“Mom!” Mary Beth yelled. It was the first time she’d spoken since she’d come inside. “They need to talk to me. Is that so insane? Ugggh. Stop treating me like I’m three. I’m fine.”
Ann Haas’s eyes widened in surprise as I was finally able to get her out into the hall. I was starting to like the feisty teen more by the minute. Emily began questioning the girl.
“Hi, Mary Beth. My name is Emily Parker. I work with the FBI. I can’t tell you how happy we are that you’re okay. But right now, I need you to answer some questions to see if we can catch the person who abducted you.”
“If you’re going to give me a speech about rape kits and stuff, don’t bother. He didn’t touch me.”
“Good. That’s very good. In that case, Mary Beth, can you describe him? How old is he? What does he look like?”
“He’s in his late fifties maybe. Broad-shouldered, about six feet tall. He has salt-and-pepper hair. He’s actually pretty handsome. He reminded me of that actor, the father from The Day After Tomorrow. Dennis Quaid. Only paler and with glasses. He also wore an expensive suit.”
Parker scribbled it down. Why wouldn’t this guy wear a mask or something if he was going to let her go? she thought. Was it sloppiness? Another trick?
“He’s actually not that bad a guy,” Mary Beth continued. “I know it sounds weird, but he cares about stuff. Probably too much. After everything, I guess I feel sorry for him more than anything else.”
What?
“How do you mean?” Parker said instead.
“He gave me a list of questions about the horrible direction this world is headed in. Like a test, I guess. Every correct answer I gave made him happier and happier. He was actually crying at the end. He told me how proud he was of me. Told me to try to learn everything I could at Bard. Said that the world was really going to need me. He apologized for having put me through the whole thing and then he drove me to a corner and put me in a cab. He even paid the cabbie.”
Parker had to use effort not to shake her head in bafflement. This guy really was nuts.
“You didn’t happen to get his plate?”
“No,” she said. “It was a light-colored van. Yellow, I think.”
“Anything else at all, Mary Beth?”
“He hand-rolls his own cigarettes. He made a cross with the ashes on my forehead right before he let me out. Look,” she said, reaching up to touch it.
Parker grabbed her wrist tightly as the girl went to wipe it off.
“Mike! Get in here!” she yelled triumphantly. “I think we got a print!”
Chapter 62
BECAUSE WE DIDN’T have time to wait for the Crime Scene Unit to arrive, we lifted the print ourselves. And when I say “we,” I mean Emily.
I stayed with Mary Beth while Special Agent Parker went to the G car and came back with some surgical gloves and 3M fingerprint tape.
“This will just take a second, hon,” Emily said as she laid the tape meticulously across the teen’s forehead. With a light, deft motion, Emily flattened out the tape and peeled off the print.
I had to contain a whoop as she laid the tape on the white fingerprint card. It was perfect. Even taking a print off a pane of cold glass can sometimes be difficult, but Emily had lifted this print as well as any CSU pro. Was there anything this Bureau chick couldn’t do?
Afterward, we headed back to the G car’s trunk, and Emily took out a large gray box. It was a LiveScan 10 printer, a portable fingerprint scanning machine. She connected it to the Fed car’s Mobile Computer Terminal and with one small scan, the print was fired down to the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
If our boy’s prints were among the fifty million the IAFIS contained, we’d get a response within two hours. This was by far our best lead yet. I was stoked.
“We need to get this down to the lab in DC as well for synchrotron infrared microspectroscopy,” Emily said, dropping the print card into an evidence envelope.
“A syncro infra what?” I said.
“It’s brand-new. See, in every print there’s little traces of sweat. The lab techs can now look at the sweat and detect chemical markers. The markers reveal whether a suspect uses drugs and even detect the hormones that indicate the suspect’s sex. If we don’t get a hit on the print, we need to obtain as much info as we can. You’re telling me you never heard of it?”
“Of course I’ve heard of it. Are you kidding me?” I lied. “I just wanted to see if you knew.”
