police had taped off great chunks of the area so they could perform their little forensics hunt, collect their evidence, and hopefully catch a killer.
They would fail. Reel knew this even if New York’s Finest didn’t.
She stood shoulder to shoulder with a crowd of people just beyond the official barricades. She watched the police methodically working, covering every inch of ground around where the body had fallen.
Reel looked at the same ground and her mind started to fill in blanks that the police didn’t even know existed.
The target was what it was. A monster who needed killing.
That didn’t interest Reel at all. She had killed many monsters. Others took their place. That was how the world worked. All you could do was try to keep slightly ahead in the count.
She was focused on other things. Things the police could not see.
She lined up the taped outline of the body on the trail with trajectory patterns in all directions. She was sure the police had already done that, Forensics 101 after all. But soon thereafter, their deductive ability and even their imagination would reach their professional limits, and thus they would never arrive at the right answer.
For her part, Reel knew that anything was possible. So after exhausting all other possibilities and performing her own mental algorithms to figure the shooter’s position, she focused on a stone wall. A seemingly impenetrable stone wall. One could not fire through such an obstacle. And the doorway into the place that was surrounded by the stone wall had no sight line to the target. And it was no doubt securely locked. Thus the police would have discounted it immediately.
Reel left the crowd and started a long sweeping walk that angled her first to the west, then north, and finally east.
She drew out a pair of binoculars and focused them on the wall.
One would have to have two holes. One for the muzzle allowing for the greater width of the suppressor sleeve. And one for the scope.
Reel knew precisely where and how large those holes would need to be.
She worked the thumbwheel on her optics. The wall came into sharper focus. Reel looked at two areas of the wall, one higher than the other, both located in mortar seams.
The police would never see it because they would never be looking for it.
But Reel was.
There was no surveillance camera that she could see pointed at the wall. Why would there be? It was simply a wall.
Which made it perfect.
And on that wall were two patches of mortar that were a slightly different color, as though they had been more recently applied than their neighbors. And they had been, Reel knew.
As soon as the shot was fired the holes would be refilled. The hardening compound would work its magic. For some hours, even some days afterward, the coloration would be slightly, ever so slightly, different. And then it would look just like the rest.
The shot had come from there.
The escape would have also come from there.
Reel looked down at the ground.
Maintenance shed. Pipes, tunnels.
Underneath the park was a maze of tunnels—water, sewer, and abandoned subway tracks. Reel knew this for a fact. It had figured into one of her kills years ago. So many places to run and hide under America’s largest city. Millions of people above were jostling for space, while down below you could be as alone as though you were on the surface of the moon.
Reel began to walk again after putting her binoculars away.
The exit would have probably been in some far-off part of the city. Then the shooter would rise up to street level. A quick ride to the airport or train station and that would be it.
The killer goes free.
The victim goes to the morgue.
The papers would cover it for a while. There might be some geopolitical retaliation somewhere, and then the story would die. Other stories would take its place. One death meant little. The world was too big. And too many people were dying violent deaths to focus for long on any one of them.
Reel walked toward a hotel where she had reserved a room. She would hit the gym to work the kinks out, sit in the steam shower, have a bit of supper, and think about things.
The jaunt to Central Park had not been without purpose.
Will Robie was one of the best, if not the best they had.
Reel had no doubt that Robie had pulled the trigger that morning in Central Park. He had covered his tracks.