'This is if he escapes and we must chase him through the hell where he killed Davila,' I said. 'This is if the worst happens.'
Frances Penn looked at me. 'What is the worst when you're dealing with him?'
'I pray we have already seen it,' I said.
'You know that Transit's got a touch screen telephone system.' Lucy showed me. 'If the numbers are in the computer, you can dial anywhere in the world. And what's really cool is 911. If it's dialed above ground, the call goes to NYPD. If it's dialed in the subway, it comes to Transit Police.'
'When do you close Second Avenue station?' I got up and said to Commander Penn.
She looked at her watch. 'In a little less than an hour.'
'Will the trains run?'
'Of course,' she said, 'but they won't stop there.'
20
The March Against Crime began on time with fifteen church groups and a miscellaneous contingent of men, women and children who wanted to take their neighborhoods back. The weather had worsened and snow blew on frigid winds that drove more people into taxis and the subways because it was too cold to walk.
At two-fifteen, Lucy, Commander Penn and I were in the control room, every monitor, television and radio turned on. Wesley was in one of several Bureau cars that ERF had painted to look like yellow cabs and equipped with radios, scanners, and other surveillance devices. Marino was on the street with Transit cops and plainclothes FBI. HRT was divided among the Dakota, the drugstore and Bleecker Street.
HRT was divided among the Dakota, the drugstore and Bleecker Street. We were unclear on the precise location of anyone because no one on the outside was standing still, and we were in here, not moving.
'Why hasn't anyone called?' Lucy complained.
'He hasn't been sighted,' said Commander Penn, and she was steady but uptight.
'I assume the parade has started,' I said.
Commander Penn said, 'It's on Lafayette, headed this way.'
She and Lucy were wearing headphones that plugged into the base station on the console. They were on different channels.
'All right, all right,' Commander Penn said, sitting up straighter. 'We've spotted him. The number seven platform,' she exclaimed to Lucy, whose fingers flew. 'He's just come in from a catwalk. He's entered the system from a tunnel that runs under the park.'
Then the number seven platform was on black-and-white TV. We watched a figure in a long dark coat. He wore boots, a hat and dark glasses, and stood back from other passengers at the platform's edge. Lucy brought up another subway survey on the screen as Commander Penn stayed on the radio. I watched passengers walking, sitting, reading maps and standing. A train screamed by and got slower as it stopped. Doors opened and he got on.
'Which way is he bound?' I asked.
'South. He's coming this way,' Commander Penn said, excited.
'He's on the A line,' Lucy said, studying her monitors. '
'Right.' Commander Penn got on the air. 'He can only go as far as Washington Square,' she told someone. Then he can transfer and take the F line straight to Second Avenue.'
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.
