“Got a name on the victim?”
“Ethan Ellis,” Renz said.
Quinn was surprised. “The guy who’s designing the MOMA addition?”
“The same. I forgot you were a devotee of the arts.”
“Any connection between that death and what we’re doing here?”
“Only in the way everything is in some way connected with every other,” Renz said. “Be sure to get in touch with me if there are any issues.”
“Are issues something like problems?” Quinn asked.
Renz said, “Have a blessed day,” and left to go to his car.
74
New York, the present
At Faith Recovery Center, Quinn stayed out of sight, behind the folding doors that partitioned Weaver’s room from the adjoining one. In the monitor propped high in a corner, he could see Weaver with bandages over much of her face, lying beneath a thin white sheet that made her look all the worse. Her bulletproof vest was completely covered by the sheet, as was the Ruger .25 semiautomatic handgun, within easy reach of her right hand. The plastic IV tube alongside her bed dripped only simple glucose.
A second monitor was trained on the door to the next room, so that anyone entering or leaving would be seen. Quinn knew that just outside the door was a uniformed cop in a chair borrowed from one of the small waiting areas. The uniform had a good view of the elevators from where he sat, as well as a view of anyone who might open the door to the fire stairs.
In the wall monitor, Quinn saw Fedderman pause outside in the hall, then enter Weaver’s room. He was wearing a light raincoat and his hair looked damp. Fedderman took a quick glance at the tiny camera near the room’s ceiling, disguised to look like one of the sprinkler heads of a fire-protection system. He walked over to the bed and leaned down, said something to Weaver that Quinn couldn’t make out. Weaver seemed to nod.
As Quinn watched in the monitor, Fedderman walked toward the folding doors separating the two rooms. Then the doors parted near the wall and he appeared in the flesh and life-size.
“Watching old Adam-12 reruns?” Fedderman asked.
Quinn thought about telling him ten-four, but he didn’t want to start something. “Weaver still doing okay?” he asked instead.
“Says her flak jacket chafes. We both agreed that if that was our biggest problem we were doing okay.”
“You’re early if you’re here to relieve me,” Quinn said.
“I came in to show you these,” Fedderman said. “Renz wanted me to make sure you saw them.” He reached beneath his tan light raincoat and handed Quinn some printouts. “The police sketch artist aged these photos and they appear to be the older woman who was killed in St. Louis.”
There were three copies of black-and-white photographs, front and profile views of a teenage girl. They weren’t mug shots. She was wearing different blouses and might even have been older in one of the shots. In that one she had a more mature profile, and a different hairdo. It was cut short rather than shoulder length, as in the other photos.
The third printout wasn’t a photo but an appeal to report the whereabouts of a missing sixteen-year-old girl named Jasmine. It was dated fifteen years ago. She had disappeared from the family farm one night and never been heard from again.
“Twenty-year-old Jordan Kray, a hired hand on the farm, disappeared at approximately the same time as Jasmine’s sudden and unexpected departure.”
“A connection?” Quinn asked.
“They might have been an item,” Fedderman said. “A week after the disappearances, several people noticed half a dozen buzzards circling in the clear blue sky. Two men drove out to investigate.
“They saw more buzzards on the ground. Some of them were pecking and standing on something dark among the corn. One of the men got a shotgun from the truck’s rear window rack and blasted away. Scared the birds, but they didn’t go far.
“The man with the shotgun saw what interested the big birds. There was a man—or what used to be a man—barely visible in the rows of corn. His clothes were ripped and filthy, and birds and animals had gotten to him.
“There was an empty, worn, and weathered leather wallet near what was left of the dead man’s body, Nothing in the wallet. No identification. The man who owned the farm kept asking the Highway Patrol troopers to remove the dead man from his field. He was informed that he was growing crops on a government easement.
“As the body was dragged a few feet closer to the tracks, onlookers saw that the victim was male and had on oversized Levi’s that were reduced to rags that fell away when he was moved.
“The dead man was barefoot. Empty wallet, missing shoes. No watch—wrist or pocket. He’d been picked clean.”
More and more it looked to Quinn as if the dead man had been a train hopper. Maybe one who followed the simple philosophy of empathizing with losers, and then acting on what he’d seen or heard. What he’d learned. There were plenty of that kind around. Always they had ulterior motives. Always they were acting.
Sometimes they were lambs. Sometimes wolves. All the time they couldn’t be trusted.
75
New York City, the present
In Faith Recovery Center, the uniform was seated in a chair outside where Officer Nancy Weaver lay in bed, where she was pretending to be Pearl pretending to be lost in a coma. Her protector was Sergeant Dave Gregg, three inches over six feet, and forty pounds over two hundred. He’d been with the NYPD over twenty years and had seen about everything that cops saw. He’d considered it an honor rather than duty when he’d been assigned this job. The two men running the show were fixtures in NYPD nobility. Renz, the commissioner who might someday become mayor. And Quinn, who was already a legend.
For the third time this evening Officer David Gregg braced with his arms and lifted his bulk up out of his chair. He hitched up his black uniform belt, yawned, and slowly strolled down to the waiting area near the end of the hall to get a candy bar out of one of the vending machines.
None of the nurses or occasional doctors seemed to take the presence of the big uniformed cop as an indication that something might be wrong. Or, if not wrong, unusual. They were quick to return his smile, but always they hurried along. All that weaponry on his belt was made to inflict injury or death, the two things the doctors and nurses in the recovery center were trained to detest.
Gregg was glad to see there were still Zero bars in the machine. They were his favorite. They were delicious when washed down with a cheap red wine, but this wasn’t the time or place for that. Maybe later.
A female doctor entered, recognized as such by Gregg because she was wearing pale blue scrubs, a matching skullcap, and floppy pull-on shoe covers. A crinkled cloth mask was still tied loosely around the doctor’s neck. Coiled below the mask’s tie strings were the twin tubes and earpieces of a stethoscope.
“Beautiful evening,” Gregg said, and was answered with a smile. Everyone was so nice here it almost made you want to recover from something.
As the doctor eased around Gregg’s bulk, it occurred to Gregg that he’d never seen anyone who looked more like a brilliant surgeon.
That was what alarmed him.
Still smiling, he reached out as if he were going to shake hands with the doctor. Instead he grabbed her wrist and held it in a powerful lock in one of his big hands.
This felt great to Gregg. He hadn’t been fooled for long, and now he was making the collar. This was the kind of thing that might get him interviewed in the Times.
The play of strength in the doctor’s arm prompted Gregg’s first misgiving. Something was wrong here. The doctor was strong as a man. Was a man. Not a large man, but strong out of proportion to his size.