief Fleming.

“There you are,” she said. “The press found out about it before we did. Are you there yet?”

“Just about.”

“The TV is saying that it’s the media mogul Gordon Hastings’s son, but that hasn’t been confirmed.”

“That’ll be the first thing on my list,” I said as we arrived at the campus.

A mob of students and press had crowded into Low Plaza, at 116th and Broadway. Sirens split the air every few seconds as more and more police cars arrived.

I saw Emily Parker emerge from the subway and called to her.

“Oh, I see,” Mary Catherine said, glaring at her through the windshield. “You didn’t say she was going to be here.”

“Of course,” I said as I got out. “She’s a kidnapping expert with the FBI. This looks like a kidnapping. What is it, Mary?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s none of my business what you do, Mike,” she said as she revved the van and ripped the transmission into gear.

“Or who you do it with. You’re welcome for the ride,” she said as she peeled off.

She whipped a screeching U-ee. I stood gaping as she dropped the hammer down Broadway.

Had she gone completely over the edge? Must have been the science fair, I thought.

“Was that your nanny?” Emily said as she arrived at a jog beside me.

“I’m not really sure,” I said.

Chapter 38

FRANCIS X. MOONEY carried a briefcase and a venti latte as he hurried with the morning rush-hour crowd through Grand Central Terminal. He was approaching the famous clock at the station’s center when he spotted the girl at the end of one of the Metro North ticket lines. He halted, weak suddenly, his heart snaring, unable to breathe.

The milky skin, the long black hair. My God, it was her! he thought, panicking. He’d messed up somehow! Chelsea Skinner was right there. She was still alive!

When the young woman turned to open her purse, the spell was broken. Francis felt a head rush of relief as he realized it was actually a thirty-something businesswoman, much too tall and heavy to be the young woman he had abducted and shot.

What the hell was wrong with him? he thought as he unrooted himself. Things were getting to him. The lack of sleep, the physical exertion. He was losing it, actually hallucinating.

He stopped at a line of Verizon phone kiosks. He removed the vial of Ritalin that sat beside the 9-millimeter Browning at the bottom of his briefcase.

He’d been practically living on amphetamines for the past three weeks, Adderall, meth, bennies. He’d read somewhere that the air force gave its pilots amphetamines to keep them alert on long-range missions.

He was on a mission, too, wasn’t he? The most important mission the world had ever known. He needed anything and everything that could keep him going.

After he swallowed half a dozen pills, he took off his glasses and laid his forehead against the aluminum coin slot. The thunder of feet on the station’s marble seemed to triple in volume as the speed cut into his bloodstream. He put his glasses back on and made a laser line for the bustling station’s Lexington Avenue exit.

Directly across Lex, he entered the marble-and-stainless-steel lobby of the Chrysler Building. He shifted the latte to his case hand as he passed his company’s electronic pass over the security turnstile’s scanner.

His law firm’s shining brass ERICSSON, WEYMOUTH AND ROTH sign greeted him outside the elevator on the sixty-first floor. At twenty-nine, he’d been the youngest to ever make partner. There was a time he’d wanted, and probably could have gotten, the name Mooney added to that sign.

That time was long over. In fact, this was his very last day.

He made a quick left before the glass door that led to his firm’s reception desk and snuck in through the back way. He needed to keep a low profile. Calling in sick the whole week before, he’d caused a caseload logjam of startling proportions. At his Forbes 100, top-flight, bill-or-die corporate firm, erratic attendance was a sin equivalent to pissing on the senior partner’s desk.

His personal assistant, Carrie, almost fell out of her chair as he ducked into her cubicle.

“Francis! What a happy surprise. I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to make it in. I was just about to call you. Your nine o’clock, Steinman, just called. Something came up at the studio, he said. He won’t be in New York until next Thursday.”

Francis breathed down a spike of anger. “Something came up at the studio” was Hollywood bullshit for “the check is in the mail.” He’d only decided to waste time and risk coming in because of the potential good that could have come out of the meeting with the multimillionaire movie executive.

He’d been stupid. He was trying to accomplish everything, but even flying on speed that was impossible.

“And, oh,” Carrie said, lifting a memo sheet out of her in-box, “I heard from reception that Kurt from New York Heart called last Friday. He said it was urgent.”

New York Heart was a privately funded antipoverty organization that Mooney did pro bono work for. He’d been advising them on a case about a destitute Harlem man who was on death row in Florida.

Francis winced. With everything else going on, he’d forgotten all about it. An urgent message about a death-row appeal couldn’t be good.

He thought about his plans. His time frame. It would be an incredible crunch, but he had to try. Even with everything he’d put into motion, he didn’t have a choice but to swing by the charity.

“Drop everything and cancel the rest of my meetings until further notice, would you, Carrie? I have to head up there.”

“Areyou sure you should, Francis?” Carrie whispered with concern. “You haven’t been here for a week. I think some of the clients, and even more so the junior partners, have been complaining, Mr. M. In fact, Mr. Weymouth is livid. Is there anything I can do? Do you need someone to talk to?”

Francis smiled at his personal assistant’s concern. Ever since she’d begun working for him seven years before, she’d been terrific, so smart and precise and loyal.

When it all came out, would she understand what he had tried to do? Would anyone?

That was beside the point, he thought, steeling himself. It didn’t matter what people thought about him personally. It wasn’t about him.

He planted a kiss on her forehead.

“You’re sweet to think about me, Carrie, but believe it or not, I’ve never felt better in all my life,” he said as he headed back for the elevators.

Chapter 39

THERE WAS AN unimpeded view of the empty wheelchair from the window of Columbia ’s Department of Public Safety. Standing at the window, staring at the chair, Jesse Acevedo, the Campus Security chief, seemed incapable of doing anything except shaking his head.

“That’s going to be the cover of the Post,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “I mean, that’s my job, right? A handicapped student gets snatched on campus? Oh, I’m sorry, the handicapped son of one of the world’s most powerful men. My daughter goes here. Once I’m out, no more staff scholarship. What the hell am I going to do?”

I felt bad for the guy. I knew full well the kind of bullshit blame he’d be getting. But I didn’t have the time to sympathize.

“Tell us about the tunnels again,” I said.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, coming back to his desk. When his phone rang, he lifted the receiver and clicked it back in its cradle. When it rang again, he unclipped the phone cord from the back of it.

“The tunnels,” he said after a deep breath. “Right. The tunnels connect some of the campus buildings. Lewisohn, the one next to where we found the empty chair, has tunnels that go to Havemeyer, Math, and the Miller Theater. There’s another, older one that actually goes under Broadway to one of the Barnard College buildings on the other side of Broadway.”

“Reid Hall. I know,” I said.

We’d already found that the basement door in that building had been propped open. John Cleary and his CSU team were there now, going over every square inch of the basement with an evidence vacuum and Q-tips. The killer must have gotten in and taken the kid out through there.

“Who else knows about the tunnels?” Emily said.

“Students, maintenance, faculty,” he said. “We blocked off some of them, but the kids still use them as shortcuts sometimes. Like hotels, every campus has its ghost stories, and the tunnels figure in a lot of the urban legends that get told around here.”

I kept thinking about the kidnapper’s cultured, educated voice. He most definitely could have been an Ivy League academic.

“One more question,” I said. “Has a teacher ever been caught down there?”

“I don’t know,” Acevedo said. “I’ll look into it and let you know. Or at least I’ll leave a note for my replacement.”

“I’m actually starting to respect this nut,” Emily said as we headed down the stairs. “I’ve never seen someone so prolific. This guy is a gold-medal-winning kidnapper.”

Emily ducked into the cafeteria on the ground floor of the building and came back with two coffees. This morning, she was wearing a form-fitting French Blue blouse and navy skirt. Her hair was still wet. I liked that she wore hardly any makeup. The way she did a cute earlobe-tugging thing when she was thinking, and especially the spark that flashed in her blue eyes when she was fired up.

“Now what?” Emily said. “Head over to Hastings ’s dorm? The library where he was last seen?”

“Nah,” I said. “We better head to the family. I’m expecting a call from our friend.”

Chapter 40

THE HARLEM SATELLITE office of the social service, nonprofit New York Heart was on 134th Street off St. Nicholas Avenue. The sour scent of sweat and marijuana made Francis X. Mooney nostalgic as he mounted the unswept stairs two by two.

For the past ten years, Mooney had been the main adviser of their legal outreach program, which took on cases for the poorest of the poor. He stared at the posters and photographs of the organization’s community theater and community garden that covered the stairwell walls and smiled. New York Heart was truly a labor of love.

“What’s cooking, kids?” Francis said after he gathered the half dozen social workers in the cramped conference room ten minutes later.

Francis X. smiled around the battered table at the lanky twenty-somethings. He remembered being that young, having that fire in the belly to set things straight. Not every young person was a selfish, whining brat, he thought.

“I just got your message this morning, Kurt,” he said. “How’s Mr. Franklin’s case going?”

Kurt, the social service’s in-house law advocate, looked up from his bagel and cream cheese. He’d gone to Ford-ham and hadn’t passed the bar yet, but Francis had faith in him. The kid’s heart was in the right place.

“The reason I called is that Mr. Franklin’s last appeal pretty much got slam-dunked into the shitter, Francis,” he said between bites. “The fuckers are going to fry him this Friday, and the rednecks down there will probably tailgate in the prison parking lot. What are you going to do? Hope the Republicans are happy. Another one bites the dust.”

Francis couldn’t believe it as chuckles exploded around the room. Mr. Reginald Franklin, the son of a destitute local resident, and borderline retarded, was about to be executed by the American government. How was that funny?

“Did you look over the habeas corpus?” Francis said.

“Of course,” Kurt said. “The appeals court decided to go by the trial record.”

“That’s what they always do,” Francis said, raising his voice now. “Did you get a copy of the police report, like I told you to? Did you look into the adequacy of his first attorney? The man supposedly fell asleep at one point.”

The room was silent now. Kurt set his bagel on the table as he sat up.

“No, I didn’t get a chance,” he finally said. “I did call you.”

“Didn’t get a chance? Didn’t get a chance!” Francis yelled. His chair made a thunderous shriek as he leapt up. “Are you out of your fucking mind? The man is about to die!”

