Chapter 14: sniper?; back off; who the hell was she?; leave it for the police
Harold's office, Manhattan, same day
Logan was sitting nearby Harold, on his own computer, watching and re-watching the video cobbled together by the Machine of Shaw and Root's escape from the diner. He could see the two women running at the end of an alley, then stopping at the corner to look for any hostiles. Then they crossed the street and walked a little ways further along the main street, before Root slowed down. She'd raised her hand to her left ear, as though she were trying to hear something, then she pointed at something ahead.
At just about that time, Logan could see Shaw at the rear, re-coiling from the shot. If he looked carefully, he thought he could see something fly or spray off her shoulder, but the picture was too grainy to see well. She lunged forward then, grabbing her left arm, and turned slightly to look over her shoulder. He slowed the video to watch her eyes.
She was looking up, not straight back behind her, but up like the shot had come from above her on a roof line.
Sniper? He turned to Harold.
"Finch, look at this."
Parking lot, Plattekill Rest Stop, Upstate NY, same day
Reese woke with a start. It was cold in the car. He'd closed his eyes for a minute, and he realized he'd slept for more than an hour. He sat up and checked around him. The usual travelers, walking their dogs, or walking back from the Rest Stop with bags of food and coffee. Hmm. That sounded good right now. Something hot to warm him up, and coffee to see him through the rest of the trip.
It had snowed a little; dry, cold snow that blew into little streaks of white on the concrete. The wind was blustery, too, and he hiked up his collar higher around his neck. A wool hat would have been good to have right now.
He hiked in from the parking lot, and entered the building, all glass and steel and dark green panels. People were milling around at the souvenir stacks, and more were heading for or returning from the giant restrooms at the end of the hall.
A few people were peeling off to the right, where he was headed, for food and a large cup of coffee. Reese's phone buzzed against his thigh, and he pulled it from his pocket. On the screen when he tapped, was a message from Harold: need u.
That said a lot. He immediately began calculating how fast he could get back. Some kind of trouble had happened, but Harold was warning him not to call. He should be cautious, make sure he wasn't followed, and just show up. Reese ran through some scenarios of what might have happened. None of them were good. He sent back a single letter: r, for received.
A minute later, he was headed back to his car – no coffee or food, just the hit of adrenaline from the message. He jumped in and sped off for the exit, accelerating into traffic to get to the left lane. Then he floored it, and quickly put some miles between the Rest Stop and himself.
Traffic near the City would be heavy. By the time he got down there, he'd be in the teeth of it. He'd do better off the highway, even with the traffic lights, where he could creep-and-run – creep up to the light and run it if no one was coming. Any traffic officer giving chase would see his badge on the car, and back off.
The 24-hour diner, blocks from Harold's office, same day
They could hear rattling from the front door. Police, no doubt. The old man had told them he'd called the police when he got there for breakfast and no one was there in the diner. The place was wide open, but no one was there and he was spooked.
Harper turned back toward the noise at the front, and when she came back, she nodded her head to Joey. They'd have to get out of there. The cops would free the people in the store room. There was just the problem of the witness. Her story didn't hold. And they needed to know why. She'd have to come with them.
"Is there another exit?" Harper asked her. The waitress nodded, and pointed to the kitchen.
Joey looked one last time at the people in the store room, tied and gagged, and then turned away. He grabbed the waitress by the arm, and the three of them moved fast through the short hallway, back to the kitchen and they ducked in.
The police were on the steps looking through the glass, inside, but they couldn't see the three of them leaving. There were just two officers responding, but soon there'd be more rolling up, and they'd walk the perimeter, looking for signs of a break-in or another way in. From the front door, they could just see an empty diner – strange, for a 24-hour diner, on a Sunday morning. And why was the front door locked? Where was the person who'd called 9-1-1?
The door out of the kitchen led to the back of the diner, where the dumpster was hidden by a high woven wood fence. Through the openings, they could see the alleyway where Root and Sameen had escaped. At the far end of the alley, a cruiser with NYPD across its doors, slowly rolled in to the back of the diner. One of them got out, while the other called it in to Dispatch. The back door of the diner was shot full of holes, and there was a mop handle jammed through the door handles to keep them closed.
Joey and Harper looked around them for another way out. There was a drainpipe at the corner, but looking at the waitress, Joey didn't think that could work. Shimmying up the pipe was no easy feat. And it was cold. Sitting up there on the rooftop for hours, waiting for the police to leave – she'd freeze to death.
But before he could think of another idea, the waitress had moved in front of the drainpipe, and pointed up toward the roof. She grabbed on, but Joey reached for her arm to stop her.
"What're you doing?" he whispered.
"Go up," she whispered back.
"You'll freeze up there. We can't come down until they leave." She looked at him and smiled a small smile.
"This? This – summer in Russia." And Joey watched her climb the pole, hand over hand, gripping the brick with the thick soles of her work shoes. He turned to Harper, and raised his eyebrows. Who the hell was she?
Bronx, same day
Root sat in a chair in the kitchen. Rosa was leaning over her, tending to the cuts on her face and hands. The rest of the family had settled in the dining room, passing around the bowls and platters. One of Rosa's daughters, the one who'd come to the door with the baby in her arms, stood behind Rosa at the counter, slicing something on a plate.
Rosa cleaned the scrapes with a cloth, rubbing it on a bar of soap first, and Root could feel the sting of it, and how Rosa pressed so carefully, to clean but not to hurt more. All those children and grandchildren had given her the experience of an ER nurse. That, and growing up in the D.R., high up in the remote mountains. She'd told stories of watching her mother slaughter chickens, pigs, even goat – and then handing the machete to her one day. That was how things were done. It was part of life.
