Worst Case Read online

  “Live Breaking News,” said the text in the corner of the local Fox Channel’s screen. Across the bottom I read, MEDIA BARON’S SON MISSING. There was a shaky aerial shot of a college campus, probably taken from a helicopter. I recognized the granite dome of Columbia’s Low Memorial Library. Police were laying tape by another campus building while a growing crowd watched.

  “No,” I said into my phone as I finally made out what the police were cordoning off. The camera had zoomed in on an empty wheelchair.

  I felt like borrowing the rosary beads around the crucifix on the wall beside the TV. He’d taken another kid? This horror was nonstop. Was that the point? Damn it, this was all we needed!

  “Where are you now, Emily?” I said as I hit the street.

  “Running to the subway. Columbia’s uptown, right?” she said. “Don’t bother picking me up. I’ll meet you there.”

  Chapter 37

  “WHERE TO, MIKE?” Mary Catherine said as I hopped back into our van. “Starbucks? That diner on Eleventh? No, how about we score a couple of warm H and H bagels and eat them in the park? I’m famished after that all-nighter.”

  “Change of plans, Mary Catherine,” I said. “Another kid just got kidnapped. I have to head over to Columbia yesterday.”

  Mary Catherine’s eyes lit up as she revved the engine. She was a notorious lead foot.

  “Hit the lights, Starsky. I’ll get you there in no time.”

  On our way to Columbia, I called Chief Fleming.

  “There you are,” she said. “The press found out about it before we did. Are you there yet?”

  “Just about.”

  “The TV is saying that it’s the media mogul Gordon Hastings’s son, but that hasn’t been confirmed.”

  “That’ll be the first thing on my list,” I said as we arrived at the campus.

  A mob of students and press had crowded into Low Plaza, at 116th and Broadway. Sirens split the air every few seconds as more and more police cars arrived.

  I saw Emily Parker emerge from the subway and called to her.

  “Oh, I see,” Mary Catherine said, glaring at her through the windshield. “You didn’t say she was going to be here.”

  “Of course,” I said as I got out. “She’s a kidnapping expert with the FBI. This looks like a kidnapping. What is it, Mary?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s none of my business what you do, Mike,” she said as she revved the van and ripped the transmission into gear.

  “Or who you do it with. You’re welcome for the ride,” she said as she peeled off.

  She whipped a screeching U-ee. I stood gaping as she dropped the hammer down Broadway.

  Had she gone completely over the edge? Must have been the science fair, I thought.

  “Was that your nanny?” Emily said as she arrived at a jog beside me.

  “I’m not really sure,” I said.

  Chapter 38

  FRANCIS X. MOONEY carried a briefcase and a venti latte as he hurried with the morning rush-hour crowd through Grand Central Terminal. He was approaching the famous clock at the station’s center when he spotted the girl at the end of one of the Metro North ticket lines. He halted, weak suddenly, his heart snaring, unable to breathe.

  The milky skin, the long black hair. My God, it was her! he thought, panicking. He’d messed up somehow! Chelsea Skinner was right there. She was still alive!

  When the young woman turned to open her purse, the spell was broken. Francis felt a head rush of relief as he realized it was actually a thirty-something businesswoman, much too tall and heavy to be the young woman he had abducted and shot.

  What the hell was wrong with him? he thought as he unrooted himself. Things were getting to him. The lack of sleep, the physical exertion. He was losing it, actually hallucinating.

  He stopped at a line of Verizon phone kiosks. He removed the vial of Ritalin that sat beside the 9-millimeter Browning at the bottom of his briefcase.

  He’d been practically living on amphetamines for the past three weeks, Adderall, meth, bennies. He’d read somewhere that the air force gave its pilots amphetamines to keep them alert on long-range missions.

  He was on a mission, too, wasn’t he? The most important mission the world had ever known. He needed anything and everything that could keep him going.

  After he swallowed half a dozen pills, he took off his glasses and laid his forehead against the aluminum coin slot. The thunder of feet on the station’s marble seemed to triple in volume as the speed cut into his bloodstream. He put his glasses back on and made a laser line for the bustling station’s Lexington Avenue exit.

