“Do me a favor, will you? Dial my mother’s number, okay?”
“It’s late for that.”
“Friday-night bingo at the church. One of her favorite forms of worship. She doesn’t leave there till after eleven.”
I found Mrs. Chapman’s number in the address book, pressed it, and passed my cell to Mike.
“Did you get lucky or what, Ma?” Whatever her answer, it made him laugh. “Next week I’m gonna get a Brinks guard to drive you home. You shouldn’t be walking around with fifty-six bucks in your purse at this hour of the night. Do me a favor and pour yourself a double — I’m grounded tonight.”
Mrs. Chapman chatted on with her favorite — and only — son.
“On my way to Cape Cod, Ma. Yep, she’s with me — my lucky charm, like you say.”
She had called me that since the first time we worked a case together. I smiled at the thought of their loving, good-humored relationship.
“Did you TiVo
He handed me back the phone.
“I meant to congratulate you on the great restraint you showed while we were on the train,” I said. “Not turning on the television, I mean.”
“I just lost track of time is all that was. Never meant to miss it. She’ll fill me in.”
“There’s practically no traffic. The only trucks I’ve seen are supermarket semis and gas tankers.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“When we get out on the Cape, you’re going to have to watch out for deer. They’re everywhere at this hour of the night.”
“So what did Oksana say about Fyodor’s juvenile record?”
“No specifics. Just enough to send him away to a school for troubled adolescents.”
“Peterson hasn’t been able to track anything yet.”
“If it’s juvie, it’s likely to be sealed. Who knows? She was just trying to give me her ‘Officer Krupke’ pitch.”
“I’ve heard way too many of those,” Mike said, speeding past the WELCOME TO THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS Signs that bordered the highway. “He’s disturbed, he’s misunderstood, he’s got a social disease. It’s never the bad guy’s own fault. I’m surprised she didn’t throw in growing up in a leotard and tights. Maybe that’s what twisted him.”
“She might have reached that point by now. I think I shut her down,” I said. “Tell you what. I’ll be Alex Trebek. Here’s your substitute question: The Final
“One ride on a circus train and suddenly you’re a freaking expert on the subject?”
“The answer is the daring young man on the flying trapeze, Detective Chapman. I’ll give you twenty seconds.”
“Give me nothing.”
“Who was Jules Leotard?”
“You and your damn ballet lessons. That’s how come you know from leotards. And the guy was French, to boot? Another likely heartthrob for you.”
“A lawyer who left the bar for a career on the high wire. It was Leotard who developed the art of trapeze, and for whom the song was written, in 1867. And he started a trend — wearing the one-piece outfit that dancers use too.”
“Then maybe this case is all his fault, you think?”
“I’m expecting that will be part of the defense — blame the victims, and then throw in a little bit of what was a man in tights supposed to do?”
We made small talk and bantered trivia and tried to reassure ourselves that every cop and agent in the northeast was doing something to find Chastity Grant while we made our way to Hyannis. By the time we reached the Sagamore Bridge, one of the two spans that crosses the Cape Cod Canal, it was one fifteen in the morning and the only thing lower than my hopes for Chat’s safety were my spirits.
The cell phone slid off my lap as it vibrated. “You losing it?” Mike asked.
“Not entirely.” I leaned down and picked it up, recognizing the displayed number. “Hey, Mercer. Thanks for calling back.”
“I wasn’t avoiding you, Alex. I had no reception. I’m just outside the ER at Bellevue.”
“Listen. We’ve got news—”
“And I’ve got news for you. What brought me here tonight is Gina Borracelli.”
“What?” I assumed the teenager and her box of bad things was behind me.
“Hold tight and don’t let this throw you off course,” Mercer said. “She’s doing fine, Alex. But she tried to kill herself tonight.”
“Oh, my God. Is she all right?” I slumped down in the passenger seat, my head against the car window.
“She’s going to be just super. Acting out, is what the docs tell me. Not a serious effort in anyone’s view, except her parents’.”
“What happened?”
“She was out clubbing with her friends. Got liquored up. Every one of them had fake IDs so they got served. She went into the restroom around midnight. Swallowed a handful of pills and passed out on the bathroom floor.”
“Where was she?”
“The Limelight.”
“I should have guessed that. Uncanny, isn’t it?”
“Unholy,” Mercer said.
The Limelight, on Avenue of the Americas at 20th Street, had been a nightclub for longer than I was a prosecutor. Drugs were as readily available there as alcohol, and many of our date-rape cases started as casual encounters in the trendy club.
For more than a hundred years before that, the landmarked building was anything but notorious. It was the glorious Church of the Holy Communion, an Episcopal church whose parishioners once included the millionaires Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor.
“EMTs just shot across town to Bellevue. Pumped her stomach out and Gina will be up and about by morning. They’ll keep her a couple of days for observation and make sure she starts some inpatient psych care.”
“But she’s conscious and alert?” I was sorry to have played any role in the mounting distress that had caused the teen’s well-being to be compromised.
“Nothing to fret about. She’s fine and her ol’ man has a new punching bag.”
“You?”
“Yeah, but I think I scare him a bit more than you do.”
“Good to hear. In the meantime, while you’re there, can you check for Fyodor Zukov’s med records? His sister says—”
“I guess I buried the lede, Alex. They’re going to give me the records, subject to a subpoena that Nan can cut in the morning. It’s not what we thought.”
“You mean it wasn’t an emergency-room admission?” I said, thinking of the problems with the nerves in his hands that cut short his career on the wires. “Or it isn’t psychiatric?”
“Neither one of those,” Mercer said, discounting the two things most commonly associated with the old medical facility.
“What then?”
“Zukov’s been examined here at a new clinic. It’s for Hansen’s disease. Do you know—?”
“I know exactly what it is, Mercer. It’s leprosy,” I said to him. Then to Mike, “Our killer — who targets outcasts and pariahs and black sheep — is a leper.”
