Deadfall

“I’ll back my SUV into the bay,” the lieutenant said. “You can tuck Alex in. Looks pretty quiet outside.”

I crawled onto the rear seat a few minutes later and curled up for the forty-five-minute ride. Somehow, the motion of the car helped knock me out and I dozed for the last half of the journey. Peterson had to wake me up when we reached the psychiatric hospital—founded in the 1960s by three nuns who worked with emotionally disturbed patients.

Sister Louise ran the facility. She was out on the lawn in front of the main building by the time I was awake. It was pitch-black but I could make out the large yellow neo-Victorian house that I had visited years earlier, which I remembered as set on a beautifully landscaped hilltop that looked more like a Swiss canton than a piece of suburban New York.

She welcomed me warmly and offered me food, which I refused, before walking us across the lawn to one of the outbuildings. It was a two-bedroom cottage, which had been set up for my arrival. Both detectives—Kate Tinsley and Jimmy North—were waiting for me in the living room.

I greeted the team, thanked Peterson for the ride and for carrying my luggage, and asked what my instructions were. I watched Sister Louise as she walked down the steps of my temporary shelter, turning to say good night, her face framed by her white coif under the dark head veil that blended in with the color of the sky.

“Sleep, Alex,” the lieutenant said. “Nobody needs you in the morning. James Prescott’s been told you can’t come in. No more than that at the moment. This will be the first time you can catch up on your sleep all week.”

“This is a psych ward, Loo,” I said. “If you can find someone on staff to dispense a sleeping pill, I might be able to take your advice. Otherwise, I’m fresh out of pleasant dreams.”

“I’ll ask. There are a couple of docs in residence,” he said. “That phone next to your bed is for incoming only. Don’t you give the number out to anyone, okay? If you need someone or something, let Tinsley or North make the call. They’ll take turns sleeping—twelve hours on, twelve off. Something like that. You understand they’ll get you whatever you need.”

“I do.”

“You’re safe here, Alex. Give in to that.”

“Thanks, Loo. I intend on trying.”

I readied myself for bed, showering and changing into my pajamas and robe. There was no minibar or television, and no lock on my bedroom door, but there were no straitjackets or restraints either. Peterson had come back with a Lunesta. I took it from him, along with a bottle of water, swallowing it and climbing under the covers.

I slept until eleven o’clock Friday morning, feeling halfway human when I awakened. North was asleep in one of the twin beds in the other room. Tinsley called the main house to ask for some coffee, cereal, and fruit to be sent over to me.

I showered again and put on clean clothes, then ate my breakfast when it arrived.

“What’s the news from headquarters?” I asked.

“The explosions made all the papers—at least, online,” Tinsley said. “No mention of you, just Scully saying that the ME would be trying to identify the remains of the homeless woman.”

“Would you mind calling Mike for me?”

“Not at all.” She dialed the number and handed me the phone, but it went right to voice mail after one ring.

I left Mike a message and gave back the phone.

“How about a walk?” Tinsley said. “You’ll go stir-crazy if you don’t get out, and Sister Louise said there are pretty nice hiking trails.”

It looked like a beautiful fall day, so I threw on a sweater and we left the cottage for a brisk walk in the woods.

Prescott’s assistant was my first caller. He reached Tinsley while we were on a path that circled a small pond on the property. Since Scully wouldn’t give out my location, they decided to postpone my meeting until Monday morning, when they hoped to be able to get to me. I liked being lost in the woods, even if I did have keepers to monitor my activities.

We were back in the cottage by two. The detectives switched duties—Tinsley going inside to rest—and I was glad for the chance to talk with Jimmy, whom I trusted and liked.

It was after four when Mike called for the first time. The phone rang next to my bed, and I went in the room to answer it, closing the door behind me.

“Hey,” he said. “All good?”

“Too much time to think,” I said. “That’s never good when what I’m thinking about is murder.”

“Missing me?”

“Sister Louise does empathy a lot better than you do, Detective,” I said. “You calling because you woke up without me today?”

“I’m calling to tell you what a good nose you have.”

“For what?”

“Snooping,” Mike said. “Instincts. Sense of smell.”

“Better than a springer spaniel?” I asked, sitting down on the bed.

“More like a grizzly, kid. They can sniff out an elk carcass that’s underwater from six miles away.”

“What’d I do to earn your praise?”

“For starters, you kept your cool last night on Sixty-Fourth Street, when my car got singed.”

“Thanks.”

“And for another, you may have hit the jackpot on your theory about Battaglia and the animals.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Sanitation found an abandoned bicycle this morning.”

“That must happen ten times a day, Mike.”

“A racer. An expensive ten-speed that looks brand-new,” he said. “On East Sixty-Fifth Street, just off Lexington Avenue, in an alleyway.”

That was only around the corner and a few blocks from where the explosion had been.

“Does the lab have the bike?” I asked.

“Yeah. Going over it for prints and any kind of trace evidence. Clothing fibers, glass fragments, oil.”

“Near Lex,” I said. “Interesting location. Have they checked video for the subway entrance at Lex and Sixty-Eighth after nine in the evening?”

“The last twelve hours the tech guys, supplemented by an FBI unit, have been checking street surveillance videos enough to blind them. They were on it full-time since Monday night’s shooting. This latest focus is for the explosions,” Mike said. “But it’s not the Lexington Avenue line that may have captured our Molotov man.”

“Somewhere else?”

“Yes. There’s a video of a young guy stripping off a hoodie and trashing it in a can on Fifth Avenue,” Mike said. “Fifth and Sixty-Fifth Street, before he started to run.”

“Run where?” I asked. “There’s a stop for the Q train, and I think the N, a block south of there.”

“Across Fifth Avenue,” Mike said. “But this clown wasn’t headed for the subway. He ran right down the path that leads into the zoo. The Central Park Zoo.”





THIRTY-THREE


“How about if Kate and Jimmy drive me down to the city?” I said, pacing the small cottage bedroom.

“Don’t need you yet,” Mike said. “I’ve been to the zoo.”

“Did this guy actually get inside?” I asked. “I mean, it’s not open at night.”

“Seems like you’re not the only one with keepers, Ms. Cooper. He works there.”

“You’ve ID’d him? That’s fantastic.”

“I have a name and a bogus address at the moment. I’ve only been on this for half an hour.”

Linda Fairstein's books