Root looked at Rosa, bent forward, dabbing at her forehead with her cloth. Her face was wrinkled, but only slightly so, and her skin belied her age. Her eyes crinkled when she smiled, and she spoke softly, but with authority, to the rest of the family. She was a small woman, and for as long as Root had known her, she'd walked with a limp; some kind of problem with her foot since birth she'd said.
Rosa turned to her daughter and asked her to bring two plates for them. She wanted to talk for a little while. Then she squeezed some ointment from a tube onto her tiny fingers, and reached up to Root's forehead, laying the ointment onto the scrapes there, then on the cheekbone, where Sameen had connected with her punch, and then on the backs of her hands, over her knuckles. Root smiled, and Rosa smiled back and shook her head. Root could see it in her eyes. She had questions, but she was holding back, until the time was right.
Maia, Rosa's daughter, returned with two plates of food, twice as much as Root could possibly eat heaped on the plate. This was food for a lumberjack, Root thought to herself. And she loved it. Root jumped up and went to one of the cabinets over the sink. She pulled down a smaller plate, and then went back to her seat next to Rosa. She spooned some of each of the mounds onto her small plate, looking up at Rosa with a smile.
"Too much," she said in Spanish, and Rosa laughed. Root took a portion of mashed cooked plantain, with the yummy topping of red onion rings, cooked lightly in oil and vinegar. Then there was salami, cut thick in rounds and browned, fried eggs, sunny-side up like she liked them, and rectangles of cheese slices, fried and browned on each side. This is a heart-attack-on-a-plate, Root thought, and dug in. And, as if there wasn't already enough fat in this dish, Maia came back, apologizing, with a plate of avocado slices she'd forgotten to put on their table. Heaven, Root thought, and she smiled again at Rosa, who looked so happy to see her eat.
There was noise from the dining room, and Root could tell they were watching soccer on the television. Soon, the men would be yelling, leaping up and crowing with each goal scored by their team, and miserable if the other team won.
After a little while, Rosa leaned in to speak more softly to Root.
"Your friend should stay here tonight. She needs to rest," she said in Spanish.
"Thank you, Rosa, for helping us. You and your family are so kind – " She hoped she'd said the right word in Spanish. Rosa seemed to know what she meant, even if the words weren't perfect. Root went on to say that they were chased by some men, and her friend – Abbey, Root called her – was injured. Rosa looked down, stabbing some of her food with a fork and raising it up.
"Your work?" she asked.
"Si," Root said. Yes, this was something about her work. Rosa knew some things about her, and the fact that her work put her in dangerous situations. But Root had helped the family, when things had been bad once before, and no one else could have done what she had done for them.
"What are you going to do now?" Rosa asked.
Root told her that she was going to move the van to a place further away, and leave it, so no one would know where they were, and once – Abbey – could travel, they would leave. There was another safe place that they could go to, where friends would come to help. Rosa nodded.
They ate in silence for a little while, and Root could see Rosa thinking. She told Root that she would have one of her sons take the van and drive it away. Root started to protest.
"I don't want any trouble for your family," she said. Rosa shook her hands in the air.
"No trouble." They could hide the van in a shed nearby, and then later today, drive it wherever Root wanted it to go. Root thought for a moment. The blood. There was blood all over the seat, from Sameen. She needed to clean it, before they abandoned the van. Otherwise, when the police found it, they wouldn't buy the joy ride theory and the van would make the 6 o'clock news. She told Rosa that she had something to do with the van first, and she sped through the rest of her breakfast.
Rosa followed her out to the plaza after breakfast, and Root showed her the blood on the seat. Good thing that it was plastic, and not fabric. It could come off with a little scrubbing. Root asked for two or three bottles of beer, if Rosa had any in the house. She laughed out loud. With all these men?
She came back a few minutes later with bottles of beer, and some old cloth towels. Root poured the beer from one of the bottles on the seat, where the blood had pooled, and let it sit for a little while. She poured more into the towel, and used it to wipe down the seat-back, where Sameen's bloody jacket had pressed back against it. The beer took it right off, and left the desired smell on the plastic, like kids had sloshed beer around, partying in the van after they stole it off the street.
They could smell the produce in the back, too. The van was carrying a delivery of fruit and other produce to the Korean fruit market when Root had spied it from the alley. Maybe they'd make a bit of a mess of that, too, like kids would do if they'd taken the van on a joy ride through town. No real harm done. Just a stupid-guy-trick thing that happened all the time in a big City.
Root wiped at the blood pool on the seat, and most of it came off on the first try. A little more, and that should do it. The van was ready for action. Root walked around the back, and opened the door. She hoisted herself up and then started tossing the boxes, neatly stacked, all over the floor of the van. Rosa watched her do it.
Root tried to say, in Spanish, what she was doing, but she wasn't sure that Rosa understood. When the boxes were scattered, like the van had been veering all over, tipping the stacks, and bumping over rough road, and into pot-holes, Root slapped her hands together.
"Finished," she said, looking over at Rosa, who was wiping off the seat. She looked at the plastic. It didn't look right. Too clean where they'd scrubbed it, and now it looked obvious that it had been scrubbed. That would be suspicious.
Rosa looked around her and then saw the terracotta pots near the back door. She limped over to one, and reached in for a little of the dirt on the top. She poured a few drops of the beer into her hand, to wet the dirt, and then smeared it on the seat, over the clean spots. Then she wiped over the smear with the cloth towel, and – presto ! – the seat looked like any other used seat in a delivery van.
Root smiled at her. She was really good at this. Misspent youth, perhaps, too. She'd have to ask her more about her life. But, for now, the van was ready, and Root could tell Rosa where she thought they could leave it for the police to find.