Little Girl Blue Part 23

"Police," Julia shouted as she broke into a run, "stop right there."

He didn't stop, but she hadn't expected him to obey. Her command had been issued for the benefit of the three joggers. They were on the west side of the park and she didn't want them to cross the path of the man she chased. She could also use them as witnesses to the fact that she'd properly identified herself and that her suspect had continued to flee, a possibility not lost on her as she sprinted across the lawn, all those hours of running finally yielding a payoff.

She was within thirty feet when he went up the concrete steps, within twenty when he hit the top step, but then she lost ground as he careened down the ramp leading out onto Chambers Street, plunging into the line of students packing the sidewalk.

"Police," Julia yelled as the kids turned toward her, "get out of the way."

Miraculously, after only a single repet.i.tion, they parted to allow her pa.s.sage. Good news except for the cab parked a few feet from the curb. Though Julia did her best to control her momentum, she hit the rear pa.s.senger's door hard enough to yelp. She didn't pause, however, to evaluate her injuries. Instead, she looked west, then east, until she saw him standing at the southeast corner of West and Chambers. The traffic on West Street's eight lanes was light but steady, moving along at sixty miles an hour. Crossing against the light would be the ultimate test of a New Yorker's jaywalking talents.

"Hey, lady, what you think you do to my cab, eh? You got insurance?"

"I'm a cop," Julia said without so much as glancing in the cabbie's direction, "Shut the f.u.c.k up and get back inside your vehicle."

She began to walk diagonally across Chambers Street, taking her time, waiting patiently for a stretch Mercedes turning onto Chambers from West Street to pa.s.s in front of her. Two blocks further west, where Chambers Street gave way to the Hudson River, then to New Jersey, an impossibly bright sun hovered just above the horizon. She resolved, if the opportunity presented itself, to put herself between that sun and her suspect. Then she shuddered, realizing how easily she'd adopted the role of the hunter. How she'd progressed from exhausted Julia Brennan, to Detective Julia Brennan, to Killer Bren-nan looking for an advantage, any advantage.

"Police," she called as she reached the sidewalk on the opposite side of Chambers Street. "Stay right where you are."

He smiled at her, drawing his lips back over his teeth, his expression feral, the proverbial trapped rat. Then he turned to run directly across West Street, and Julia braced herself for the incredulous scream of tires and brakes. Instead, the three closest vehicles, all cabbies, swerved only far enough to avoid an inconvenient accident, then continued on their way.

Julia looked to her right, at a van traveling in the lane closest to her. When it pa.s.sed, she decided, she would make her move. From across the street, an adolescent male, his voice jumping several octaves in the excitement, shouted, "Go for it, b.i.t.c.h. Go for it." But the van didn't pa.s.s. Instead it slowed as the light changed to red, then came to a halt, blocking the crosswalk.

Infinitely grateful, Julia looked up at a darkening blue sky as she skirted the van, thanking whatever deity resided in the heavens for her good fortune. For a moment she'd actually contemplated letting the b.a.s.t.a.r.d get away.

No, she told herself, sprinting forward, not really. I was perfectly willing to risk being reduced to roadkill. Right?

The man turned left at the first intersection, directly opposite the main entrance to Stuyvesant High School. There were no students using the stainless-steel doors, the bulk of the student body having already left by a second-floor exit that led onto the bridge. There was, however, a uniformed cop leaning against a black marble pillar, smoking a cigarette. His expression revealing only the mildest curiosity, he watched the man run by, then glanced over at Julia.

"I'm on the job," she shouted without breaking stride. "I'm a lieutenant. Get your a.s.s in gear."

"But I'm a.s.signed to this post." At least forty pounds overweight, the cop's gut swelled beneath his coat, a watermelon that echoed the thrust of his b.u.t.tocks. Without doubt, his supervisor had a.s.signed him to the school because he wasn't fit for any other duty.

Julia made the turn without further comment, knowing the cop would be more likely to follow if she didn't acknowledge his protest. She found herself on a newly paved road divided by an island planted with a box hedge. Her suspect was standing on the island, behind the hedge, looking back. Before he could turn away, Julia stopped in her tracks and raised her left hand.

"Hey," she said, trying not to gasp for breath, to keep her tone natural, "why are you running away? I just want to talk to you. What's your name?"

To her surprise, he answered without hesitation. "My name is Hal Townsend. In case you didn't know." Behind him, a red brick apartment building, under construction and topped with a crane, rose twenty-five floors.

