scenery in them, maybe. Or animals.”
“What do you want me to do here, Coop? I’m fresh out of bullshit for Delahawk. He’s got that takes-one-to- know-one style.”
The whole picture of the killer, the combination of traits that fit his modus operandi was coming into focus for me. I kept my eyes on the locomotive and talked fast.
“Get me on that train, Mike. That’s all I’m asking you to do. This killer could fly, just like your winged man in that stained-glass window he led us to. Come with me and I’ll show you how.”
“Well, try again to cozy up to chubby old Fontaine, ’cause he ain’t buying my cruelty-to-animals angle. You got probable cause or anything close to it besides your green-eyed intuition?”
“I’ll sniff out probable cause. The smell of it on that cattle car is stronger than the stink of Secaucus,” I said. “Think about how the toddler found Naomi’s severed head in the church fountain. What drew her to it?”
Mercer was in my corner. “A child’s backpack. A bright yellow backpack with cartoon characters and smiley faces. Like you’d take to the circus.”
“Or buy at a concession stand. Or lose there in the crowd.”
Mike was still mulling the whole situation over.
“Delahawk’s probably glued to the second hand on his cheap watch while I try to twist your arm,” I said. “Go back to what Faith Grant described this morning. The man who stalked her went from walking behind her on the sidewalk of 122nd Street to coming directly at her — facing her — from across Claremont Avenue. He went up like a cat on that scaffolding, bypassing the streetlights below. I think he’s got Chat confused with Faith. He probably hasn’t seen her since the night in December at Ursula Hewitt’s play. That’s why he kept on walking past Faith with a simple ‘sorry.’ ”
“He disappeared from your courtroom ‘like magic’ that day the bishop testified,” Mercer said, adding to my fuel. “Isn’t that what you told us?”
“That’s exactly how Pat McKinney described it.”
“I’ll get Manny Chirico checking those murders in Alpharetta, Georgia, and Wayland, Kentucky,” Mercer said. “See how the dates match up to when the circus came to a nearby town. I’m beginning to like the possibilities here.”
“I know you wanted the killer to be an orangutan, Mike, swinging over the church gates,” I said, “but unless there’s one of those on board for an animal act, you better give me some cred. It’s totally logical. Think Poe, that’s fine with me. Think ratiocination.”
He had both hands on his hips, working through my ideas as though they were starting to make sense.
“Come with me, Mike.” I meant it both literally and figuratively. “Strong, fluid, graceful, agile. Gymnasts, trampoline artists, illusionists. What better candidate for our perp than a circus performer?”
“A suspect with his own private rail car to take him away from the scene of his last crime — no flight in a stolen vehicle with bum tags,” Mercer said. “And the train puts him firmly in our territory when his spree begins. No lousy motel room to leave a record of your driver’s license or your timetable.”
“But we don’t know what set him off,” Mike said. “We don’t know what he was doing here over the holidays, if he was actually the guy in the audience at Ursula’s play.”
“Well, don’t you want to find out?” I was imitating Fontaine Delahawk, tapping the dial on my watch. “They’re going to ride on if we don’t bite this bullet now.”
“What’s your gut, Mercer?” Mike asked.
“Take Coop and go.”
“Call Peterson first. Make sure he’s got a squad waiting in the Bronx, in case we catch a break and move this fast enough to offload there. He’d better have a couple of cars all along the route, if they can figure out what that might be.”
“Probably parallels the Northeast Corridor passenger trains, on freight tracks. New Rochelle, New Haven, New London, Providence,” Mercer said. “I’ll wait here until every one of these Angus trucks is opened. And yes, Alex, Nan and I will stay on top of the lady minister from Nantucket too.”
“You going to try to sell this one to Fontaine?” Mike asked me. His words were almost drowned out by the double-blow of the whistle.
I looked to the engineer and could see Fontaine Delahawk talking with him in the cab. Slowly, the great hulking locomotive belched its smoke into the air and like a sleeping beast, awakened and started to move.
Mike pointed to the empty area from which Delahawk had earlier descended. We looked at each other and began sprinting toward the train. I beat Mike there, then reached out for him and pulled him with me onto the stepladder, holding on tight as we climbed up to safety on the platform of the rolling rail car.
FORTY-ONE
“STAND still. Don’t move a hair,” Mike said. He had opened the door of a coat closet in the front car, which seemed to be Delahawk’s office, directing me inside and pressing against me while the train lurched forward and picked up speed.
“How long?” I mouthed to Mike.
He held up five fingers and whispered, his lips against my ear. “He obviously gave the engineer the signal to start running. He’ll either ramble back and check on his charges, or he’ll settle down in his office, in which case we’ll already be out of the rail yard and on the live tracks.”
I closed my eyes as the train swayed around a curve and tried to keep my balance by holding Mike’s shoulder.
“What is it with the eyes, Coop? The onions? I shouldn’t have had that second sandwich.”
I shook my head, unable to get the vision of Faith’s sister out of my mind. “Chat. It’s Chat. Not knowing where she is or what condition she’s in. How did I ever let that fragile girl walk away this morning?
“You can’t go there, kid. We didn’t know then what we know now. We’re pulling out all the stops to find her. Stay cool. Wrap your mind around P. T. Barnum.”
“There’s a sucker born every minute, is that what you’re telling me?”
“He never said that, Coop. Some guy said it about one of his exhibits. The Cardiff Giant. Remember him?”
Mike was trying to keep me calm. He could read me as well as anybody. He was so close to me he could probably hear how fast my heart was pounding.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s hope our perp stays away from Grace Church.”
The elegant Episcopal landmark on Broadway at Tenth Street was, like St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the old smallpox hospital on Roosevelt Island, another stunning design of the architect James Renwick.
“I give up,” I said.
“Built with stone cut by the inmates at Sing Sing and shipped down the Hudson. That’s where Barnum held the wedding of Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, his two dwarfs, in 1863. Bet there’s not a true Barnum scholar on this whole train.”
“Is there anything you don’t know?” I asked. He had managed to draw a smile from me. “That’s right. Barnum called Tom Thumb a general, didn’t he? A four-year-old general. Of course you’d know about him, even if it was only a stage name.”
The train had suddenly gone from a slow canter to a noticeable trot. We were on the straightaway now and moving at a good clip.
I could hear Fontaine Delahawk’s voice as he reentered the car. He stopped close to where we were hiding, wheezing until he finished a violent coughing spasm. The teenager who had helped him off the train must have been his assistant. The older man again barked orders, telling someone — presumably that same kid — that he was going back to his room to await dinner.
“I’ve always wanted to come out of the closet. Too bad there’s nobody here to see me,” Mike said. “How
