Fairstein, Linda - Final Jeopardy (39 page)

“Does that mean he’s out of jail now?”

“Don’t remind me about him, Ellen. Yeah, Harold McCoy is out. We get to retry him after the first of the year. But in the meantime, his brother posted bail for him and he’s on the street.”

“I don’t know how you do it, Alex. That would give me the creeps every time I go through the park. I’d be looking I’M for him everywhere I went.”

“You think I don’t? It’s not even conscious at this point, I told her.

“Certain places just evoke connections, memories on and they’re not always good ones. It’s ironic. I happen to think that Central Park is one of the safest places in as the city. Look at the size of it, more than eight hundred ?er acres. You’ve got more crimes committed in any two- or -he three-square-block area around the park every month than -St. you have inside it. But when something does happen here, ier especially because it’s so isolated at night, it’s a legitimate public safety issue. It’s awfully hard for the police to patrol a space like this.”

Goldman was driving east. She passed the guardhouse at the Dakota, and then continued straight on into the park.

As soon as she entered the roadway, I realized her mistake.

“Whoa, I meant the transverse the road that cuts through, from West to East. This is the long way,” I complained.

“Oh damn. I just saw this opening and thought it was what you were referring to. My fault,” she apologized.

The few extra minutes hardly mattered at this point.

Instead of going directly across, this would lead us on the more rambling route down the West Drive and back up to the exits on the East Side.

“No big deal, Ellen. It’s a prettier ride.”

The moon was full maybe that had helped us catch Montvale, I thought to myself, if the cops were right about all the lunatics coming out under its spell and it would probably result in an overflow of business in my office tomorrow. Not the quiet Friday I had just predicted.

The park showed itself brilliantly in the lunar glow, the foliage with its dapplings of yellows and auburns having replaced much of the verdant color of summer. The fallen leaves made it possible to see further off the road, into the beautiful park grounds, than you could when the trees were full of thick greens.

I was relaxed now, taking in the quiet view as we rounded the south end of the drive, and noting that the number of late-night runners and dog walkers tapered off as we left the areas of the park closest to the entrances and coursed up the Center Drive, almost smack in the middle of the two sides. Hard to believe this pastoral setting, with its fifty-eight miles of paths, was once the site of stench-filled swamps and pigsties. I enjoyed the tracks it provided for jogging, the lawns that hosted concerts I had attended with friends, and the cheerful zoo where I took my niece and nephew when they visited me in town.

But I knew better than most who loved its lush comfort the danger that could lurk in its bushes, the terrors hidden behind its trees and stone walls. I had enormous respect for the splendor it added to the city, and just as much respect for the power with which it controlled that gift.

We were past the Carousel now, almost parallel to the Bandshell, and nearing the fork that led to the first East Side exit at Seventy-second Street. Ellen knew my address, so it didn’t occur to me to remind her to bear right at that point. When she missed the turn and veered off to the left, I groaned at the thought of having to circle around that long loop again.

“Shit, Ellen, you missed the turnoff.”

“Oh, sorry, Alex. I’m not that familiar with the park, especially at night. I haven’t spent that much time in New York. I… I guess I just lost my bearings. It’ll just be a couple of minutes. It’s always when I’m rushing to do things right, if you know what I mean.”

I did. I guess that’s why they always used to say most accidents happen close to home. I straightened up in my seat to try to observe the directions more carefully in order ton to get us back to my apartment as soon as possible. stic Now we were traveling north again, on the portion of the road just beyond the curve that cuts off to the West Side jger at Seventy-second Street. I was watching the light from the the sky dance on the small pond which was below me and off to my right, but was jolted back to attention when the car her veered off the drive to our left and Ellen braked to a stop, almost flush against a large elm tree.

I had instinctively thrown my arms up against the dashboard to protect myself, but my head still smacked against the roof of the low car from the impact it made jumping the curb.

“Jeez, Ellen, take it easy,” I mumbled, shaking my head, as though that would clear the stars that started flashing in my eyes, and rubbing my neck, which already seemed to be sore.

