that, Coop. Some guy said it about one of his exhibits. The Cardiff Giant. Remember him?”
Mike was trying to keep me calm. He could read me as well as anybody. He was so close to me he could probably hear how fast my heart was pounding.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s hope our perp stays away from Grace Church.”
The elegant Episcopal landmark on Broadway at Tenth Street was, like St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the old smallpox hospital on Roosevelt Island, another stunning design of the architect James Renwick.
“I give up,” I said.
“Built with stone cut by the inmates at Sing Sing and shipped down the Hudson. That’s where Barnum held the wedding of Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, his two dwarfs, in 1863. Bet there’s not a true Barnum scholar on this whole train.”
“Is there anything you don’t know?” I asked. He had managed to draw a smile from me. “That’s right. Barnum called Tom Thumb a general, didn’t he? A four-year-old general. Of course you’d know about him, even if it was only a stage name.”
The train had suddenly gone from a slow canter to a noticeable trot. We were on the straightaway now and moving at a good clip.
I could hear Fontaine Delahawk’s voice as he reentered the car. He stopped close to where we were hiding, wheezing until he finished a violent coughing spasm. The teenager who had helped him off the train must have been his assistant. The older man again barked orders, telling someone—presumably that same kid—that he was going back to his room to await dinner.
“I’ve always wanted to come out of the closet. Too bad there’s nobody here to see me,” Mike said. “How about you?”
He reached behind his back and twisted the handle on the door. The large office was empty, except for the sound of the steel wheels.
It was smartly outfitted in the finest of wood finishes. And like a fancy yacht, everything was built into the walls of the windowless car so that it would be difficult for objects or furniture to be dislodged by the motion of the rocking train. There were several desks and a row of filing cabinets. Brass fittings were mounted on every drawer, more likely to secure them in place than to protect from intruders—like the two of us.
“Snap some photos, will you, Coop?” Mike asked. “We may need to come back to this later on.”
He waited until I aimed my phone for a few shots, then pulled back the heavy arm of the car’s exit as we made our way carefully onto the next platform.
There was a single door on the right-hand side of the long car. On the wall adjacent to it, a small whiteboard was affixed, and someone had written eight names—many of them foreign-sounding—in alphabetical order. The men and women who occupied this suite were a mix of Italian and Spanish, Russian and Czech, French and Hungarian, with a couple of Americans thrown in.
Mike opened the door and we entered. Directly opposite was a small cubicle—like a tiny college dorm room with a bed, dresser, and desk—occupied by a striking, raven-haired woman dressed in a sweatsuit. I’d guess she wasn’t much older than twenty-five.
“Hey, guys. What’s up?” she asked. Her back was supported by three pillows, none of which disturbed the well-lacquered beehive updo atop her head. She was balancing a hardcover astrology book on her knees. “Who are you?”
She seemed amused and curious about our presence, not concerned.
Mike showed her his shield and identified himself.
“Awesome!”
“We’re with Missing Persons, Ms. Cooper and me. We’re looking for a young woman who went missing.”
It was a long-standing police department tactic. People were always much more willing to cooperate to find someone who may have just run away than become ensnared in an ugly murder investigation.
“You think she’s with us? No way.”
“Mind if we talk?”
“Sure. Mr. Delahawk says—”
“Yeah, we met him on the way in.”
She leaned over and patted the end of her bed, and Mike sat down, motioning me to the desk chair. “I’m Kris. Kristin Sweeney.”
Not from the long line of European circus families, I guessed, as so many of the performers with foreign names might be.
“You a Cowboys fan?” Mike asked. There was a poster over the bed of the Dallas football team, autographed by many of the players.
“Can’t grow up in Spur, Texas, and root for anyone else. I was a cheerleader for them before I took this job.”
“Awesome,” Mike said, smiling back at Kristin, and I knew he meant it sincerely. “Hard act to