“Thanks for all this, Alex,” Scully said. “You’ll be in good hands, and by the time you’re back at home, I’ll get a department phone for you. I don’t care that Prescott wants you to go shopping at your local AT&T store. I need to get you something that can’t be traced and that only comes directly to me. Just give me a few days.”
The only thing missing from his farewell remarks was a “semper fi.” He turned away and closed the door behind him.
A few minutes later, after knocking, two morgue attendants wheeled in the ME’s gurney. They left the room while I stripped down to my bra and panties. I climbed on and lay down, letting Mike drape my body with two white sheets. They were stamped in green ink with the words PROPERTY OF THE NYC MEDICAL EXAMINER on the border.
“Are you going to be okay when I cover your face?” Mike asked. He was stroking my hair and bent over to kiss me on the forehead.
I bit my lip and nodded. He kissed me on the mouth and I responded, clutching at his hand. Then he broke away and pulled the sheets up over my face and head.
The morgue attendants came back in and told me to brace myself for the short ride on the gurney. They led me out of the room and down the hallway. I was breathing normally, but careful not to move.
The double outer doors swung open automatically. Several nurses flanked us—at least, I assumed they did because I heard Mike and the attendants thank them as I felt a blast of cold air when we left the hospital corridor.
“Run silent, run deep,” Mike said. I knew he was referring to one of his favorite World War II movies. I was supposed to be the American sub turning off its engines to pass beneath the Japanese warship. No sound, no movement, no sign of life.
I could hear Keith Scully’s voice, maybe fifty feet away. He must have been talking to reporters.
There was a short passage from the hospital exit to the van. My ride stopped abruptly as the two men opened the rear doors of the morgue vehicle. They each took a side of the metal bed and lifted it, collapsing the base, which held the wheels, and shoving the entire contraption—with me aboard—into the van.
“You’re good, babe,” Mike said. “Stay down.”
He hoisted himself up and one of the men slammed the doors. There were no windows on the side panels, of course, so it seemed doubly dark inside.
Mike waited until we moved out of the driveway and up the short block, turning south on York Avenue to ride downtown to the morgue, before he lifted the sheets.
“You can open your eyes now,” Mike said.
“I really don’t want to.”
There were too many ghosts who had taken this bumpy ride. I had no desire to check out my grim surroundings.
“What did Scully say?” I asked.
“Nothing more than he told you,” Mike said. “He was just creating a diversion to keep the press with him while we slipped you out.”
“No photographers?” I asked.
“A couple. I saw some flashes go off, but they were at long distance.”
It took only eight or nine minutes to get to the morgue. There was a long bay large enough to accommodate the vans. I could feel the motion as the driver made a U-turn and backed us in, then down the slight incline that led right to the doors of the basement morgue, while Mike covered my head again—just to be safe.
I was unloaded as quickly as I had been loaded. Doors slammed behind us and I figured we were in the private space that was reserved for the recently dead.
Mike lifted the sheets from my face and put my clothes on the table next to the gurney.
“Turn off the Stryker saw,” he said, smoothing out my hair while he had a conversation with an imaginary pathologist. “Looks like I’ve got a live one.”
THIRTY-TWO
“What happens now?” I asked.
We were back in the ME’s conference room, where Jaxon Stern had first interrogated me less than four days earlier. It was three A.M. and I was slumped across the table, my head resting on my arms, too tired to think straight. A suitcase with my clothes and toiletries was in the corner. Vickee had delivered it to the local precinct, as the commissioner had directed, and a uniformed cop brought it here.
“You leave for Three Sisters,” Mike said. “Scully just wants to give it enough time to make sure any reporters who might have followed the van down here have left.”
“Is Mercer taking us?”
“Nope. Too obvious,” Mike said. “There’d be no reason for him to come to the morgue.”
“Who?”
“Lieutenant Peterson,” Mike said. “Ray lives in Westchester County. It makes sense for him to stop by here to check on the body of a Manhattan North homicide victim before he heads for home.”
Ray Peterson was one of my heroes. A smart, steady, old-fashioned detective who had long ago earned his grade as lieutenant by combining his experience and intelligence with cutting-edge technology to run the best homicide squad in the country.
“When do we go?”
“Soon, Coop, very soon,” Mike said. “One more thing, kid, and I don’t want any theatrics on account of it, okay?”
“I feel it coming,” I said, without even picking up my head. “I’m going solo.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“To a nuthouse,” I said. “To a nunnery.”
“Good for all that ails you, as my mother would say.”
“Who’s going to be there for me?” I asked.
“Jimmy North,” Mike said, referring to one of my favorite young guys on the squad. “And Kate. Kate Tinsley.”
I opened my eyes and glared at Mike, but didn’t pick my head up. It seemed too heavy to lift.
“She’s got a pipeline to Jaxon Stern,” I said. “I don’t like that.”
“We’re doing it Scully’s way,” Mike said. “He thinks it would send some kind of signal if I disappeared at the same time you did. He wants me in the city and at work.”
“Kate? How about her?”
“I told the commissioner about Jaxon Stern and what his problem is,” Mike said. “Kate didn’t do you any harm, kid, and Scully really needs to keep one of his people in the mix. Someone who’s been in on all the task force meetings since the first night.”
“I’m too whipped to fight my own battles,” I said, pulling myself up and shaking my head to wake myself up. “How are we going to stay in touch?”
“There are real phones at Three Sisters,” Mike said. “I can call you in your room. Three or four days; that’s all it’s going to be.”
Ray Peterson knocked on the door before he walked in. He slapped Mike on the back and clasped both his hands over mine.
“You hanging in, Alex?” he asked.
I nodded. “Thanks, Loo.”
“Glad to have your company going home,” he said. “Chapman tell you we think it’s best if you lie down on the backseat for the ride? I’ve got a pillow and a blanket, so maybe you can nap on the way.”
“Good to go,” I said. “Want to give us a minute?”
Mike was lacking the gene for empathy, but I had known that for more than a decade. “No long good-byes, Coop,” he said, wrapping his arm around me and leading me out of the room.