Holmes, Margaret and Poe, page 13
“Morning, Stephen,” said Marple.
“Morning, Margaret.” There was still a hint of the bayou in his voice. Behind him was a backhoe and a fresh hole deep enough for three coffins. Two were already stacked in the ground. A third coffin rested on the lip of the hole. It was simple white pine with straight sides, as unadorned as a shipping box.
“Is this the one?” asked Marple, her heart pounding.
“It is,” said Stephen. “Jane Doe. They found her in Rosedale a few days ago.”
He put down the shovel and picked up a huge hammer. “You ready?”
“Go ahead,” said Marple. She mouthed a simple prayer.
Stephen jammed the claw of the hammer under the coffin lid, working it around the edge, inch by inch. Slowly, with loud squeaks, the wooden top began to lift. When it was mostly free, Stephen grabbed it with both hands and pulled it all the way off. Marple leaned forward and peered inside, then leaned back with a sigh of relief. The body in the shroud was tall and slender, with narrow hips and long legs. Nothing like the petite and curvy teenager in the pictures from Zozi’s bedroom.
“Not her,” said Marple.
“That’s good,” said Stephen, wiping sweat from his forehead. “That means there’s hope, right?”
“Possibly,” said Marple. “Or she could just be buried somewhere else.” She reached under her jacket and pulled out the customary carton of Marlboros.
Stephen took the box and smiled grimly. “These’ll put me in the ground too, soon enough.”
“But not here, Stephen,” said Marple. “At least it won’t be here.”
The gravedigger looked past Marple, squinting. “Friend of yours?”
Marple turned. About fifty yards back, a young man—late teens or early twenties—was standing in the middle of the walkway, staring in their direction. He looked slim and fit. He was wearing jeans, a denim jacket, and a white ten-gallon hat. Not exactly a New York look.
“Nobody I know,” said Marple. “I didn’t see him on the ferry.”
Stephen shook his head. “Sometimes they come over on kayaks. They all think they’re gonna see something freaky—like Ghostbusters.” He started to refasten the coffin lid.
“Thanks again, Stephen,” said Marple. She headed back down the path.
“Take care now, Margaret,” said the gravedigger. “See you next time.”
As Marple watched, the cowboy turned and started walking quickly toward the dock road.
Then he started running.
CHAPTER 53
MARPLE DECIDED NOT to spook the kid with a full-on chase. But she kept her eyes on him. She watched him run past a stand of trees and the ruins of an old building. From that point to the dock road, there was no other cover. She saw him pass through the metal gate and head toward the ferry slip.
When Marple reached the dock, the young man was nowhere in sight. As she walked up the ferry ramp, a deckhand in a Yankees cap emerged from under the metal superstructure.
“Excuse me,” Marple called out. “The boy in the cowboy hat. Where did he go?”
“Sorry. I was in the head. I didn’t see anybody.”
The Yankees fan and a second deckhand—a tall kid with a red bandana across his forehead—moved to the stern and raised the ramp. The engines fired up. Marple steadied herself with one hand on the rail and moved forward. Her heart was starting to pound. Where did the cowboy go? He had to be here somewhere.
The ferry was mostly one level, with a large open space in the middle. The only vehicle aboard was a battered DOT pickup. Marple walked over and checked the front seat and footwells. As she moved back along the side of the truck, she saw a thick tarp covering the cargo bed.
There was a large bulge in the middle.
Marple felt her adrenaline rising. She inched her way to the back of the truck, grabbed a corner of the tarp, and flipped it over.
Underneath were two fat sacks of sand. Marple moved quickly to the port side. A narrow cabin with thick plastic windows ran half the length of the deck. She pushed the door open and saw a large wooden bin against the wall. She jerked the lid open. Inside was a pile of musty life jackets. She leaned over and swept her arm through the pile. Nothing.
Marple ran to the starboard side and looked out over the rail. Suddenly, she spotted an object bobbing in the grey water about twenty yards away.