  Directly across Lex, he entered the marble-and-stainless-steel lobby of the Chrysler Building. He shifted the latte to his case hand as he passed his company’s electronic pass over the security turnstile’s scanner.

  His law firm’s shining brass ERICSSON, WEYMOUTH AND ROTH sign greeted him outside the elevator on the sixty-first floor. At twenty-nine, he’d been the youngest to ever make partner. There was a time he’d wanted, and probably could have gotten, the name Mooney added to that sign.

  That time was long over. In fact, this was his very last day.

  He made a quick left before the glass door that led to his firm’s reception desk and snuck in through the back way. He needed to keep a low profile. Calling in sick the whole week before, he’d caused a caseload logjam of startling proportions. At his Forbes 100, top-flight, bill-or-die corporate firm, erratic attendance was a sin equivalent to pissing on the senior partner’s desk.

  His personal assistant, Carrie, almost fell out of her chair as he ducked into her cubicle.

  “Francis! What a happy surprise. I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to make it in. I was just about to call you. Your nine o’clock, Steinman, just called. Something came up at the studio, he said. He won’t be in New York until next Thursday.”

  Francis breathed down a spike of anger. “Something came up at the studio” was Hollywood bullshit for “the check is in the mail.” He’d only decided to waste time and risk coming in because of the potential good that could have come out of the meeting with the multimillionaire movie executive.

  He’d been stupid. He was trying to accomplish everything, but even flying on speed that was impossible.

  “And, oh,” Carrie said, lifting a memo sheet out of her in-box, “I heard from reception that Kurt from New York Heart called last Friday. He said it was urgent.”

  New York Heart was a privately funded antipoverty organization that Mooney did pro bono work for. He’d been advising them on a case about a destitute Harlem man who was on death row in Florida.

  Francis winced. With everything else going on, he’d forgotten all about it. An urgent message about a death- row appeal couldn’t be good.

  He thought about his plans. His time frame. It would be an incredible crunch, but he had to try. Even with everything he’d put into motion, he didn’t have a choice but to swing by the charity.

  “Drop everything and cancel the rest of my meetings until further notice, would you, Carrie? I have to head up there.”

  “Are you sure you should, Francis?” Carrie whispered with concern. “You haven’t been here for a week. I think some of the clients, and even more so the junior partners, have been complaining, Mr. M. In fact, Mr. Weymouth is livid. Is there anything I can do? Do you need someone to talk to?”

  Francis smiled at his personal assistant’s concern. Ever since she’d begun working for him seven years before, she’d been terrific, so smart and precise and loyal.

  When it all came out, would she understand what he had tried to do? Would anyone?

  That was beside the point, he thought, steeling himself. It didn’t matter what people thought about him personally. It wasn’t about him.

  He planted a kiss on her forehead.

  “You’re sweet to think about me, Carrie, but believe it or not, I’ve never felt better in all my life,” he said as he headed back for the elevators.

  Chapter 39
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  THERE WAS AN unimpeded view of the empty wheelchair from the window of Columbia’s Department of Public Safety. Standing at the window, staring at the chair, Jesse Acevedo, the Campus Security chief, seemed incapable of doing anything except shaking his head.

  “That’s going to be the cover of the Post,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “I mean, that’s my job, right? A handicapped student gets snatched on campus? Oh, I’m sorry, the handicapped son of one of the world’s most powerful men. My daughter goes here. Once I’m out, no more staff scholarship. What the hell am I going to do?”

  I felt bad for the guy. I knew full well the kind of bullshit blame he’d be getting. But I didn’t have the time to sympathize.

  “Tell us about the tunnels again,” I said.

  “Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, coming back to his desk. When his phone rang, he lifted the receiver and clicked it back in its cradle. When it rang again, he unclipped the phone cord from the back of it.