Chapter 63
MARY BETH WAS sitting down with the just-arrived police sketch artist when we left the brownstone. That’s when I noticed that the crowd outside the Haases’ had changed. The teenagers looked much more vicious, heartless, almost hyenalike. Oh, I thought, spotting a news van. That explains it.
I was scanning for a slot to get through the converging newsies, when I suddenly stopped at the town house’s bottom step. Instead of running, I waved the crowd toward me. I had an idea.
“I have an announcement,” I said.
I cleared my throat as lights and microphones leaned toward me. Peering at me from behind the bulky cameras and apparatus, the surrounding press people looked like an invading army of alien cyborgs. The problem I had with them was that they often treated me like I was part of an invading army of alien cyborgs.
“Today another young victim was abducted, but this one was released unharmed,” I began. “First off, if the person responsible is listening, I want to thank them for their mercy in this case. I would also urge them strongly to contact me so that we might be able to resolve this situation once and for all. I’m available anytime day or night. You have my number. Please do not hesitate to speak with me.”
“Do you have any leads in the case?” one of the cyborgs called to me.
“Goddammit,” I said angrily. “Can’t you see we have an investigation to run? That’s it now. Out of my way. I mean it!”
Parker was silent as we stepped to the car. Then she suddenly snapped her fingers.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “You wanted to get the pissed-off-cop routine on the eleven-o’clock news. You’re trying to make our guy think we’re still running around in circles instead of getting closer.”
“Exactly,” I said with a wink. “Why let on that we’re getting closer to grabbing him? That’ll only make him run. I need to make him think that he’s still way ahead of us. Then bam! Once we get this fingerprint hit, we nail him cold.”
“That’s brilliant, Mike,” Emily said. “I love it.”
“Hey,” I said. “I’m just trying to keep up with you, Special Agent.”
I checked my watch.
“I just hope to God he hasn’t done that Hastings kid yet. We need that hit fast. And if that’s not enough to worry about, it’ll be Ash Wednesday in a few hours. Who knows what this loon has planned.”
“Maybe he’s cut us some slack and decided to head to New Orleans to catch the tail end of Mardi Gras,” Emily said.
“Sounds like fun,” I said. “You and I should go, too. I could use a road trip.”
“Not so fast, Mike. If all goes well, we’ll have the ID of the kidnapper in an hour and a half. After we put this lunatic out of business, I’ll buy the first round.”
Chapter 64
LIMOUSINES AND TOWN cars were three deep out in front of the Waldorf Astoria as Francis Mooney stepped north up Park Avenue. He had to walk in the street to avoid the scrum of paparazzi stuffed behind sidewalk barricades. He was temporarily blinded as a limo door popped open and three dozen flash packs went off at once. A scruffy young man in a tuxedo emerged, squinting merrily in the brilliant shower of white light. An actor perhaps?
The American Refugee Committee was having its benefit tonight, Francis remembered, putting the scene at his back. He was happy that ARC was having such a stunning turnout. Mooney had been on the organization’s board ten years ago and knew it to be a terrific organization, unlike the many charities whose bloa
ted CEO salaries and outrageous benefits budgets soaked up most of the donations.
Continuing up Park, he thought about Mary Beth Haas. He cursed himself for the thousandth time for not wearing a mask during the test. He’d been positive she was going to fail. He’d gotten lazy, and someone had seen his face. Oh, well. Couldn’t worry about it now. Places to go, he thought.
Three minutes later, he quickly turned the corner onto 52nd and passed beneath the awning of the legendary Four Seasons restaurant on the north side of the street. Coming up the stairs, he smiled at a startling black-haired woman in a gravity-defying backless gown who was speaking German into a cell phone. More chic women and slim, suited men waited for their tables beneath the Picasso inside. He inhaled the expensive-perfume-thick air. Cedar, gardenia, ambrette, he thought with a sigh. Now, that’s what money smells like.
The sleek, platinum-haired maître d’, Cristophe, rushed toward him from the front bar.