“Jeez, Francis,” Kurt mumbled with his head down. “Relax.”

“I won’t,” Francis X. said. He didn’t want to cry. Not in front of these kids, but he couldn’t help it. A torrent of hot tears poured down his reddened face.

“I can’t relax, don’t you see?” he said as he stormed out. “There’s no more time.”

Chapter 41

WE WERE OUT on Columbia ’s sprawling Low Plaza, heading over to the bursar’s office to get Dan Hastings’s personal info, when my phone rang.

“Mike,” Detective Schultz cried. “Get over quick to the vice president’s office at the Low Memorial Library. We need your help. You’re not going to believe this.”

I met a frustrated-looking Schultz and Ramirez in a hallway on the second floor of the college’s iconic domed building. The administration was denying them the tapes from the Campus Security cameras due to “privacy concerns.”

“These wackos are acting like we’re the KGB rounding up people for the gulag instead of trying to save the life of one of their kidnapped students,” Ramirez said wide-eyed.

After twenty minutes of arguing, it finally took the threat of both a city and federal subpoena to get the officials to release the tapes, along with Dan Hastings’s personal information.

“Only in New York,” Agent Parker said as we went out toward the Broadway gate and the Crown Victoria that the FBI’s New York office had dropped off for her.

“Or any Ivy League college campus,” I said.

The victim’s father, Gordon Hastings, lived way downtown on Prince Street in SoHo. As Emily drove, I listened to a 1010 WINS report that was already being broadcast about him. Gordon Hastings used to work for Rupert Murdoch and now had his own business buying radio and TV stations, mostly in Canada and Europe. His wealth was estimated at eight hundred million dollars. I couldn’t even imagine that kind of money. Or what the man had to be going through, knowing that his disabled son had been abducted.

As she drove, Emily called the New York office and ran Gordon Hastings through NCIC and other federal databases.

“He was born and raised in Scotland,” she said, hanging up a few minutes later, “but became a U.S. citizen a couple of years ago. He’s clean, though the IRS has an open case on him due to some remarks he made about offshore accounts in a Vanity Fair interview.”

“Imagine that,” I said. “And all my Vanity Fair interviews always go so swimmingly.”

I let out an angry snort a moment later as we turned off Broadway onto Prince.

Half a dozen news vans had beat us to Hastings ’s cast-iron building. Cold-eyed camera lenses swung on us as we double-parked. I swung my cold-eyed Irish face right back at them.

“No goddamn comment,” I yelled at them as I got out. “And get that goddamn eyewitness van away from that fire hydrant if you ever want to see it again.”

“Now, that’s what I call media savvy,” Emily said with a grin as we waded through the newsies on the sidewalk. “If you ever make it down to DC, you should toss your résumé into the ring for White House press secretary.”

“You thought that was bad,” I said. “I was being restrained. I usually just empty a magazine into the air.”

It actually turned out that the ride we had taken downtown was for nothing. The luxury building’s handsome but seemingly stoned concierge stifled a giggle when we asked to speak to Gordon Hastings.

“C’mon. Where you been, man? I thought everyone knew that only Mr. Hastings’s second wife and new baby twins get to live in the penthouse duplex during the divorce proceedings.”

“Could we speak to the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Gordon Hastings, then?” Emily said before I could ask the guy for a urine sample.

“I wouldn’t think so,” the spaced-out model look-alike said. “Unless, of course, you’re planning a trip to Morocco, where her Italian Vogue shoot is.”

The only useful thing we learned was that the mogul’s mail was being forwarded to somewhere called Pier Fifty-nine, at Twenty-third Street and the Hudson River.

It turned out to be the Chelsea Piers Sports Center. We stared at the kids Rollerblading and the men with golf bags on the sidewalk in front of it.

“That kid was even higher than he looked. How could this guy live at a sports facility?” Emily said as we pulled up.

“That’s how,” I said as I pointed to the yacht-filled marina beside the netted driving range.

Chapter 42

OVER TWO HUNDRED feet long, Gordon Hastings’s yacht, the Teacup Tempest, turned out to be the largest one at the marina. Ten minutes later, we sat waiting to meet the mogul at the rear of its massive cherry-paneled forward salon.

There were antiques and paintings. There were also row upon row of flat-screen TVs. Smaller computer screens on scattered desks showed investment graphs. In addition to the ship’s crew, there were eight or nine businesspeople, Hastings ’s corporate team that actually worked from the ship. Like us, they were just standing around waiting, with stressed-out looks on their faces.

The captain of the vessel, John McKnight, who’d escorted us on board, told us about the accident that had crippled the abducted Columbia freshman.

“It was on a mountain-biking trip in Asia that was all Mr. H’s idea,” the captain said in a low voice. “He completely blames himself. That’s what led to his divorce, if you want my opinion. Now with Dan being abducted, it’s just unbelievable. Unbearable. For all of us. Dan was the most down-to-earth, lovable kid you ever met. He took the accident like it was nothing. He was inspiring.”

“He still is inspiring as far as we know, Captain,” I said. “You can’t forget that.”

A barefoot figure in a Hawaiian shirt and khakis finally emerged from one of the rear staterooms. The wiry, deeply tanned man came directly over to us and shook our hands, and we introduced ourselves. I noticed that his heavy gold watch had nautical flags on it instead of numbers. I could also see the top of his pajama pants above the waistband of his khakis. He didn’t stagger or smell of alcohol, but I could tell the distraught father had been drinking.

“Thank you so much for coming,” he said with an unexpected thick Scottish burr. With his bald head and mustache, he actually looked a little like Sean Connery. “Have you learned anything?”

“There’s been nothing so far, sir,” Emily said. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”

He stared at Emily a moment and then a vicious look crossed his face.

“Maybe that lack of imagination is the reason why the first two victims ended up dead, Agent Parker,” he said with a sneer. “I just bought the New York Mirror a few weeks ago, you know. One hears these things.”

Wow, I thought. Looks like James Bond, acts like Attila the Hun. And make that drinking heavily. I understood that Hastings was hurting, but his nastiness was inappropriate and completely uncalled for.

“The pattern of the man who kidnapped Jacob Dunning and Chelsea Skinner is to contact the family,” I said, edging myself between Emily and Hastings. “We don’t know if the person or persons who seem to have taken your son are the same, but we’ll go on that assumption. With your permission, we’d like to put trap-and-trace equipment on your phones.”

“I guess…,” Hastings said, brooding.

“Thank you, sir,” Emily continued with a grin. “You wouldn’t happen to know either the Dunnings or the Skinners by any chance, would you?”

“Of course not,” Hastings spat at her again. “What kind of question is that? Do you think we’re part of some billionaire cabal? Don’t they have any actual professionals who take care of kidnappings?”

“Right here, sir,” Emily said with an even wider, lovelier smile. “You’re looking at them. Thank you again for your cooperation.”

“Way to handle that jackass, Parker,” I said as the millionaire left.

“I’ve learned from the best, Mike,” Emily said, grinning.

Chapter 43

OUTSIDE, EMILY AND I huddled with our own team and got busy bringing in the phone-tracing gear from the FBI and NYPD tech cars in the marina’s lot. In addition to recording the conversation, the tech guys were going to run it through voice-analysis software, a kind of high-tech lie detector and emotion indicator. We hooked up my phone to the equipment as well this time.

We’d just finished setting everything up when something sounded from one of the computers in the luxury salon’s corner.

“You’ve got mail,” it said in an inappropriately cheery tone.

“I didn’t know they actually still said that,” I said to Hastings ’s secretary.

“They really don’t, but Mr. Hastings insists. He finds it nostalgic,” she said in a way that implied it was one of many nutty insistences that came from Emperor Hastings.

We rushed over. Mr. Hastings’s personal assistant quickly brought up the mail page.

From: danhastings@AOL.com

Subject: Whether I live or die

The secretary bit her lip as she opened the e-mail.

Hastings,

If you want to see your son alive again, you’ll get five million dollars in hundred-dollar denominations ready for delivery. You have three hours. The faster we wrap this up, the faster you can get back to your greedy, decadent life.

I do not think I need to remind you what I am capable of.

“What is it?” Hastings said, emerging from his stateroom. He banged a shin on a settee as he rushed over and stared at the screen. Everyone jumped as he emitted a primal moan.

“Oh, Danny! Oh, my son,” Hastings said. He knocked a lamp off the desk as he reached for the computer monitor. Luckily, he missed. He landed with a painful-sounding thump next to the lamp on the Oriental rug.

We watched as Captain McKnight lifted Hastings from the floor. It looked like something he’d done before. He spoke to him soothingly as he guided him to the back of the ship.

Vivid freeze-frame images of Jacob Dunning and Chelsea Skinner flashed through my head as I reread the last part of the e-mail.

I do not think I need to remind you what I am capable of.

No, he didn’t, I thought. He was right about that.

Chapter 44

AS OUR TECHS got busy tracing the e-mail, I caught Emily’s attention.

“Could I talk to you out on the aloha deck?” I said, motioning for the salon’s exit.

On our way outside, through an open doorway I spotted a dining room set with crystal and silver for twenty. I found the sight of it, for some reason, the most lonesome thing.

No wonder Hastings had gone over the edge. Even with eight hundred million dollars, life had rammed him completely through the wringer. Despite his drunken melodrama, I truly felt sorry for him.

“I don’t like this, Parker,” I said as we stood outside, watching yuppies hit golf balls on the converted dock beside us. “Something smells. On the one hand, switching to e-mail is in keeping with our guy’s pattern of changing methods. But on the other hand, our guy loves the sound of his voice too much to send an e-mail. He loves talking to me, crying on my shoulder. I’m not convinced this is the same guy.”

Ramirez suddenly stuck his head outside.

“Mike, get in here quick. And I thought Columbia was bad. Now this is really getting nuts.”

Back inside, I saw a large, bald gentleman in a pinstripe suit collecting the laptops off the desks.

“Sic ’em, Vin,” Hastings yelled from a couch with a laugh. He lit a cigar. “Tell them their services are no longer required.”

“Vinny Carbone,” the new arrival said, offering his hand. “I’m Mr. Hastings’s attorney. I’m going to be representing Mr. Hastings in this matter here.”