She squinted.
It was a white cowboy hat. Floating upside down.
Marple shouted at the two deckhands. “Over there! He must have jumped!”
“Holy shit!” said the Yankees fan. He grabbed a red rubber donut off the wall and heaved it over the rail. It landed about ten yards short of the hat.
“What’s going on?” the captain called down from the bridge.
“Man overboard, Cap!” shouted the second deckhand. “Midship! Starboard side!”
“I’ll come about!” The captain ducked back into the wheelhouse.
Marple heard the ferry engine strain as the boat started to make a wide right turn. She leaned back over the rail and scanned the choppy water, from the bobbing hat to the City Island dock, now just a few hundred yards away.
Then she saw a shape moving toward shore.
“There he is!” Marple shouted.
The Yankees fan ran up with a pair of binoculars. Marple grabbed them. She brought the eyepieces up and looked toward shore.
“Hey, look!” The second deckhand was shouting from the stern. Marple turned. He was pulling a length of thick rope from the water. It was tied to the stern rail and knotted at the lower end.
The Yankees fan leaned over the rail, squinting into the distance. “Jesus! He must’ve been hanging on to the rope the whole way! He’s lucky he didn’t get sucked into the screws.”
Marple lifted the binoculars again. She saw a male figure swimming the last twenty yards to the other side of the channel. He stood up in the shallows, waded out of the choppy surf, and staggered up the landing toward the road.
Marple watched through the eyepieces as the kid slid into the driver’s side of a white pickup truck. The rear tires spun in the gravel as the truck pulled away from the curb. Marple tried to adjust the focus knob, but the truck kept bouncing in and out of view.
The license plate was white with black letters, but the image was too shaky for a clear read. Dammit! Marple held tight on the rear window as the truck sped away. Even with the blur through the eyepiece, she could make out a large white decal on the right side of the glass.
A lone star.
CHAPTER 54
AN HOUR AFTER losing the cowboy on City Island, Marple was sitting with Holmes and Poe in the common area of their first-floor offices. She was antsy and impatient for answers.
“Four point two million!” Virginia called out from her desk.
Not what Marple had been hoping to hear.
“What does that mean?” asked Holmes.
“Apparently, that’s how many pickup trucks are registered in the state of Texas,” said Marple.
“You said the truck was white,” said Poe. “That should narrow it down.”
Virginia called out again: “One point one million of those trucks are white!”
Marple let out a long sigh.
“Margaret, let it go,” said Poe. “Maybe your cowboy just freaked out when he saw the coffin opening. Maybe he realized that he was in a restricted area and was afraid of getting caught.”
“Or maybe he was following me,” said Marple. “Once I spotted him, he was crazy enough to take a swim in the middle of Long Island Sound.”
“Should we report him to Helene?” asked Poe. “She could put out an APB on the pickup.”
Marple shook her head. “She already knows I had a tip about Hart Island. If she finds out I was looking for Zozi Turner …”
Holmes leaned forward. “Look. The body wasn’t Zozi—and we’ve been told to take a back seat on that case. Let’s focus on more fertile areas.”
“Such as …” said Poe. He pressed a remote to turn on a large flat-screen monitor. The screen filled with a color map of New York City, from Manhattan to the Bronx and east to Brooklyn and Queens.
“What’s this?” Marple asked.
“Auguste’s latest creation,” said Holmes. “A new view on the subway case.”
The map was covered with tiny icons, thousands of them, overlapping in some places into a single solid mass.
“Take a look,” said Poe. He sat at the edge of the sofa, iPhone in his palm. “On average, thirty-five people go missing in New York every day. Most of them turn up within forty-eight hours.” Poe tapped his phone screen with his thumb. Icons started popping off, leaving a scattering across the map. “These people are still gone.”
“Where did you get this data?” asked Marple.
“I assembled it,” said Poe.
“Don’t be modest,” said Holmes. “He did it by hacking into the NYPD database.”