"Well Mr. Townsend, I'm Lieutenant Julia Brennan." Julia took several steps forward, then stopped once more. "Where do you live?"

Before Townsend could respond, the uniformed cop lumbered up. Julia stayed him with a glance, noting his name tag. "Watch him closely, Burke," she whispered. "Most likely, he's armed."

"I think," Townsend said, "that you already know where I live."

"The Clapham?"

Townsend drew his lips over his teeth, smiling again. Then he walked across the street, to the sidewalk, before strolling away as if he had all the time in the world. Julia followed on the other side of the street, hoping that maybe Townsend had come to his senses, maybe he'd finally realized that he could not escape.

They continued on that way for several short blocks, until Townsend stopped on the other side of the street, just a few yards from the North Cove Yacht Harbor where road and sidewalk abruptly ended.

Julia said nothing for a moment, merely watching as Townsend brushed the outside of his coat pocket with his right hand. Without doubt, she decided, he's got a gun in there, a gun he's afraid to use.

"Can we talk about this?" she finally asked. To her left, Officer Burke's labored breath steamed from his mouth and nostrils. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, his fingers resting lightly on the b.u.t.t of his .38.

"What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry? Because I'm telling you, lieutenant, I have no regrets. The men I killed, not unlike myself, deserved to die."

The casual admission reminded Julia that she'd neglected to inform Townsend that he had a right to remain silent. Nevertheless, having no wish to confront him with the inevitable, she said, "Ya know something? I was just gonna bring up that very topic. About not being sorry."

"Were you?"

"Sure. Most New Yorkers think you're a hero. They don't have a problem with what you did. You come in, you'll get a fair deal."

Townsend's eyes widened in mock astonishment and his smile, this time, was genuine. He was back in control. "If it goes to a jury, do you think I'll be acquitted? Do you think my admiring peers will render a verdict of not guilty?"

"Uh-uh." Julia shook her head without taking her eyes off Townsend. "That's not the way to play it out. You gotta give the jury an excuse. You ask them to let you walk away, they're not gonna do it, not after the way you offed the Mandrakes. On the other hand, you plead not guilty by reason of mental defect, they'll take the easy out, send you off to the shrinks instead of the penitentiary. It'll make 'em feel good about themselves."

Townsend continued to stare at Julia for a moment, his expression relaxed; then he turned and walked to the marina. Dubbed the North Cove Yacht Harbor, the sheltered marina was packed with wintering vessels, from twenty-foot sailboats to seventy-foot yachts. Townsend halted, briefly, a yard from the prow of one of these yachts, the Royal Princess. The yacht was tied to cleats along the sea wall, the wall itself part of a concrete pier jutting into the Hudson.

Julia's first thought was that Townsend would leap aboard the yacht, somehow commandeer the boat, that an action-movie sea chase would follow. Instead, Townsend strolled to the end of the pier, to a low rail, then turned to face Julia. Behind him, a narrow crescent of cold sun poked above the horizon, while the heaving black waters of the Hudson, flecked with ice, seemed as thick as oil.

"Endgame," Townsend said. "Nowhere to go."

"True enough," Julia admitted. "You've definitely trapped yourself." She jammed her left hand into her pocket, hunched her shoulders. The wind here, with no intervening skysc.r.a.pers to absorb the shock, drilled into the exposed skin on her face. "There's something else, though, something you might help me out with."

"And what's that?"

"Well ..." Julia smiled. "This is a little embarra.s.sing, but I seem to have misplaced one of the detectives under my command. His name's Foley. You haven't seen him, have you?"

"Tall, kinda skinny guy? Real good-looking?"

"That's the one."

"Haven't laid eyes on him."

Julia tried to imagine some wedge she could use to pry Foley's whereabouts from Hal Townsend, some bribe that would tempt the man. But there was nothing; Townsend was in complete control. Nevertheless, she gave it a try. "Look, if you help us out with Detective Foley. I'll personally guarantee that you'll be a.s.signed to a protective custody unit. There'll be no mingling with the population at Rikers. You'll have access to an attorney as well, and not some underfunded jerk from Legal Aid. With your money, you can have any lawyer in the city. Plus, there'll be all kinds of publicity. You're an articulate guy, Hal. You play your cards right, you could be a star."

