“There are blasts in the tunnel almost every day,” Teddy said, reaching in his plastic bag for another cigarette. “The guys prep the walls by jacklegging a drill ten feet in and making a grid. It ain’t exactly a haphazard occurrence.”
“And the site is cleared of all workmen, right?” KD asked.
“You bet. You gotta be three miles down the tracks if you don’t want to wind up airborne to Brooklyn. There’s a three-minute warning that’s sent out, and a follow-up with a minute to go. Nobody in his right mind doesn’t get the hell out of range.”
The empty railroad train that had passed us on the way down to this spot had coal cars like those on a Lionel train set. They were open on top, and when ready to dump their load, they tipped over on one side and poured out the coal.
KD Halloran stepped sideways and tapped Hal Sherman on the back. The NYPD’s best crime-scene investigator was kneeling in the mud, meticulously photographing the splintered remains of the wooden ties that had caught fire in the blast.
He looked up at Halloran-spotted us-and blew me a kiss. “What next?”
KD told him the workmen were ready to load the already processed debris into the cars to be removed from the dig.
One sandhog walked to the far side of the tracks and picked up a long black hose. He turned a spigot and water-more water-poured forth from the nozzle. The muck cars rolled on their sides to receive the first loads.
As two other men began to shovel piles of rubble, the hog with the hose started to spray it all down.
KD asked, “What the hell are you doing?”
Teddy interrupted him, “They gotta keep the crap wet or we’ll choke to death. It’s routine.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got to sift through this again when we get it upstairs,” the detective said.
Teddy raised one of his arms to stop the guys. “I thought you were finished.”
KD looked to Mike for help. “We’ve gone through it twice the best we can in this light. We got a couple of tarps spread out behind the crane up in the yard. This all has to be examined more carefully.”
“What have you found so far?”
“Pieces of flesh,” KD said. “Can’t even smell it in here over the dynamite.”
“Salt and pepper?” Mike asked, referring to the mixed races of the victims.
“Yeah. Got some teeth, some strips of clothing. I’m telling you, shoot me the next time I complain about working a scene in some roach-filled ten-by-twelve room in a flophouse. This explosive stuff is a nightmare.” KD pointed down the tunnel behind me. “The bomb squad makes the focal point of the blast about twenty feet back, but the fragments go a helluva long way from that.”
“You locate any device? Got any ideas?”
KD bent over and with his gloved hand lifted a stick of dynamite from a cardboard box between the two sets of tracks. It was about eight inches long and one and a half inches in diameter, wrapped in a waxed paper that seemed to be oil-stained from the nitroglycerin inside.
“We’ve got some detonating cord in the mess,” he said. “It was probably laced through the sticks of dynamite. All on its way to the lab.”
Mike looked around at the remaining piles of debris. “So what do you want these guys to do?”
“Shovel it onto the car and take it to the conveyor belt,” KD said, his annoyance obvious in his tone. “I just don’t want them hosing it down yet, destroying any evidence.”
Mike nodded to Teddy, and the men resumed their work.
KD stood next to the second muck car, running the beam of his flashlight back and forth along its length as the rubble was thrown onto it. Something glinted from the ashes and he called out for the guys to stop.
“What is it?” Mike asked, stepping forward to watch as KD picked up the object.
“Looks like a belt buckle.” He held it up for us to see, a silvery metal clasp with bits of shredded leather extending from its sides.
“Give me that light again,” Mike said, pulling a pair of rubber gloves from his rear pocket and practically sticking his nose into the soot-filled car. “Right here.”
KD focused his powerful beam over Mike’s shoulder, as I squatted beside him.
I covered my mouth with the plastic mask that hung around my neck as I stared at the thick, white finger that sat atop the pile.
“Bag it, KD. It’s no bomb that ripped that digit off,” Mike said. “Look at it, Coop.”
He scratched the ashes away from it, exposing the tip of the dirt-encrusted nail down to the beefy knuckle that had caught his attention.
“What do-”
“Too even. Damage from an explosion would be much more ragged. My money’s on a serrated knife,” Mike said. “Somebody sliced this guy’s finger off while he was still breathing. Sawed it off like a hunk of steak.”
14
“What do you figure, Mercer?” Mike asked. “You think the minute she’s through making love, Coop gets out of bed and heads for the locker room?”
Mercer was pouring drinks in my den as I walked in from the bedroom. I had changed into a collared T-shirt and jeans and was toweling off my wet hair. “Clean is good, Mr. Chapman,” he said. “I wasn’t down in the shaft half as long as you two and I can’t wait to get that smell out of my nose either.”
“You take more showers than any broad I know. Don’t you like it with a little dirt on your uniform, like you just stole second, sliding into base? Be a little daring?”
“I’m taking a break from daring for the long weekend. What did the ME say?”
“Ah, Ms. Cooper is going into her Vineyard tranquillity mode. A walk on the beach, late-afternoon massage, sunset swim. Enough to make you forget the island of Manhattan is about to implode. You remember the drill, don’t you, Mercer?”
“This is all about Joan’s wedding, guys. It’s not too late to change your minds. I can make room for you at the house.”
Joan had come to know Mike and Mercer almost as well as I did. And although the small guest list was a mix of her family and friends, she had sincerely wanted them there with us. Mike was still trying to cope with Val’s sudden death when the invitation came and told Joan that he didn’t want his mood-gloomy and remote-to put a pall on her happiness. Mercer wouldn’t think of going without Mike.
Mike steered the subject back to the water-tunnel death investigation. “Dr. Kestenbaum says antemortem amputation. Hemorrhage in the adjacent tissue. Believes it’s this one,” he said, flexing the first knuckle next to his thumb. “Duke Quillian-that’s a confirmation on the DNA from the mobile lab-was alive when that finger took a walk from the rest of his hand.”
“Any prints on file?” I asked.
“Nope. Never been collared.”
“You figure how we missed a connection to Brendan yet?”
“I’ve been going over and over the possible links all day, since I heard the news. It intrigues me as much as it does you. But there’s not even one damn phone call that suggests that the brothers talked to each other in the last year.”
“Any word on the tire iron?” I asked, sitting on the sofa with my Scotch.
“Like the proverbial hound’s tooth, Alex,” Mercer said. “Nothing on it.”
“Don’t take it too personally, kid,” Mike said, switching the channel from the news to the final few minutes of Jeopardy! “That was just a get-out-of-our-hole signal to all of us interlopers.”
“Those hogs don’t want us down there,” Mercer said. “It’s like they think they’re going to handle this entire investigation themselves. What happened in Water Tunnel Number Three stays in Water Tunnel Number Three. No one we talked to saw people near the shaft at the time the damn thing fell, there’s no video cameras on top, and the cops were all so busy keeping the reporters out of the yard that they weren’t any better at figuring what
