Worst Case

  You’d think I’d have learned my lesson, he thought as the expensive computer-balanced wheelchair bounced hard off the last step. His legs had become paralyzed in a mountain-biking accident.

  He’d been on an extreme adventure trip to the Orkhon Valley in Central Mongolia with his dad. One second he was flying down a jeep track like the reincarnated Genghis Khan, and the next, his front tire got jacked between a couple of boulders.

  His landing at the bottom of the ravine had pulverized his ninth, tenth, and eleventh thoracic vertebrae, but he wasn’t complaining. He still had his brain and his heart and, as a Mongolian parting bonus, the full use of his penis. With his iBOT, the so-called Ferrari of wheelchairs, he was putting the whole thing where it belonged. Behind him. He could and would continue to go anywhere he wanted.

  Tonight’s late studying marathon was due to a mother of a stats test he had the next day. That, and the fact that his roomie was hosting a party for his Peace Studies group. He’d rather sleep in the stacks than hang with those tree huggers.

  If truth be known, he was the biggest conservative he’d ever met. At liberal Columbia, that made him a spy, embedded deep in enemy territory.

  His chair’s motor hummed as he opened it up across College Walk into Low Plaza. Usually, the area was filled with sunbathers and Hacky Sackers, but it was completely deserted now, the lit-up majestic dome of Low Library looking strangely ominous against the dark night sky.

  Hadn’t the antiwar hippies taken over that beautiful building during the sixties? What a disgrace. What was even worse was that a lot of his fellow students still believed in that garbage.

  Not him. He was an economics major. His original plan was to work his ass off, graduate summa, and get his ticket punched as an intern for one of the major Wall Street investment banks. But ever since Bear Stearns, Goldman, and Merrill had blown themselves up, he’d been thinking about trying to get on with a private-equity firm. He didn’t care which, just so long as it was big.

  Go big or go home in a Med-Lift chopper was pretty much the Dan Hastings credo.

  He popped in his iPod earbuds and scrolled himself up a little Fall Out Boy. That and My Chemical Romance were the greatest in wheelchair-cruising tunes.

  He was passing Lewisohn Hall when he saw the light. A strange blue strobing coming from a doorway on its south side. Was it a cell phone? He slowed the chair and tugged out his earbuds.

  “Hey, Dan. C’mere,” called a voice in a loud whisper.

  What was up? Dan thought, zooming over. Was it somebody from one of his classes? College high jinks? Maybe it was a pantie raid. He was down with that. What was a pantie raid, anyway?

  When he was about five feet away, Dan almost jerked out of his chair as he braked to a dead stop. A guy in a black pea coat and a ski mask stepped out of the doorway, holding a pistol.

  What the fuck was this? And where the hell was Security?

  He’d heard that Morningside Heights, the neighborhood around the Ivy League school, was notoriously dangerous, but he’d never heard of someone actually being mugged on campus.

  “Take it,” Dan said, offering him the iPod. “There’s a hundred and fifty dollars and an American Express card in the wallet in my bag. You can have that, too, buddy.”

  “Gee, aren’t you nice?” the man wearing the ski mask said as he grabbed Dan by his jacket and ripped him full out of the chair. The service door beside the man boomed as he kicked it open.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Dan cried as he was carried into the dark building.

  The man hoisted him over his knee and violently wrapped his arms, legs, and mouth with masking tape.

  “Shhh,” the man said, slinging him over his shoulder. “Quiet down now. No talking in class.”

  Part Three

  SIGN OF THE CROSS

  Chapter 36

  “DAD, DON’T TRIP, and whatever you do, please don’t drop it!” Jane called after me as I zombie-shuffled over the curb toward Holy Name’s auditorium, bearing the awkward display boards.

  Though the science projects were officially completed, this next stage was like on the Food Network show where the contestants have to move their cakes to the judging table.

  Only I had to do it six times, and there would be no chance for a $10,000 check.