I stared at Parker, baffled.

“I wasn’t aware this was a court proceeding,” I said.

“The bottom line is, you don’t need to be putting any kind of trace software or spyware or anything else on Mr. Hastings’s computers,” the lawyer continued. “He’s had a little trouble with you guys, especially the IRS, and, well, we’re sorry, but we can’t cooperate. In fact, you can get off his phones, too. He wants to handle things on his own from here. And if you’ve left any bugs, you should take them with you. We will be sweeping the whole boat after you leave.”

Spyware and bugs? I thought. These people really were worse than the nuts at Columbia.

“Mr. Carbone,” I said, putting up my palms. “This is a kidnapping. Dan Hastings is a citizen. We can’t just walk away.”

“Tell him to get the fuck off my boat, Vinny,” the father yelled, pointing his stogie for emphasis. “Tell him we’ll do it the right way. By ourselves. I let these assholes handle it, Dan comes back in a plastic bag.”

“You heard it from the horse’s mouth, kid,” the lawyer said in his Brooklyn accent. “You gotta go.”

More like the other end of the horse, I thought.

“Yeah, in a second, Pop,” I said to Carbone, stepping past him.

“This might not even be the same kidnapper,” I said to the father, trying not to lose my cool.

Emily, following me, seemed to have lost hers.

“You think you can buy your kid back?” she said loudly. “You’re going to get him killed.”

“Piss off, cop,” Hastings said. “You’re oh for two! You fools have no idea what you’re doing.”

He waved his cigar at us dismissively. He suddenly sounded a lot less upper crust than at our initial meeting.

“Oh, don’t worry. I am pissed off, Mr. Hastings,” Emily yelled at him as we left. “I’ve been pissed off pretty much since the second I met you.”

Chapter 45

VINNY CARBONE, ESQUIRE, followed Emily and me back outside to the observation deck.

“Are you as insane as that guy? This is a federal investigation,” Parker said to the lawyer.

“Hold on a second, Agent Parker,” I said, pulling her back. “I think I can work this out.

“Listen, Vinny. You want subpoenas, you got ’em. But I guarantee you, I’ll be going over his computers and phone records with a fine-tooth comb now. I’ll lock his ass up for obstruction of justice-or shit, maybe I’ll make him my main suspect. You gonna muzzle him, or do I take his rich drunken ass up to Harlem for questioning?”

Vin didn’t think about my offer for too long. For all his blue-collar demeanor, he definitely seemed on the ball.

“I’ll talk to him,” Vin said. “Gimme a sec.”

As we waited, Parker and I stared at the cars on the West Side Highway, trying to brainstorm.

“We need to piece this thing together before this idiot really does get his son killed,” Emily said.

“Okay, Parker,” I said. “For the moment, let’s assume it’s the same guy. How does Dan Hastings fit in?”

“He’s rich, obviously,” Parker said. “One of the other two was a college freshman, too. He’s an only child.”

“No, he isn’t,” I pointed out. “He has two new half siblings, remember?”

“You’re right,” she said. “Is that important?”

“I don’t know. It’s a difference. Also, this guy’s going through a divorce. The other two families were happily married.”

“Good point. But doesn’t that indicate another kidnapper?”

“Or that there’s another connection we haven’t made.”

“Yeah, well, we better make it quick,” Parker said as we watched an armored car pull into the pier’s parking lot.

Two armed uniformed guards got out of the car, went around to the back, and removed two very large currency bags.

“Because this ship of fools looks like it’s about to set sail.”

Chapter 46

WE WERE ALLOWED back on board with the stipulation that our technicians be closely monitored by Gordon Hastings’s staff. Hastings ’s IT adviser actually stood over the shoulder of our FBI techie as he installed a Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier.

The petty squabbling was still going on when the next “You’ve got mail” came at three o’clock on the button. Hastings himself opened up the e-mail.

The following instructions will be followed to the letter.

The five million dollars will be placed in a black rolling suitcase.

You and you alone will bring the money to the south playground of the Polo Grounds projects at 155th Street in Harlem at 4:45 PM.

When you are there and when we are convinced you have not been followed or brought the police, you will be given more instructions.

Take note:

If there is any evidence of ground or air police surveillance, you will never see your son again.

The first two were to prove what I am capable of. You alone have been given the chance to save your precious flesh and blood. Do not blow it.

Hastings and his lawyer disappeared into the stateroom for a quick powwow. Carbone emerged five minutes later alone.

“Mr. Hastings will be paying the money and delivering it himself. That’s nonnegotiable. He’ll wear a wire so he can be kept track of, but that’s it. Otherwise, follow the kidnapper’s instructions. No air surveillance. Hear me, Bennett?”

I knew at some point in this case I’d be required to apply the skills I’d learned as a hostage negotiator. I just never thought I’d have to use them in dealing with the victim’s father.

We reluctantly had to agree. It really was up to Hastings how he wanted to play things, especially with the ransom. But that didn’t mean we would shirk our responsibility and not use everything within our power to get his son back alive.

Emily and I quickly made calls to our respective agencies to relate how badly things were stacking up. My boss, Carol Fleming, told me she’d heard of Hastings ’s mouthpiece, Carbone. The lawyer was known to represent mob types.

Could that fit into this? I didn’t know. But we didn’t really have the time to check it out. We had a deadline in less than two hours, and we needed our people in place yesterday.

Standing by the bar, Mr. Hastings was drinking coffee now as our techs wired him up. His corporate people were busy packing the money. I understood the instructions for it to be in a rolling suitcase, because even in hundred-dollar bills, the ransom would weigh almost ninety pounds.

“This guy can hardly tie his shoes. How’s he going to save his son?” Emily said.

“He’s not,” I said. “We are.”

Chapter 47

DETECTIVES RAMIREZ AND Schultz had to stay and rough it back at the yacht as Emily and I raced up the West Side Highway and then crosstown along 155th Street. Traffic wasn’t so bad, but then again, we didn’t bother stopping for any of the red lights.

Housing Police sergeant Jack Bloom from Police Service Area 4 met us at the rear of the Polo Grounds Housing Project’s most southern building.

“We patrol up here with guns drawn,” the Housing cop advised as we arrived on the roof. “There’s sexual assaults, beatings. We beg Housing to keep the roof doors locked, but they keep saying they can’t because of fire codes. Even when you’re patrolling the courtyards below, you need one eye up in case some kid wants to send you a little airmail.”

There was an incredible view of Yankee Stadium across the Harlem River. Bloom told us that the projects were built where the historic Polo Grounds baseball stadium had been located.

“Get out of here,” Emily said. “You mean the Giants-win-the-pennant, shot-heard-round-the-world Polo Grounds?”

Bloom nodded grimly.

“The only shots heard round here anymore are from the drug disputes in the stairwells.”

“Well, it’s definitely another hellhole like the other two locations,” I said to Emily. “So maybe it is our guy, after all.”

Twenty minutes later, we were radioed that Gordon Hastings was present and accounted for, waiting with the money in a town car half a block west on 155th. I checked my watch. It was four thirty. Fifteen minutes to contact.

Everything that could be set up was ready to go. Though not actually in the air, Aviation was waiting in Highbridge Park a little farther uptown. A Harbor Unit boat was on standby as well a little ways south down the Harlem River, in case anything was thrown into the water.

Two ESU surveillance teams and a contingent of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team were getting in place inside several apartments surrounding the development’s south playground. Over the radio, I could hear them aligning frequencies with one another.

If our guy was dumb enough to show up, we would bag him. I truly hoped he was.

I let out a tight, tense breath as I stared down at the project yards. For the first time, we had something the kidnapper wanted. We had to bet our only chip very carefully now.

Five minutes later, Emily called me over to the roof wall.

“Mike, check it out.”

Down on the plaza beside the playground, some young black men in traditional African garb were setting up instruments. A moment later, a rhythmic drumming filled the courtyard.

“Nice beat,” I said. “You want to African dance?”

“No, idiot,” Emily said. “That’s us. They’re from the New York office’s Special Surveillance group.”

“No way,” I said, laughing.

Emily nodded.

“The guy in the green buba and gbarie pants is the SAC for the White Collar Squad. What time do you have?”

“T minus ten minutes,” I said, wiping sweat off my face.

Chapter 48

THE WIND AND my heart rate both picked up as Hastings finally exited his car on Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. I tracked the harried-looking father through the stark cement courtyard with a pair of high-power Nikon binoculars.

“Be advised,” crackled the voice of a member of one of the surveillance teams over the radio. “Male black in a brown leather jacket is approaching from the south.”

Agent Parker and I scurried over to the southeast corner of the roof. Directly below our vantage point, a young, bald black man wearing sunglasses was moving through the southern parking lot, making a beeline for Hastings.

He called out as Hastings was entering the courtyard’s amphitheater. I turned up the other radio, which was tuned to Hastings ’s body mic.

“Over here,” the man was saying.

Hastings stopped. He stood, breathing loudly, both hands now clutching the suitcase as the man approached.

“Where is Danny?” he said. “Where’s my son?”

Ignoring him, the man took an already opened cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to Hastings.

Even without the binoculars, I probably could have detected the happiness that flashed across the father’s face a second later.

“Oh, Danny!” he said, beginning to cry. “It’s you! My God, I thought you were dead. Are you all right? Are you in pain?”

I felt a short jolt of relief as I exchanged a surprised look with Emily. Our abductor had slaughtered his first two victims pretty much outright. The fact that Dan Hastings still seemed to be alive was a very welcome sudden change of MO.

“I’m going to get you back now, Danny,” the mogul said. “I’m going to do what they say. You’re going to make it back home to me. I-”

The mogul’s joyful expression fled as suddenly as it had appeared. The kidnapper must have gotten on the line. It was extremely frustrating not being able to hear both sides of the conversation.

“Yes, of course I have the money,” Hastings said. “But you won’t get one penny until my son is released.”

We watched helplessly as Hastings listened to something the kidnapper was saying.

“Look where? At the phone?” Hastings finally said.

The mogul lifted the phone off his ear and looked at its screen.

What was happening now? Was he being shown a picture? A live video feed?

“Does anyone have a view of the phone? What’s he looking at?” I called into the surveillance radio.

