Lucy said, 'We'll check one station after another.
We don't know where he might get off. But he's got to get off somewhere so he can go back into the tunnels.'
'He has to do that if he comes in the Second Avenue way,' Commander Penn relayed to the radio. 'He can't take the train in there because it's not stopping there.'
Lucy manipulated the closed-circuit television monitors. At rapid intervals they showed a different station as a train we could not see headed toward us.
'He's not at Forty-second,' she said. 'We don't see him at Penn Station or Twenty-third.'
Monitors blinked on and off, showing platforms and people who did not know they were being watched.
'If he stayed on that train he should be at Fourteenth Street,' Commander Penn said.
But if he was, he did not disembark, or at least we did not see him. Then our luck suddenly changed in an unexpected way.
'My God,' Lucy said. 'He's at Grand Central Station. How the hell did he get there?'
'He must have turned east before we thought he would and cut through Times Square,' Commander Penn said.
'But why?' Lucy said. 'That doesn't make sense.'
Commander Penn radioed unit two, which was Benton Wesley. She asked him if Gault had called the pharmacy yet. She took her headphones off and set the microphone so we could hear what was said.
'No, there's been no call,' came Wesley's reply.
'Our monitors have just picked him up at Grand Central,' she explained.
'What?'
'I don't know why he's gone that way. But there are so many alternative routes he could take. He could get off anywhere for any reason.'
'I'm afraid so,' Wesley said.
'What about in South Carolina?' Commander Penn then asked.
'Everything's ten-four. The bird has flown and landed,' Wesley said.
Mrs. Gault had wired the money, or the Bureau had. We watched while her only son casually rode with other people who did not know he was a monster.
'Wait a minute,' Commander Penn continued to broadcast information. 'He's at Fourteenth Street and Union Square, going south right at you.'
It drove me crazy that we could not stop him. We could see him and yet it did no good.
'It sounds like he's changing trains a lot,' Wesley said.
Commander Penn said, 'He's 'gone again. The train's left. We've got Astor Place on-screen. That's the last stop unless he goes past us and gets out at the Bowery.'
The train's stopping,' Lucy announced.
We watched people in the monitors and did not see Gault.
'All right, he must be staying on,' Commander Penn said into the microphone.
'We've lost him,' Lucy said.
She changed pictures like a frustrated person flipping television channels. We did not see him.
'Shit,' she muttered.
'Where could he be?' The commander was baffled. 'He's got to get out somewhere. If he's going into the pharmacy, he can't use the exit at Cooper Union.' She looked at Lucy. 'That's it. Maybe he's going to try. But he won't get out. It's bolted. But he might not know.'
She said. 'He's got to know. He read the electronic messages we sent.'
She scanned some more. Still, we did not see him and the radio remained tensely silent.
'Damn,' Lucy said. 'He should be on the number six line. Let's look at Astor Place and Lafayette again.'
It did no good.
We sat without talking for a while, looking at the shut wooden door that led into our empty station. Above us, hundreds of people were walking sodden streets to demonstrate they were fed up with crime. I began looking at a subway map.
Commander Penn said, 'He should be at Second Avenue now. He should have gotten off at an earlier or later stop and walked the rest of the way through the tunnel.'
A terrible thought occurred to me. 'He could do the same thing here. We're not as close to the pharmacy, but we're on the number six line too.'
'Yeah,' Lucy said, turning around to look at me. 'The walk from here to Houston is nothing.'
'But we're closed,' I said.
Lucy was typing again.
I got up out of my chair and looked at Commander Penn. 'We're here alone. It's just the three of us. The trains don't stop here on the weekends. There is no one. Everyone is at Second Avenue and the pharmacy.'
'Base station to unit two,' Lucy was saying into the radio.
'Unit two,' Wesley said.
'Everything ten-four? Because we've lost him.'
'Stand by.'
I opened my briefcase and got out my gun. I cocked it and pushed on the safety.
'What's your ten-twenty?' Commander Penn got on the air to ask for their location.
'Holding steady at the pharmacy.'
Screens were flashing by crazily as Lucy tried to locate Gault.
'Hold on. Hold on,' Wesley's voice came over the air.