Worst Case

Chapter 39

THERE WAS AN unimpeded view of the empty wheelchair from the window of Columbia ’s Department of Public Safety. Standing at the window, staring at the chair, Jesse Acevedo, the Campus Security chief, seemed incapable of doing anything except shaking his head.

“That’s going to be the cover of the Post,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “I mean, that’s my job, right? A handicapped student gets snatched on campus? Oh, I’m sorry, the handicapped son of one of the world’s most powerful men. My daughter goes here. Once I’m out, no more staff scholarship. What the hell am I going to do?”

I felt bad for the guy. I knew full well the kind of bullshit blame he’d be getting. But I didn’t have the time to sympathize.

“Tell us about the tu

“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, coming back to his desk. When his phone rang, he lifted the receiver and clicked it back in its cradle. When it rang again, he unclipped the phone cord from the back of it.

“The tu

“Reid Hall. I know,” I said.

We’d already found that the basement door in that building had been propped open. John Cleary and his CSU team were there now, going over every square inch of the basement with an evidence vacuum and Q-tips. The killer must have gotten in and taken the kid out through there.

“Who else knows about the tu

“Students, maintenance, faculty,” he said. “We blocked off some of them, but the kids still use them as shortcuts sometimes. Like hotels, every campus has its ghost stories, and the tu

I kept thinking about the kidnapper’s cultured, educated voice. He most definitely could have been an Ivy League academic.

“One more question,” I said. “Has a teacher ever been caught down there?”

“I don’t know,” Acevedo said. “I’ll look into it and let you know. Or at least I’ll leave a note for my replacement.”

“I’m actually starting to respect this nut,” Emily said as we headed down the stairs. “I’ve never seen someone so prolific. This guy is a gold-medal-wi

Emily ducked into the cafeteria on the ground floor of the building and came back with two coffees. This morning, she was wearing a form-fitting French Blue blouse and navy skirt. Her hair was still wet. I liked that she wore hardly any makeup. The way she did a cute earlobe-tugging thing when she was thinking, and especially the spark that flashed in her blue eyes when she was fired up.

“Now what?” Emily said. “Head over to Hastings ’s dorm? The library where he was last seen?”

“Nah,” I said. “We better head to the family. I’m expecting a call from our friend.”

Chapter 40

THE HARLEM SATELLITE office of the social service, nonprofit New York Heart was on 134th Street off St. Nicholas Avenue. The sour scent of sweat and marijuana made Francis X. Mooney nostalgic as he mounted the unswept stairs two by two.

For the past ten years, Mooney had been the main adviser of their legal outreach program, which took on cases for the poorest of the poor. He stared at the posters and photographs of the organization’s community theater and community garden that covered the stairwell walls and smiled. New York Heart was truly a labor of love.

“What’s cooking, kids?” Francis said after he gathered the half dozen social workers in the cramped conference room ten minutes later.

Francis X. smiled around the battered table at the lanky twenty-somethings. He remembered being that young, having that fire in the belly to set things straight. Not every young person was a selfish, whining brat, he thought.

“I just got your message this morning, Kurt,” he said. “How’s Mr. Franklin’s case going?”

Kurt, the social service’s in-house law advocate, looked up from his bagel and cream cheese. He’d gone to Ford-ham and hadn’t passed the bar yet, but Francis had faith in him. The kid’s heart was in the right place.

“The reason I called is that Mr. Franklin’s last appeal pretty much got slam-dunked into the shitter, Francis,” he said between bites. “The fuckers are going to fry him this Friday, and the rednecks down there will probably tailgate in the prison parking lot. What are you going to do? Hope the Republicans are happy. Another one bites the dust.”

Francis couldn’t believe it as chuckles exploded around the room. Mr. Reginald Franklin, the son of a destitute local resident, and borderline retarded, was about to be executed by the American government. How was that fu

“Did you look over the habeas corpus?” Francis said.

“Of course,” Kurt said. “The appeals court decided to go by the trial record.”

“That’s what they always do,” Francis said, raising his voice now. “Did you get a copy of the police report, like I told you to? Did you look into the adequacy of his first attorney? The man supposedly fell asleep at one point.”

The room was silent now. Kurt set his bagel on the table as he sat up.

“No, I didn’t get a chance,” he finally said. “I did call you.”

“Didn’t get a chance? Didn’t get a chance!” Francis yelled. His chair made a thunderous shriek as he leapt up. “Are you out of your fucking mind? The man is about to die!”

“Jeez, Francis,” Kurt mumbled with his head down. “Relax.”

“I won’t,” Francis X. said. He didn’t want to cry. Not in front of these kids, but he couldn’t help it. A torrent of hot tears poured down his reddened face.

“I can’t relax, don’t you see?” he said as he stormed out. “There’s no more time.”

Chapter 41

WE WERE OUT on Columbia ’s sprawling Low Plaza, heading over to the bursar’s office to get Dan Hastings’s personal info, when my phone rang.

“Mike,” Detective Schultz cried. “Get over quick to the vice president’s office at the Low Memorial Library. We need your help. You’re not going to believe this.”

I met a frustrated-looking Schultz and Ramirez in a hallway on the second floor of the college’s iconic domed building. The administration was denying them the tapes from the Campus Security cameras due to “privacy concerns.”

“These wackos are acting like we’re the KGB rounding up people for the gulag instead of trying to save the life of one of their kidnapped students,” Ramirez said wide-eyed.

After twenty minutes of arguing, it finally took the threat of both a city and federal subpoena to get the officials to release the tapes, along with Dan Hastings’s personal information.

“Only in New York,” Agent Parker said as we went out toward the Broadway gate and the Crown Victoria that the FBI’s New York office had dropped off for her.

“Or any Ivy League college campus,” I said.

The victim’s father, Gordon Hastings, lived way downtown on Prince Street in SoHo. As Emily drove, I listened to a 1010 WINS report that was already being broadcast about him. Gordon Hastings used to work for Rupert Murdoch and now had his own business buying radio and TV stations, mostly in Canada and Europe. His wealth was estimated at eight hundred million dollars. I couldn’t even imagine that kind of money. Or what the man had to be going through, knowing that his disabled son had been abducted.

As she drove, Emily called the New York office and ran Gordon Hastings through NCIC and other federal databases.

“He was born and raised in Scotland,” she said, hanging up a few minutes later, “but became a U.S. citizen a couple of years ago. He’s clean, though the IRS has an open case on him due to some remarks he made about offshore accounts in a Vanity Fair interview.”