“It’s someone in a wheelchair maybe,” one of the HRT snipers cut in. “I can barely make it out.”

“Okay, okay, good,” Hastings said finally. He pushed the money at the man with the phone.

Whatever Hastings had seen had obviously convinced him that they were releasing his son. I wasn’t there yet.

“Take it now. It’s all there. It’s yours,” Hastings said. “I’ve done what you said. Now let Danny go.”

Chapter 49

THE BLACK MAN was kneeling, zipping open the case to check the money, when Emily and I broke into a sprint toward the roof door. We needed to get down to the street to follow the money now. It was the only thing that would lead us to Hastings ’s son.

“He’s on the move to the south, heading toward Bradhurst,” came a voice over the radio as we hit the courtyard two minutes later.

“I’ll follow on foot,” I called to Emily as I spotted the tall youth moving south across the project yard. “Follow in the car. Stay at least two blocks behind me. The trunk of the Fed car has more antennas than a goddamn cell site. We don’t want to spook him.”

Emily booked away as I tailed the man. I hung back as far as I could. He wasn’t moving particularly fast. He didn’t look over his shoulder or seem concerned in any way about whether anyone was following him. I wondered if he was being coy or if he was just stupid. I was leaning toward the latter.

As I followed, I stayed in contact with the roving multi-layered surveillance detail we had set up. The topography of that little corner of East Harlem was hell on surveillance. Not only did we have the river, the Harlem River Drive, and a close subway to contend with, but the projects themselves were separated from the rest of Harlem by a high, stone bluff. There were lots of alleys, one-way streets, and dead ends, plenty of places to duck into to try to shake us.

It was cat-and-mouse time, and frankly, I wasn’t exactly sure who was going to come out on top.

I was surprised when the man made a hard right out of the complex and headed under the raised roadway of 155th Street past a ROAD CLOSED sign. I noticed some cars parked at the dead end of the short street. Would he hop into one of them?

Instead, he made another right at the face of the dead end’s stone bluff and turned toward a set of ascending stairs I hadn’t seen. I shook my head when I reached them and saw how incredibly steep they were.

I wasn’t sure if it was my thighs or my lungs that were burning the most as I neared the top.

“We have a visual,” I heard over my radio as the man hit the top of the stairs next to a Harlem River Drive entrance ramp. We had an undercover Highway Patrol unit stationed a hundred yards north up the highway in case he attempted to move the money out that way.

He didn’t, though. He passed the entrance and was crossing over Edgecombe Avenue along the upper part of 155th Street when I got to the top. I thought he would head down into the subway on the corner of 155th and St. Nicholas, where yet another team was waiting, but he surprised us all by heading to the window of a place called Eagle Pizza on the corner and grabbing a slice.

A slice? I thought. Was this guy for real? Nobody could be this calm. I searched the crowd of pedestrians going up and down the subway stairs. There was definitely something off about this whole thing.

Emily pulled up beside me, and I joined her in the Fed car. We watched the black guy finish his slice and continue west with the money.

He’d just rolled the suitcase off the next corner when it happened. There was a high scream of a motor, and a figure wearing a black motorcycle helmet and matching racing leathers roared up on a BMX dirt bike.

Without stopping and without an opportunity to do anything except look on with our mouths open, we watched as the rider scooped up the bag the black guy had let go of. He gunned the cycle through the red light, almost hitting the hood of our car, and raced the opposite way down 155th.

Chapter 50

WE WERE POINTED in the wrong direction as he lasered past us. Emily hopped the curb as she U-turned after him. I was on the radio, screaming the recent happenings, when the biker screeched to the left north onto Amsterdam. The biker swung off the street onto the sidewalk and into a city park. It felt like the axle broke as Emily hopped curb number two directly after him.

“I guess this means we’re not maintaining tailing distance anymore!” I yelled as we violently off-roaded on the uneven grass behind the dirt bike.

The rider skidded to a stop beside a city pool. He left the bike and began booking with the money into the trees. I didn’t have time to say, “You’ve got to be shitting me,” as I jumped out after him.

I made it through a break in the thick brush and gulped as I spotted where the guy was headed.

It was the High Bridge pedestrian bridge, which connected Manhattan to the Bronx. Built in the mid-1800s, the thirteen-story narrow stone walkway that spanned the Harlem River had originally been used as an aqueduct that carried the city’s water supply down from upstate. Now it was an abandoned structure just south of the Cross Bronx Expressway that city administrations debated whether they should renovate or tear down.

Motorcycle man swung the bag onto his back, hopped onto some ancient scaffolding, and started climbing. In a moment, he hopped over a break in the razor wire and was hightailing it toward the Bronx over the bridge’s weed-filled cobblestone pavers.

“Call the Bronx!” I radioed my backup. “The Forty-fourth Precinct. The crazy son of a bitch is headed over the High Bridge walkway toward the Bronx!”

“And so’s this one,” I mumbled to myself as I tucked the radio into my pocket and pulled myself onto the scaffolding.

I paused as I hopped down from the fence onto the bridge itself. It was maybe ten feet across, with only flimsy, waist-high cast-iron railings between me and a horrifying fall to my death. Talk about vertigo.

Motorcycle man was going flat out at the other end of the bridge when he shrugged the bag off his back and chucked it. I thought it would hit the river, but I saw it land with a puff of dust on the Bronx side between the Major Deegan Expressway and the Metro North train tracks.

“He tossed it!” I called. “Get somebody across the river and down by the train tracks. The money is next to the Bronx-side tracks!”

When I looked up, I saw the motorcycle man running in a new direction. Directly at me!

He had his jacket off and was grasping something in his hand now. It had wires coming out of it. They seemed to go over his shoulder toward his back.

Bomb!? I thought, drawing my Glock. What the-?

“DOWN! NOW!” I yelled. The guy was a bad listener.

“ON YOUR KNEES!” I yelled.

He kept coming. The sight of him, silently running at me for no conceivable reason, was beyond surreal. I was about to squeeze off a shot, when he did it. The craziest thing of all.

Without pausing, he veered to my left, bounded up onto the low iron railing, and dove without a sound off the bridge.

I think my heart actually stopped. I ran to my left and looked down. The guy was plummeting toward the water when there was a strange bloom of color that at first I thought was an explosion. I thought he’d blown himself up, but then I saw the orange canopy of a parachute.

Son of a bitch! I thought. He hadn’t committed suicide. He’d base-jumped off the bridge. I knew I should have shot him! I debated whether I still should as he sailed up the river.

“Get Harbor and Aviation up!” I screamed. “The son of a bitch just did a James Bond off the bridge. He parachuted off. I repeat. He just parachuted off the bridge!”

Chapter 51

I THOUGHT WE were going to flip ten minutes later as Parker whipped us off the Bronx-side highway onto a Metro North utility road. We were still skidding to a stop when I hopped out of the car and over the third rail to the weeds where I thought the bag had landed.

I searched through the weeds like a man possessed. I kicked past a Prestone can, a Happy Meal box, several tires. Where the hell was it! That’s when I saw the black strap. I rushed over and pulled. Shit! It was weightless. The bag was empty.

I decided to take a seat in the dead grass beside it. There was a path behind me that led less than a hundred feet up to the highway. The kidnappers must have been waiting. They were long gone.

We’d blown it. We’d lost the money.

“Shit and double shit,” Emily said, when I showed her the empty bag. She offered her hand and pulled me up. “Harbor got the jumper at least. Let’s go.”

I was still firing full bore on adrenaline when I hopped out of the Fed car and crashed down a bank of the Harlem River to the north. Harbor had pulled the base jumper out of the drink and was holding him near the southbound entrance for the Cross Bronx Expressway.

With the help of one of the Harbor guys, I sat the parachutist up from where he was lying wet and handcuffed on his belly. He was a young, pimple-faced white kid with a frosted faux-hawk haircut.

“This is over. Where is Dan Hastings? Where is he?” I yelled.

“What? Danny who?” the kid said, his face scrunched in surprise. “Is he a new guy on the team? The Birdhouse Team?”

I squinted my eyes into slits.

“You have two seconds to tell me what you’re talking about before you go swimming in handcuffs.”

“Hey, man. I didn’t do anything. I was paid to jump the bridge by this guy Mark. He said he was from Birdhouse-you know, the Tony Hawk skateboard company? He said they needed some crazy-ass footage for one of their new movies. I know it wasn’t exactly legal, but he gave me ten grand cash. He said some black guy would drop a bag on the corner of Amsterdam, and I would bike it to the bridge and do my thing. He gave me half up front. I swear to God that’s the truth.”

I stared at the dopey kid, furious.

“What did you think when I was pointing my gun at you? I was method acting?”

“Yes,” the kid said emphatically. “I thought it was all part of the movie, man. So, you’re basically telling me the cameras weren’t rolling?”

Could anyone be this stupid? I decided this guy could.

“They still are,” I said as a couple of Bronx uniforms arrived. “This next scene is where you get thrown in prison.”

Back at the car, I said to Emily, “The idiot says he was hired to jump the bridge, and I actually believe him.”

That was a definite low point in the investigation. We’d lost the money and the trail back to Hastings ’s son. We got taken to the cleaners. We’d blown everything.

We were comparing notes with the rest of the shell-shocked surveillance guys when the victim’s father, Gordon Hastings, showed up in his town car.

“You cocked it up! You lost my money! You killed my son!” the red-faced Scot screamed as he came for me across the shoulder of the highway.

He’s lucky he didn’t make it through the half dozen cops and agents between us. At that point I was so frustrated, I would gladly have knocked his millionaire teeth out, father or no father.

Chapter 52

FIVE MINUTES LATER, Parker and I spun over to the Thirtieth Precinct, where the two suspects in the money chase had been taken.

After a lost coin flip in the precinct captain’s office, I was given the onerous task of calling in the fiasco to One Police Plaza. Even the ordinarily heartless, map-of-Ireland-faced precinct captain O’Dwyer gave me a sympathetic nod before leaving me to my spanking. Having dropped the full payload of bad tidings, I thought my ears would start hemorrhaging from the chief’s tongue-lashing.

I was still licking my wounds in one of the captain’s Ed Koch-administration plastic chairs when Emily came back in from the suspect interview rooms down the hall.