"The rest of my life," Townsend said, his voice now tinged with resignation. "In prison. Or in some h.e.l.lhole asylum for the criminally insane, pumped full of whatever drug catches the attention of the psychiatrist in charge. You know what it's like to be so disoriented all you can do is sit in a chair with your tongue protruding and a line of drool running all the way to your collar?"

"I'm afraid I don't."

"Well, I do, lieutenant. I've been down that road."

Julia nodded eagerly. "Then you know you'll be released at some point, right? We're not talking about a life sentence."

"Did you say we? Somehow, I don't think you're ready to join me on my grand adventure."

"A figure of speech. Look, about Detective Foley. Was he alive the last time you saw him?"

"I believe I said that I've never met the man."

"C'mon, Townsend, what's it mean to you? Foley's just another cop. He's not a child molester, not a monster."

"He tried to kill me."

"What?"

"And all I ever wanted was to be his friend."

With that, Hal Townsend vaulted to the top of the low railing between himself and the Hudson River. He paused to secure his footing, then looked back at Julia, the triumphant expression on his face at once as greedy as that of a suckling infant and as filled with depraved knowledge as that of the oldest demon in h.e.l.l. "It's better this way," he said. "Don't you think?"

Julia took a step forward, then stopped. She tried to think of something to say, but quickly admitted that they were beyond words. Her hand tightened on the Glock in her purse. If she shot him, maybe he'd fall forward, maybe he'd survive, maybe somewhere down the line he'd tell her where to find Peter Foley. Then it was over. Then Hal Townsend leapt backward, his eyes still riveted to Julia's, and crashed through the ice, vanishing instantly and forever.

Next to her, his tone speculative, Patrolman Burke asked, "Lieutenant, you think it's our bounden duty to jump in after him?"

"You first," she responded, pulling her cell phone from her pocket. "I'll call in the cavalry."

"That's a joke, right?"

"Yeah, Burke, it's a f.u.c.king joke."

I,.

FIFTY.

FOLEY DIDN'T become aware of the cold until he'd removed his T-shirt and begun to cut it into vertical strips with a small pocket knife, until he'd actually begun to shiver. Then he put the knife, which he carefully folded, and the T-shirt to one side before retrieving his shoulder rig and his outer garments. He could see nothing, not even the pullover rugby shirt as it slid across his face. There was no sense of dark, then darker. There was nothing at all.

It was enough, he decided as the pain in his thigh forced him to pause, to make a fella want to just give up.

In addition to everything else, Foley was very tired. He felt that if he closed his eyes, he would become instantly free of all discomfort, physical and psychological. But he did not close his eyes, and not for any reason he could name. There was something within him, a stranger he would not have acknowledged even an hour before, a stranger now running the show. This stranger had no interest in Foley's personal history. He just wanted to live.

It took Foley some time to work his way into his shirt and coat, and to stop shivering. He didn't know exactly how long because his sense of time was distorted by the absence of light and the need to rely solely on the sense of touch. He was lying on his back, staring at the flat black nothing in front of his eyes. Eventually, he knew, he'd have to crawl off in search of a splint. Eventually he'd have to sit up to secure the splint to his thigh. Eventually he'd have to rise to his feet, find a crutch, explore his new world.

As Foley felt for his knife and T-shirt, he resolved to not consider eventualities of any kind. He saw no reason to plan a next step which depended entirely on what he accomplished in the here and now. That message was driven home when he dropped his knife with the blade half open, nicking his finger, causing him to jerk away, causing the fire in his leg.. ..

He cried out, then was instantly angry. Just do this, he told himself: Find the knife, find the T-shirt, cut the strips. He repeated the message as he went about the task, a little mantra. Find the knife, find the T-shirt, cut the strips.

When Foley finished, he stuffed the strips into his pocket, then took a moment to plot the next step. What remained of the stairs lay in a heap directly behind him. In order to get to them he would have to turn onto his left side and pull himself along until he found a suitable length of wood to make a splint, perhaps one of the bal.u.s.ters. The important thing was to crawl in the right direction. He'd seen enough of the room before dropping his flashlight to know the s.p.a.ce was enormous. If he lost his bearings, he'd be crawling for the better part of forever.

But he had it right. The stairs were only a few yards away and he covered the ground quickly, lying on his left side, pulling alternately with his arms and his hips. With his right thigh elevated, he barely felt the press of his bones, and he thought that a good sign until he finally rose to a sitting position, cut a slit in his pant leg, touched his own flesh. The skin was trampoline tight, the leg so swollen it was acting as its own splint.

