Reliquary

He had arrived just as she was being brought up an emergency exit at 66th Street on a stretcher: hands folded in her lap, pleasant vacant expression on her face, plump and motherly, her smooth brown skin in stark contrast to the sheets around her. God only knew how she’d managed to hide: she had not uttered a sound. The train itself had been turned into a temporary morgue: seven civilians and two TA workers dead, five with smashed skulls and throats cut to the backbone, three others with their heads completely missing, one electrocuted by the third rail. D’Agosta could almost smell the lawyers circling.

Mrs. Munoz was now up at St. Luke’s in psychiatric seclusion. Waxie had hollered and pounded and threatened, but the admitting doctor was unyielding: no interviews until at least six that morning.

Three heads missing. The trails of blood were picked up immediately, but the hemoluminesence team was having a tough time in the labyrinth of wet tunnels. D’Agosta went over the setup once more in his head. Someone had cut a signal wire just beyond the 59th Street station, causing an immediate halting of all East Side express trains between 14th and 125th, leaving the one train trapped in the long approach to 86th Street. There they had waited, in ambush.

The whole setup took intelligence and planning, and perhaps an inside knowledge of the system. So far, no clear footprints had been found, but D’Agosta estimated there had been at least six of them. Six, but no more than ten. A well-planned, well-coordinated attack.

But why?

The SOC team had determined that the electrocuted man probably stepped on the third rail deliberately. D’Agosta wondered just what a man would have to see in order to do something like that. Whatever it was, Alberta Munoz might have seen it, too. He had to talk to her before Waxie got there and ruined everything.

“D’Agosta!” a familiar voice bellowed, as if on cue. “What, are you frigging asleep?”

He slowly opened his eyes, silently regarding the quivering, red face.

“Forgive me for interrupting your beauty rest,” Waxie continued, “but we’ve got a tiny little crisis on our hands here—”

D’Agosta sat up. He looked around the office, spotted his jacket on the back of a chair, grabbed it and began sliding one hand into an armhole.

“You hearing me, D’Agosta?” Waxie shouted.

He pushed past the Captain and walked into the hallway. Hayward was standing by the situation desk, checking an incoming fax. D’Agosta caught her eye and motioned her toward the elevator.

“Where the hell are you going now?” Waxie said, following them to the elevator. “You deaf or something? I said, we got a crisis—”

“It’s your crisis,” D’Agosta snapped. “You deal with it. I’ve got things to do.”

As the elevator doors closed, D’Agosta placed a cigar in his mouth and turned to face Hayward.

“St. Luke’s?” she asked. He nodded in response.

A minute later, the elevator doors chimed open on the wide tiled lobby. D’Agosta began to step out, then stopped. Beyond the glass doors, he could see a crowd of people, fists thrust in the air. It had tripled in size since he’d arrived at One Police Plaza at 2:00 A.M. That rich woman, Wisher, was standing on the hood of a squad car, speaking animatedly into a bullhorn. The media was there in force: he could see the pop of flash guns, the assembled machinery of television crews.

Hayward put a hand on his forearm. “Sure you don’t want to take a black-and-white from the basement motor pool?” she asked.

D’Agosta looked at her. “Good idea,” he said, stepping back into the elevator.

The admitting doctor kept them waiting on plastic chairs in the staff cafeteria for forty-five minutes. He was young, grim, and dead tired.

“I told that Captain no interviews until six,” he said in a thin, angry voice.

D’Agosta stood up and took the doctor’s hand. “I’m Lieutenant D’Agosta, and this is Sergeant Hayward. Pleased to meet you, Dr. Wasserman.”

The doctor grunted and withdrew his hand.

“Doctor, I just want to say up front that we don’t want to do anything that will cause harm to Mrs. Munoz.”

The doctor “nodded.

“And you’re to be the only judge of that,” D’Agosta added.

The doctor said nothing.

“I also realize that a certain Captain Waxie was up here causing trouble. Perhaps he even threatened you.”

Wasserman suddenly exploded. “In all my years working this emergency room, I’ve never been treated quite like that bastard treated me.”

Hayward snickered. “Join the club,” she said.

The doctor shot her a surprised look, then relaxed slightly.

“Doctor, there were at least six, and probably ten, men involved in this massacre,” D’Agosta said. “I believe they’re the same individuals who killed Pamela Wisher, Nicholas Bitterman, and many others. I also believe they may be roaming the subway tunnels as we speak. It may be that the only living person who can identify them is Mrs. Munoz. If you really feel that my questioning Mrs. Munoz now will be harmful, I’ll accept that. I just hope you’ll consider that other lives might hang in the balance.”