“Same story,” she said, closing her notebook and collapsing into the traffic cone-orange chair next to me. “The bald black guy and the kid were both paid in cash by the mysterious Mark. They describe him as a very burly white biker type. They said he had a red Abraham Lincoln beard and double sleeves of tats. Another disguise, maybe?”

I shrugged.

“I can’t believe it,” I said. “After all that, we’re back to square one. Make that square negative one.”

Dan Hastings was gone. The five million dollars was gone. I’d come very close to killing a reckless nineteen-year-old and knocking out a reckless middle-aged multimillionaire. Even for me, this was stacking up to be a pretty bad day at the office.

“We need to get back on track,” I said. “Let’s grab some coffee and go over what we know so far.”

The closest thing to a Starbucks we could find was a Greek diner across from the Bronx County Courthouse.

“We know from the Jacob Dunning abduction that our kidnapper hired illegals to purchase cell phones for him. Do you think he could have used yet another middleman-this Mark guy-to subcontract the money pickup?”

“It’s possible, I guess,” Parker said. “Though from all indications, our unsub seems to be more of a loner. But then again, the more I think about it, the more it sort of makes sense that maybe this was about money. He kills the first two as a calling card to prove to Hastings ’s father that he’s dealing with a stone-cold maniac. Maybe from this point, we should go on the assumption that Hastings was the real target.”

My aching neck actually made a cracking sound as I rolled it. I finally stood.

“Maybe you’re right. Let’s head back to Columbia.”

Chapter 53

FROM THE THIRTIETH Precinct, we headed directly over to Dan Hastings’s residence hall at Columbia. Because of his disability or maybe because of his father’s connections, Dan Hastings had scored a room at the new dorm on 118th, which was otherwise reserved for law students. One of the Public Safety guys keyed us into his suite.

It was neat as a pin. There were some very expensive-looking custom furniture pieces and a closet full of clothes from stratosphere-priced Barneys. Beside the bed, we found copies of the National Review and the latest Sean Hannity book. Even Dan’s sixty-inch plasma was tuned to the Fox News Channel.

“A closet conservative at Columbia? How do you like that?” Emily said.

As we watched, a report about the Mardi Gras celebration down in New Orleans started. I remembered the forehead ashes on the bodies of Jacob Dunning and Chelsea Skinner and the references to Ash Wednesday. Even though this was starting to look like an elaborate kidnapping-for-ransom plot, I couldn’t completely shake the feeling that the three kidnappings were still related to this somehow.

Back down at the security desk, we got the cell number for Hastings ’s neighbor in the adjoining suite. We called and arranged to meet the first-year law student, Kenny Gruber, outside the gym, where he was playing basketball.

“Wheelchair or not, Dan was superpopular,” Gruber said between chugs of his Red Bull. “He had more friends than anyone I know. He tossed incredible parties. Did you speak to Galina?”

“Who’s that?” Emily said.

“His girlfriend, Galina Nesser. My God, is she hot. A Russian goddess. And a physics major. See what I mean about Dan being a unique dude? I mean, how does a guy in a wheelchair score a quality piece of ass like that?”

“A-hem,” Emily coughed exaggeratedly.

“Oh, sorry, ma’am. Forgot my manners there,” Gruber said. “You want to know more about Dan, you should talk to Galina.”

“‘Ma’am’?” Emily said as we headed for the nearest campus exit. “Do I look like a ma’am to you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “You look like a quality piece of-”

I sidestepped as Agent Parker punched me in the arm.

“What was that for?” I said, rubbing it. “I was merely going to say you look like a quality peace officer. Jeez, what did you think I was going to say?”

Chapter 54

FRANCIS X. MOONEY cursed under his breath as his taxi crested the 115th Street rise on Lenox Avenue. Down the low valley toward 125th Street and back up again on the other side, it was nothing but bumper-to-bumper red brake lights for another fifteen blocks.

He stuffed a twenty through the greasy partition’s slot and popped the door latch. He was running unbelievably late. He’d have to hoof it.

He broke into a run as he hit the sidewalk. Christ, what a day, he thought as sweat began to pour down his face. He had so many balls in the air, he could hardly keep count.

He got to 137th Street without a minute to spare. He was headed to the apartment of the death-row inmate Reginald Franklin’s mother. Even with all his plans and all his incredibly important work, his conscience wouldn’t let him forget the doomed man.

Off Lenox Avenue, down from the Harlem Hospital Center, he entered the battered front door of a narrow three-story brick tenement. The barking started the second he stepped through the open inner door and into a rancid-smelling stairwell.

No wonder Kurt from New York Heart had been reluctant to follow up on the case, he thought, listening to the unbelievably loud barks. No matter. Dogs or no dogs, someone’s life was at stake here.

The door to Mrs. Franklin’s second-floor apartment cracked open when Francis X. made the landing. He froze as an enormous dog lunged out of the apartment. It looked like a monster. It was a Presa Canario, the same breed of unbelievably vicious dog that had mauled a woman to death in San Francisco. It had a brindled coat and had to weigh close to 150 pounds.

Francis X. started breathing again only when he saw that there was a taut chain around its neck. It was being clutched by a wiry old black woman.

“I’m from New York Heart, ma’am,” Francis said quickly. “The lawyer advocacy group? I’m here about your son, Reggie. I’d like to try to help him get a stay of execution. Could you please put up your pet, ma’am?”

“You got any ID, white boy?” she said between the earsplitting barks.

Francis showed her his card from the social services agency. The dog snapped for it, almost swallowing it along with Francis’s hand.

“Okay, okay. Just a second,” the old woman finally said.

Was it him, or did the old African American woman have a smirk on her face?

“You said you was coming, too, right? Must have forgot. Sit tight till I get Chester back in the closet.”

The door shut and opened again. The sound of Chester going absolutely batshit came from the rear of the apartment.

“C’mon in, I guess,” she said, waving impatiently. “Close the damn door behind you. What did you say about Reggie?”

He followed her into the living room. Judge Judy was on the TV. The woman lay down on a couch and put up her feet. She didn’t lower the volume.

“Well? What you want?”

“I heard about Reginald’s latest denial, and I’ve gone to the liberty of writing up a request of stay to the governor. It’s all done. I just need you to sign it. Then I’ll take it to FedEx. A friend of mine from law school is in the Florida State Legislature, and though he can’t guarantee anything, he is going to personally advocate for Reggie. I think we have a real good shot.”

“I gotta pay?” Mrs. Franklin said as she motioned for him to bring her the paper.

“For my legal services? Of course not, Mrs. Franklin.”

“No, I know that,” she said as she scratched her signature. “I meant for the FedEx. That shit’s expensive.”

“No, that’s covered, too, of course.”

“Good,” she said with another little smirk. “Anything else?”

How about a fucking thank-you? Francis X. thought, unable to control his anger. Then he looked around the room. It wasn’t her fault, he realized. Abject poverty made people this way. Mrs. Franklin was a victim, like her son.

“That’s all,” Francis said. “I’d better get going. Helping you and your son is my pleasure. It’s the least I could do.”

Chapter 55

IT WAS COMING on five when I had Emily drop me off at my apartment. The end-of-day task force meeting downtown at headquarters had been bumped up to six-thirty, and I was in desperate need of a shower and a change of clothes. I wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. They would be looking to blame someone for the missing five million.

Inside, I grabbed a suit fresh from the dry cleaners from the front hall closet. It’s always been a policy of mine to make sure to look my best when I’m going to be called on the carpet.

“It can’t be, but it is! Daddy’s home before dinner! Ahhhhh!” one of my daughters, Fiona, shrieked ecstatically as I appeared in the dining room doorway.

The gang, still in their school uniforms, were home from school and in the midst of getting their homework out of the way. I went around, slapping high fives and administering hugs and even a few atomic tickles where appropriate.

Many cops I’ve worked with have asked me why the hell I would want so many kids, and I’ve always had trouble explaining it. Yes, there are fights. Legendary lines for the bathroom. Clutter beyond the nightmares of professional organizers. Not to mention the expense. I envy people who can live paycheck to paycheck. But it’s moments like these, when my guys are all safe and happy and busy and together, that every bit of it is incredibly worth it, when it is pure, unabashed happiness.

The kids are simply my tribe, my pack. We gathered them together, and everything good that my wife, Maeve, and I had ever learned, we passed on to them. Not only have they taken those lessons to heart in our house-being kind to one another, being polite, being good even when they don’t feel like it-as they get older, they’ve started spreading that goodness to the world. I can’t count how many times teachers and neighbors and school parents have said to me how wonderful, polite, and thoughtful they thought my kids were.

Maeve, and now Mary Catherine, being home with them every day, could take ninety-nine percent of the credit for that. But that one percent that makes me proud of myself exceeds everything I have ever accomplished professionally, hands down.

Mary Catherine smiled up at me from where she was surrounded by a sea of blue-and-gold Catholic-school plaid.

“Mike, is it you?” she said. “Can I fix dinner?”

“Don’t bother,” I said, putting my cell on the sideboard as I headed for my room. “This is just a pit stop. I have an hour, maybe less, until this evil object summons me again.”

Twenty minutes later, wearing a suit not covered in sweat, antifreeze, and grass stains, I stepped back into the dining room and almost fainted. Instead of being covered in textbooks, workbooks, red pens, calculators, and rulers, the table was set like it was Sunday all over again.

Mary Catherine and Brian and Juliana came in a second later with a plate of homemade fried chicken, jalapeño corn bread, and a fresh salad. Another incredible meal brought to you by my personal savior, Mary Catherine.

I shook my head at her for going to all the trouble. Besides my wife, Mary Catherine was the most genuinely generous person I’d ever met.

Who knew? Maybe this meant she was even a little less pissed at me.

After we said our prayers, I wolfed down a piece of hot corn bread. I closed my eyes in ecstasy.

“How can an Irish girl do Southern cooking this well?” I said, spraying crumbs. “Let me guess, you’re from the southwest part of Ireland?”

The smiles and happy, fuzzy mood all popped like a cigarette on a balloon when my blasted phone rang. I was standing up to get it when Chrissy reached back and grabbed it.