  Once everything had been safely transported, I started to relax, though when I passed a blood pressure cuff on one of the gymnasium’s many displays, I was tempted to test mine.

  I walked Chrissy to her kindergarten class’s door. She pulled away from me as I went to give her a hug.

  “Not here, Daddy. They’ll say I’m a baby,” she told me.

  But you are a baby, I thought.

  “Can’t we at least shake hands, Miss Bennett?” I said. She gave me a quick, businesslike pump and bolted off without looking back. I smiled from the door as she linked arms and began whispering in earnest with one of her classmates. The kids were all growing up so quickly.

  Thank God I, miraculously, wasn’t aging with them.

  I was coming down the school’s front steps when I noticed that I hadn’t turned on my phone after charging it. No wonder my morning had been filled with peace and quiet.

  Uh-oh, I thought. In the past twenty minutes, there had been two messages from my boss and four from Emily Parker. I called Emily back first. She was cuter.

  “What now?” I said.

  “The Fox Channel. Turn it on.”

  I ducked into Holy Name’s rectory, adjoining the school. Mrs. Maynard, the parish secretary, looked up from stuffing envelopes at her desk.

  “Father Bennett is still saying the eight o’clock, Mike,” she said to me.

  “Is he? Could I borrow your TV?” I said, going into the lounge beside her without waiting for an answer.

  “Live Breaking News,” said the text in the corner of the local Fox Channel’s screen. Across the bottom I read, MEDIA BARON’S SON MISSING. There was a shaky aerial shot of a college campus, probably taken from a helicopter. I recognized the granite dome of Columbia’s Low Memorial Library. Police were laying tape by another campus building while a growing crowd watched.

  “No,” I said into my phone as I finally made out what the police were cordoning off. The camera had zoomed in on an empty wheelchair.

  I felt like borrowing the rosary beads around the crucifix on the wall beside the TV. He’d taken another kid? This horror was nonstop. Was that the point? Damn it, this was all we needed!

  “Where are you now, Emily?” I said as I hit the street.

  “Running to the subway. Columbia’s uptown, right?” she said. “Don’t bother picking me up. I’ll meet you there.”

  Chapter 37

  “WHERE TO, MIKE?” Mary Catherine said as I hopped back into our van. “Starbucks? That diner on Eleventh? No, how about we score a couple of warm H and H bagels and eat them in the park? I’m famished after that all-nighter.”

  “Change of plans, Mary Catherine,” I said. “Another kid just got kidnapped. I have to head over to Columbia yesterday.”

  Mary Catherine’s eyes lit up as she revved the engine. She was a notorious lead foot.

  “Hit the lights, Starsky. I’ll get you there in no time.”

  On our way to Columbia, I called Chief Fleming.

  “There you are,” she said. “The press found out about it before we did. Are you there yet?”

  “Just about.”

  “The TV is saying that it’s the media mogul Gordon Hastings’s son, but that hasn’t been confirmed.”

  “That’ll be the first thing on my list,” I said as we arrived at the campus.

  A mob of students and press had crowded into Low Plaza, at 116th and Broadway. Sirens split the air every few seconds as more and more police cars arrived.

  I saw Emily Parker emerge from the subway and called to her.

  “Oh, I see,” Mary Catherine said, glaring at her through the windshield. “You didn’t say she was going to be here.”

  “
Of course,” I said as I got out. “She’s a kidnapping expert with the FBI. This looks like a kidnapping. What is it, Mary?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s none of my business what you do, Mike,” she said as she revved the van and ripped the transmission into gear.

  “Or who you do it with. You’re welcome for the ride,” she said as she peeled off.

  She whipped a screeching U-ee. I stood gaping as she dropped the hammer down Broadway.

  Had she gone completely over the edge? Must have been the science fair, I thought.

  “Was that your nanny?” Emily said as she arrived at a jog beside me.

  “I’m not really sure,” I said.