“What happened, what’s your prob-‘ ”I need to talk with you, Alex.

You’re going to get out of this car, and walk down that path with me-’
I hadn’t looked up yet and I was massaging my temples with my fingertips. Everybody wants to talk to me except William Montvale, everybody wants to tell me their troubles.

“Ellen, this is stupid. If you’d like me to drive, I’ll be happy to do it, but I’m not wasting another minute here…”

“Look at me, Alex. This is my investigation. I’m the one in charge now, and you’re going to take orders from me.”

I lifted my head to try to see whether the words I was listening to bore any relation to the speaker or the circumstances I was in, or whether I had been knocked around in the car by that bad bounce so that I was truly a bit foggy. I was staring directly into the muzzle of a small handgun.

“Ellen, my God, Ellen put down that gun and talk to me, tell me what you want!” My body had reacted immediately to the signals my tired brain was sending out, and I was shaking uncontrollably as I tried to shield myself from the pistol with my quivering hands.

“You’re even more stupid than I thought if you haven’t figured out what I want by now. You like everybody to think you’re so smart that’s so important to you but even I know the ridiculous mistakes you’ve made this time, and you’re about to find out that I’m more clever than you are. Get out of the car, get out very slowly and stand right next to the door. This is not a joke do it now.”

I looked at the gun again and remembered that Goldman had told me she had been in the Israeli Army an elite antiterrorist unit. I had no reason to doubt her. The dark pathway in front of the car frightened me as much as she and her weapon did, and I had no intention of following her to a more isolated piece of turf.

“Let’s talk right here, please, Ellen. I’ll tell you whatever information you want to know. Whatever it is.” Where the fuck are the Park Rangers? I asked myself. Don’t leave this car. Nobody’s allowed to park off the roadway it’s a worse offense to the Rangers than a triple homicide. Keep her in the car and someone will come upon us, I kept thinking.

Stay put.

“Get out!” she barked. She was out of her door, gun down at her side, and around the back of the car to me in a matter of seconds. I had thought about trying to climb over the console and into the driver’s seat, but the model was too H ii compact to do it quickly, and she had taken the key out of icy the ignition. on Ellen had an automatic light beam on the key ring which she held in her left hand, and she pointed it at my lock, as which popped up at her command.

“I told you to get out of the car and I mean it, Alex, right now.” the “It doesn’t seem to make any difference to me. I’m not ?s moving.

Either you shoot me in your car, which at least creates some problems for you, or you take me down into a park ravine and shoot me, God knows why. But I’ll take my chances here.”

“Stop playing Clarence Darrow with me, Alex. I don’t intend to shoot you, so get your ass out of the car and walk with me. We have things we need to talk about.”

My mind was trying to move more nimbly to process the words Goldman was speaking, while the rest of my I body stayed taut in the presence of her pistol. Why was she holding me at gunpoint, why was she threatening my life, if she didn’t intend to kill me? It made no sense, since I would obviously have to report this abduction to the police. Of course she was going to shoot me, so why give her the location of her choice? At least my body or my blood in her rented car would link her to my death. A wave of nausea swept through me at the thought of the possibility of those two words: ‘my death.“

Goldman had seemed so sane and articulate and rational until moments ago, and now, so completely crazy.

“Walk down this trail with me, Alex. We just need to get a bit away from the road for a while, so we can discuss things.”

She had opened the car door and was nudging me with the short barrel of her gun, motioning me toward a narrow footpath leading downhill between a clump of trees and bushes. I stepped out, and let my blazer, which had been draped across my lap, fall to the ground.

I didn’t have enough possessions with me to make a track to follow, but surely it would be an identifying piece of clothing that would make someone look for me if I were missing. I fast-forwarded through every kidnapping case I had worked on and every dreadful story of disappearing people I had clipped from the tabloids.

“Pick it up, Alex,” Goldman chided me. ‘I’ll wear it.

It’s chilly, tonight. A little big for me, but it’ll be fine.“

She waited until I handed her the jacket and then put it on, one arm at a time, rolling up the sleeves to fit her shorter arms.