“Oh, no, Daddy,” she said, tossing it across the table to Bridget. “You’re staying right here. No phone means no work.”

They actually started chanting, “No phone! No work!” as our game of Monkey in the Middle began. Guess who the monkey was.

“That’s not funny, guys,” I said, trying not to laugh and failing.

I also failed to get to the phone. A game of Monkey in the Middle really isn’t fair against ten people. Eleven, actually, as Mary pretended to offer it to me and then passed it behind her back to the waiting Brian. He tossed it to Eddie, who opened it.

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Bennett is not available,” Eddie said as everyone cracked up. “Please leave your name at the sound of the beep. Beep!”

“Mike, is that you?” Emily said as I finally wrested it from him.

“Sorry about that, Parker. My family is being funny. At least they think they are. What’s up?”

“One guess,” she said.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” she said grimly. “Another kid was grabbed, Mike. I’m pulling up in front of your building right now.”

Chapter 56

EMILY HANDED ME her notes on the latest kidnapping as I buckled myself into the passenger seat of her Fedmobile. She surprised me by having a piping-hot black venti in my drink holder and a black-and-white cookie from Zaro’s on the dash. I noticed she was also doing a pretty professional job of carving our way south through the chaos of midtown Manhattan dinner traffic.

Unhealthy food and a healthy dose of road rage, I thought with an impressed nod. My new partner was getting this New York cop thing down pretty fast.

The calm from my shower and my visit with the kids lasted less than a New York minute as I scanned the pages of her notes. The latest victim was a seventeen-year-old high school student named Mary Beth Haas. She’d been missing since noon. She’d last been spotted leaving the very exclusive all-girls Brearley School on East 83rd Street to go to the school’s gym on East 87th. She’d never made it there. The poor teenage girl seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

“The similarity to the Hastings kidnapping is striking,” I said. “Both were grabbed from exclusive Manhattan schools. We need to check for teaching staff who have a history in both places.”

“No new leads on Hastings?” Emily inquired.

“Some Twenty-sixth Precinct squad guys are out looking for the Russian girlfriend, but so far nothing,” I said as I looked back down at the report.

I read that Mary Beth Haas’s mother, Ann, was the CEO and main shareholder in the Price Templeton Fund, the second-largest mutual fund on Wall Street. No wonder our newest case had loudly rung every alarm bell down at One Police Plaza.

“I Googled the mother,” Emily said. “She’s, like, the fifth- or sixth-richest woman in the country. Her father started the fund, but they said she worked herself up from an analyst and probably would have ended up as CEO even if she hadn’t been left thirty-four percent of the stock in her dad’s will. She’s also one of the largest contributors to the New York Philharmonic and Public Library.”

“Another only child of an A-list mega-wealthy New Yorker, like the Dunnings, the Skinners, and Gordon Hastings?” I asked.

Emily nodded. “I can’t believe he’s hit another one so fast. He actually had to have grabbed Mary Beth before we did the money exchange for Hastings.”

“For the love of God,” I said, wanting to punch something. “I thought he’d be done after getting his five million. Now two in one day? What is this guy made of? And what the hell is he after if it’s not money?”

We shot over the Brooklyn Bridge and pulled off the first exit into the borough’s most exclusive neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights. Two undercover cars were already parked in front of the Haases’ stately Greek Revival brownstone on a tree-lined street called Columbia Heights. It overlooked the Brooklyn Promenade and had, perhaps, the most majestic view of lower Manhattan that exists.

A female detective I knew from Brooklyn South Homicide answered the door. Behind her, a task force techie in an NYPD Geek Squad Windbreaker was taking apart a wall phone.

I looked up as a petite fiftyish woman with very short blond hair came down the stairs. She kept passing a hand back obsessively through her hair as she spoke rapidly into a cell phone. I groaned inwardly at the intense sorrow and despair on Ann Haas’s face. I could only imagine what she was going through. Could only guess how unimaginably sad and angry and destroyed I’d feel if one of my kids were missing. Mrs. Haas was a woman who was most definitely going through hell.

“I think the FBI’s here now, John. I’ll call you back,” the distraught mother said into the cell as she arrived at the bottom of the stairs. She waved us into the living room.

Her dropped cell phone clattered off an antique oak steamer trunk she used as a coffee table as she collapsed back onto a huge, silk-upholstered couch. Despite her expensive power suit, when she pulled her black-hoseclad legs up underneath her, she suddenly looked like a little girl. A little girl who’d lost her only doll, I thought to myself.

The high-def night skyline of lower Manhattan seemed to scratch up against the glass of the bay window behind her. She turned and stared at the office towers.

“I took us out of that insane place in order to provide some sort of normalcy and security after Mary Beth was born,” she said quietly as she shook her head. “I wanted to send her to and from Brearley by car, but ever since Mary Beth was fourteen, she’s insisted on taking the subway.

“I have friends who hire professionals to try to get their wealthy kids to understand how normal people live, but it was almost the opposite with Mary Beth. It was like pulling teeth every time I had to convince her that it was okay to use the resources we’ve been fortunate enough to acquire.”

She looked at me, perplexed, as if I might know the answer to the affliction she was now suffering from. It pissed me off that I didn’t.

“Is your husband here?” I said.

“He works for UBS in London during the week, but he’s on the next plane back. Did you know some fool at Brearley actually tried to tell me my daughter might have just cut class? Mary Beth is the captain of both the lacrosse and volleyball teams. She got an early acceptance to Bard, for the love of God. This is not a girl who cuts classes.

“Please tell me you have an idea of who this person is who might have taken her. Please tell me you’re going to bring my Mary Beth back home.”

The woman’s hurt eyes locked on mine again as she started to silently weep. They only tore away as Emily sat down next to the woman and laid a hand on her wrist.

“We’ll do everything possible, Mrs. Haas,” Emily said. “I can’t guarantee you anything except that we’ll go to the ends of the earth to bring your little girl home again.”

Chapter 57

DESPITE ANN HAAS’S obvious pain, she managed to tell Emily and me about her daughter, Mary Beth. She was a solid 4.0 student whose dream was to help the poor of Latin America, where she’d summered from the time she was fourteen at various volunteer camps.

“This year, instead of going to Europe like a lot of her friends, Mary Beth is planning to run a children’s theater in Pérez Zeledón, one of the poorest sections of Costa Rica,” the CEO told us as she handed us a picture. “It’s all she can talk about.”

Mary Beth was a slightly overweight, attractive, blue-eyed girl with long jet-black hair. In the picture, she was wearing a green bandanna and matching camo shirt and cargo shorts as she smiled and waved from some muddy jungle path.

Most surprising of all to me was that Mary Beth didn’t have a social networking account on either MySpace or Facebook, unlike the other victims. A throwback, I thought, looking at her smile. A very good and special kid.

Ann Haas was about to take us up to her daughter’s room, when her wall phone rang. The department geek set up by the fireplace glanced at his laptop and nodded vigorously. I motioned for Mrs. Haas to pick up the phone in the family room as the tech handed me a set of headphones.

Mrs. Haas’s knuckles were as bloodless as her face as she lifted the cordless phone.

“Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Haas,” the kidnapper said. “Poor, poor Mrs. Haas. How ironic, considering the latest Forbes listing, wouldn’t you say?”

I nodded to everyone around the room. It was the same guy.

“Oh, Mrs. Haas,” the kidnapper continued. “How glorious you look at your charity events. How brightly the flash packs of the paparazzi reflect off your diamonds. While the lights dazzled, did you maybe for a moment think that you had become more than mortal? I think you did. Pride is one of your main sins, Ann. I can call you Ann, can’t I? I hope you don’t mind. After spending so much time with your daughter, I feel like we’re practically related.”

“You fucking prick son of a bitch!” Mrs. Haas screamed. “Give her back!”

The kidnapper let out a long, sad sigh.

“My, my. What filth even a daughter of the highest privilege is capable of in our tainted society. Is that really any way to talk? Did those tight-ass lily-white-tower academics teach you to speak like that at Sarah Lawrence? Or did you learn that potty mouth at Daddy’s trading desk? Mustn’t we have been turned on, being one of the few women amongst all that heady Wall Street warrior testosterone?

“Which leads us to your next sin, Ann. Lust. Multiple acts of adultery with multiple partners, if the rumors are true. Shall I get into specifics?

“Isn’t that what being rich is all about? Sex and money and hiring people to clean the eight-hundred-thread-count sheets? You’re a filthy sinner, Ann, and so’s your lackluster English poseur of a husband.”

“Please let me speak to Mary Beth,” Mrs. Haas begged. “Just for a second. For whatever I’ve done to you, I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” the kidnapper said. “But talking to Mary Beth won’t be possible. I’m here to teach you that you are human, Ann. And like all humans, you must come to terms with the reality of loss. Sin and loss go hand in hand. Please put my friend Detective Bennett on the phone now. It’s been a real pleasure speaking to you, despite your disgusting language. I hope he hasn’t pumped up your hopes concerning Mary Beth, Madam Chief Executive. On second thought, I hope he has. All the more pride to goeth before the fall. Ta-ta.”

“Detective Bennett here,” I said, taking the phone from the weeping CEO. “How’s Mary Beth? Is she okay?”

“Mary Beth is fine, Mike. For now. She has a big test coming up, though. A final final, you might say. It’s all in her hands. I’ll call you back the second her score is tallied.”

“Wait a minute. Don’t you want money?”

“All the money on this earth couldn’t prevent Mary Beth from facing her destiny, Mike.”

What the hell did that mean? How did that make sense? There was a sharp sound in the background suddenly, a distinctive click-clack. I winced. Goddammit. He’d just chambered an automatic pistol.

“Pray for her, Mike. That’s all she has now.”

Chapter 58

MARY BETH HAAS bit harder into the thick wraps of gauze gagged into her mouth as she wrestled herself up into a cramped seated position.

She was in a pitch-black metal box with a low lid and cold, rusty walls and floor. Her arms were tightly wrapped around herself in a straitjacket. She’d been in the box for several hours. At first she’d been terrified. Then angry. Now she was just sad, infinitely, inconsolably, hopelessly sad.

As she sat in the cramped dark, the events of the afternoon kept playing and replaying through her mind in a nightmare loop.

