“I get out of here,” he said, starting to move again.
“Good idea.”
AS HOLLY WATCHED the dust settle, men in hard hats were running out of the cloud of dust ahead of her. There was much shouting. Then she froze as a horrible idea came to her. She turned and saw the old man on crutches nearing Second Avenue. “Teddy,” she said aloud. Then she shouted, “TEDDY!!!” He seemed to pause for a moment, then continued on his way, not looking back.
“Look out!” someone shouted from behind her. She turned and just managed to avoid a group of men who were running past her, apparently escapees from the building. One of them stopped and stood beside her.
“What happened?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” the man said. “The structure alarm went off, and everybody abandoned ship. Then there was a loud noise, and the building started to go. I think everybody got out.”
Holly turned and looked back toward Second Avenue. The man on crutches was gone. She made her decision; she started to run toward Second Avenue.
TEDDY REACHED THE GARAGE, unhooked his left toe from the shock cord and tossed the crutches ahead of him into the RV. He didn’t bother with his coat, just jumped in and closed the door. He was about to start the engine when Holly Barker ran past the garage entrance, headed downtown, never looking into the garage. He turned the key and pulled across the sidewalk and into traffic.
Holly was running down the east side of the street, looking around her for something, looking for him, he was sure. He rolled up his side window, which was tinted dark and, slowly, overtook her. She was, perhaps, ten yards away, jogging down the sidewalk, looking up and down the street, and there was a gun in her hand. Traffic stopped for a light.
HOLLY SEARCHED DESPERATELY through the crowd on the street for the old man on crutches, but he had vanished, as if into thin air. She grabbed for her cell phone and pressed the walkie-talkie button. “Lance. Holly. Do you read?”
“I read you, Holly.”
“What happened over there?”
“Ben Saud is down, single shot to the head.”
“I think I made Teddy.”
“Where? Where are you?”
“An old man on crutches passed me going toward Second, just as the building under construction collapsed.”
“Teddy probably fired from that building,” Lance said.
“I can’t see the old man,” Holly said. “I saw him headed toward Second, and I yelled his name, and he paused, but he kept going. Then I got distracted for a second, and when I turned around he had apparently turned the corner. I’m searching on Second, now, but I can’t see him anywhere. It’s like he just went poof and vanished into thin air. I mean, how far could he get on crutches?”
“Well, if it’s Teddy, he’s not on crutches anymore. Maybe he had a car waiting. I’ll send help. Start looking in vehicles.”
“Roger.”
THE LIGHT CHANGED, and Teddy drove on, watching Holly running along the curb, looking into parked cars. He made his way across traffic and managed to turn right onto 42nd Street. His last glimpse of Holly was in his offside rearview mirror. She was standing stock still, looking in his direction, the gun still in her hand.
Teddy continued on, toward the Lincoln Tunnel, New Jersey and 1-95 South to Florida.
FIFTY-SEVEN
IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT before Holly, Lance and the whole team got back to the Barn, every one of them streaked with dirt and dust from their search through the debris of the collapsed steel structure. Lance called everybody into the big conference room. There wasn’t room for everybody to sit down, so they stood along the walls, every one of them looking exhausted.
Lance, appearing exhausted himself, looked around at the group. “I want to thank you all for sticking with this and bringing this hunt to a close at last. What I’m about to tell you is above your pay grade, but you deserve to know.” Lance set a shopping bag on the table, reached into it and pulled out a small, odd-looking rifle.
“Teddy Fay made this in his workshop; the NYPD found the drawings for it. It’s simply a Walther PPK-S.380 pistol, to which Teddy added a scope, a longer barrel, a silencer and a folding metal stock. He shot Ali ben Saud with it this morning.
“The weapon was found a few feet from the unidentified body that the firemen located in the search. Because the structure alarm went off when the building started to collapse, everybody working there survived, a few with minor injuries. Only this one corpse was unidentified. I’ve just spoken to the medical examiner, who has done a preliminary autopsy, and it seems certain that the corpse is that of Teddy Fay.”
There was a stir of approval in the room, and applause broke out.
“Since, for public purposes, the corpse of Teddy Fay was supposed to have been eaten by fish off the coast of Maine many weeks ago, no inquest will be held, and no public announcement will be made. And no one in this room will ever discuss this subject again with anyone outside it.
“Our job is done, and that’s it. Our task force is officially disbanded or rather, unofficially, since it never existed. Tomorrow morning, all Bureau personnel will report to the New York City field office downtown at nine a.m. the day after tomorrow for reassignment. All Agency personnel will report to Langley at nine a.m. next Monday in the director’s conference room. She would like to thank you personally before you are given new assignments.
“Everybody is ordered to get a good night’s sleep. Kerry Smith and I would like to thank each and every one of you for your hard work on what must have seemed like a fruitless assignment. You will all have commendations placed in your personnel files, and you will all get new assignments that are better than you would normally expect at this stage of your careers. Good night and good luck.”
Lance and Kerry walked out of the room, and Lance tapped Holly on the shoulder as he went. “Follow me,” he said.
Holly followed Lance down the hall to his office. He stopped, said goodbye to Kerry Smith and motioned for Holly to come in and sit down.
“You look upset,” he said. “Do you have any questions? If so, ask them now and never again.”
“Who was the corpse found in the wreckage?”
“It was Teddy Fay, and don’t you ever let me hear you doubt it.”
“Was the homeless man who lived in the basement ever found?”
“These people move freely about the city; now that his home no longer exists, I’m sure he has taken up residence elsewhere.”
“I saw Teddy Fay on the street; he spoke to me.”
“Oh? Do you know that?”
“I know it.”
“How?”
“Instinct.”
“Instinct isn’t good enough when you have to sign your name to the kind of report that Kerry and I are submitting to our superiors. You were mistaken; you simply saw an old man. Is that clear?”
“Can we talk, off the record, for a moment?”
“Just this once, then we’re done with it.”
“Do you really think this is over?”
“I do. Teddy pulled up stakes: he abandoned his base and a workshop that he went to a great deal of trouble to assemble.”
“Did we find anything of use among his papers or on his computer?”
“All the paper in the place had been shredded and burned; the computer hard drive had been reformatted, so every byte was scrubbed from it.”
“So we still don’t know exactly how he got into the Langley mainframe or who his contact was?”
“We have no hard evidence that he ever got into the mainframe, and a very thorough internal investigation has determined that no one at Langley aided him in any way.”
“Suppose he starts killing again?”
“I’ve no reason to suppose he will, but should that happen, I’ll screw that elephant when it sits on me. If he pops up someplace else and starts killing, he won’t be Teddy Fay, he’ll be someone else. Are we done?”