  “The tunnels,” he said after a deep breath. “Right. The tunnels connect some of the campus buildings. Lewisohn, the one next to where we found the empty chair, has tunnels that go to Havemeyer, Math, and the Miller Theater. There’s another, older one that actually goes under Broadway to one of the Barnard College buildings on the other side of Broadway.”

  “Reid Hall. I know,” I said.

  We’d already found that the basement door in that building had been propped open. John Cleary and his CSU team were there now, going over every square inch of the basement with an evidence vacuum and Q-tips. The killer must have gotten in and taken the kid out through there.

  “Who else knows about the tunnels?” Emily said.

  “Students, maintenance, faculty,” he said. “We blocked off some of them, but the kids still use them as shortcuts sometimes. Like hotels, every campus has its ghost stories, and the tunnels figure in a lot of the urban legends that get told around here.”

  I kept thinking about the kidnapper’s cultured, educated voice. He most definitely could have been an Ivy League academic.

  “One more question,” I said. “Has a teacher ever been caught down there?”

  “I don’t know,” Acevedo said. “I’ll look into it and let you know. Or at least I’ll leave a note for my replacement.”

  “I’m actually starting to respect this nut,” Emily said as we headed down the stairs. “I’ve never seen someone so prolific. This guy is a gold-medal-winning kidnapper.”

  Emily ducked into the cafeteria on the ground floor of the building and came back with two coffees. This morning, she was wearing a form-fitting French Blue blouse and navy skirt. Her hair was still wet. I liked that she wore hardly any makeup. The way she did a cute earlobe-tugging thing when she was thinking, and especially the spark that flashed in her blue eyes when she was fired up.

  “Now what?” Emily said. “Head over to Hastings’s dorm? The library where he was last seen?”

  “Nah,” I said. “We better head to the family. I’m expecting a call from our friend.”

  Chapter 40

  THE HARLEM SATELLITE office of the social service, nonprofit New York Heart was on 134th Street off St. Nicholas Avenue. The sour scent of sweat and marijuana made Francis X. Mooney nostalgic as he mounted the unswept stairs two by two.

  For the past ten years, Mooney had been the main adviser of their legal outreach program, which took on cases for the poorest of the poor. He stared at the posters and photographs of the organization’s community theater and community garden that covered the stairwell walls and smiled. New York Heart was truly a labor of love.

  “What’s cooking, kids?” Francis said after he gathered the half dozen social workers in the cramped conference room ten minutes later.

  Francis X. smiled around the battered table at the lanky twenty-somethings. He remembered being that young, having that fire in the belly to set things straight. Not every young person was a selfish, whining brat, he thought.

  “I just got your message this morning, Kurt,” he said. “How’s Mr. Franklin’s case going?”

  Kurt, the social service’s in-house law advocate, looked up from his bagel and cream cheese. He’d gone to Fordham and hadn’t passed the bar yet, but Francis had faith in him. The kid’s heart was in the right place.

  “The reason I called is that Mr. Franklin’s last appeal pretty much got slam-dunked into the shitter, Francis,” he said between bites. “The fuckers are going to fry him this Friday, and the rednecks down there will probably tailgate in the prison parking lot. What are you going to do? Hope the Republicans are happy. Another one bites the dust.”

  Francis couldn’t believe it as chuckles exploded around the room. Mr. Reginald Franklin, the son of a destitute local resident, and borderline retarded, was about to be executed by the American government. How was that funny?

  “Did you look over the habeas corpus?” Francis said.

  “Of course,” Kurt said. “The appeals court decided to go by the trial record.”

  “That’s what they always do,” Francis said, raising his voice now. “Did you get a copy of the police report, like I told you to? Did you look into the adequacy of his first attorney? The man supposedly fell asleep at one point.”

  The room was silent now. Kurt set his bagel on the table as he sat up.

  “No, I didn’t get a chance,” he finally said. “I did call you.”

  “Didn’t get a chance? Didn’t get a chance!” Francis yelled. His chair made a thunderous shriek as he leapt up. “Are you out of your fucking mind? The man is about to die!”

