Of course I had phoned that number in the past. When I had worked the Reservoir rapist case with Mercer, our big break came from a tip I received in the early hours of the morning.
It was Jessica Pell who had placed the hang-up call tonight. Judge Jessica Pell, who was going to try to take me down with Mike.
NINE
At six A.M., standing on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 72nd Street, I texted Sergeant Chirico, asking where to meet him. It was an overcast morning but expected to clear. Already, hundreds of the people who would use the Park this day were pouring into it on foot, bikes, blades, and pedicabs before the seven A.M. auto traffic would be allowed.
“I’ll wait for you in the parking lot behind the boathouse,” he replied. “Know it?”
“Yes.” It was three blocks north of where I would enter, just off the east drive.
As I walked toward it, wearing slacks and a blazer in an attempt to look casual but professional, I passed more cops than I ever remembered seeing in one place at any time. My keys and ID were in my pants pocket, and I carried only a pen and a thick notebook.
All along the roadway that was still barred to vehicular traffic, cops were trying to stop every jogger, biker, and dog walker-having started before sunrise almost two hours ago-to ask whether they had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary on any of the mornings the week earlier.
Many people seemed eager to stop and answer questions, some expressed annoyance but complied, and a few didn’t slow down for a moment, just waving off the cops who tried to approach them.
“Good morning, Sarge. Thanks for letting me be here.”
“No problem, Alex. I know you’ve done it before.”
“Is Mike-?”
Chirico cut me off. “He’s out on the Point. I don’t think you’re likely to see him.”
“The Point?”
“It’s that long piece of land at the southern tip of the Ramble that juts into the Lake. It sits directly opposite Bethesda Terrace-straight in front of the angel-and due east of Bow Bridge. The Point is wooded and remote. There won’t be many people around, but Mike’s got a secluded spot where he can take in all the action around the Lake, in case our killer is the kind of guy who wants to watch our operation.”
“So is there a rush to judgment here, Sarge? Punishing Mike before you know what happened?”
Chirico shook his head at me. “You know me better than that. I’m trying to cover his back. He’s out there with the squirrels and the chipmunks and the red-throated warblers till I can talk this Pell woman down off the ledge.”
“So Lieutenant Peterson doesn’t have a clue?”
“Sure he does. He just doesn’t want to give Pell the satisfaction of thinking it rises to the level of needing his attention,” the sergeant said. “You’ve got to ease up, Alex. Otherwise people will start to think she’s got real ammunition. Let’s get going.”
“Just so you know, she called my apartment last evening. Hung up when she didn’t get me at home.”
“I’ll make a note. But you ought to tell the DA.”
My heart sunk. “I’m sort of hoping he doesn’t have to find out.”
“Where’s your backbone, Alex? This broad’s on a mission. And your common sense? If she hasn’t told Battaglia yet, I’d be mighty surprised. He’s got more sources than the pope,” Chirico said. “Let’s get my team in place.”
The sergeant called out to the sixteen young cops-three women and thirteen men-who were gathered in small groups in the parking lot, waiting for orders. “Listen up!”
The clusters came together around Chirico, who introduced them to me and to Tom O’Day, the park ranger who was going to accompany us to our canvass site.
“We’ve got our assignment, guys,” the sergeant said. “We’re going up in the Ramble this morning, and our goal is to stop everyone who will talk to us, to see if they saw or heard anything unusual last week.”
He passed around a small paper with a headshot of the dead girl, after she’d been autopsied and cleaned up at the morgue. “Show them this face. She might have been homeless, and a lot of homeless men and women hang out in the Park, so it gives us another chance at getting her ID’d.”
“What’s the Ramble, Sarge? I work on Staten Island,” one of the cops said. “I’ve never set foot in this Park.”
Manny Chirico turned to O’Day to field questions. He pointed over his shoulder to the winding wooded path that led uphill behind the boathouse.
“This is actually the most complex area of Central Park, in terms of its topography,” O’Day said. “It was all pretty much a swamp when the Park was laid out. But the designers wanted New Yorkers to feel like they could escape from the city, so they brought in mountains of soil and boulders to create this woodland walk.”
“This is man-made?”
“Entirely, except for some glacial bedrock that was laid down twenty thousand years ago,” O’Day said. “We’re going to climb up this web of pathways-there are all kinds of steep angles and sharp turns-”
“I’m a straight-line kind of guy myself,” the cop said, growing an audience of comrades for his wisecracks.
“Then you’ve pulled the wrong assignment. There’s only one straight line in this entire Park, Officer. It’s the Promenade on the Mall, taking you from Bethesda Terrace back toward 59th Street. Just that one. I’m about to lead you into thirty-eight acres that look like you might as well be in the Adirondacks. If you’ve never been here before, you won’t believe you’re in the city.”
“A guy like me could get lost,” another cop said.
“Good point,” O’Day said. “See the streetlights? Every one of these lampposts has a location marking on it-four numbers that tell you exactly where you are.”
He stopped at the foot of the path and pointed to the small plaque affixed to the post. “See that? 7500. The next one up there will be 7502. The first two numbers tell you what street is our parallel outside the Park-that would be 75th Street-and then they go in order, even numbers only when you’re east of the center of the Park, from double-0 to 02. Above 100th Street, they’re tagged with the last two digits, so the first post at 101st Street becomes 01-00.”
“Where’s 7501?” the same guy asked.
“Just off 75th Street on the west side. The numbers over there are odd, like everything else about the west side.”
We started to walk, two at a time, up the incline, which began as an asphalt path but soon became gravel and dirt. Within minutes, the sights and sounds of urban New York were far below us, as we were shaded by overgrown trees and serenaded by what sounded like varieties of songbirds.
Tom O’Day stopped all of us at the first fork in the trail. “Some of you are going to head that way, up to the Gill.”
“What’s the Gill?” a female officer asked.
“It’s a stream. Runs out of Azalea Pond up above us, by 77th Street. It twists and turns with a few cascades, then takes a pretty steep drop down a gorge into the Lake.”
“Even the stream is artificial?”
“Yes, ma’am. Same pumped-in-from-upstate water that runs out of your tap. But you’d never know it.”
“So the body that was found in the Lake could have been thrown in the water up here and floated down?”
“Not a prayer,” the sergeant said. “There would have been quite an accumulation of postmortem skin tears and discolorations. Wait till you see this stream-and the boulders in it. Tom, why don’t you tell them who’s likely to be around?”
“Sure. At this hour of the day we get your more adventurous runners. Guys on the clock prefer the roadway or Reservoir trail, not just because of how steep it gets here but because the ground is so rough, with tree roots and rocks in the way. They rarely stop for anyone. Your dog walkers are the friendliest by far.