Reliquary

thousand might just pay your salary for the next two years, Harriman had teased. Smithback decided that, after the next front-page story, he’d have to hit Murray up for a raise. Nothing like striking while the iron was hot.

= 11 =

SERGEANT HAYWARD descended a long metal staircase, opened a narrow door filmed in brown rust, and stepped out onto an abandoned railroad siding. Behind her, D’Agosta emerged from the doorway, hands in pockets. Murky sunlight filtered down through a series of gratings far above their heads, illuminating dust motes in the still air. D’Agosta looked first left, then right. In both directions, the tracks dissolved into the gloom of the tunnel. He noticed that Hayward had an unusual way of moving below ground, a kind of silent, wary step.

“Where’s the Captain?” Hayward asked.

“He’s coming,” said D’Agosta, scraping the underside of his heel on the metal rail of the siding. “You go ahead.” He watched Hayward move catlike down the tunnel, her flashlight throwing a narrow beam into the darkness ahead. Any hesitation he felt at letting this petite woman lead the way had evaporated as he watched the ease with which she handled herself underground.

Waxie, on the other hand, had slowed considerably in the two hours since they’d visited the brownstone basement where the first body had been found more than three months before. It was a damp room, crammed with old boilers. Rotting wires dangled from the ceiling. Hayward had pointed out the mattress tucked behind a blackened furnace, littered with empty plastic water bottles and torn newspapers: the dead man’s living space. There was an old bloodstain on the mattress, three feet in diameter, heavily chewed on by rats. Above it, a pair of ragged athletic socks were draped over a pipe, covered in a furry mantle of green mold.

The body found there had been Hank Jasper, Hayward said. No witnesses, no known relatives or friends. The case file had been equally useless: no photographs or scene reports, just some routine paperwork, a brief report referring to “extensive lacerations” and a badly crushed skull, and the notice of a quick burial at Potter’s Field on Hart Island.

Nor had they found much of anything in the defunct Columbus Circle station bathroom, where the second body had been discovered: a lot of trash, and a half-hearted attempt to clean up the red blizzard of blood that clung to the ancient tile sinks and cracked mirrors. No ID on that one at all: the head was missing.

There was a stifled curse behind him, and D’Agosta turned to see the round form of Captain Waxie emerging from the rusted door. He looked around distastefully, his pasty visage shining unnaturally in the half-light.

“Jesus, Vinnie,” he said, picking his way over the tracks toward D’Agosta. “What the hell are we doing? I told you before, this isn’t any job for a police captain. Especially on a Sunday afternoon.” He nodded his head in the direction of the dark tunnel. “That cute little thing put you up to this, didn’t she? Amazing set of knockers. You know, I offered her a job as my personal assistant. Instead, she chose to stay on rousting detail, dragging bums out of holes. Go figure.”

Funny thing about that, D’Agosta thought, imagining what life under Waxie would be like for a woman as attractive as Hayward.

“And now my damn radio’s gone on the fritz,” Waxie said irritably.

D’Agosta pointed upward. “Hayward tells me they don’t work underground. Not reliably, anyway.”

“Great. How are we supposed to call for backup?”

“We don’t. We’re on our own.”

“Great,” Waxie repeated.

D’Agosta looked at Waxie. Beads of sweat had sprung up along his upper lip, and his dough-colored jowls, usually firm, were starting to sag. “This is your jurisdiction, not mine,” D’Agosta said. “Just think how good it will make you look if this turns out to be big: taking charge right away, visiting the scene personally. For a change.” He fingered his jacket pocket for a cigar, then decided against it. “And think how bad it will look if these deaths are connected somehow, and the press starts talking about how you just looked the other way.”

Waxie scowled at him. “I’m not running for mayor, Vinnie.”

“I’m not talking about being mayor. All I know is, when the rain of shit begins to fall like it always does, your ass will be covered.”

Waxie grunted, looking somewhat mollified.

D’Agosta could see Hayward’s light playing down the tracks toward them, and soon the woman appeared again out of the gloom.

“Almost there,” she said. “It’s one more down.”

“Down?” said Waxie. “Sergeant, I thought this was the lowest level!”

Hayward said nothing.

“So how are we supposed to go down?” D’Agosta asked her.

Hayward nodded in the direction from which she’d come. “North along the tracks about four hundred yards, there’s another staircase along the right wall.”

“What if a train comes?” Waxie asked.

“This is a deserted stem,” Hayward said. “No trains have come along here in a long time.”

“How do you know?”

Hayward silently played her beam along the rails beneath their feet, illuminating the thick orange rust. D’Agosta’s eyes traveled up the flashlight beam until they reached Hayward’s face. She did not look very happy.

“Is there anything unusual about the next level?” D’Agosta asked quietly.