The man pointedly angled his face away from the camera as he crossed the concourse and headed down to the platforms without a glance at the arrivals and departures boards. A man who knew where he was going — and where the cameras were placed.
The entrance to Platform 23 had a camera. When Joe switched to it, he was rewarded by a view of Rebar looking directly into the surveillance camera. A determined expression crossed his face as he stuffed papers deeper into his pocket. Joe didn’t remember seeing those papers when he’d filmed the crime scene. Maybe the murderer had taken them, or maybe Rebar had lost them or stashed them on his way to the train car.
He had to stay focused on the identification. He took a screen shot of the facial image and ran it through tools to enhance it. He made a few guesses to clean it up and then started running the picture through Pellucid, starting with military databases because of the jacket, posture, and how he’d called Joe “sir.”
Edison sat patiently next to him. The man came out of the shower and glared at the dog.
“Psychiatric service animal,” Joe said. “You can ask at the front desk.”
“Some of us are here to play tennis.”
“I’m waiting on my court time,” Joe lied.
“Surely you can find somewhere more comfortable than that.”
“You’d be surprised.” Joe went back to his screen.
He’d gotten a hit on Rebar’s picture. He brought up the window and scrolled down. Rebar’s real name was Ronald Raines. He was in the Navy and had been stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Currently listed as AWOL. Who went AWOL from Cuba? It wasn’t a war zone.
Edison lay down, blissfully unconcerned about these questions.
Even though he had his own accounts with official access to the databases he needed, he used CIA Agent Bister’s login and password. He’d cracked Bister’s password the first time he’d logged in next to him because Bister typed with two fingers at about the speed of your average chimpanzee. His password, not surprisingly, was hulksm@sh.
Joe always masked the IP address of his computer and this morning, for all the Internet knew, he was Agent Bister logging in from Peet’s Coffee & Tea in Redwood City, California, where Bister liked to hang out, probably because the woman behind the counter had big breasts and a TV smile. Sunil had often teased Joe for being paranoid, but knowing as much as he did about how data were collected and used, he considered his precautions barely adequate.
Once in, he settled down to read about Ronald Raines, the man who’d introduced himself as Rebar in the tunnel. Before the man had gone missing, he’d worked in interrogations in Afghanistan and later in Cuba. Did that mean that he’d asked clever questions, or did it mean that he’d tortured people to obtain information? The files had no answer. Had he gone AWOL because of something he’d uncovered in an interrogation? Had a prisoner bribed him?
The files listed extra combat training. Otherwise, nothing unusual. He memorized Rebar’s parents’ names and phone number. No other personal contacts were listed. The file said that he was single, with no children, so at least there were no kids growing up without a father.
The man must have known something important to have a killer sent after him. And what could be so important that they would blanket the tunnels under New York after his death?
Chapter 17
Stomach seething, Vivian jogged up Fifth Avenue. She maneuvered through commuters carrying coffee and brown paper sacks full of breakfast. Frost rimed the sidewalk, and she watched her footing. Each breath puffed out in front of her, and cold air stung her cheeks. A good winter day for a run. Running was what she did best when angry. And today she was miles’ worth of angry.
She’d texted Dirk to meet her by Pulitzer Fountain on the south end of Central Park. A good mile from Grand Central. Had Tesla really stumbled across the body, or had he put it there? Her instincts told her that he wasn’t a killer, but she knew better than to trust that assessment. She’d seen enough seemingly mild-mannered men in Afghanistan who’d turned into brutal killers.
She passed the skaters in front of Rockefeller Center, then the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Her footsteps pounding against concrete pushed her on. Not ready yet to slow down or catch her breath.
An email had arrived in her account early that morning that looked like it had come from her mother. Her mother had emailed her only once a year or so, preferring to talk on the phone, so Vivian had opened it immediately. The first paragraph chatted about a family dinner that had never happened. Just when she’d started to worry that her mother was losing it, she got to the second paragraph.
Remember our friend from the tunnel? I just found out that his name is Ronald Raines and he was in the Navy. Maybe he’d be a good match for you?
Tesla. Either he’d hacked her mother’s account or spoofed it, and she didn’t give a damn which. He had damn well better stay away from her mother.
She was enough of a good citizen to call Raines’s name into the tip line from a phone kiosk not far from her apartment. The surveillance camera pointed at it had been vandalized months ago, so no one would be able to trace her. Damn Tesla for putting her in this position to begin with.
So, where did that leave her? Halfway to her daily run with Dirk and with no idea what she was going to tell him. She kept going, hoping that she would run right into the answer. She didn’t.
“Yo!” Dirk waved from the empty fountain. The water had been turned off for winter. He wore gray sweatpants and a blue sweatshirt that matched his eyes. A black watch cap was pulled low over his ears, and his nose was red.
She headed over to him, glancing inside the fountain at the black leaves mounded up in the corners. “Nice day for a walk.”
Dirk looked at the gray sky and quirked his mouth. “Might snow.”
She started a fast jog around Grand Army Plaza, and Dirk fell in next to her, not yet breathing hard. He gave her a long look, like he expected her to talk, then pressed his lips together. He’d wait her out. He always did.
They passed a woman in a long gray woolen coat pushing a stroller so mounded with pink blankets that Vivian couldn’t see the baby, but it had to be a girl. Not even old enough to go to school and already suffocating in pink. Vivian had been a tomboy, fighting pink all her life.
Dirk gave her a sidelong smile. He knew how she felt about pink.
“Any progress on the tunnel murder?” she asked.
Dirk slowed his rhythm and put on his cop face. “Why are you asking?”
“I might have an ID on the victim,” she said, running faster. “An anonymous tip.”
Dirk caught back up before saying anything. “We have a tip line. Call it in there.”
“I did. I want to make sure that it gets treated seriously, so I thought I’d tell you, too.”
“Then tell me the ID,” he said. “I’ll make sure.”
She hesitated a long time before answering. He knew that she sometimes worked for Rossi and Rossi, and that they represented Joe Tesla. He even knew that she’d been assigned to Tesla once. She couldn’t give him details without implicating a potential client. “I can’t.”
He’d check today’s tips now, and he’d be able to say that he hadn’t gotten the information from her.
“I see,” he said. Frozen leaves crackled under their feet as they ran deeper into the park.
“Any news you can share?”