  Chapter 38

  FRANCIS X. MOONEY carried a briefcase and a venti latte as he hurried with the morning rush-hour crowd through Grand Central Terminal. He was approaching the famous clock at the station’s center when he spotted the girl at the end of one of the Metro North ticket lines. He halted, weak suddenly, his heart snaring, unable to breathe.

  The milky skin, the long black hair. My God, it was her! he thought, panicking. He’d messed up somehow! Chelsea Skinner was right there. She was still alive!

  When the young woman turned to open her purse, the spell was broken. Francis felt a head rush of relief as he realized it was actually a thirty-something businesswoman, much too tall and heavy to be the young woman he had abducted and shot.

  What the hell was wrong with him? he thought as he unrooted himself. Things were getting to him. The lack of sleep, the physical exertion. He was losing it, actually hallucinating.

  He stopped at a line of Verizon phone kiosks. He removed the vial of Ritalin that sat beside the 9-millimeter Browning at the bottom of his briefcase.

  He’d been practically living on amphetamines for the past three weeks, Adderall, meth, bennies. He’d read somewhere that the air force gave its pilots amphetamines to keep them alert on long-range missions.

  He was on a mission, too, wasn’t he? The most important mission the world had ever known. He needed anything and everything that could keep him going.

  After he swallowed half a dozen pills, he took off his glasses and laid his forehead against the aluminum coin slot. The thunder of feet on the station’s marble seemed to triple in volume as the speed cut into his bloodstream. He put his glasses back on and made a laser line for the bustling station’s Lexington Avenue exit.

  Directly across Lex, he entered the marble-and-stainless-steel lobby of the Chrysler Building. He shifted the latte to his case hand as he passed his company’s electronic pass over the security turnstile’s scanner.

  His law firm’s shining brass ERICSSON, WEYMOUTH AND ROTH sign greeted him outside the elevator on the sixty-first floor. At twenty-nine, he’d been the youngest to ever make partner. There was a time he’d wanted, and probably could have gotten, the name Mooney added to that sign.

  That time was long over. In fact, this was his very last day.

  He made a quick left before the glass door that led to his firm’s reception desk and snuck in through the back way. He needed to keep a low profile. Calling in sick the whole week before, he’d caused a caseload logjam of startling proportions. At his Forbes 100, top-flight, bill-or-die corporate firm, erratic attendance was a sin equivalent to pissing on the senior partner’s desk.

  His personal assistant, Carrie, almost fell out of her chair as he ducked into her cubicle.

  “Francis! What a happy surprise. I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to make it in. I was just about to call you. Your nine o’clock, Steinman, just called. Something came up at the studio, he said. He won’t be in New York until next Thursday.”

  Francis breathed down a spike of anger. “Something came up at the studio” was Hollywood bullshit for “the check is in the mail.” He’d only decided to waste time and risk coming in because of the potential good that could have come out of the meeting with the multimillionaire movie executive.

  He’d been stupid. He was trying to accomplish everything, but even flying on speed that was impossible.

  “And, oh,” Carrie said, lifting a memo sheet out of her in-box, “I heard from reception that Kurt from New York Heart called last Friday. He said it was urgent.”

  New York Heart was a privately funded antipoverty organization that Mooney did pro bono work for. He’d been advising them on a case about a destitute Harlem man who was on death row in Florida.

  Francis winced. With everything else going on, he’d forgotten all about it. An urgent message about a death-row appeal couldn’t be good.

  He thought about his plans. His time frame. It would be an incredible crunch, but he had to try. Even with everything he’d put into motion, he didn’t have a choice but to swing by the charity.

  “Drop everything and cancel the rest of my meetings until further notice, would you, Carrie? I have to head up there.”

  “Areyou sure you should, Francis?” Carrie whispered with concern. “You haven’t been here for a week. I think some of the clients, and even more so the junior partners, have been complaining, Mr. M. In fact, Mr. Weymouth is livid. Is there anything I can do? Do you need someone to talk to?”

  Francis smiled at his personal assistant’s concern. Ever since she’d begun working for him seven years before, she’d been terrific, so smart and precise and loyal.