“Once I got past their deep packet inspection,” said Poe, “it was pure silk. They haven’t updated their software significantly since 9/11. Plenty of gaps if you know where to look.” He zoomed in on Brooklyn, where a pattern of pins dotted several neighborhoods from Clinton Hill to Greenpoint.
“The ME report says the oldest bones from the subway dig may be about sixty years old,” said Poe. “The newest are less than one year old. And the ages of the victims are so far all between twenty and thirty.” He pointed at the screen. “Here are all the local disappearances in that age range since 1950. Cold cases, without resolution, including a few recent disappearances. All with one thing in common.”
“What’s the pattern?” asked Holmes.
“The pattern is, no known relatives,” said Poe. He flicked through page after page of missing person reports, usually filed by friends or employers. “All people on the margins—sex workers, restaurant dishwashers, hotel housekeepers—people without nearby relations. Or none at all. No family to pester the police or the media year after year. Nobody to keep their cases alive.”
“These people weren’t like Sloane Stone,” continued Poe. “The tabloids weren’t clamoring over them.”
“Invisible victims,” said Marple. She thought about Mary McShane, alone in New York, with nobody to claim her after she died.
Along with his diagrams and missing person profiles, Poe had assembled a gallery of Google Maps images.
“These are the locations of last-known sightings,” he said.
Marple looked up at the street views of city parks, apartment complexes, storefronts, nightclubs, restaurants, brownstones, and private houses. Poe scrolled slowly through the pictures, a mundane gallery of urban locations. Nothing in common, thought Marple, except that somebody was last seen alive near each of them.
Suddenly a flash of red and blue lights flickered across the windows. Next came the sound of vehicle doors opening and slamming shut. Then heavy footsteps.
Virginia turned her head toward them. “I think we’re being invaded.”
She and Marple both moved to the front door. On the security screen, Marple could see a cluster of uniformed cops gathered outside, along with a few officers in plainclothes. Helene Grey was in the pack, flanked by a couple of other detectives. The group parted as a bulky man thrust his way to the front and pounded his fist on the door.
“Police! Open up!”
Marple turned to her partners. “It’s Boolin.”
Virginia had her finger on the release button. “Should I open the door?” she asked.
“Might as well,” said Marple, “before they break it down.”
CHAPTER 55
THE LATCH CLICKED. Commissioner Boolin shoved the door open and pushed his way through. The rest of the posse followed him through the vestibule and into the common area.
Feeling violated, Holmes stepped forward to defend the firm’s turf. “I wish you’d called ahead, Commissioner. We would have put out some donuts.”
Boolin planted himself a few inches from Holmes’s face. “Go ahead,” he said. “Dig yourself in deeper.”
Poe looked at Grey. “Helene, what’s this about?”
Boolin held up his hand, claiming the floor. “What this is about, in addition to failure to report a kidnapping, is unauthorized access to the New York City morgue and illegal excursions to Hart Island. Interference in police procedure. Possible obstruction of justice.” He leaned in even closer toward Holmes. “Did they cover that concept in private-investigator school? Or did you three just take the online course?”
Holmes exchanged looks with his partners.
“I’ve got eyes too,” said the commissioner. “I’ve got eyes in the back of my ass.” He turned to the monitor screen. “What the hell is that?” he asked. “What are those markers?”
“Chinese restaurants,” said Holmes. “We were just planning to order takeout.” He could see Grey glaring at Poe.
Poe hesitated for a second. Then he tapped his phone and enlarged the view of Brooklyn. “Patterns of unsolved disappearances cross-matched with subway victim evidence.”
“This is NCIC stuff,” said Boolin. “How did you get this?”
“It’s my own software,” said Poe. “Independently developed.”
“Bullshit!” said Boolin. “These are restricted files.” He turned to look Grey in the eye. “You were right, Detective. They have a very nice space here.”
“Yes, sir,” said Grey.
“Good. Because until this subway perp is caught, I think your team should use it as an annex. Get yourself set up and pool your resources with these three … experts. From now on, whatever they know, we know.”
