“You get any sense from her he could have hurt Lydia?” Mike asked.
“I can’t rule it out, but there’s no thread to the other cases-to Corinne and to the mole. We’ll know more after we’ve eyeballed his sheet,” I said. “Who’s left to send to the Peekskill campus, Rocco? We’re more likely to find people there who knew her, had classes with her.”
“Checking on it, Alex. I assume more calls have come in since her photograph was in this morning’s papers. Somebody back at the office is on it.”
Mercer stood up from Ledger’s desk, where he’d gone online as soon as I came back into the room spouting commands. “The group you’re looking for is ALF-the Animal Liberation Front.”
“Never heard of it,” I said. “Anyone?”
No one had. He handed me a printout of a news story.
“It’s been around since the sixties. And it is international. Operates in more than forty countries abroad,” Mercer said. “So it makes sense that Lydia’s mother got involved in Russia.”
“Where do they meet?” I asked.
Mercer laughed. “It’s a resistance group, Alex. Leaderless. Very sixties radical. They wouldn’t meet anywhere you could find them. All underground.”
Pug wanted a piece of the action. “Like the tunnel people? That kind of underground? That would link right in with that Carl kid’s murder.”
Mike waved him off. “That’s not what it means, Pug. You just stick to the Waldorf.”
“But Jean said Lydia was totally into nonviolence. Does that fit with this group?” I asked Mercer.
“I just scanned that article I printed out for you. No violence against people or animals, but ALF is very much into property damage. Started in the US with the Silver Spring monkeys.”
“What?”
“Some ALF members broke into a lab in Maryland where university scientists were using animals for medical experimentation. Freed the monkeys, put them in safe houses, then blew up the lab to the tune of a million dollars. End of the experiments.”
“Is there a zoo in Grand Central we don’t know about?” Pug asked.
“Everything but,” Mike said.
“The feds have targeted ALF as a terrorist group.”
“Terrorist?” I asked, shocked at the appellation.
“Yeah. Domestic ecoterrorism.”
“Don Ledger’s been worried about terrorist groups that have targeted Grand Central before,” I said, looking over at Mike. “And so have you.”
“Mike’s got terrorists on the brain,” Pug said.
“Sit on it, Pug.”
“Just sayin’…”
“To use Alex’s word,” Mercer said, “it’s not a ‘fit’ for these crimes. No question this killer is moving from the outskirts right into the terminal, but if you’ve got this place targeted-I mean the building itself-you can’t do that without hurting lots of people.”
“The commish says the feds have got that angle covered,” Rocco said. “Agents were sent in overseas after the international train bombings. That’s why they’re coming here in force today. Scully’s orders are to keep our focus on the three murders. Leave the terrorist theories to the feds.”
“Are there any similarities between those bombings and our investigations?” I asked.
“Madrid was 2004,” Mercer said. “Ten bombs in gym bags all set to go off on commuter trains in the morning. One hundred ninety-one people dead, thousands injured.”
I should have known the transportation guru would remember those details. “Basque separatists?”
“That was the first theory, Alex, but it turned out to be a branch of Al-Qaeda. And nothing like our cases, although the supposed target of the blasts was the train station itself.”
“Of course,” I said, thinking of our terminal, around which all these crimes had occurred. “The Atocha.”
Madrid’s magnificent steel and glass rail station was also a work of art, refitted with a glorious tropical garden on its main concourse. I had visited the shrine to the bombing victims-an olive or cypress tree planted for each of them-on a trip through the city.
“Then came London in 2005,” Mercer went on. “Four suicide bombers, all homegrown. Three bombs carried on the Underground in rucksacks and the last one went off on a double-decker bus. Fifty-two dead.”
“Homegrown what?” Pug asked.
“Islamic sympathizers. Blew themselves up,” Mercer said. “Moscow in 2010. Two rebels from the Caucasus-women suicide bombers, which is a far less common phenomenon.”
“So two dead women here,” I said. “Maybe our killer was trying to enlist them, and they refused?”
“I get that,” Pug said. “Once he told them his plan and they wouldn’t go along with it, he had to kill them.”
“What was that horrible thing in the Tokyo subway?” Rocco asked.
“The sarin attack,” Mike said. “Nerve gas.”
“Terrorists?” I asked.
“A religious cult, Coop. You just can’t pigeonhole these things,” Mike said, skimming the article on the ALF that Mercer had printed out. “More people were killed in South Korea when a taxi driver went on a rampage in the subway and set fire to a morning train, trapping and burning almost two hundred people.”
I shuddered. “What was his cause?”
“No cause at all. Mental illness,” Mike said, dropping the paper and throwing his hands up in the air. “The guy suffered from severe depression.”
“All right. That gets me back to what Jean Jansen said about Lydia’s strange visitor. The guy hears voices.”
“How does she know?”
“Because that’s what she heard him telling Lydia.”
“She heard the words herself?” Mercer asked.
“Yes. This guy was yelling at Lydia, and I guess that’s when Jean started listening. He told Lydia there were voices in his head, talking to him, telling him what to do.”
“Schizophrenic,” Mike said.
“Someone trying to control his thoughts.”
“Way to go, Coop. Another guy, another notch on your belt.”
“What?” I snapped at him.
“I thought that’s the defense in the cannibal cop case. You’re trying to exercise mind control over Dominguez and half the male population. Telling him what he should think and who he should eat. Maybe you’ve taken hold of our perp, too,” Mike said, grinning at me. “Remind me, Rocco, when I start hearing voices, if one of them is Coop’s, I’m gonna have to get monster-strength earplugs.”
“She could drive you to drink if you weren’t already there,” Pug said to Mike. “No offense, Alex, but you give enough orders and directions to keep me going for a month.”
I held my hands up, palms out. “Okay, guys. Pick it up from here yourselves. Next time you need a search warrant for a pair of soiled underwear from a homicidal maniac, call Battaglia. He’ll find you some well-meaning rookie who’ll get it right on the third try.”
“Calm down, Alex,” Mercer said.
I looked at my watch. “Still time for me to catch a flight to the Vineyard. Somehow, the way I remember it, you guys-the lieutenant, actually-asked me to go in and talk to Lydia’s roommate.”
“And you come out with a boyfriend who beats her,” Pug said, “and-”
“Yeah, and he hated Lydia. Tried to force himself on her very recently,” I said. “I got you a terrorist connection to the vic, and the fact that she’s had a grounding in radical movements as far back as her childhood in Russia. And a known schizoid who’s been pressuring her to do something with him. Did I come up short, Loo?”
“Sounds like you forgot to ask Jean the last time she saw Lydia,” Mike said. “Last time she heard from her. You’re slipping, kid.”
“That answer, Detective, would be Tuesday evening.”
“The night Corinne Thatcher’s body was found in the Waldorf,” Mercer said.
“Yes, but remember it had been there for twenty-four hours,” I said. “Jean isn’t sure, but she doesn’t think Lydia came home Tuesday night.”