I scanned the area for signs of a jogger, a member of the Road Runner club, a homeless guy who’d have some kind of box cutter or object I could use to try to defend myself, but we seemed to occupy this little pocket of the park entirely by ourselves.

Goldman tugged on the sleeve of my shirt and pressed the gun into the small of my back. We started along the tree-lined walk and halfway down I stumbled on a piece of loose rock, falling backward and sliding another four or five feet, pounding my back against the stones and branches, and scraping my hands as I tried to break my descent. An involuntary screech let out as I fell and Goldman hurried to catch up to me, smacking me across the face with her free hand in punishment for the noise.

“It was an accident. I slipped. I’m not being difficult.”

“I thought you were so graceful,” she sneered, ‘the ballet dancer. Ha!
Get on your feet.“

I pushed myself up, wiping the pebbles from the ie abrasions that now covered the palms of both hands, on but as I tried to stand it was obvious I had turned an ankle and couldn’t put my weight directly on it. as “Keep going. Drag your damn foot if you have to, but move it over this way.” She poked me with the gun barrel to be cross the paved sidewalk and moved me further downhill, st near a weeping willow that was bent over, gleaming in the ier moonlit radiance of the lake.

“Under these trees, here. Now sit down. Does this place look familiar to you?”

How closely she had done her research was even more apparent now. We weren’t more than thirty feet from the site of Harold McCoy’s last rape, diagrammed on the front pages of each of the city papers when he struck the last time before his arrest eleven months ago. McCoy had brought his victim in from the other direction after he dragged her off her bicycle late one night, coming to this area from the north, near the Loeb Boathouse.

I couldn’t tell which was throbbing more violently now, my head or my ankle. The former was urging me not to obey the command to sit, and the latter was eager to be relieved of my dead weight.

Goldman leaned over and seemed to be placing her gun in a holster on her ankle, hidden beneath the leg of her slacks. I lightened for a moment, thinking she had meant her statement not to shoot me, but closed my eyes in terror at the sight of the knife with the six-inch blade which she unsheathed and withdrew in the next gesture.

From her pants pocket she unrolled a small length of cord.

“Give me your hands. In front,” she demanded as she kneeled and wound the rope around my wrists, securing it with a knot that looked like some professional job the kind that might have been taught to an army Special Forces recruit.

Talk, I kept telling myself. You’ve heard of victims who have talked themselves out of their situations. Offenders who can be reached and reasoned with, who walk away from the ultimate crime and leave their prey unharmed.

“Ellen, I won’t run away, you don’t have to tie me up.

Please tell me what it is you want to know.“ I tried to be forceful without letting the degree of desperation that I felt spill over into my voice.

”This is how Harold McCoy would do it, isn’t it? This is his “signature,” you were quoted as saying. Get them into the park, off the roadway, always near one of the bodies of water, trussed up like the pigs they are, and then cut them up.“

There was no place for me to recoil as she took the knife and slit a line across my jeans, right at the crease where the top of the thigh meets the hip. The thick denim material yielded like butter to the fine-bladed, sharp knife, and like a paper cut, I didn’t even feel it pierce my skin until the stinging sensation began to smart and I looked down to see the oozing line of blood.

Ellen Goldman was laughing now as she saw the red stain creep onto the faded denim of my pants.

“I didn’t even mean to cut you yet. I have plenty of time for that.”

Talk to her, I thought to myself again. But words didn’t jy in ic as er come, and I didn’t want her to enjoy the fact that I was in pain.

She went on.

“Don’t you see how easily I could make it look like Harold McCoy did this to you? That he waited outside the precinct when he heard on the radio that you were there, then he forced you into the park. People would buy that, you know. The press would love that story.”

Was that her plan? To make it look like a copycat crime?

Goldman had studied my cases and knew that Harold McCoy was out of jail. She could make it look like he had stalked me his prosecutor, his nemesis and taken me to his special place in the park and killed me there.

“No one would believe that, Ellen. People saw me get in the car with you.” I prayed that was true, as I said it aloud, although I had no more reason to believe it than she did.