Reliquary

Kolb grabbed the other flange, the tears streaming down his face.

“Pull, for Chrissakes!”

There was a sigh of air and the door gave way, flooding the car with a suffocating, earthy odor. Before he could move Trumbull felt himself shoved aside by Kolb, who jammed through the opening and leapt onto the tracks. Trumbull tensed himself for the leap, then froze. Several figures were coming into focus out of the darkness of the tu

Trumbull shrank back in terror, falling to the floor and then scrambling to his knees, momentarily disoriented. He glanced back desperately at the car from which they’d run. In the darkness, he could see two figures crouched over the prone body of the waitress, working busily around her head…

Trumbull felt an indescribable desperation suddenly pierce his gut. He turned and leapt out of the emergency door, stumbling onto the tracks, ru

Then two more figures stepped out ahead of him on the tracks, cloaked and hooded, silhouetted against the distant light of the station. Trumbull stopped short as they began to move, loping toward him with a terrible speed. Behind him, the sounds of pursuit grew closer. A strange lethargy was turning his limbs to stone, and he felt his reason begin to give way. In a few seconds he’d be caught, just like Kolb…

And then, in the brief flash of a signal light, he caught a glimpse of one of the faces.

A single thought, clear and quite unmistakable, came to him through the haze of a night which had suddenly turned to nightmare. He realized what he had to do. Quickly, he sca

= 37 =

D’AGOSTA TRIED TO think of Yankee Stadium: the white orb of cowhide soaring through the blue July sky, the smell of grass newly ripped by a slide, the outfielder slamming into the wall, glove upraised. It was his form of transcendental meditation, a way to shut off the outside world and collect his thoughts. Especially useful when everything had gone totally to shit.

He kept his eyes shut a moment longer, trying to forget the sounds of the telephones, the slamming doors, the frantic secretaries. Somewhere, he knew, Waxie was rushing around like a turkey in heat. Thank God he wasn’t within squawking distance. Guess he isn’t so sure about old Jeffrey anymore, he thought. It brought no consolation.

With a sigh, D’Agosta forced his thoughts back to the strange figure of Alberta Muñoz, sole survivor of the subway massacre.

He had arrived just as she was being brought up an emergency exit at 66th Street on a stretcher: hands folded in her lap, pleasant vacant expression on her face, plump and motherly, her smooth brown skin in stark contrast to the sheets around her. God only knew how she’d managed to hide: she had not uttered a sound. The train itself had been turned into a temporary morgue: seven civilians and two TA workers dead, five with smashed skulls and throats cut to the backbone, three others with their heads completely missing, one electrocuted by the third rail. D’Agosta could almost smell the lawyers circling.

Mrs. Muñoz was now up at St. Luke’s in psychiatric seclusion. Waxie had hollered and pounded and threatened, but the admitting doctor was unyielding: no interviews until at least six that morning.

Three heads missing. The trails of blood were picked up immediately, but the hemoluminesence team was having a tough time in the labyrinth of wet tu

The whole setup took intelligence and pla

But why?

The SOC team had determined that the electrocuted man probably stepped on the third rail deliberately. D’Agosta wondered just what a man would have to see in order to do something like that. Whatever it was, Alberta Muñoz might have seen it, too. He had to talk to her before Waxie got there and ruined everything.

“D’Agosta!” a familiar voice bellowed, as if on cue. “What, are you frigging asleep?”

He slowly opened his eyes, silently regarding the quivering, red face.

“Forgive me for interrupting your beauty rest,” Waxie continued, “but we’ve got a tiny little crisis on our hands here—”

D’Agosta sat up. He looked around the office, spotted his jacket on the back of a chair, grabbed it and began sliding one hand into an armhole.

“You hearing me, D’Agosta?” Waxie shouted.

He pushed past the Captain and walked into the hallway. Hayward was standing by the situation desk, checking an incoming fax. D’Agosta caught her eye and motioned her toward the elevator.

“Where the hell are you going now?” Waxie said, following them to the elevator. “You deaf or something? I said, we got a crisis—”

“It’s your crisis,” D’Agosta snapped. “You deal with it. I’ve got things to do.”

As the elevator doors closed, D’Agosta placed a cigar in his mouth and turned to face Hayward.

“St. Luke’s?” she asked. He nodded in response.

A minute later, the elevator doors chimed open on the wide tiled lobby. D’Agosta began to step out, then stopped. Beyond the glass doors, he could see a crowd of people, fists thrust in the air. It had tripled in size since he’d arrived at One Police Plaza at 2:00 A.M. That rich woman, Wisher, was standing on the hood of a squad car, speaking animatedly into a bullhorn. The media was there in force: he could see the pop of flash guns, the assembled machinery of television crews.

Hayward put a hand on his forearm. “Sure you don’t want to take a black-and-white from the basement motor pool?” she asked.

D’Agosta looked at her. “Good idea,” he said, stepping back into the elevator.

The admitting doctor kept them waiting on plastic chairs in the staff cafeteria for forty-five minutes. He was young, grim, and dead tired.

“I told that Captain no interviews until six,” he said in a thin, angry voice.

D’Agosta stood up and took the doctor’s hand. “I’m Lieutenant D’Agosta, and this is Sergeant Hayward. Pleased to meet you, Dr. Wasserman.”

The doctor grunted and withdrew his hand.

“Doctor, I just want to say up front that we don’t want to do anything that will cause harm to Mrs. Muñoz.”

The doctor “nodded.

“And you’re to be the only judge of that,” D’Agosta added.

The doctor said nothing.

“I also realize that a certain Captain Waxie was up here causing trouble. Perhaps he even threatened you.”