They were headed the right way.
What a grim place this was. The March weather had cast a gray pall over the earth, turning it to the shade of a corpse at a postmortem. Humid and cold, crawling up your spine, along your legs and thighs to your groin. It reminded Krueger of a huge open-cut diamond mine he’d been to years ago in Russia. A thought occurred to him: His job, of course, was to make sure that the pipe containing the kimberlite was never discovered, and no diamond-mining operation opened here. But what, he thought, might workers have found if a mine had opened? His evaluation was that the lode contained very high-quality gems.
Could it be that beneath the earth at the Northeast Geo Industries site there rested a diamond for all time? Krueger thought of two stones from his own country: The Cullinan, which when mined weighed over thirty-one hundred carats, making it the largest gem-quality diamond ever found. The stone was cut into more than one hundred smaller diamonds, including the Great Star of Africa, more than five hundred carats, and the Lesser Star of Africa, more than three hundred. Those two finished gems are part of the British Crown Jewels. Krueger’s favorite South African stone was the Centenary Diamond. The weight as rough was 599 carats. It was cut to more than 270. A modified heart-shaped brilliant, it was the largest colorless flawless diamond in the world.
Krueger’s role in keeping such a diamond buried would sting.
But this was his job, and he would see it through.
“Keep going,” he muttered to Vimal. “The sooner we finish, the sooner you can get home to your family.”
Chapter 61
Amelia Sachs was just off the Brooklyn Bridge, a few minutes from the Northeast Geo operation, her destination. The Torino’s engine sang at a high pitch.
Rhyme’s thinking had been that Ackroyd—or whatever his name might be—didn’t want simply to kill Vimal Lahori. Not yet. He needed to find out where the boy had picked up the kimberlite on Saturday morning before he’d walked into the carnage at Patel’s. Ackroyd’s assignment would be to destroy or dump every bit of kimberlite he could find, before fleeing, and the one logical place for that would be the drilling site.
The operation was still closed, and Ackroyd and Vimal could wander it with impunity, as the boy pointed out where the kimberlite samples had been found.
She was about to exit the highway when her phone hummed. She tapped the Answer button, then Speaker, and set the phone on the passenger seat to downshift from fourth to third. The car skidded around a slow-moving van.
“I’m here.”
Lon Sellito said, “Amelia. I’ve got somebody who wants to talk to you. I’m patching her through.”
Her?
“Sure.” She eased off the gas.
A click and another. Then a woman’s voice. “Detective Sachs?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“I’m Adeela Badour.”
“Vimal’s friend.”
“Yes, that’s right.” The woman’s voice was concerned but steady. “Detective Sellitto called and told me Vimal has disappeared. You’re trying to find him.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“I don’t know for certain. But Detective Sellitto told me about the diamonds and the drilling. And that the man who might have kidnapped him was interested in some rocks Vimal had. Well, on Saturday, the morning he was shot, he called me from the subway. He was angry. Mr. Patel had given him a job—to go to a junkyard somewhere and prowl around to find something. Some particular kind of rocks.”
The kimberlite, Sachs understood.
“And when I saw him later that night, he had a piece of rock lodged under the skin.”
“Yes, the bullet hit a bag of stones he had. Lon, are you there?”
“Yeah, Amelia.”
Sachs said, “That’s where they’re going. He’s taken Vimal to the junkyard. To find the kimberlite. Not to the drilling site.”
“Got it. I’ll find out where Northeast Geo dumps their waste.”
“Get in touch with the site manager. A guy named Schoal. Or if you can’t get through to him, call the CEO. What was his name? He was on the news. Dwyer, I think.”
“I’ll get right back to you.”
Sachs asked, “Adeela, did Vimal say anything more about where he was on Saturday?”
“No.”
“Well, thanks. This’s important.”
“I gave Detective Sellitto my number. If you hear anything…” Now Adeela’s voice cracked. She controlled it instantly. “If you hear about him, please call.”
“I will. Yes.”
The young woman disconnected.
Sachs veered onto the shoulder to wait, earning two horns and a middle finger. Ignored them all.
“Come on, come on,” she whispered, a plea to Lon Sellitto. Her leg bobbed impatiently and she resolved not to stare at her phone.
She stared at her phone.
Then put it facedown on the bucket seat beside her.
Three excruciating minutes later Sellitto called back. Schoal had told him that all the stone scrap and drilling residue from the Northeast Geo operation in Brooklyn was hauled to C&D Transfer Station #4. On the water, east of Cobble Hill. He explained, “Hundreds of companies use it, from all over the city.”
“Got it,” she said. She slammed the shifter forward into first and popped the clutch, hitting the flow of traffic in three seconds and exceeding it in five.
She knew the scrapyard and barge dock. They were south of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Piers, about five minutes away—at least in the Torino—if traffic cooperated. Which it decidedly was not doing. She set the blue flasher on her dash, downshifted and returned to the shoulder. She accelerated again, hoping fervently that nobody would have a flat and swerve in front of her.
“Lon, my ETA’s five minutes, I hope. Get uniforms and ESU to the scrapyard. Silent roll-up.”
“Will do, Amelia.”
She didn’t bother to shut off the phone, letting Sellitto disconnect. Sachs didn’t dare remove her hands from the wheel as she sped along the rough shoulder, with side-view mirrors inches from the concrete abutment on the right and traffic on the left.
Thinking: Am I too late?
She traded sixty miles an hour for eighty.
Chapter 62
Sachs beat the blue-and-whites and ESU to the debris transfer station.
She skidded into the site—a sprawling yard, which she remembered as a dusty, shimmering sprawl in the summer but was now forbidding and gray. The large gate was open and she saw no security. There was no parking lot, per se, but as she cruised around, the Torino bounding over the rough ground, she came upon a level area, free of scrap, between two large mounds of shattered concrete and rotting wood and plaster. A Ford was parked here, by itself; all the other vehicles were dump trucks and bulldozers. The few personal vehicles were pickup trucks and SUVs.
She skidded to a stop and climbed out. Drawing her weapon, she made her way cautiously to the Ford. Nobody inside.
She reached inside, pulled the trunk release.
A huge relief seeing the empty space.
Vimal Lahori was, possibly, still alive.
A flash of motion caught her eye. Two squad cars from the local precinct sped up and stopped nearby. Four officers, all in uniform, climbed out.
“Detective,” one said, his voice soft. She knew the slim, sandy-haired officer. Jerry Jones, a ten-year, or so, veteran.
“Jones, call in the tag.”
He fitted an earbud—to keep his Motorola quiet—and put in the request. Adding, “Need it now. We’re in a tactical situation. K.”
She nodded to him and the others—two white men and an African American woman. “You got the description of our perp?”
They all had.
Sachs said, “We’ve got one of his weapons but assume he’s armed again. Glock Nines may be his weapon of choice. No evidence of long guns. He’ll have a knife too. Box cutter. Remember that the younger man with him is a hostage. Indian, dark hair, twenty-two. I don’t know what he’s wearing. The suspect was last seen in a tan overcoat but he’s worn dark outer clothes, too. We want this perp alive, if there’s any way. He’s got information we need.”
Jones said, “He’s planted those gas bombs, right?”