“Safe idea?” Kepler asked. He didn’t know what that meant. “I frankly didn’t think about it. It was just something I had to do: Get the tracker onto her then back off.”
Surani, his gray complexion even grayer under the inhumane lights in the dismal operations room, said, “It was pretty good, pretty smooth. She doesn’t have a clue.”
“Microphone?” The captain brushed his trim white hair — senior congressman’s hair — twice, then a third time. He seemed to look Kepler up and down, as if approving of his impressive tan. Or disapproving.
“No, just a tracker. We lost her for a bit in the subway.”
The New York City metro system was huge and fast and efficient, and that meant it could transport Gabriela anywhere within a several-hundred-square-mile area. And GPS trackers wouldn’t work there.
“But then she surfaced. CCTV got a facial recognition exiting a station in Midtown. The signal’s been solid since then.”
“Unless she decides to hop on the A train again.”
“She can’t live in the MTA,” Surani said. “The food sucks down there. And the showers? Forget about it.” This drew a hard glance from Kepler because the joke was beyond stupid. It wasn’t even a joke.
“And she was with the guy?”
“That’s right.”
“Stay on her. But I want everybody tailing to be invisible. You follow me? If Surveillance gets made, then people could get killed. That’s not happening on my watch.”
And why not? Kepler wondered of the dramatic pronouncement. You can protect all the innocents in New York City, can you now, boss? A lot of people have died on your watch over the years, when you think about it.
But Surani said only, “We’ve told the teams to stay back. They’re near but not too close.”
One of the deputy chiefs stuck his head in the doorway. “Hey, sorry, gentlemen. Need to commandeer this room.”
“What?” Barkley snapped. “Move again? You gotta be kidding me?”
The white-haired, rotund brass shrugged, looking only slightly contrite. “Got a terrorist tip and we need an ISDN line. They’re not up and running in the other rooms.”
“Terrorist. We get a thousand terrorist tips a year. Why’s this one a big deal?”
“Bureau’s running it. Pretty serious. And could be going down in two, three weeks. Infrastructure target, that sort of thing. You got ten minutes to find new digs.” He disappeared. Kepler glanced at Surani and knew that his partner was just barely refraining from giving the empty doorway the finger. They swapped smiles.
Sighing, Barkley looked over sheets of paper on the table. One was headed Charles Prescott Investments.
The other was another copy of the press release.
Surgery to remove a bullet lodged near his heart is planned for later today...
“We’ll make this work. I know we will.” This flimsy reassurance came from Kepler.
Just then Surani got another call. He listened. He disconnected. “Surveillance. Gabriella and Reardon’re on the move again. Near Forty-Eight and Seventh, moving west. There’re a couple unmarkeds in the vicinity, but they’re staying out of sight.”
Vi-cin-ty.
Jesus, Kepler thought.
Barkley slid the Prescott file away as if it reminded him of a bad medical diagnosis. He asked, “Is the tracker a good one?”
Kepler said, “Yeah. Battery lasts for days and it’ll pinpoint the location down to six feet.”
Surani added proudly, “And she’ll never spot it. It’s inside a Bic pen.”
Chapter 32
Scent Memory
3:15 P.M., SUNDAY
15 MINUTES EARLIER
“What happened back there, with that man,” Gabriela whispered, wiping tears. “I... I don’t know what to say.”
Daniel fell back into his waiting state: observing, not speaking. His eyes swept the overcast, afternoon streets of Midtown, east. “Looks clear. Come on.”
They walked another block.
“There. That’s the place, Mac. Let’s get inside.” Daniel was pointing out a narrow dun-colored apartment building down a cul-de-sac on East 51st. It crested at four stories high, and many windows were hooded as suspicious eyes.
“We’ll be safe there.”
She gave a brutal laugh. Safe. Yeah, right.
Daniel squeezed her hand in response.
As they approached the structure, Gabriela looked around, scrutinizing shadows and windows and doorways. She saw no police. Or other threats. Daniel let them into the lobby, which was painted in several shades of blue and lit by brushed-silver sconces. The decor was tasteful, though hardly elegant. A painting — by a Picasso wannabe, it seemed — of a ballerina, possibly, hung from the wall near the mailboxes. They took the stairs to the second floor, where there were doors to two apartments.
Daniel directed her to the left, which faced the front courtyard.
The key clicked, the hinge creaked. It made a funny sound, musical. The first two notes of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
O — oh, say can you see...
After they’d entered the dark rooms, Daniel closed and double-locked the door, flicked on the overhead lights.
Gabriela dropped the new backpack, which contained her gym bag, on a battered coffee table in the living room. Daniel set his belongings beside it and sat heavily in a solid chair at the dining room table. He went online via his iPad and she walked to the window, looked out over the courtyard and cul-de-sac.
Gabriela found the smell of the rooms troubling. The aroma reminded her of a funeral parlor. Old, stale chemicals, though here they would just be cleansers, not preservatives for dead flesh. She recalled just such a smell from six years and two months ago. Her stomach twisted, hurt grew, anger grew. An image of the Professor arose.
Then she thought of her mantra.
Sarah.
Your goal. Focus on your goal.
Sarah.
It’s just a random smell, she told herself, that’s triggering hard memories. Still, she couldn’t quite flick it away. She stepped into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, which was mostly bare — a container of coffee, butter, a shriveled lemon, hard as horn. And in the crisper an onion. It too was past prime but not rotten. Green shoots were growing from the end, eerie. She thought of Joseph’s unruly hair, slick, greasy. She found a knife, dull but sharp enough to slice the vegetable if she sawed with pressure. When she’d produced a small pile of rings, she found oil in the cupboard, which she poured into a dusty frying pan, without bothering to wipe it clean. She turned up the heat and cooked the rings and shoots, stirring them absently in a figure-eight motion with a wooden spoon.
The sweet scents rose and soon they’d mitigated the smells that had bothered her. The thoughts of past death faded.
Daniel Reardon walked to the doorway of the kitchen. She sensed him watching her closely. She glanced at his handsome face, felt that ping of attraction. Thought of Friday night, two days ago. A year, forever.
“Hungry?”
“Probably. But I don’t want anything to eat. I’m just air freshening.”
“With onions?” A laugh. He had a wonderful laugh — just like the actor he so closely resembled.
Her voice shivered as she said, “Every night when she’s with me, Sarah and I cook. Well, not every night. But most. She likes to stir things. She’s a great stirrer. We sometimes joke, we...” And she abruptly fell silent, inhaled deeply, looking away from him.
She touched her chest, wincing, and Daniel stepped close, taking a tissue and slowly wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth. Then he embraced her. His hand trailed down her spine, bumping over the strap of her bra beneath the thick sweatshirt and settling into her lower back. He pulled her close. She tensed and groaned slightly. He tilted her head back and, despite the residue of blood, kissed her hard on the lips. She groaned, frowning, and he released her.