The World Beneath (Joe Tesla) (13 page)

Probably nothing to worry about. He was just being paranoid, but Joe worked faster anyway. He went back to the picture of Rebar. He couldn’t see his face in the shot. He painstakingly backed the video up from that point and switched through other cameras in the station, hoping to find Rebar captured in one of them.

Bingo. He tilted his laptop’s screen forward to get a better view. Edison cocked an ear in his direction, sensing his excitement, but didn’t lift his head.

Joe moved the video forward a frame at a time. A man in a camouflage jacket entered the concourse with determined long strides, a shadow indicating stubble on his chin. What looked like crumpled papers overflowed from the pockets of his jacket. He walked with the erect posture of the man Joe had met in the tunnel. It might be the same man, but he couldn’t get a positive ID unless he could see at least part of his face.

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
[email protected]
.

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

November 29, 8:19 a.m.

Fifth Avenue

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, s
he 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?”

“We only recovered two sets of prints at the scene,” he said. “One from the victim. And one from that guy you worked with—Joe Tesla. That’s not been released to the press, but his lawyer knows, so I imagine that you already do, too.”

She lengthened her stride, as if she could run away from that truth. Dirk kept pace easily. “Is that so?”

Dirk ran on without saying anything else.

“What’s the CIA doing?” she asked.

“Why would they be doing anything?”

“I met two of them yesterday at Tesla’s house, and I thought I saw a couple of them up in the concourse, too.”

Dirk slipped on an icy patch, and she caught his arm. “Dirk?”

“I don’t know what the CIA wants with him. We want him for questioning about the murder of the homeless man in the tunnels.”

Ronald Raines, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

“They seem to think he’s got classified information,” Dirk said.

“Doesn’t his company work with them all the time? I imagine he has a security clearance. A pretty high one.”

Dirk nodded. “That’s been bugging me, too. You’d think he’d be in the CIA’s pocket already, and I can’t figure out what contact he’d have with some random homeless guy that would interest them. But they are very interested. Do you know why?”

“I don’t,” she said. “You know I’d tell you if I could.”

“When would that be?” he asked. “We both know he’s a client of yours.”

“If he weren’t, then,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t know. Why don’t you guys ask him?”

“He’s lawyered up. They say he can’t be reached. He can’t even be found.”

That part was probably true.

“Why’d he do something like that?” Dirk asked.

“Go to ground?” She dodged a slow jogger lost in the music of his MP3 player. “He’s terrified that he’d have to go outside, that you guys will make him leave the hotel for questioning. Remember that article I showed you?”

“Jail’s inside,” Dirk said.

She thought of her mother’s name on Joe’s email.

“If he did it,” she said, “then you ought to put him there.”

Chapter 18

November 29, 9:18 a.m.

Vanderbilt Tennis and Fitness Club

Grand Central Terminal

Joe couldn’t stay much longer, but he didn’t know where else to go. He paced from one end of the small locker room to the other, closed laptop under his arm. Edison didn’t bother to pace with him this time. He had curled up on a pile of dirty towels to sleep. He’d clearly had a rough night, too.

Joe knew he had to act fast, but he didn’t know why. Rebar had told him that something big was due to happen by the end of the month, and that was the day after tomorrow. Obviously, something more important than Rebar’s life, and Joe’s.

He hadn’t found out anything about Ronald Raines that might indicate why he’d been murdered, much less why the CIA cared.

The information Joe had uncovered about mysterious deaths in Guantanamo Bay might be related. A few days after Rebar had been reported AWOL, one hundred and two soldiers and a doctor were lost at sea when the ship they were on went down halfway between Cuba and Florida. Pretty suspicious, but the Navy had done only a cursory investigation, blaming freak weather conditions. He’d checked weather satellite data for the period in question, confirming the weather had been calm and clear the night the ship was lost. It looked to him as if the boat had been sunk on purpose.

Had Rebar been involved in their deaths? Had he killed them?

Joe leaned against the wall and made a VoIP call on his computer to the number he’d memorized from Rebar’s file. The call might be traceable, but it wouldn’t be easy.

He settled headphones over his ears and listened to it ring once (cyan) and twice (blue).

“Raines,” said a woman’s voice. She sounded so tired and defeated that he almost hung up. He hated to worry her further.

“Good morning, Mrs. Raines.” He introduced himself and lied about being from the Navy. “Have you had any word from your son, Ronald?”

“Have you?” She coughed into the phone, a deep, retching hack. A smoker.

He didn’t dare tell her the truth. “I’d like to go over some facts in his file, ma’am.”

“Why?” she wheezed.

“The file doesn’t seem to support what Specialist Raines’s fellow soldiers had to say about him.” He had no idea if that was true, but it seemed like a good starting point.

“What’d they say?” She didn’t sound worried that anyone would say anything bad about her Ronald, and Joe wondered what he might have been like before the events in Guantanamo Bay.

She was asking more questions than he was.

“What would you like to tell me about him?” he asked.

“Ron’s a good boy,” she said. “Smart. Tough. He always wanted to be a soldier like his father, God bless him.”

“I see.” He kept his voice pitched low.