She knew she wasn’t really allowed to leave campus to run laps at the Brearley Field House on 87th, but since she was a senior and the cocaptain of the reigning New York State Championship volleyball team, her teachers and her coach often looked the other way when she snuck out during her morning free period.

She had been coming through one of those cavelike construction scaffolding tunnels across the street from the gym when a man standing beside the open door of a van had said, “Mary Beth?”

She remembered a stinging numbness in her chest as she turned toward the voice. Her whole entire body seemed to cramp at once as she fell forward, powerless. A strong, wet, medicinal smell filled her nose and mouth then, and she was out.

She’d woken up in the straitjacket with a massive headache. That had been what? Seven? Maybe eight hours before? Eight hours of blackness and silence. Eight hours of being starving and thirsty and dirty and having to use the bathroom. It was like she was stuck at sea. A sea of darkness where there seemed to be no hope of being rescued.

At first, the sadness had been sharp, but now it was lessening, weakening like a candle dying out. She thought of her friends and teachers. Her mom. I’m sorry, everyone, she thought. Sorry for being so stupid. Sorry for messing up.

She didn’t know how much more time had elapsed when she heard the clacking of a steel shutter rolling up.

Oh, God! Somebody was coming. The man who had taken her.

An unhinging bolt of animal panic gripped her, froze her. He would touch her now, wouldn’t he? That’s what they did, right? Crazy men? Hurt you. Raped you. Killed you. She whimpered. It would be better just to be buried. She didn’t want to be in pain.

That’s when she shook herself out of her pity. She found a hard place inside herself and went there. She would fight for her life. She would bite and scream and kick. She found the thought of it comforting. She wanted to live, but more than that, she wanted to fight. She suddenly knew she could, and that was somehow better.

There was the sound of a car motor approaching. The clackety-clack of a metal gate going back down again. The killing of the engine and the sound of the door opening made her new strength waver for a moment, but then she bit down harder on the gag, and it was back.

I want to live, she thought. Please, God, just allow me the chance to live.

Chapter 59

THE METALLIC SCRAPE of a lock was loud right next to Mary Beth’s ear. The lid of the steel box screeched as it opened.

Even in the poor light, she knew it was him. The suit. The gray hair and the glasses. He looked intelligent, fatherly, like a kindly doctor or a popular professor. How could men be so evil? she thought.

Her arms and especially her hands were strong from volleyball. He’d free her to get at her, wouldn’t he? First chance she got, she’d smash the side of her fist into his glasses, try to ram a shard into his eye as deep as it would go.

He lifted her out by the straps on the back of her jacket. She saw that she’d been held in a large industrial toolbox. They were in an enormous dark warehouse of some kind. Behind the van were girderlike pillars and welding gas tanks. Could she kick one over and start a fire? Best of all was a high window above the steel shutter of the door. The world lay on its other side.

Make it there, she urged herself. For everything that everyone in your life has done for you, make it there.

The man sat her on a bench beside a metal table and sat down on the other side of it.

He took two items out of his jacket pockets and laid them on the tabletop for her to see. She made another whimper at the sight of them.

They were a straight razor and a black pistol.

“I’m going to remove your gag. If you scream, I’m going to have to cut up that flawless face of yours, Mary Beth. Nod if you understand.”

She nodded. He leaned across the table, slid the cold flat of the razor to her cheek, and shredded the gauze. She breathed through her mouth as she worked her sore jaw, wishing her hands were free to scratch her cheeks.

“Hi, Mary Beth,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”

Um, let me guess, she thought. You’re the sick freak who’s going around killing rich teenagers?

“The man from the paper. The one the police are looking for,” she said instead.

He nodded, grinned.

“Guilty as charged,” he said. “I won’t lie to you. The people who have died so far have done so because they failed a test. We no longer have the luxury in this world to allow those who are unworthy to live. That’s why I have brought you here. I need to find out if you are worthy.”

A test, Mary Beth thought as the man rolled and then lit a cigarette. As he exhaled blue fragrant smoke from his nose, she allowed herself a tiny sliver of hope. She suspected that he was lying, just playing games with her, but if he wasn’t, maybe she could pull this off.

If anything, she was smart. She’d gotten a 2120 on her SAT, been early accepted to Bard, her first choice. Most kids she knew came up with a whole bunch of bull crap for their college applications, but hers, all her volunteering and extracurricular activities, were actually true. She really did love to learn and read and engage her mind.

Please let it be true, she thought.

He tapped some ash on the table between the razor blade and the gun.

“Okay, question one: Tell me about fair trade coffee prices and their effect on South American coffee growers.”

Oh, my God, Mary Beth thought excitedly. I actually know this. It was last month’s topic from her Political Awareness committee at school.

“The modern fair trade movement began in ’eighty-eight in Holland,” she said. “It came about because of the horrendous exploitation of the Southern Hemisphere fieldworkers. It’s basically an economic partnership that protects small coffee growers and gives consumers a choice to pay a little more for their joe while providing a living wage for the workers. The summer I was fifteen, I actually went on a fair harvest trip to Nicaragua.”

For a moment, it looked like the cigarette was going to drop from the gray-haired man’s lower lip. He recovered quickly.

“You’re right,” he said, taking a drag. “Now let’s shift gears to global warming: How many gallons of gasoline are consumed by Americans each year?”

“One hundred forty-six billion gallons,” Mary Beth said without hesitation. She knew this answer because of the mock United Nations project she’d completed at school. She’d been given the role of representative from Darfur on their global-energy-issues debate.

For the first time, the man with the gray hair seemed to genuinely smile. He crushed his cigarette under his shoe. He even took the razor off the table and put it back into his pocket.

“Correct again,” he said. “That’s good, Mary Beth. You’re doing well. So far, at least. But we have many more questions to get through. Now, question three. The subject: abject hunger in the world’s richest nation.”

Chapter 60

WE SAT THERE, staring at the phone. It just didn’t make sense. The kidnapper should have called back by now. Every other time, he’d called to let us know where the body was. Was not telling us and leaving the parents hanging his latest method of torture? If it was, it was working like a charm.

The only whiff of a lead came when Verizon Wireless called back with a cell site triangulation of his first call. It had come from somewhere in the vicinity of Gateway National Beach, on the south shore of Staten Island. But not surprisingly, when detectives from the 122nd Precinct had raced to the scene, they found nothing but gulls. The killer could have been in a car when he’d called-or who knew? A boat maybe. Another stone wall. Another dead end.

When I went to the window for about the thirtieth time, I noticed a funny thing happening on the sidewalk out in front of the Haases’ brownstone. A crowd had formed. It looked like a block party.

I went outside, thinking at first it was the press, but then I spotted a Brearley sweatshirt. Mary Beth’s friends. They were holding candles beside a pile of teddy bears and flowers and a signed volleyball. Almost every member of the Brearley senior class showed up to the vigil. They were crying, smoking, holding pictures of her.

I thought about breaking it up but then decided, why? If the kidnapper was watching the house, maybe the outpouring of love might make him see Mary Beth as a flesh-and-blood valuable person instead of the symbol of his hate.

I stared at the young, solemn faces as a guitar started playing. The vigil was oddly beautiful. The flickering flames from the candles seemed to merge with the lights of Manhattan across the dark bay. Mary Beth was obviously a great kid who had affected many lives.

It set my teeth on edge that I couldn’t find her. Even after all this time, we were as baffled by everything as anyone, completely useless.

Ann Haas came outside and was embraced by her daughter’s friends. She ordered pizza. Emily and I joined her in handing it out. I have to say, I was pretty overwhelmed by the emotional reactions of everyone, the genuine outreaching to comfort one another. Too bad it so often has to take tragedy to bring out the best in people, I thought.

Emily and I used the opportunity to learn more about Mary Beth. Ann Haas introduced me to Kevin Adello, a tall, mop-headed basketball player from Collegiate, Brearley’s exclusive brother school. He told us he’d dated Mary Beth off and on.

“She’s going to Bard, and instead of going to Princeton, I decided to go play for Vassar so we could be near each other. She isn’t like any other girl at Brearley, I’ll tell you that. Mary Beth is real. She’d puke seeing all these debutantes here in their just-so Seven jeans. I’m sorry. I’m being too harsh. I guess it’s nice that they showed. I just wish I could do something.”

I wheeled around as a cab slowed in the street. The crowd converged on it. My blood went cold as a ragged cry rang out.

“Move!” I yelled as I forced shocked teenagers aside.

A scared-looking girl in a wrinkled Brearley hoodie opened the door of the cab as I arrived beside it.

“It’s okay,” Mary Beth said, holding her hands up. “I’m okay.”

What? I couldn’t believe it. Another twist. The first one in the case that was actually welcome. Mary Beth’s bowled-over friends clapped and whistled as I guided her toward the brownstone stairs and her joyfully crying mother.

He’d let Mary Beth live?

Chapter 61

BACK INSIDE UNDER the kitchen high hats, Emily and I stood back as the mother and daughter embraced. I couldn’t tell which of them was crying the hardest. It even looked like Emily was about to join in.

“Something in your eye there, Detective Badass?” she teased.

“Hey,” I whispered to her, blinking back the moistness. “I guess I must have a heart or something, huh? You breathe a word about it to Schultz or Ramirez, we’ll be exchanging gunfire.”

“Toss me a block now, Mike,” Emily said, taking a deep breath. “We need to debrief the girl while she’s still fresh. I need to get Mary Beth alone.”

“Mrs. Haas? Can I talk to you for a moment?” I said, tapping the mother on the arm. “We need to start thinking about a media strategy. It’s very important.”

“Now?” she said as I ushered her into the hall. “Can’t it wait? I have to get my daughter cleaned up now. She needs me. Nothing is more important than that. In fact, why are you still here? I’d like you to leave so we can all get back to normal.”

“Mom!” Mary Beth yelled. It was the first time she’d spoken since she’d come inside. “They need to talk to me. Is that so insane? Ugggh. Stop treating me like I’m three. I’m fine.”

Ann Haas’s eyes widened in surprise as I was finally able to get her out into the hall. I was starting to like the feisty teen more by the minute. Emily began questioning the girl.