  “Jeez, Francis,” Kurt mumbled with his head down. “Relax.”

  “I won’t,” Francis X. said. He didn’t want to cry. Not in front of these kids, but he couldn’t help it. A torrent of hot tears poured down his reddened face.

  “I can’t relax, don’t you see?” he said as he stormed out. “There’s no more time.”

  Chapter 41

  WE WERE OUT on Columbia’s sprawling Low Plaza, heading over to the bursar’s office to get Dan Hastings’s personal info, when my phone rang.

  “Mike,” Detective Schultz cried. “Get over quick to the vice president’s office at the Low Memorial Library. We need your help. You’re not going to believe this.”

  I met a frustrated-looking Schultz and Ramirez in a hallway on the second floor of the college’s iconic domed building. The administration was denying them the tapes from the Campus Security cameras due to “privacy concerns.”

  “These wackos are acting like we’re the KGB rounding up people for the gulag instead of trying to save the life of one of their kidnapped students,” Ramirez said wide-eyed.

  After twenty minutes of arguing, it finally took the threat of both a city and federal subpoena to get the officials to release the tapes, along with Dan Hastings’s personal information.

  “Only in New York,” Agent Parker said as we went out toward the Broadway gate and the Crown Victoria that the FBI’s New York office had dropped off for her.

  “Or any Ivy League college campus,” I said.

  The victim’s father, Gordon Hastings, lived way downtown on Prince Street in SoHo. As Emily drove, I listened to a 1010 WINS report that was already being broadcast about him. Gordon Hastings used to work for Rupert Murdoch and now had his own business buying radio and TV stations, mostly in Canada and Europe. His wealth was estimated at eight hundred million dollars. I couldn’t even imagine that kind of money. Or what the man had to be going through, knowing that his disabled son had been abducted.

  As she drove, Emily called the New York office and ran Gordon Hastings through NCIC and other federal databases.

  “He was born and raised in Scotland,” she said, hanging up a few minutes later, “but became a U.S. citizen a couple of years ago. He’s clean, though the IRS has an open case on him due to some remarks he made about offshore accounts in a Vanity Fair interview.”

  “Imagine that,” I said. “And all my Vanity Fair interviews alwa
ys go so swimmingly.”

  I let out an angry snort a moment later as we turned off Broadway onto Prince.

  Half a dozen news vans had beat us to Hastings’s cast-iron building. Cold-eyed camera lenses swung on us as we double-parked. I swung my cold-eyed Irish face right back at them.

  “No goddamn comment,” I yelled at them as I got out. “And get that goddamn eyewitness van away from that fire hydrant if you ever want to see it again.”

  “Now, that’s what I call media savvy,” Emily said with a grin as we waded through the newsies on the sidewalk. “If you ever make it down to DC, you should toss your résumé into the ring for White House press secretary.”

  “You thought that was bad,” I said. “I was being restrained. I usually just empty a magazine into the air.”

  It actually turned out that the ride we had taken downtown was for nothing. The luxury building’s handsome but seemingly stoned concierge stifled a giggle when we asked to speak to Gordon Hastings.

  “C’mon. Where you been, man? I thought everyone knew that only Mr. Hastings’s second wife and new baby twins get to live in the penthouse duplex during the divorce proceedings.”

  “Could we speak to the soon-to-be ex–Mrs. Gordon Hastings, then?” Emily said before I could ask the guy for a urine sample.

  “I wouldn’t think so,” the spaced-out model look-alike said. “Unless, of course, you’re planning a trip to Morocco, where her Italian Vogue shoot is.”

  The only useful thing we learned was that the mogul’s mail was being forwarded to somewhere called Pier Fifty-nine, at Twenty-third Street and the Hudson River.

  It turned out to be the Chelsea Piers Sports Center. We stared at the kids Rollerblading and the men with golf bags on the sidewalk in front of it.

  “That kid was even higher than he looked. How could this guy live at a sports facility?” Emily said as we pulled up.

  “That’s how,” I said as I pointed to the yacht-filled marina beside the netted driving range.