Worst Case (Michael Bennett 3)

“Reid Hall. I know,” I said.

We’d already found that the basement door in that building had been propped open. John Cleary and his CSU team were there now, going over every square inch of the basement with an evidence vacuum and Q-tips. The killer must have gotten in and taken the kid out through there.

“Who else knows about the tunnels?” Emily said.

“Students, maintenance, faculty,” he said. “We blocked off some of them, but the kids still use them as shortcuts sometimes. Like hotels, every campus has its ghost stories, and the tunnels figure in a lot of the urban legends that get told around here.”

I kept thinking about the kidnapper’s cultured, educated voice. He most definitely could have been an Ivy League academic.

“One more question,” I said. “Has a teacher ever been caught down there?”

“I don’t know,” Acevedo said. “I?

??ll look into it and let you know. Or at least I’ll leave a note for my replacement.”

“I’m actually starting to respect this nut,” Emily said as we headed down the stairs. “I’ve never seen someone so prolific. This guy is a gold-medal-winning kidnapper.”

Emily ducked into the cafeteria on the ground floor of the building and came back with two coffees. This morning, she was wearing a form-fitting French Blue blouse and navy skirt. Her hair was still wet. I liked that she wore hardly any makeup. The way she did a cute earlobe-tugging thing when she was thinking, and especially the spark that flashed in her blue eyes when she was fired up.

“Now what?” Emily said. “Head over to Hastings’s dorm? The library where he was last seen?”

“Nah,” I said. “We better head to the family. I’m expecting a call from our friend.”

Chapter 40

THE HARLEM SATELLITE office of the social service, nonprofit New York Heart was on 134th Street off St. Nicholas Avenue. The sour scent of sweat and marijuana made Francis X. Mooney nostalgic as he mounted the unswept stairs two by two.

For the past ten years, Mooney had been the main adviser of their legal outreach program, which took on cases for the poorest of the poor. He stared at the posters and photographs of the organization’s community theater and community garden that covered the stairwell walls and smiled. New York Heart was truly a labor of love.

“What’s cooking, kids?” Francis said after he gathered the half dozen social workers in the cramped conference room ten minutes later.

Francis X. smiled around the battered table at the lanky twenty-somethings. He remembered being that young, having that fire in the belly to set things straight. Not every young person was a selfish, whining brat, he thought.

“I just got your message this morning, Kurt,” he said. “How’s Mr. Franklin’s case going?”

Kurt, the social service’s in-house law advocate, looked up from his bagel and cream cheese. He’d gone to Ford-ham and hadn’t passed the bar yet, but Francis had faith in him. The kid’s heart was in the right place.

“The reason I called is that Mr. Franklin’s last appeal pretty much got slam-dunked into the shitter, Francis,” he said between bites. “The fuckers are going to fry him this Friday, and the rednecks down there will probably tailgate in the prison parking lot. What are you going to do? Hope the Republicans are happy. Another one bites the dust.”

Francis couldn’t believe it as chuckles exploded around the room. Mr. Reginald Franklin, the son of a destitute local resident, and borderline retarded, was about to be executed by the American government. How was that funny?

“Did you look over the habeas corpus?” Francis said.

“Of course,” Kurt said. “The appeals court decided to go by the trial record.”

“That’s what they always do,” Francis said, raising his voice now. “Did you get a copy of the police report, like I told you to? Did you look into the adequacy of his first attorney? The man supposedly fell asleep at one point.”

The room was silent now. Kurt set his bagel on the table as he sat up.

“No, I didn’t get a chance,” he finally said. “I did call you.”

“Didn’t get a chance? Didn’t get a chance!” Francis yelled. His chair made a thunderous shriek as he leapt up. “Are you out of your fucking mind? The man is about to die!”

“Jeez, Francis,” Kurt mumbled with his head down. “Relax.”

“I won’t,” Francis X. said. He didn’t want to cry. Not in front of these kids, but he couldn’t help it. A torrent of hot tears poured down his reddened face.

“I can’t relax, don’t you see?” he said as he stormed out. “There’s no more time.”