Rook's driver also took the blind curve too fast and Nikki had to goose her bike to avoid getting hit. The other rider careened past her and struggled against a wipeout. Just as it looked like they were going over, he managed to correct and brought the bike to a stop without falling.
"Take care of this one," said Nikki, "he's hurt." And then she drove her motorcycle across the grass after Soleil, who was pulling herself up and over the chain-link fence separating the path from the train tracks.
The West Side Line was historically the conduit for Manhattan freight service with its tracks emerging from a tunnel at 122nd Street and running along the bank of the Hudson River from New York to Albany. Nineteen years before, the line had been taken over by Amtrak for northbound passenger service out of Penn, and as Detective Heat dismounted her motorcycle, the low rumble of a locomotive signaled one of those long passenger trains was coming. Soleil jumped down from the fence and ran across the siding in an attempt to make it onto the other side of the rails before Nikki got there, buying herself getaway time as the Empire Service rolled past and blocked the cop. But the locomotive got there first, and now Soleil was walled in by the long, lumbering train as Nikki also began to climb the fence.
"It stops here, Soleil," she called over the groan of metal and the screech of steel wheels passing behind her suspect. "Get away from the track. Lie down and put your hands behind your head."
"Come closer, I'll jump."
Nikki leaped down from the top of the fence, landing on both feet, and Soleil made a move closer to the track and leaned, canting her body toward the train, making as if she was going to throw herself under its passing wheels. "I'll do it."
Heat stopped. She was thirty feet away. Even though it was a flat surface, the gravel made poor footing and the singer was quick. Nikki couldn't hope to cover that distance and stop her from hurling herself under a wheel. "Soleil, come on, step away from there."
"You're right. It does stop here." She turned to look down at the track, metal rusted and coated with dust and carbon on the sides but gleaming brightly, like a fresh sheet of aluminum foil, on top, where the wheels churned by and friction carried away all grime. When Soleil looked up, Nikki was a few yards closer, and Soleil shouted, "Nuh!" and so she stopped.
"Just be still, then, Soleil. Take a minute, I'll wait." Nikki saw all the signs she didn't like on her. The woman's posture was deflating. Her body was turning in on itself, making her seem small and alien to the show wardrobe she had on. Every bit of arrogance and hardness was gone from the singer's face. Her mouth trembled and Nikki could see red blotches surfacing through her stage makeup. And she kept staring down at those wheels grinding by two feet away from her. "Are you hearing me?" Nikki called over the noise, knowing she was but just trying to pull focus.
Soleil said, in a barely audible voice, "I don't think I can do this."
"Then don't."
"I mean go on anymore."
"You'll work it through." Both of them knew she had to arrest her, but the detective was trying to get her to look past the immediate. Move her out of The Now.
"What happened to that guy? You know, from yesterday morning?"
"He's fine. Be out of the hospital tomorrow." Heat was guessing but told herself this was the time for positive thoughts. She flashed back to Interrogation 1 the day before and the cut on Soleil's knuckle, the one she kept nibbling at. At the time she assumed it came from rehearsal, having seen how physical the routines were. The god of hindsight visited her, and she now saw it as the mugger's battle scar.
"I had to get it. He wouldn't let go, so I had to…"
"He's going to be OK. Come on, get away from there."
"I still have nightmares about it." Soleil ignored Nikki; she was off in her own conversation. "I can deal with jail, maybe. But not the nightmares. About what happened to Reed, I mean. I want that night back. It was so stupid." And then she shouted, "I was so stupid… And now I'll never have him again."
As Soleil broke down in sobs, Heat was torn between wanting her to go on and tell the story of what happened to Wakefield; an obligation to read her her rights so if this turned into a confession she could use it in court; and a human need to not lead Soleil into a place so dark she would take her own life. "Soleil, we can talk about this later. Come on, come to me, let's get you some help, all right?"
"I don't deserve to live. Do you hear me?" Her mood weather vaned from somber to angry. The biting tone Nikki was accustomed to receiving suddenly got turned inward. "I don't deserve to be here. Not after Reed. Not after what I did to him. Fighting, killing our relationship. That was all me. I called off the marriage. I hurt him so bad…" And then the anger gave way to more sobs.
Nikki glanced down the track, wishing to spot the end of the train, but the line of passenger cars extended as far south as she could see. It hadn't gotten to speed yet and its slow roll made its length feel infinite to Heat.
"And then that night. Do you know the guilt I carry around about that night?"
Nikki assumed it was the night of Reed's death, but again she didn't want to tip Soleil over the edge by asking at a time of such vulnerability, so she said, "You won't have to carry it alone anymore. Understand?"
Soleil pondered that, and Nikki began to have hope that at last something she said was reaching her. That's when they both turned toward the noise. Three NYPD motorcycles rolled slowly with lights but no sirens down the path. Nikki turned the other way just as a Parks Department SUV was rolling up beside Rook from the other direction. Heat saw the change in Soleil and called out to Rook, "Tell them to stay back!"
Rook stepped to the driver's window and spoke to the Parks officer, who Nikki watched grab his microphone. Seconds later, the NYPD motorcycles must have gotten his call, because they braked and waited in the near distance, idling, the purr of their engines mixing with the squeaking and moaning of the lumbering train.
"I can't deal with it all, I can't," moaned Soleil. "It's all too much."
Nikki could finally see the end of the train about a hundred yards away and began calculating her rush.
"I just feel… hollow. I can't turn off the pain."
Fifty yards to go. "I'll get you through this, Soleil." Now only three more cars. "Will you let me help you?" Nikki extend her arms, hoping her gesture would be felt over the yards that separated them, across the crushed stone of the railroad siding. Soleil straightened her posture, looking like a dancer again. She raised her face to the sun with her eyes closed for a moment, then lowered it to look right at Nikki, smiling at her for the first time ever. And then she threw herself under the last car.
Chapter Sixteen
NYPD cordoned off a wide area around the scene of Soleil Gray's suicide to keep media and fans at a distance so the medical examiner, Forensics, and the chief's squad from One Police Plaza that routinely investigated any officer-involved death could do their jobs with privacy and focus. Other investigative personnel, including Parks and Rec and representatives from the train company and its insurance carrier were present but would have to wait their turns. To maintain the dignity of the deceased and to give the technicians privacy, a line of portable vinyl screens had been erected on both sides of the train tracks where most of the singer's remains were strewn. Twelfth Avenue had been closed off between West 138th and 135th Streets, but news photographers, paparazzi, and mobile TV newsrooms had staked out elevated vantage points both in Riverbank State Park and on the opposite side of the tracks, on Riverside Drive. OCME deployed a tent fly to mask the scene from the half dozen news choppers that had positioned themselves overhead.