He ran his fingers back and forth over his thigh, from his knee to his hip, wondering if the swelling had stopped or if his leg would stretch to the bursting point, then explode like a popped balloon. But that wasn't really the problem, though Foley didn't even suspect the truth. Foley thought his leg was filling with the sort of clear fluid common to sprained ankles and torn ligaments. In fact, his leg was filling with blood.

Loss of blood accounted for his exhaustion, and for an inability to focus that had him lying on his side, lazily running his hand over his thigh as if he hadn't a care in the world. Time pa.s.sed, a minute, then another, then five, before he summoned the will to move on. Before he told himself that he would have to splint the leg, swelling or not, that the pressure of a splint would hold the swelling down, that even if the G.o.dd.a.m.ned leg exploded the rest of him wanted to survive.

Foley located a length of wood, a bal.u.s.ter, as he'd hoped. He ;s worked the bal.u.s.ter back and forth, each swing producing a pain sharp enough to keep him thoroughly awake, until it broke free of the railing. As he'd expected, the inch-thick plank of common pine was too long, and he rolled onto his back, raised his left knee into his chest, and settled the plank beneath his foot. He did all this by touch, : and quite deliberately, so that when he pulled back hard, the board snapped in half on the first try while the antic.i.p.ated explosion of pain was manageable, perhaps even, in the long run, bearable.

Wrong again. By the time Foley finished splinting his leg, any hope that his swollen thigh was shielding him from the worst of the pain had been thoroughly dispelled. He'd played it smart, tied small loops into one end of the cotton strips, then used the loops to pull the strips tight. It was a technique he'd learned moving furniture one summer in high school. You could draw a burlap strap tight enough, using that knot, to crush the box you were tying. You could crush human flesh as well, until your body was slick with sweat, until you realized that the scream echoing through the empty s.p.a.ce was your own.

Finally, Peter Foley lay back and simply waited, not counting the seconds or minutes, while the pain gradually diminished. It was a peaceful time, actually, even as the sweat dried and the cold threat-i ened to crawl into his bones, a time in which death presented itself to Foley as a distinct presence with a short, sharp message: You can die here and it will be all right.

i Foley tried to move, to roll onto his side, but stopped when his thigh flared. The effort, he decided, to get over here, splint the leg, all wasted. Now what?

Another few minutes pa.s.sed before Foley admitted that there was no contingency plan. There was only get up on your feet and find a way out. So he did it. Crawling as he had before, he located a broken section of the railing long enough to act as a cane, then used the cane and the rubble to pull himself to a kneeling position, with his weight resting entirely on his left leg. He tried to lever himself up from there using only his arms, but his grip on the cane, a two-inch pine board, was too uncertain. He was going to have to put weight on his right leg, there was no getting around it. And no getting around the likelihood that if he fell he might not be able to rise again.

So he absorbed the pain, realizing only after he was standing on his left foot that it was less than he expected. Encouraging news as he considered the immensity of the task before him. First, he would have to explore the area of the wall from which the stairway fell. More than likely, the stairs had been bolted to the wall. If Townsend had done nothing more than remove the nuts and slide the stairway out, if the bolts were still embedded in the wall, if they extended far enough to offer a purchase, he might use them to climb up. If not, he would have to trace a circuit of the room, perhaps with his right shoulder against the wall. He'd seen enough of the s.p.a.ce before his flashlight went out to know it was smaller than the building. Maybe there was another room, maybe there was an intact set of stairs in that room, maybe there was a door into that room.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. If, if, if.

He found the bolts where he expected them to be, protruding a couple of inches from the wall, less than half the span of his hand. Even with both legs, he might not be able to make it all the way up. As it was, unwilling to risk a fall, he didn't dare begin. So it was off into unknown territory, the darkness beyond the darkness. Foley felt almost euphoric as he took that first hopping step, then the next, then the next. He was bracing himself against the wall with his right hand, holding the impromptu cane with his left, finding all this so much easier than he expected that he nearly burst out laughing.

Without sight, he couldn't really know how far or fast he was going.

But he was certain that he was making progress, moving right along, and that he wasn't about to give up. Not him, not Peter Foley, who was responsible for hundreds of arrests, who flew invisible through cybers.p.a.ce in search of villains.

You've got a mission in life, he declared to himself as he hopped along, to warn Julia Brennan of the danger to her daughter. And by G.o.d you're gonna do it.

