Escape (27 page)

Reedy shoved the boat from shore and hopped aboard. The boat roared off into the river and headed north.

Marlene watched until it disappeared around a bend in the river. She knew that once they reached the farthest access road on their search pattern, they would begin the tedious process of going back and forth from one bank to the shipping channel, working their way downstream through the first grid. When they finished the first grid, they would begin the next—back and forth, one run slightly overlapping the last so as not to miss anything, moving below access points with the current.

Marlene started to turn away from the river just as an Amtrak train appeared from the same direction, riding a rail above the water and twenty-five yards from the shore. As the train passed, she could see curious faces pressed against the window as they spotted the police cars and curious gathering on the shore. A child waved to her and she raised a hand to reply before the little face was gone. It reminded her of the photographs she'd seen of the three children, who waited ... she was sure of this .... out there beneath the murky waters.

In the meantime, there wasn't much for her to do except go into town to pick up some food for lunch. Cobing and Fulton had already headed for town, so she invited Katz and Swanburg, but they'd settled into chairs and were telling "old war stories." Without any other company to keep her occupied, she decided to call Giancarlo to see how he and his brother were faring with her dad.

"Great!" he replied. "We're going to Coney Island for a Nathan's hot dog and the roller coaster."

Marlene laughed. "Maybe you ought to reverse the order and do the roller coaster before the hot dog ... if you know what I mean.... Anyway, remind me to call my cousin Eric when I get back to confirm our field trip to the New York Stock Exchange."

Giancarlo, who was much more likely to remember than his brother, promised he would. The boys were required to write up a report after spending a day at a New York City landmark for a civics class, and they'd chosen the Exchange. In the past, that would have been easy enough to arrange, as the NYSE had been open to the public. Before 9/11, its viewing gallery had always been brimming with tourists and schoolchildren who had come to learn about the financial center of the American economy. However, after that it was much tougher to get in. Visitors had to be sponsored by someone who already had security clearance ... such as her cousin Enrique "Eric" Eliaso, who was a floor manager for one of the big trading banks.

"Sure, no problem, be good to see you and those juvenile delinquents you been raising," he'd assured her just that past week. But Eric liked to party and there was a good chance he'd forget to get her and the twins on the list to get in unless she stayed on him.

After leaving the Staatsburg grocery store, Marlene followed the Lincoln back to the encampment. She could tell by the way Fulton bounced out of the car and called to Katz and Swanburg that the hunting trip had been a success.

"You look like the cat that swallowed the canary," she said as she brought the groceries over to the table, where the rest of the group was gathering around Fulton. "What's up ... or, as the twins' might say ... 'sup?"

"Word," Fulton replied, miming gang posturing and cracking open a bottle of beer. "I'll let Detective Marj fill you all in. After all, she was the one who sweet-talked the station master into cooperating with Johnny Law." Cobing gave Fulton a smile. "The station master is exactly what you'd expect in a small town—crotchety and suspicious. He was 'too busy' to want to look at a photo lineup we brought along that includes a head shot of Jessica Campbell. But I turned on the charm, asked a few questions about trains, and that warmed him right up. The man positively loves trains, especially the Hudson Railway trains. I now know more about narrow-gauge and standard-gauge tracks than this city girl ever wanted to know. But he also agreed to look at our photo lineup."

Staatsburg had a population of less than a thousand and for the most part served a few regular commuters—people willing to spend the time to live in the country when their jobs were in the big city. Otherwise, the station didn't do a lot of business, and its staff almost never saw strangers who walked in from nowhere and bought a one-way ticket to Grand Central Terminal. Certainly no one like the woman who'd obviously been wearing a bad wig and cheap, oversized sunglasses.

"This 'stranger' paid cash," Cobing said, "which is apparently unusual and something the station master noted. And he picked her out of the photo lineup."

"So she was wearing a disguise," Marlene said.

Kenny made more notes in his pad. "Let's hope we can find her car," he said. They all turned to look at the river as they heard the Zodiac approaching.

