14
The High Line was an elevated train track platform, formerly part of the West Side Line, that was disused for many years and then transformed by the city into a park in a “rails-to-trails” program. The park was first opened in 2009, completed in 2015, and ran all the way from Thirty-Fourth Street in the north to below Thirteenth Street in the south. But as a result of the River Rise and construction of the Water Wall, the only part left was a stretch from Thirtieth to Twenty-Third Streets. The Wall was built right next to the outer edge of that section of the High Line, making it the only place in the city where residents and visitors could “walk the ramparts” along the Big Apple’s newest architectural wonder.
When Jon and Halladay reached the top of the stairs, it wasn’t hard to tell that Shinsky had gone south on the narrow parkway. There was a decent-sized crowd, and the big perp was bumping into enough of them that the cops could see the ripples of offended and off-balance pedestrians he’d left behind in his wake. Jon noticed the same eerie blue-green glow up here that he had seen at Madison Square Park, from the UV lamps that lined the path and kept the plants growing.
“I guess he’s done hiding,” Jon said, puzzled at the level of desperation the big ex-athlete had apparently reached. But he and Halladay just shrugged at each other and took off after him, making their own waves through the walkers and bicyclers. NFL linemen weren’t very fast even in their heyday, and Shinsky was older now, so the two officers were soon gaining on him. They even lined up their guns a few times when they caught an unobstructed view of his fleeing figure, but there were too many people in the park for them to fire on him. Plus, they wanted him alive for the sake of their investigation, and there weren’t any good angles to go for a wounding shot.
When Jon estimated they were about a block from closing on him, both the big man and the ripples in the crowd ahead suddenly disappeared. As the two cops reached the spot where they had lost sight of him, they found a small stairway that was on the Wall side of the path, unlike the others used by most of the people for access to the street level. It seemed their prey had descended this smaller stairway because of where the crowd ripples ended, and because of the wordless communication from a few bystanders who nodded and pointed that way. So Jon bolted down the stairs himself, noticing that they were half built into the Wall itself and therefore had been added during the newer construction.
Just a few feet away from the bottom of the steps there was a big steel door set into the inside of the Wall itself, and because Jon didn’t see Shinsky running away from it toward the street, he instinctively stepped over to it and looked for a handle to open it. He found none, only a small mechanism built into the door requiring some kind of key, so he turned around and starting moving through the smattering of cars parked underneath the roof formed by the elevated train platform above. It was extra dark under there, so he and Halladay stepped around the cars carefully with their guns drawn, as they had done with the beds at the sex club. But Shinsky was nowhere to be found.
They scanned the nearest street, which led out to Tenth Avenue, but there was no sign of the big man, nor any indication he had gone that way. It didn’t seem to Jon that the perp had been far enough ahead of them to have cleared that street, or the buildings on the other side of the High Line. So he had to rethink, and soon found himself sprinting back to the stairway and running up it, his older partner huffing and puffing as he tried to keep up.
When he got back up to the High Line, he made Halladay’s heart beat even faster by jumping onto the railing on the Wall side of the stairway entrance, and then propelling himself up onto the top of the parapet itself, which was about six or eight feet high.
“What the hell are you doing?” the Scotsman said between heavy breaths.
“He could have climbed up here and jumped,” Jon answered, peering over the wall into the darkness of the river below and listening for any sounds of swimming, or a boat, or whatever. He heard none.
Meanwhile, Halladay was using his still considerable vocal strength to ask people if anyone saw “a big hairy guy” jump, or go down the stairs, or anything else. But no one responded, presumably because the park was designed for walking and biking rather than loitering, and everyone who been here earlier had moved on by now.
The sound of MPD sirens arose from the bottom of the stairway, so Jon and Halladay descended it again and found three police cars had pulled in near the parked ones. Officers Ari Hegde and Brenda Dixon, of the Chaos Crimes division, had exited the lead one and were approaching them.
“Well, if it isn’t Airhead and Dickless,” Halladay said, still breathing heavily.
“You sound like you’re about to have a heart attack, Frank,” said the Indian cop.
“I’m fine,” Halladay croaked. “What are you doing here?”
“We got reports from people who thought a chaos crime was going down.”
“I thought they only happened in the daylight,” Jon said, putting his gun back into its holster.
“Apparently they do,” Hegde said, “because the only chaos I see here is Frank’s shirt coming all out of his pants.”
“Hilarious,” Halladay growled. “Why don’t you do something useful and head out onto Tenth and see if you can find a big hairy guy who’s probably sweating even more than me.”
“Wait a minute,” Jon interjected. “Before you do anything else…” He motioned for the three cops to follow him in the direction of the big steel door built into the wall. “What’s this?”
“What do you mean?” Hegde said. “It’s a door.”
“Can we get it open? The city must have keys for it, right?”
“I don’t know,” Halladay said, “but I assume GS would, because they built the Wall.”
“I’ll make a few calls for you,” Hegde volunteered. He turned to go back to his car, followed by Dixon.
Jon and Halladay waited for Hegde to return, but after a couple minutes his car and the other two just backed out and pulled away.
“What the hell?” Halladay said, and dialed Hegde’s number on his phone. Jon took it from him while it was ringing.
“Hegde,” the Indian man answered.
“Where’d you go?” Jon asked.
“Oh, we’re looking for your perp, like you asked.”
“We’re standing here waiting for you. You said you were gonna check on the door.”
“Oh, sorry. Yeah, MPD doesn’t have keys for Wall access points like that…. No one does. Render built it, and GS provides security for it. You’d have to talk to them. Sorry.”
Jon ended the call and handed the phone back to Halladay, who just shrugged when the younger cop shot him a puzzled look.
“Do ya think he jumped?” Halladay said as they walked back toward their own car.
“Could be,” Jon said. “Why would he go up onto the High Line just to run back down again?”
“Maybe because there are a lot of people.”
“There’s a lot of people on the street, too. But going down those stairs would have taken him away from the crowd and given us a clear shot.”
“Maybe he knew we didn’t want to shoot him.”
“What if there was some way to get in the Wall from outside it, by jumping at that spot? Or he had a way to get in that door we saw? He could have been heading for that spot all along. That would explain the desperate sprint, if he knew he could disappear somewhere.”