2
Pendergast sprinted to Riverside Drive and paused at the corner, scanning north and south along the broad avenue. The rain was now coming down in sheets, traffic was light, and there were no pedestrians. His eye lit upon the closest vehicle, about three blocks south: a late-model Lincoln Town Car, black, of the kind seen on the streets of Manhattan by the thousands. The license plate light was out, leaving the details of the New York plate unreadable.
Pendergast ran after it.
The vehicle did not speed up, but continued at a leisurely pace down the drive, at each cross street moving through one set of green lights after another, steadily gaining distance. The lights turned yellow, then red. But the vehicle continued on, running a yellow and a red, never accelerating, never slowing.
He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number as he ran. “Proctor. Bring the car. I’m headed south on Riverside.”
The Town Car had almost disappeared, save for a faint pair of taillights, wavering in the downpour, but as the drive made the slow curve at 126th Street even those disappeared.
Pendergast continued on, pursuing at a dead run, his black suit jacket whipping behind him, rain stinging his face. A few blocks ahead, he saw the Town Car again, stopped at another light behind two other vehicles. Once again, he pulled out his phone and dialed.
“Twenty-Sixth Precinct,” came the response. “Officer Powell.”
“This is SA Pendergast, FBI. In pursuit of a black Town Car, New York license plate unidentified, traveling southbound on Riverside at One Hundred Twenty-Fourth. Operator is suspect in a homicide. Need assistance in motor vehicle stop.”
“Ten-four,” came the dispatcher. And a moment later: “We have a marked unit in the area, two blocks over. Keep us posted on location.”
“Air support as well,” Pendergast said, still at a dead run.
“Sir, if the vehicle operator is only a suspect—”
“This is a priority target for the FBI,” Pendergast said into the phone. “Repeat, a priority target.”
A brief pause. “We’re putting a bird in the air.”
As he put the phone away, the Town Car suddenly veered around the cars idling at the red light, jumped the curb and crossed the sidewalk, tore through a set of flower beds in Riverside Park, churning up mud, then headed the wrong way down the exit ramp to the Henry Hudson Parkway.
Pendergast called dispatch again and updated them on the vehicle’s location, followed it up with another call to Proctor, then cut into the park, leapt over a low fence, and sprinted through some tulip beds, his eyes locked on the taillights of the car careening down the off-ramp onto the parkway, the screech of tires floating back to his ears.
He vaulted the low stone wall on the far side of the drive, then half ran, half slid down the embankment, scattering trash and broken glass in an attempt to cut the vehicle off. He fell, rolled, and scrambled to his feet, chest heaving, soaked with rain, white shirt plastered to his chest. He watched as the Town Car pulled a U-turn and came blasting down the exit helix toward him. He reached for his Les Baer, but his hand closed over an empty holster. He looked quickly around the dark embankment, then — as brilliant light slashed across him — was forced to roll away. Once the car had passed, he rose again to his feet, following the vehicle with his eyes as it merged into the main stream of traffic.
A moment later a vintage Rolls-Royce approached and braked rapidly to the curb. Pendergast opened the rear door and jumped in.
“Follow the Town Car,” he told Proctor as he strapped himself in.
The Rolls accelerated smoothly. Pendergast could hear faint sirens from behind, but the police were too far back and would no doubt get hung up in traffic. He plucked a police radio from a side compartment. The chase accelerated, the Town Car shifting lanes and dodging cars at speeds that approached a hundred miles an hour even as they entered a construction area, concrete barriers lining both shoulders of the highway.
There was a lot of chatter on the police radio, but they were first in pursuit. The chopper was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly a series of bright flashes came from the traffic ahead, followed instantly by the report of gunshots.
“Shots fired!” Pendergast said into the open channel. He understood immediately what was happening. Ahead, cars veered wildly right and left, panicking, along with the flashes of additional shots. Then a crump, crump, crump sounded as multiple vehicles piled into each other at highway speed, causing a chain reaction that quickly filled the road with hissing, ruined metal. With great expertise, Proctor braked the Rolls and steered into a power slide, trying to maneuver it past the chain reaction of collisions. The Rolls hit a concrete barrier at an angle, was deflected back into the lane, and was hit from behind by a driver who rammed into the pileup with a deafening crash of metal. In the backseat, Pendergast was thrown forward, stopped hard by his seat belt, then slammed back. Partially stunned, he heard the sound of hissing steam, screams, shouts, and the screeching of brakes and additional crashes as cars continued to rear-end each other, mingling with a rising chorus of sirens and now, finally, the thwap of helicopter blades.
Shrugging off a coating of broken glass, Pendergast struggled to collect his wits and remove the seat belt. He leaned forward to examine Proctor.
The man was unconscious, his head bloody. Pendergast fumbled for the radio to call for help, but even as he did so the doors were pulled open and paramedics were pushing in, hands grasping at him.
“Get your hands off me,” Pendergast said. “Focus on him.”
Pendergast shrugged free and exited into the sweeping rain, more glass falling away as he did so. He stared ahead at the impenetrable tangle of cars, the sea of flashing lights, listening to the shouts of paramedics and police and the thud of the useless, circling chopper.
The Town Car was long gone.
3
As a classics major from Brown University and a former environmental activist, Lieutenant Peter Angler was not a typical officer of the NYPD. However, there were certain traits he shared with his fellow cops: he liked to see his cases solved clean and fast, and he liked to see perps behind bars. The same single-minded drive that had motivated him to translate Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War during his senior year in 1992, and to sink nails into old-growth redwoods to frustrate chain-saw loggers later that same decade, also caused him to rise through the ranks to Lieutenant — Commander Detective Squad at the young age of thirty-six. He organized his investigations like military campaigns, and made sure that the detectives under his supervision performed their duty with thoroughness and precision. The results that such a strategy obtained were a source of lasting pride to Angler.
Which was precisely why this current case gave him such a bad feeling.
Admittedly, the case was less than twenty-four hours old. And his squad could not be blamed for the lack of progress. Everything had been handled by the book. The first responders had secured the location, taken statements, held the witnesses until the technical investigators arrived. Those investigators, in turn, had thoroughly processed the scene, surveying and searching and collecting evidence. They had worked closely with the crime scene unit, with the latents team, the forensic investigators, photographers, and the M.E.
No — his dissatisfaction lay with the unusual nature of the crime itself… and, ironically, with the father of the deceased: a special agent in the FBI. Angler had read a transcript of the man’s statement, and it was remarkable for its brevity and lack of helpful information. While not exactly hindering the CSU, the agent had been curiously unwilling to allow them any more access to his residence than had been necessary beyond the perimeter of the crime scene — even to the point of refusing to let an officer use a bathroom. The FBI was not officially on the case, of course, but Angler had been prepared to give the man courtesy access to the case files, if he’d wished it. But the agent had made no such request. If Angler hadn’t known better, he would almost have assumed this man Pendergast didn’t want his son’s murderer to be caught.