“Hi, Mary Beth. My name is Emily Parker. I work with the FBI. I can’t tell you how happy we are that you’re okay. But right now, I need you to answer some questions to see if we can catch the person who abducted you.”

“If you’re going to give me a speech about rape kits and stuff, don’t bother. He didn’t touch me.”

“Good. That’s very good. In that case, Mary Beth, can you describe him? How old is he? What does he look like?”

“He’s in his late fifties maybe. Broad-shouldered, about six feet tall. He has salt-and-pepper hair. He’s actually pretty handsome. He reminded me of that actor, the father from The Day After Tomorrow. Dennis Quaid. Only paler and with glasses. He also wore an expensive suit.”

Parker scribbled it down. Why wouldn’t this guy wear a mask or something if he was going to let her go? she thought. Was it sloppiness? Another trick?

“He’s actually not that bad a guy,” Mary Beth continued. “I know it sounds weird, but he cares about stuff. Probably too much. After everything, I guess I feel sorry for him more than anything else.”

What?

“How do you mean?” Parker said instead.

“He gave me a list of questions about the horrible direction this world is headed in. Like a test, I guess. Every correct answer I gave made him happier and happier. He was actually crying at the end. He told me how proud he was of me. Told me to try to learn everything I could at Bard. Said that the world was really going to need me. He apologized for having put me through the whole thing and then he drove me to a corner and put me in a cab. He even paid the cabbie.”

Parker had to use effort not to shake her head in bafflement. This guy really was nuts.

“You didn’t happen to get his plate?”

“No,” she said. “It was a light-colored van. Yellow, I think.”

“Anything else at all, Mary Beth?”

“He hand-rolls his own cigarettes. He made a cross with the ashes on my forehead right before he let me out. Look,” she said, reaching up to touch it.

Parker grabbed her wrist tightly as the girl went to wipe it off.

“Mike! Get in here!” she yelled triumphantly. “I think we got a print!”

Chapter 62

BECAUSE WE DIDN’T have time to wait for the Crime Scene Unit to arrive, we lifted the print ourselves. And when I say “we,” I mean Emily.

I stayed with Mary Beth while Special Agent Parker went to the G car and came back with some surgical gloves and 3M fingerprint tape.

“This will just take a second, hon,” Emily said as she laid the tape meticulously across the teen’s forehead. With a light, deft motion, Emily flattened out the tape and peeled off the print.

I had to contain a whoop as she laid the tape on the white fingerprint card. It was perfect. Even taking a print off a pane of cold glass can sometimes be difficult, but Emily had lifted this print as well as any CSU pro. Was there anything this Bureau chick couldn’t do?

Afterward, we headed back to the G car’s trunk, and Emily took out a large gray box. It was a LiveScan 10 printer, a portable fingerprint scanning machine. She connected it to the Fed car’s Mobile Computer Terminal and with one small scan, the print was fired down to the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

If our boy’s prints were among the fifty million the IAFIS contained, we’d get a response within two hours. This was by far our best lead yet. I was stoked.

“We need to get this down to the lab in DC as well for synchrotron infrared microspectroscopy,” Emily said, dropping the print card into an evidence envelope.

“A syncro infra what?” I said.

“It’s brand-new. See, in every print there’s little traces of sweat. The lab techs can now look at the sweat and detect chemical markers. The markers reveal whether a suspect uses drugs and even detect the hormones that indicate the suspect’s sex. If we don’t get a hit on the print, we need to obtain as much info as we can. You’re telling me you never heard of it?”

“Of course I’ve heard of it. Are you kidding me?” I lied. “I just wanted to see if you knew.”

Chapter 63

MARY BETH WAS sitting down with the just-arrived police sketch artist when we left the brownstone. That’s when I noticed that the crowd outside the Haases’ had changed. The teenagers looked much more vicious, heartless, almost hyenalike. Oh, I thought, spotting a news van. That explains it.

I was scanning for a slot to get through the converging newsies, when I suddenly stopped at the town house’s bottom step. Instead of running, I waved the crowd toward me. I had an idea.

“I have an announcement,” I said.

I cleared my throat as lights and microphones leaned toward me. Peering at me from behind the bulky cameras and apparatus, the surrounding press people looked like an invading army of alien cyborgs. The problem I had with them was that they often treated me like I was part of an invading army of alien cyborgs.

“Today another young victim was abducted, but this one was released unharmed,” I began. “First off, if the person responsible is listening, I want to thank them for their mercy in this case. I would also urge them strongly to contact me so that we might be able to resolve this situation once and for all. I’m available anytime day or night. You have my number. Please do not hesitate to speak with me.”

“Do you have any leads in the case?” one of the cyborgs called to me.

“Goddammit,” I said angrily. “Can’t you see we have an investigation to run? That’s it now. Out of my way. I mean it!”

Parker was silent as we stepped to the car. Then she suddenly snapped her fingers.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “You wanted to get the pissed-off-cop routine on the eleven-o’clock news. You’re trying to make our guy think we’re still running around in circles instead of getting closer.”

“Exactly,” I said with a wink. “Why let on that we’re getting closer to grabbing him? That’ll only make him run. I need to make him think that he’s still way ahead of us. Then bam! Once we get this fingerprint hit, we nail him cold.”

“That’s brilliant, Mike,” Emily said. “I love it.”

“Hey,” I said. “I’m just trying to keep up with you, Special Agent.”

I checked my watch.

“I just hope to God he hasn’t done that Hastings kid yet. We need that hit fast. And if that’s not enough to worry about, it’ll be Ash Wednesday in a few hours. Who knows what this loon has planned.”

“Maybe he’s cut us some slack and decided to head to New Orleans to catch the tail end of Mardi Gras,” Emily said.

“Sounds like fun,” I said. “You and I should go, too. I could use a road trip.”

“Not so fast, Mike. If all goes well, we’ll have the ID of the kidnapper in an hour and a half. After we put this lunatic out of business, I’ll buy the first round.”

Chapter 64

LIMOUSINES AND TOWN cars were three deep out in front of the Waldorf Astoria as Francis Mooney stepped north up Park Avenue. He had to walk in the street to avoid the scrum of paparazzi stuffed behind sidewalk barricades. He was temporarily blinded as a limo door popped open and three dozen flash packs went off at once. A scruffy young man in a tuxedo emerged, squinting merrily in the brilliant shower of white light. An actor perhaps?

The American Refugee Committee was having its benefit tonight, Francis remembered, putting the scene at his back. He was happy that ARC was having such a stunning turnout. Mooney had been on the organization’s board ten years ago and knew it to be a terrific organization, unlike the many charities whose bloated CEO salaries and outrageous benefits budgets soaked up most of the donations.

Continuing up Park, he thought about Mary Beth Haas. He cursed himself for the thousandth time for not wearing a mask during the test. He’d been positive she was going to fail. He’d gotten lazy, and someone had seen his face. Oh, well. Couldn’t worry about it now. Places to go, he thought.

Three minutes later, he quickly turned the corner onto 52nd and passed beneath the awning of the legendary Four Seasons restaurant on the north side of the street. Coming up the stairs, he smiled at a startling black-haired woman in a gravity-defying backless gown who was speaking German into a cell phone. More chic women and slim, suited men waited for their tables beneath the Picasso inside. He inhaled the expensive-perfume-thick air. Cedar, gardenia, ambrette, he thought with a sigh. Now, that’s what money smells like.

The sleek, platinum-haired maître d’, Cristophe, rushed toward him from the front bar.

“Mr. Mooney,” he said with a flourished raising of his hands. “Finally, you have arrived. Mrs. Clautier was worried. May I take your coat?”

“Thank you so much, Cristophe,” Mooney said, allowing him to remove his camel hair as the rest of the elegant crowd pretended not to gape at his royal treatment.

“Has she been waiting long?”

“Not so long, Mr. Mooney. Shall I take your case as well?”

Francis hefted the briefcase with the 9-millimeter Beretta in it, as if debating.

“You know what, Cristophe? I might as well hold on to it.”

He stopped for a moment before he followed the maître d’ into the restaurant’s storied Pool Room. He took in the glittering white-marble center pool, the shimmering chain-link drapes, the important and beautiful people at the crisp, glowing tables, all eating with a meticulous casualness. He could almost feel the power thrumming through the floor. Even he couldn’t deny that the sensation was exhilarating.

The other board members of New York Restore had already arrived. They were seated at the double table by the pool that they always reserved for their quarterly dinner meeting.

“Well, if it isn’t our wild Irish chairman,” Mrs. Clautier said. “In all the time I’ve known you, Francis, I do believe this is the very first time you’ve ever been late.”

“I can’t tell you how hectic things have been at the office,” Francis said, grinning widely as he kissed her Cartier-diamond-encrusted hand. “The important thing is, I’m here now to bask in the glow of your loveliness.”

“Such a charmer,” Mrs. Clautier said with a sigh as she touched his cheek. “Francis, as I’ve told you many a time, you were born several generations too late.”

“And you several too early, my dear,” Francis said. He declined the menu the tuxedoed waiter offered and ordered the Dover sole.

“I was with Caroline at lunch today, and she told me that Sloan-Kettering is doing celebrity-designed lunch boxes for their soiree,” Mrs. Clautier told the group. “Isn’t that a hoot? Brooke came up with the idea.”

For Mrs. Clautier, diva of the New York social set, to actually go out of her way to supply the last names Kennedy and Shields would have been beneath her, Francis knew.

Mrs. Clautier was an unapologetic snob. In truth, he really couldn’t give two shits about New York Restore and its insipid mission to maintain and beautify Manhattan ’s playgrounds and public spaces. The only reason he’d decided to head it was to humor the generous Mrs. Clautier. Over the years, he’d become a kind of unofficial philanthropy consultant to her, and he had been able to steer millions of the limitless oil fortune her husband had left her to other much more important causes.

In fact, he was going to squeeze her for the biggest amount he’d ever chanced right after the meal. The papers, all ready for her to sign, were under the holstered automatic in his briefcase.

“Champagne, Mr. Mooney?” the ever discreet table captain whispered to Francis as Mrs. Clautier’s regaling veered into tales of the latest mischief her Pekingese, Charlie, had gotten into.

“Glenlivet. A double,” Mooney whispered back.