Of course, it might already be too late. It might be hours since Townsend disappeared. But that didn't get Foley off the hook. He was still obligated to go forward, hopping like a crippled rabbit, until he found a way out or collapsed.

That was how he saw it, find a way out or collapse, as if there were no other possibilities. But in fact there was another eventuality lurking in the shadows and Peter Foley found it a few minutes later when he braced himself against the wall with his right hand, took a little jump, and landed on a D-cell battery. Totally unprepared, his leg rolled up while he flailed away at the darkness with both hands, maintaining his equilibrium for the s.p.a.ce of a few heartbeats. Then he fell over, straight back and down, managing to absorb only a bit of the force with his shoulders before the back of his head smashed into the concrete floor.

When he awakened, a minute or an hour or a day later, he found himself unable (or was that unwilling?) to rise. He wiggled the toes on his left foot. They seemed to behave, but how could he be certain without seeing them in action? Didn't paraplegics suffer phantom pain in limbs supposedly without sensation? Maybe the same thing was happening here.

Suddenly he realized that his right leg was transmitting a constant signal, sharp and fiery, that proved his spinal cord was very much intact. He reflected on this for a moment, wondering why it had taken him so long to recognize the obvious, then felt a little surge of pleasure, a faint, though definite relief. Because the pain was now far away, as if the Peter Foley who recognized the pain had divorced himself from the hapless, pitiful jerk who actually had to feel it.

No more pain, he said to himself without considering any of the implications, never again pain. Hurrah.

From there, his thoughts drifted to Julia Brennan and her daughter, then to his wife, Kirstin, and his own daughter, Patti. But they were gone as well, as irrelevant as his regrets. What could he do for them? What could they do for him? Bestow their forgiveness? That was no longer possible. If forgiveness was to be forthcoming at this point, he would have to forgive himself. There was no one else to do it.

Satisfied with this bottom line, he drifted for a while, aware of a consuming thirst and a penetrating cold that seemed no more real than the throbbing of his leg. Various thoughts and images nicked through his mind, but nothing stuck until he finally settled on one of those early memories that recur from time to time in the course of a life. Foley is seventeen, a junior at Holy Cross High School, and he and his dad are in the back yard of their Flushing home. They have gone out to play catch on a hot August evening, a ritual they perform whenever the weather and his father's policeman schedule permit.

At this stage in his life, Peter Foley, star pitcher for his high school and Police Athletic League teams, fancies himself quite the athlete. His father is also a fair athlete, a catcher by trade who still plays for an NYPD baseball team, though no longer behind the plate.

As Pete sets up on a makeshift pitching mound, he is acutely aware of his father's growing (though unexpressed) reluctance to handle Peter's best pitches. Peter has reached his full growth, standing two-and-a-half inches above six feet. He throws a two-seam rising fastball already clocked in the high eighties, and a four-seamer that crowds right-handed batters. Pete wants to learn to throw a curve and a slider, but his father believes that at seventeen Pete's joints are not strong enough to withstand the sharp twist necessary to get the proper rotation on the ball. So what Pete's done, without telling his father, is practice a split-finger fastball that dives for the dirt like a soldier at the whine of an incoming artillery sh.e.l.l.

Pete warms up slowly, allowing his arm to come through the pitching zone almost on its own, stretching the muscles in his neck and back. He is waiting for the point at which every muscle on his right side, from the tips of his fingers down into his legs, will lock into place, a single unit unfolding like the coils of a snake when he strides toward the plate.

"You up for a few hard ones, dad?" Pete asks when he's ready.

What can the poor man say? d.i.c.k Foley who put a baseball in Pete's hand fifteen years before, who demanded over the years that his son throw harder and harder and harder. "Yeah," he replies, setting up knee-high on the outside corner of the plate. "Fine."

The first few pitches crack into d.i.c.k Foley's glove, as loud and urgent as the report of the S&W .38 he routinely carries. He winces with each pitch and Pete notices this even through the bars of the catcher's mask. For reasons entirely unknown to him, reasons he refuses to consider, Pete enjoys his father's humiliation. His goal is complete dominance. His goal is to make his father quit.

Pete slows down as they continue, concentrating for a time on his four-seam fastball which for some reason has stopped breaking to the right. He works through the mechanics, varying release points in search of the problem, until his T-shirt and shorts are heavy with sweat and he has to go to the resin bag after every pitch. Then he kicks at the dirt in front of the rubber and says, "Wanna try one O9'.