Marlene laid out the lunch materials as the others waited for the boat team to stow their gear and walk to the table. "So anything interesting?" she asked when they arrived.

"Yeah, we've come across several anomalies worth checking out," Reedy said, fishing a cold beer out of the cooler and taking a swig. "Oh man that's good. It's flippin' hot out there with that sun beating on you from above and reflecting back up at you from the water.... Anyway, there's one right off that first boat ramp. It's in shallow water, but it isn't a real strong signal—my guess is somebody lost their boat trailer. However, there are several other anomalies with pretty intense magnetic fields that seemed to be about the distance a car might drift after rolling in from the access point. In fact, let's go over the map, and we'll plot them right now."

Using the GPS coordinates Gates had written down, Reedy marked the location of the anomalies on the Corps of Engineers maps. When he finished, he pointed to one near the first access point. "If she rolled the car in there, she would have had to walk nearly four miles back into town."

"Or hitchhike," Washington said. "Folks around here would pick up a woman and give her a lift."

Reedy pointed to two dots on the map. "Nothing much here. However, when we got to the grid right above here, we hooked into a couple of good ones." He pointed to first one and then a second dot on the map. "The readings were so intense, I thought something had to have been wrong. So I recalibrated the machine and we tried again. Same thing." The geologist stopped talking and looked down at his feet.

"You got a hunch," Marlene said. "Give it up, Jim."

Reedy shook his head. "I'm a scientist, we don't believe in hunches."

"Bullshit," Gates snorted. "What's scientific theory except somebody's educated hunch that if such and such happens, this will be the result?"

"Okay, okay," Reedy laughed. "Yeah, if I had to pick a spot right now, my hunch is that's a submerged car," he said, pointing to the second dot. "Doesn't make it our submerged car, but you asked. If we're doing this right, though, we ought to check out the next two grids, at least down to Staatsburg."

"I vote for intuition," Marlene said. "If this hunch doesn't pan out, then we check out the next two grids. Come on, Jim, live a little dangerously." Reedy scratched under his hat. "It's completely against the scientist's code, but okay," he said with a grin. "Let's do it."

A dozen willing hands pushed the Zodiac back into the current and cheered again as it roared off upriver.

The small Zodiac was soon joined by a much larger boat owned by the Duchess County Sheriff's Office. The big boat was carrying several large anchors with cables attached that were in turn attached to buoys.

With Reedy directing, the sheriff's boat maneuvered into position just upstream of the first of the two anomalies he'd noted. He wasn't willing to completely abandon scientific practice and just go with his hunch, so he'd decided they'd check out the closer of the two first.

The first attempt to drop an anchor misjudged the current; the anchor ended up too far downriver and had to be hauled back to the surface. The second attempt was nearly a bull's-eye.

As Reedy reported their progress like a play-by-play announcer for those on shore, the divers clipped their safety ropes to the cable running down to the anchor and went over the edge. They didn't wear fins, since they weren't going to be able to swim against the current. Instead, they wore extra weight to help them get to the bottom and explore on foot. As they sank beneath the surface, those in the boat and on the shore were glued to their tinny-sounding accounts from their headset radios.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I can't see my hand in front of my face," said the first diver.

"It is a might murky," replied the second. "Uh, Houston, the Eagles have landed. We're going to walk around a bit on the dark side of the moon here if we can. That's one small step for a man ..."

The radios were silent for several minutes when the excited voice of one of the divers broke in. "Found it," he shouted. "It's definitely the bumper of a car. Let me work my way around to the side ..."

A few moments later, the voice reported in again. "What we got here is a genuine Ford Econoline van, circa 1970s."

"Might as well look inside," said the second diver. "Maybe we'll solve some other murder."

"Yeah, a two-fer," said the first. "Hold on, the side door is open.... HOLY SHIT!"

The next few moments were filled with sounds of panic. Then a laugh. "Sorry about that folks. I poked my head in the side door of this baby and nearly got run over by one big fuckin' ass sturgeon. Damn thing was the size of a shark!"