  When it all came out, would she understand what he had tried to do? Would anyone?

  That was beside the point, he thought, steeling himself. It didn’t matter what people thought about him personally. It wasn’t about him.

  He planted a kiss on her forehead.

  “You’re sweet to think about me, Carrie, but believe it or not, I’ve never felt better in all my life,” he said as he headed back for the elevators.

  Chapter 39

  THERE WAS AN unimpeded view of the empty wheelchair from the window of Columbia’s Department of Public Safety. Standing at the window, staring at the chair, Jesse Acevedo, the Campus Security chief, seemed incapable of doing anything except shaking his head.

  “That’s going to be the cover of the Post,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “I mean, that’s my job, right? A handicapped student gets snatched on campus? Oh, I’m sorry, the handicapped son of one of the world’s most powerful men. My daughter goes here. Once I’m out, no more staff scholarship. What the hell am I going to do?”

  I felt bad for the guy. I knew full well the kind of bullshit blame he’d be getting. But I didn’t have the time to sympathize.

  “Tell us about the tunnels again,” I said.

  “Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, coming back to his desk. When his phone rang, he lifted the receiver and clicked it back in its cradle. When it rang again, he unclipped the phone cord from the back of it.

  “The tunnels,” he said after a deep breath. “Right. The tunnels connect some of the campus buildings. Lewisohn, the one next to where we found the empty chair, has tunnels that go to Havemeyer, Math, and the Miller Theater. There’s another, older one that actually goes under Broadway to one of the Barnard College buildings on the other side of Broadway.”

  “Reid Hall. I know,” I said.

  We’d already found that the basement door in that building had been propped open. John Cleary and his CSU team were there now, going over every square inch of the basement with an evidence vacuum and Q-tips. The killer must have gotten in and taken the kid out through there.

  “Who else knows about the tunnels?” Emily said.

  “Students, maintenance, faculty,” he said. “We blocked off some of them, but the kids still use them as shortcuts sometimes. Like hotels, every campus has its ghost stories, and the tunnels figure in a lot of the urban legends that get told around here.”

  I kept thinking about the kidnapper’s cultured, educated voice. He most definitely could have been an Ivy League academic.

  “One more question,” I said. “Has a teacher ever been caught down there?”

  “I don’t know,” Acevedo said. “I?
??ll look into it and let you know. Or at least I’ll leave a note for my replacement.”

  “I’m actually starting to respect this nut,” Emily said as we headed down the stairs. “I’ve never seen someone so prolific. This guy is a gold-medal-winning kidnapper.”

  Emily ducked into the cafeteria on the ground floor of the building and came back with two coffees. This morning, she was wearing a form-fitting French Blue blouse and navy skirt. Her hair was still wet. I liked that she wore hardly any makeup. The way she did a cute earlobe-tugging thing when she was thinking, and especially the spark that flashed in her blue eyes when she was fired up.

  “Now what?” Emily said. “Head over to Hastings’s dorm? The library where he was last seen?”

  “Nah,” I said. “We better head to the family. I’m expecting a call from our friend.”

  Chapter 40

  THE HARLEM SATELLITE office of the social service, nonprofit New York Heart was on 134th Street off St. Nicholas Avenue. The sour scent of sweat and marijuana made Francis X. Mooney nostalgic as he mounted the unswept stairs two by two.

  For the past ten years, Mooney had been the main adviser of their legal outreach program, which took on cases for the poorest of the poor. He stared at the posters and photographs of the organization’s community theater and community garden that covered the stairwell walls and smiled. New York Heart was truly a labor of love.

  “What’s cooking, kids?” Francis said after he gathered the half dozen social workers in the cramped conference room ten minutes later.

  Francis X. smiled around the battered table at the lanky twenty-somethings. He remembered being that young, having that fire in the belly to set things straight. Not every young person was a selfish, whining brat, he thought.

  “I just got your message this morning, Kurt,” he said. “How’s Mr. Franklin’s case going?”