“He never would have gone AWOL. Never. That’s a mistake.”

“His file says—”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “And I know him better than you do.”

Joe couldn’t argue with that. “What do you think he did?”

“I think he’s on some kind of special mission, undercover, and that once he’s done they’ll clear his name and let him come home.” She coughed as if to underline her point.

He wished, for her sake, that she had been correct about the last part. “I see.”

She laughed bitterly. “I know you can’t tell me even if you do know, which you probably don’t.”

“When did you last hear from him?”

“He called a couple of months ago, like I told the last investigator I talked to.”

Last investigator? “How did he seem when he spoke to you?”

She hesitated. “He said that he wasn’t feeling well and that he had an important mission, but not to worry about him. So, I’m not.”

Why the pause before answering? “Did he say anything specific about the nature of his mission, ma’am?”

“Of course he didn’t.” She sounded offended by the question.

After a few more minutes of trying, he gave up on getting any other information out of her. He thanked her for her time and closed the connection.

The only thing he’d learned was that Rebar thought he was sick, and that didn’t seem relevant. Maybe it was. Joe’s suspicions of an infectious disease could be right. That might explain why the monkey was there—it could have been a long-ago test subject.

If that was the case, the cops weren’t after him to arrest him—they were after him to quarantine him.

He’d have to turn himself in.

Maybe he was wrong. How could a pathogen live seventy years bricked in underground? The longest-living spore that he could think of was anthrax, and that lived only fifty years in the soil. Even if the men in the train car had been infected, they couldn’t have infected Rebar after all that time.

No. Rebar had been sick before he’d broken through the wall.

Still, it might be worth checking to see if the cops were treating the scene as if it were biologically contaminated.

Just because he hadn’t caught anything from the people in the car didn’t mean he hadn’t caught anything from Rebar. If he had, he’d walked, potentially infected, through a giant crowd of people just to get here. He needed to get away from people until he knew more—a self-imposed quarantine. He snorted. That described his current life, more or less, anyway.

The risks were low that he’d caught anything. Joe was basically paranoid about the world, so he knew a lot about disease vectors. There weren’t many strictly airborne diseases—fewer than five (brown)—so it was statistically very unlikely that this one was airborne. He’d had no direct contact with Rebar. He was probably fine and, even if he wasn’t, it was improbable he’d infected anyone else. Everything was fine.

But knowing for sure would be even more fine.

Brandon walked into the locker room wearing a blue tennis club shirt and his bright Pellucid cap. “Do you need anything else, Mr. Tesla? I’m only working a half-day today.”

Joe sighed. He hated what he was about to say. “I need a giant favor.”

“What is it?” Brandon smiled expectantly, a kid willing to go the extra mile to impress his future boss.

“Could you take Edison to a friend’s house for me?”

“Of course!” Brandon looked relieved that it wasn’t more complicated.

“Much appreciated.” Joe rattled off Celeste’s address and handed him another twenty.

Joe snapped Edison’s leather leash on to his collar. Those brown eyes gave him a betrayed look, his whole furry body pleading. Joe handed the leash to Brandon.

“Don’t worry, boy,” said Brandon. “It sounds like you’re going on a doggie vacation.”

“Exactly.” Joe didn’t know how he’d manage without Edison, but the dog was too conspicuous, and maybe in too much danger, to let him stay.

Edison’s head and tail drooped as he obediently followed Brandon out of the locker room. Joe fought down feelings of guilt and panic. Edison would be fine. Celeste would spoil him terribly. And Joe would be fine, too. He’d lived most of his life without a psychiatric service animal, and he’d last a few days until he got this sorted out.

The cold truth was, he’d be in greater danger if Edison came with him.

Joe packed everything up and put his gym bag back into his locker. He’d head down to check out the crime scene, but first he wanted to watch Edison leave. He circled the blue tennis court, likely annoying the players, to stand in front of the rounded window that ran along one wall. The windows were set in sturdy frames, which made it easy for him to look through them without panicking. Ridiculous that such things mattered.

Hiking his backpack up on his shoulder, he looked down on the entrance to Grand Central. People walked in and out, coming and going, a simple thing that he couldn’t do anymore. He had been just like them, before his ill-fated trip to New York. What use was he to anyone wasting away here underground?

Maybe Edison should have a real life as Celeste’s pet.

He spotted Brandon’s bright blue baseball hat, and his eyes lingered on the yellow dog walking dispiritedly next to him. Brandon swung his arms and talked to Edison. The dog looked over his shoulder at the front door as if he expected Joe to come for him. Celeste would take good care of him until Joe could take him back. He’d call her in just a second. It would be good to hear her voice.

Brandon, as energetic and cheerful as ever, made it down the front stairs and onto the sidewalk, where a short man wearing a dark blue parka and a Yankees cap jostled him. Edison’s leash dropped to the ground as Brandon turned toward the man. Joe leaned closer to the window. What was Brandon thinking, letting go of Edison like that?

Brandon’s legs buckled, and he crumpled to the ground. The man in the dark parka melted into the crowd. Blood spread out from Brandon’s body onto the sidewalk.