"Oh, come on, O'Donnell, I've got goldfish bigger than that," his partner laughed. "I've never see you move that fast on dry land."

"Fuck you, Clanahan. But there's a bunch of crap in the back of this van. Might be worth hauling out of the water someday, but it ain't no Volvo and it's been here awhile."

The divers pulled themselves hand over hand to the surface and climbed back inside the Zodiac. The sheriff's boat then hauled the anchor, cable, and weights back up and the two craft headed for the next anomaly, where the process was repeated.

Once again, those in the boat and on shore could only wait as the two divers sank into the gloom to the river bed, bantering as they went. But within moments O'Donnell's voice came across the radio, sounding excited. "Houston, we practically landed on top of the target," he said. "And we, in fact, have another car, resting partly on its side. I do believe it's a station wagon. Let me see if I can find something to identify it."

The radios were silent again until Fulton grabbed one of the radios from a dive team member on shore. "Goddam it," he swore. "What kind of car is it?"

"Hold your horses, son," Clanahan replied. "Let me see if I can detach the license plate.... Got it! I'm coming up."

On shore, Swanburg opened the three-ring binder he'd brought with specifics from the case, including the license-plate number of the Campbell station wagon. He found the right page just as Reedy's voice came over the radio.

"I see an arm coming out of the water, holding a license plate," he shouted. "Hey, I can't see it, face this way.... Okay ... New York plate, A ... C ... X ... 75 ... 18."

"BINGO!" Swanburg shouted into the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we've found our Volvo!"

On the river and the shore of the Hudson, an odd assortment of police officers, scientists, investigators, an assistant district attorney, and Marlene Ciampi jumped like children and cheered as they clapped each other on the back. After a minute, Marlene suddenly noticed that Charlotte Gates was still sitting in her chair, with her head between her hands.

"Are you all right?" she asked, regretting that their success at finding a car was only part of the battle. The worst, at least for this woman who was death's constant companion, was yet to come.

Looking up, Gates had tears in her eyes. "Yeah," she said. "I'll take a look at those family shots of the kids before I look in the car. But even then, I'll be okay. I'm here to take them home now, and that will get me through this." Swanburg came up and patted Marlene and Gates on the shoulder. "I need to get a couple of things for the exhumation. If you want, I'll call Butch and let him know we found the car."

"Yes, please," Marlene said, not wanting to leave the other woman. "Here, take my cell phone."

The team spent the next hour moving their headquarters to the river access point closest to the submerged vehicle. Meanwhile, the second set of divers went back down to the car to seal the doors and hatchback with large rubber bands and hooks. This would prevent the contents of the car from slipping out as the Volvo was pulled to the surface.

A sheriff's office tow truck arrived and extended a cable that could be attached to other cables hooked to the car. Then, with a great whirring of its winch and belching of diesel smoke as the driver revved the engine, the cable was slowly retrieved along with its prize catch.

As the car was gently pulled from its resting spot, Reedy described watching the diver's arm come out of the water with the license plate. "It was like the Lady in the Lake holding up Excalibur," he said. "I was too excited to remember the correct number. But I knew we had it."

"A hunch, eh?" Gates teased.

"Male intuition," Reedy replied. "So much more refined than female intuition. We just don't like to talk about it like girls do."

"Uh-huh," Marlene, Cobing, and Gates all replied.

"Good thing we went with your hunch," O'Donnell said. "I wouldn't have wanted to check out every single flippin' dot on the chart. I mean, it was dark and cold and nasty down there. Something bumped into me—probably just a log or piece of trash—but it scared the piss out of me."

They all gathered on the bank of the river as the car slowly emerged from the water until it sat on the boat ramp, water draining from the interior. Gates directed the tow-truck driver to pull it a little farther to a flat paved spot.

The windows of the car were partly rolled up to about three inches from the top, and the interior was invisible to those outside. "Think we're going to have to cut our way into it?" Washington asked Gates, who circled the car like a boxer looking for an opening.