“No,” I said. “Most people don’t get it at all. Especially when it comes to an estranged lover. If the same story happened with a stranger as the assailant, the whole town would have thrown a party for Chat.”
“Thank God — and I do mean that — the jury listened to her, believed her, and finally acquitted her of all the charges.”
Mike checked his cell. “That’s why Peterson’s not coming up with any mug shots of her.”
“No, you won’t find those arrest photos. I hired a good lawyer for her. The entire record’s been expunged. It’s her only chance to start clean.”
“I hope she’s still packing heat right now, Faith,” Mike said, trying to add some good cheer to a dark situation. “Make my day if she gets our perp for us.”
“Then I’m sorry I’ve been such a good influence on Chat. All she packs now is a pocket-size copy of the Bible. Can that stop a madman?” Faith said, her spirits clearly flagging.
“You know better than I do. I’m sure you’ve saved your share of wretches like me — or worse. Just takes amazing Faith.”
“Grace,” she said softly as he drew a reluctant smile from her.
“My money’s on Faith. You stay strong for us today, you hear me?”
Her eyes locked on Mike’s handsome face, falsely reading in it a promise of some sort of hope from his fortitude and energy.
“I’ll do anything you tell me to do. You just find Chat.”
“Have you got a recent photo?” I asked. “Something more current than that newspaper picture with Ursula and Naomi that we can get out to the public?”
“Yes, of course. Right here on my computer,” she said, turning to her files to open a series of shots of Chat in the courtyard of the seminary. “I just sent them to my mother last week.”
“May I forward those to headquarters?” Mercer asked.
“Please,” Faith said, moving aside so he could get to her desktop. She picked up a slip of paper next to the computer. “And if it’s any help, Alex, the dean gave me the contact information for Jeanine.”
“Jeanine?”
“Yes, Reverend Portland — the ordained minister who’s also in the photo with Chat the night they went to Ursula’s play. You asked me about her this morning.”
I reached for the slip of paper and was startled to see the 508 area code, which was the same as the code for my home on Martha’s Vineyard. But the prefix for the phone number began with a two, not the six of all the Vineyard accounts.
“Is she at a church on Cape Cod?” I asked.
“Nantucket.”
“You’d better call, Coop. Let’s make sure she’s okay and see what she knows,” Mike said, jerking his thumb as a signal to Mercer to get moving.
Jeanine Portland needed to be warned — and perhaps assigned police protection — since she was the only one of the four women in the Christmas photograph as yet unharmed.
“Would it help if I come with you?” Faith asked, standing up with us.
“I need you to stay right here, no matter what temptation comes your way,” Mike said. “You can help your sister by doing what you do best. Give it every prayer you got, Faith.”
“But you don’t know where Chat is. It might be useful if I—”
“No offense, but I’ve got technology as reliable as you to lead me out of the wilderness,” Mike said, answering his vibrating cell phone. He turned his attention to the caller. “Loo? They pull up a hot spot?”
Peterson was telling Mike the general location of the cell tower that had transmitted Chastity Grant’s aborted phone call.
“We got the bridge, Coop. It’s the George Washington. Chat made her call from a rail yard in Secaucus, New Jersey.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
I was belted into the backseat of Mike’s car as he rocketed out of the parking space, up Broadway toward the entrance to the GW Bridge at 178th Street and Ft. Washington Avenue.
“Peterson’s got the local cops ready to shut down the town. Get us backup from the State Police if we can figure out whether she’s still in the area. What does our time look like, Mercer?”
“Give it twenty minutes from the bridge,” he said, checking his watch. “Say Chat called two hours ago. No telling where she is now.”
“Why Secaucus?” I asked.
“Remind me to ask Chat after we find her, Coop.”
Mercer was thinking it through. “If somebody is on the move with her, Secaucus is the perfect transportation hub. You’re directly across the river from Manhattan. You’ve got the north-south stretch of the Jersey Turnpike, which is intersected by local highways up and down the entire line. And acres of rail yards.”
“Amtrak?” I asked.
“Freight. Not passengers. It’s a major transfer station for truckers too. Our killer could be scatting in or out of there any which way. I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope that Chat’s sitting in a terminal waiting for us.”
“I got a worse thought than that,” Mike said. “Secaucus used to be the hands-down winner of the most odorific stinking town in the US of A. Back before it became a destination shopping-outlet strip mall.”
The town had long been infamous for its foul smell, a stench so powerful that even as kids riding down the turnpike in the family car, we literally had to hold our noses for miles and miles along the drive.
“What causes the odor?” I asked. “My father used to tell us it was sewage.”
“The doc was sparing your sensitive nature, kid. Didn’t want to disconnect your olfactory nerve from your big brain.”
“Pig farms, wasn’t it?” Mercer asked.
“That would have been the part of town closest to the Chanel counter at Bergdorf ’s. The rest of the distinctive Secaucus fragrance came mostly from rendering plants.”
“Rendering. You don’t mean — animals?”
“Oh, yeah, Coop. Yes, I do. The process that converts waste animal tissue into useful materials — everything from lard to tallow.”
My fingers reflexively pinched my nostrils. We were high above the Hudson River on the upper deck of the bridge as Mike weaved in and out of the heavy flow of traffic heading to New Jersey.
“Butcher-shop trimmings, expired grocery-store meats, dead-stock,” he went on, listing things I didn’t want to envision. “Blood, feathers, hair. What? You think the Mob used the old Meadowlands as a dumping ground for dead bodies ’cause they were Giants fans? A murder victim could get good and ripe before anyone in town suspected a stray whiff of death.”
“The girl was alive two hours ago,” Mercer said. “Fingers crossed.”
“Be careful what you wish for. Being alive in this guy’s hands isn’t likely to be time well spent.”
“Freezing,” I said. “What about the freezing cold she described?”
“Take off your long johns, blondie. It’s twenty-six degrees outside.”
“Her
“Now how would you happen to know that, Brother Wallace?” Mike asked with a grin. He had cut off two cars at the exit as he careened onto the southbound highway.
“ ’ Cause Alex was kind enough to give some to Vickee for Christmas, for that ski trip we took in January. Now I’m expected to keep my wife in silk underwear.”
“Coop dresses so she don’t know from freezing. The wind blows off the Hudson, that cold air can bite like a king cobra. That’s freezing.”
“So Secaucus is remote, industrial, and a ghost town at night. But just a short hop into Manhattan,” I said.
