when everybody was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, but by 2013 all Liz Dutton had left in the NYPD was a toehold, and only that much because cops have a kickass union. The rest of her was already out the door. Internal Affairs was circling like buzzards around fresh roadkill, and on the day she picked me up from school, she wouldn’t have been put on a task force dedicated to catching serial litterbugs. She needed a miracle, and I was supposed to be it.
“By today,” she went on, “every cop in the boroughs had Kenneth Therriault’s name and description. Every way out of the city was being monitored by human eyeballs as well as cameras—and as I’m sure you know, there’s plenty of cameras. Nailing this guy, dead or alive, became our number one priority, because we were afraid he might decide to go out in a blaze of glory. Maybe setting off a bomb in front of Saks Fifth Avenue, or in Grand Central. Only he did us a favor.”
She stopped and pointed at a spot beside the path. I noticed the grass was beaten down, as if a lot of people had been standing there.
“He came into the park, he sat down on a bench, and he blew his brains out with a Ruger .45 ACP.”
I looked at the spot, awestruck.
“The bench is at the NYPD Forensics Lab in Jamaica, but this is where he did it. So here’s the big question. Do you see him? Is he here?”
I looked around. I had no clue what Kenneth Alan Therriault looked like, but if he’d blown his brains out, I didn’t think I could miss him. I saw some kids throwing a Frisbee for their dog to chase (the dog was off his leash, a Central Park no-no), I saw a couple of lady runners, a couple of ’boarders, and a couple of old guys further down the path reading newspapers, but I didn’t see any guy with a hole in his head, and I told her that.
“Fuck,” Liz said. “Well, all right. We’ve got two more chances, at least that I can see. He worked as an orderly at City of Angels Hospital on 70th—quite a comedown from his construction days, but he was in his seventies—and the apartment building where he lived is in Queens. Which do you think, Champ?”
“I think I want to go home. He might be anyplace.”
“Really? Didn’t you say they hang around places where they spent time when they were alive? Before they, I don’t know, pop off for good?”
I couldn’t remember if I’d said that to her, exactly, but it was true. Still, I was feeling more and more like Ramona Sheinberg. Kidnapped, in other words. “Why bother? He’s dead, right? Case closed.”
“Not quite.” She bent down to look me in the eye. She didn’t have to bend so far in 2013, because I was getting taller. Nowhere near the six feet I am now, but a couple of inches. “There was a note pinned to his shirt. It said, There’s one more, and it is a big one. Fuck you and see you in hell. It was signed THUMPER.”
Well, that kind of changed things.
22
We went to City of Angels first, because it was closer. There was no guy with a hole in his head out front, just some smokers, so we went in through the Emergency Room entrance. A lot of people were sitting around in there, and one guy was bleeding from the head. The wound looked like a laceration to me rather than a bullet hole, and he was younger than Liz said Kenneth Therriault was, but I asked Liz if she could see him, just to be sure. She said she could.
We went to the desk, where Liz showed her badge and identified herself as an NYPD detective. She asked if there was a room where the custodians put their stuff and changed their clothes for their shifts. The lady at the desk said there was, but the other police had already been there and cleaned out Therriault’s locker. Liz asked if they were still there and the lady said no, the last of them left hours ago.
“I’d like to grab a quick peek, anyway,” Liz said. “Tell me how to get there.”
The lady said to take the elevator down to B level and turn right. Then she smiled at me and said, “Are you helping your mom in her investigations today, young