“Mr. Mooney,” he said with a flourished raising of his hands. “Finally, you have arrived. Mrs. Clautier was worried. May I take your coat?”
“Thank you so much, Cristophe,” Mooney said, allowing him to remove his camel hair as the rest of the elegant crowd pretended not to gape at his royal treatment.
“Has she been waiting long?”
“Not so long, Mr. Mooney. Shall I take your case as well?”
Francis hefted the briefcase with the 9-millimeter Beretta in it, as if debating.
“You know what, Cristophe? I might as well hold on to it.”
He stopped for a moment before he followed the maître d’ into the restaurant’s storied Pool Room. He took in the glittering white-marble center pool, the shimmering chain-link drapes, the important and beautiful people at the crisp, glowing tables, all eating with a meticulous casualness. He could almost feel the power thrumming through the floor. Even he couldn’t deny that the sensation was exhilarating.
The other board members of New York Restore had already arrived. They were seated at the double table by the pool that they always reserved for their quarterly dinner meeting.
“Well, if it isn’t our wild Irish chairman,” Mrs. Clautier said. “In all the time I’ve known you, Francis, I do believe this is the very first time you’ve ever been late.”
“I can’t tell you how hectic things have been at the office,” Francis said, grinning widely as he kissed her Cartier-diamond-encrusted hand. “The important thing is, I’m here now to bask in the glow of your loveliness.”
“Such a charmer,” Mrs. Clautier said with a sigh as she touched his cheek. “Francis, as I’ve told you many a time, you were born several generations too late.”
“And you several too early, my dear,” Francis said. He declined the menu the tuxedoed waiter offered and ordered the Dover sole.
“I was with Caroline at lunch today, and she told me that Sloan-Kettering is doing celebrity-designed lunch boxes for their soiree,” Mrs. Clautier told the group. “Isn’t that a hoot? Brooke came up with the idea.”
For Mrs. Clautier, diva of the New York social set, to actually go out of her way to supply the last names Kennedy and Shields would have been beneath her, Francis knew.
Mrs. Clautier was an unapologetic snob. In truth, he really couldn’t give two shits about New York Restore and its insipid mission to maintain and beautify Manhattan’s playgrounds and public spaces. The only reason he’d decided to head it was to humor the generous Mrs. Clautier. Over the years, he’d become a kind of unofficial philanthropy consultant to her, and he had been able to steer millions of the limitless oil fortune her husband had left her to other much more important causes.
In fact, he was going to squeeze her for the biggest amount he’d ever chanced right after the meal. The papers, all ready for her to sign, were under the holstered automatic in his briefcase.
“Champagne, Mr. Mooney?” the ever discreet table captain whispered to Francis as Mrs. Clautier’s regaling veered into tales of the latest mischief her Pekingese, Charlie, had gotten into.
“Glenlivet. A double,” Mooney whispered back.
Part Four
CHARITY CASE
Chapter 65
WAKING ABRUPTLY IN the dark, Francis Mooney immediately regretted the third Scotch he’d ordered the night before. Alcohol always disrupted his sleep. He was trying to fall back when the 1010 WINS xylophone started up from his radio alarm.
“Good morning,” the anchor said. “It’s five-thirty. Alternate side of the street parking is suspended today for Ash Wednesday.”
Despair surged like vomit into the back of Francis’s throat at the mention of the day.
It was here, he thought as he began to whimper inconsolably. No! It’s too soon. I can’t face this. How can I face doing this?
Tears poured down his cheeks. It took him a full ten minutes of breathing slowly to control himself enough to sit up. He squeezed his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms as hard as he could. The pain was exquisite, but it did the trick. He wiped his eyes, shut off the radio, and swung his feet out of bed.
He made coffee and carried it through the immaculate rooms of his 25th Street Chelsea town house. Up a circular staircase on the second floor was his favorite place, his rooftop lounge.
Outside, the cold air was pleasant as he wiggled his bare toes on the tar paper. He remembered playing tag on the roof of his Inwood tenement when he was a child. Was that why he liked this rooftop lounge so much?