“Hold on!” said Holmes. “This is a private business office. You can’t just …”
Boolin pointed at the screen. “Or I could just go ahead, charge you with theft of proprietary government files.”
Holmes could see Virginia watching the whole spectacle from her desk, her head swiveling back and forth to follow the action. She caught his eye and passed him a folded note. He opened it.
Should I order cots? it said.
CHAPTER 56
BY THE NEXT night, Poe was about to go completely out of his mind.
“Assholes! I can’t function in this atmosphere! I can’t work! I can’t think!”
He was looking over the balcony rail outside his apartment to the office space below. The firm’s once-neat headquarters was now crowded with folding tables and whiteboards. Soda cans and half eaten deli sandwiches littered the tabletops. The air reeked of stale onions and kosher pickles and overused restrooms. Even for his normal human nostrils, it was a lot. He imagined that Holmes must be nauseated.
Most of the task force, including Grey, were out following up on leads. A couple of uniforms leaned against the kitchen island, drinking coffee. A detective in wrinkled khakis slouched and snored on one of the reception chairs. Poe could see Virginia at her desk, answering calls to the tip line.
He turned and walked back through the open door into his living room, shutting the door firmly behind him. Holmes and Marple sat in armchairs near an open window. Holmes sipped from a goblet of wine. He looked morose. Marple stirred a cup of tea. Annabel was curled up under her chair, hiding out from the task force. The investigators had been holed up together for nearly thirty-six hours, like prisoners in their own castle.
“Can they really commandeer our space like this?” Poe asked. “We should take them to court!”
“Exactly!” said Holmes. “Illegal confiscation. Malicious loitering. Something like that.”
Marple took a slow sip from her cup. “There’s only one way to get rid of them,” she said softly. “Solve the case.”
Her phone dinged with a text message. As she put down her tea and looked at the screen, her mood instantly brightened. “Look!” she said. “It’s on!”
“The exhibit?” asked Holmes. He moved over to look at Marple’s screen. Poe slipped in on the other side. Marple clicked to an elegant electronic invitation from a small gallery in Williamsburg—the very artsy neighborhood nearby.
“Looks like they put together an interesting show,” she said. “Some minor pieces … and …” Marple scrolled to an image of the exhibit’s big draw. She whistled softly. “And a very nice Picasso.”
Holmes grinned. “I told you my friend Essen Blythe would come through.”
“How do we know Franke will be interested?” asked Poe.
“Because he’s already cased the gallery four times,” said Marple. “He’s jealous about the Shakespeare and Gutenberg. Also, I insulted his manhood.”
“He needs to score,” said Holmes.
Marple nodded. “So. Are we ready to take the great Luka Franke down?”
She was obviously eager to get into the details of the sting, but Poe couldn’t muster the interest. Through the door, he could hear two cops downstairs guffawing at a crude joke.
“You two work it out,” he said. “I need a break from these Neanderthals.”
CHAPTER 57
TEN MILES AWAY, in his Manhattan penthouse, Luka Franke was using the Van Gogh he’d lifted in Cairo for practice. By coincidence, it was almost exactly the same size as the Picasso he intended to steal from the Williamsburg gallery the next day.
He had built a replica of the gallery’s display case, complete with alarm system. He had also laser measured the dimensions of the gallery floor, the height of the ceiling, the distances to the exits. Everything. Down to the centimeter.
Disconnecting the alarm would be child’s play. A simple wiring bypass. The same panel contained the connections for the surveillance cameras. Careless but convenient. And not totally surprising. This was a pop-up gallery, after all, not the Smithsonian.
He had already hired his shills, a Swiss couple with impeccable credentials who would create a diversion at the right moment. He had ordered a uniform for himself to match those of the gallery guards, two of whom were now on his payroll. Now it was just a matter of making the switch—and making it undetectable. For that, he would rely on his own sleight of hand, and the wizardry of his Japanese technicians.
