“Tell me why,” Mercer said, his hand on the stern cleat.
“’Cause it’s Renner territory, if I’m thinking right. ’Cause I played there as a kid, like I was telling Jimmy this morning, and now the whole picture’s coming into focus.”
“Where’s Jeffrey’s Hook?”
I straightened up and looked at Mercer. “I’m going to tell you what this is and why I think it might be the place Renner would lure me to. And then I’m going to ask you and Peterson to set the trap, okay?”
“Nothing’s okay till I hear you out.”
“Listen up, ’cause I’m moving fast,” I said, turning on the running lights at the front of the boat. “Jeffrey’s Hook is one of the most treacherous points in the Hudson River, right next to Fort Washington.”
“Under the George Washington Bridge?” Mercer said.
“Exactly. The little red lighthouse,” I said. “But long before there was a bridge, there was this rocky piece of land-the hook-jutting out into the river at a site where there were more shipwrecks than anyplace in the city except for Hell Gate.”
I took the flashlight out of my rear pants pocket and placed it on the cockpit.
“In the early nineteenth century, the only thought given to preventing wrecks was to hang a red pole with two lights on it out into the river. It wasn’t till the 1920s that the city bought this old lighthouse from Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Ten years later, when the George Washington Bridge opened right on top of the spot, there was no longer a need for the little beacon.”
“But it’s obviously still standing,” Mercer said.
“Obsolete but still standing,” I said. “What’s the date? Today’s date?”
“It’s Friday. October twentieth.”
“There’s your answer. The lighthouse is open to the public for one week a year every fall. One single week. The rest of the time it’s closed. I bet the kidnappers hit the last night of open season on Wednesday-the annual festival. Needed a place to stash their victim for a couple of days.”
“So they had Lonigan create a makeshift B and B inside the old fort for a couple of nights,” Mercer said. “There was enough activity on Liberty Island, with the concert tomorrow night, to make their comings and goings fit in unobtrusively, no matter what time of day or night they arrived-deliverymen, sound engineers, caterers, crews to erect tents.”
“Fort Washington and that rocky point at Jeffrey’s Hook is a comfort zone for Emmet Renner,” I said. “It’s isolated and remote. An easy place to break into, and no one around to disturb him. One of his playgrounds on the Hudson River. It’s a dark comfort zone for a dark killer.”
“What else do we need?” Mercer said, about to step on the gunwale and get on the boat.
But I pushed hard with both hands and the bow separated from the dock.
“You’re not coming with me, man. You’ve got better things to-”
“Don’t do this, Mike.”
“Throw me that rope,” I said.
“You’ve got the Lonigan kid.”
“Damn right I do. I swear I’ll take good care of him if you work the rest of this with the lieutenant like I need you to do,” I said. “Now, throw the goddamn rope.”
I had already drifted too far away for Mercer to jump onto the boat. He tossed the line to me.
The engine was idling ten feet off the end of the dock.
“As soon as I take off, you call Lieutenant Peterson. Tell him why I’m sure it’s Renner and that I think the red lighthouse is where he’s got Coop.”
“I’m dialing now,” Mercer said. “That much I knew.”
“Tell him no lights and sirens, okay? No John Wayne macho-commando operation at the fort,” I said. “I think I can surprise him from the water.”
“Dumbest of a lot of dumb things I’ve heard out of your mouth, Mike.”
“Peterson needs to get Emergency Services on the bridge. There are three or four paths that lead from the surrounding park area to the lighthouse itself. And an abandoned trail across a bridge built in the 1840s for the first railroads. Those would be the logical approaches cops might make because they’re pretty well covered by tree foliage-even at this time in the season.”
“Got it.”
“And the Harbor Unit, Mercer. They need to stay back till I give you some kind of sign.”
“With any luck they’ll be there before you will.”
It was just after six o’clock and the sun had set.
I switched on the starboard and port lights-green for starboard and red for port-so that I could run the boat safely in the channel without getting hit. I eased the boat away from Liberty Island and circled it once to say one more thing to Mercer.
“No shooting. There’s to be no shooting until we see that Coop is alive and well.”
From this point on, once Mercer made the call, I would have no control over any of the decisions being made. But I needed to think that I did.
I pulled back on the throttle and made my way across the river to go north. The water taxis appeared to be full of commuters. I crept along at eight or ten knots because of the traffic, despite my desire to race to Jeffrey’s Hook.
I hadn’t gotten farther than Battery Park City when my phone rang.
It was Vickee, calling from the press office at One Police Plaza.
“Game’s up, Mike,” she said. “The commissioner wants you to come in to headquarters stat.”
“Have you talked to Mercer?”
“He said he doesn’t know where you are.” Her voice was covered in a crisp layer of frost. “And I don’t believe him.”
Good man, I thought. Great friend.
“What’s changed?” I said. “Mercer’s not lying. Peterson sent me home.”
“There’s a ransom note, Mike.”
I gripped the steering wheel of the Intrepid. I thought I was going to be sick.
“What does it say? What’s the demand?”
“No demand yet. A note tucked under the windshield wiper of the district attorney’s car when his security detail went downstairs at six o’clock,” Vickee said. “‘Alexandra Cooper is alive’ is what it says. There’ll be video proof at ten P.M.”
I pulled on the throttle to ramp up my speed. “So why does Scully want me? Why does anyone think this is real?”
“He wants you here to protect you from yourself, Mike. From doing something stupid when we’ve just been offered a glimmer of hope,” she said. I’d never heard an edge in Vickee’s voice until just now. “There’s an inked fingerprint on the note next to Alex’s name. We’re checking it now against the prints in her DA’s employment file. Then we’ll know if this is for real.”
I heard the word fingerprint and I could only think of Westies bosses like Coonan and Renner who had kept fingers that they had cut off their victims. Another wave of nausea swept over me.
“I’ll see you at nine forty-five.”
I was cruising past a party boat with revelers celebrating on deck. I didn’t think the wake I was kicking up would disturb the large vessel. Speed seemed more important to me at this moment than safety.
“You’d better make it sooner than that, Mike,” Vickee said. “The commissioner is taking the story public in an hour. He’s holding a presser with Paul Battaglia. He knows he can’t sit on the story of Alex’s disappearance once the video goes viral, so he’s breaking the news himself.”
FORTY-SIX
I moved the needle up so that I was doing twenty knots, and then twenty-five. I was flying over the water at thirty-five knots, past the piers that held giant cruise ships. I had a distance of about one hundred city blocks to go.
I didn’t know this stretch of the river. It seemed to be a straight shot toward the bridge. I could mark my progress by landmarks: the tall lighted spire of Riverside Church near 125th Street and the circular dome of Grant’s Tomb. The huge sewage-treatment plant loomed ahead of me, so I checked behind me for other boats, then veered off to the center of the fast-running waterway.