From the almost-empty street below, he heard a speeding cab’s tire slap off a road plate. He smiled, looking north at the green McGraw-Hill Building, which loomed like some landlocked Art Deco cruise ship. His smile departed as he turned toward the hint of dawn on the dark eastern horizon behind the Empire State Building.
The day was coming. It would not be stopped. Another tear rolled down his cheek. He wiped it away. He finally steeled himself with a breath and tipped his mug at the coming dawn as if in a toast.
Gray light was spilling down 25th Street as he locked his front door half an hour later. He always dressed well, but this morning of all mornings, he’d pulled out all the stops. He slid a hand down the sleek lapel of his best suit, a light gray chalk-stripe Henry Poole he’d splurged on when he was in London on business six years before. The thirty-two-hundred-dollar black John Lobb calfskin brogues on his feet complemented it perfectly. The only thing that didn’t really go was the large case he carried. It was black and boxy with stainless-steel hasps.
He popped the cuffs of his Italian milled-poplin Turn-bull & Asser shirt as he carefully lifted the heavy case and brought it with him out into the street to hail a taxi.
The church that the cab let him out in front of ten minutes later was Most Holy Redeemer on 3rd Street in the East Village. He’d chosen it as his parish because it was the city’s most tolerant, catering to gays and the HIV-positive.
At the votive offering inside the tiny chapel, he lit some candles and said a prayer for the teenagers he had killed. Like martyrs’, their souls would ascend directly to heaven, he knew. Their necessary sacrifice was most certainly acknowledged by God. Francis had faith in that. How could he have done this without faith?
He raised his head as the organ began. The seven-o’clock mass was about to start. He quickly lit a last candle.
“So that my faith will not waver this day, my Lord,” he whispered in the scented darkness.
He sat in the last pew. When the time came, he lined up behind the dozen early churchgoers and got his ashes. They were made from palms like the ones that had welcomed the Lord on the last week of His life. Francis found comfort in that fact. The scratch of the priest’s thumb on his forehead almost made him cry out. Then the sacred words of Latin were in his ears.
“Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.”
Know that you are dust and to dust you shall return.
“I am dust,” Francis said to himself as he turned and came back down the aisle. He felt amazing, unblemished, filled w
ith the light of the Lord’s grace. He scooped up the heavy valise he had left by the kneeler. His step was light as he came out of the church into the new morning.
Chapter 66
OUT ON THE sidewalk the next morning, despite my sleep deprivation, I found myself smiling as I walked my kids to church. Cutting an extra-wide swath through the bustling Manhattan foot traffic, Chrissy and Shawna entertained one and all by singing every Nationwide and free-credit-report-dot-com commercial they knew by heart.
Wearing their plaid school uniforms and walking in two sort of straight lines, my ten boys and girls looked like they’d stepped off the first page of Madeline. Maybe I wasn’t as tough as Miss Clavel, but I did carry a Glock.
My gang’s warmth and lack of self-consciousness as we walked were contagious enough that I almost forgot the horror of my latest case. That is, until we ran into the solemn people spilling out of the early mass at Holy Name.
My eyes locked on the ashes on their foreheads. My stomach churned as images of the two dead teens shot through my mind. I could almost see the blood patterns from their wounds on the church steps.
I let out an angry breath. It made me sick that something so holy had taken on such a twisted symbolism. Ashes were supposed to symbolize sacrifice and humbleness at Christ’s suffering. They weren’t supposed to be a detail in an autopsy report that I couldn’t get out of my head.
The churchgoers themselves seemed a little self-conscious. Last night Seamus had told me that the archdiocese had done a little hand-wringing over whether to distribute ashes today, because of the high-profile case. I was glad wiser heads had prevailed down at St. Pat’s. Having one person hold such sway over all of New York City’s Catholics would have been horrendous.
As we entered the church, Eddie and Ricky headed toward the front to put on their altar boy attire. Julia led the rest of the kids into the church’s rear pew as I went over to the votives.