Douglas Preston - Impact

Ford drifted back into the park, hands shoved into his pockets, Abbey at his side. They took shelter from the drizzle in a pseudo-classical outdoor pavilion and waited for the police to arrive. Within a few minutes two cop cars came cruising down Driggs Avenue, lights flashing but sirens off. They stopped. A pair of officers from the first vehicle went up the stairs and knocked on the front door. No answer.

"Let's get a little closer," Ford said, drifting over. Three police officers were now at the door, knocking persistently, while a fourth remained in the squad car, talking into the radio. One of the cops fetched a wrecking bar out of his car and poked it through a door window. He picked out the glass, reached in, and unlatched the door.

The two cops disappeared into the house, one with a handheld radio.

Ford quickly crossed the street and leaned in the window of the second squad car. "There a problem?"

"Routine check," said the cop, waving them along.

All of a sudden his radio burst to life. "We have a ten-twenty-nine double homicide at Eighty-seven Driggs; two squad cars on scene, sealing the premises." Then another burst, "Two ambulances and CS team dispatched and en route; ten-thirteen homicide division . . ." The radio went on in this fashion and almost immediately sirens could be heard approaching. From her vantage point across the street Abbey could just see through the door into the interior of the parlor: a wall, with a starburst of blood on it, and below a woman's bare foot.

51

It amazed Abbey how quickly the deserted, rain-drenched park filled with people. They came out of the town houses and apartments, white-haired ladies speaking Polish, middle-aged men with bratwurst guts, young professionals, hip-hop kids, junkies, drunks, shopkeepers, and yuppies, forming a loose crowd in front of the small three-story row house. Ford and Abbey mingled with the crowd while the police pushed everyone back, set up barricades, and blocked off the street. Two ambulances arrived, followed by unmarked cars packed with homicide detectives in brown suits, ambulances, a crime-scene van, and finally the local news vans.

Abbey crowded forward with the others, listening to the babble of voices. Somehow, as if by osmosis, the crowd knew everything: two bodies found in the front hall, shot at point-blank range, house tossed. No one had heard anything, no one had noticed strange people, no one had seen cars parked in front.

As the cops bawled at the growing crowd, Ford nodded to Abbey and they pushed toward a gaggle of local women.

"Excuse me," said Ford, "but I'm new to the neighborhood. What happened?"

They turned to him eagerly, all speaking at once, interrupting each other, while Ford encouraged them with wide-eyed interest, adding interjections and expostulations. Once again she was amazed at Ford's chameleon-like ability to play a part and extract information.

"It's Mrs. Corso and her son Mark . . . He'd just come back from California . . . A lovely woman, husband died of a heart attack several years ago . . . Been a struggle since . . . Lived here all their lives . . . A good boy, studied hard, went to Brown University . . . Working at Moto's to earn pocket money . . . Seems like yesterday he was playing stickball in the park . . . A tragedy . . ."

When the information from the ladies had been exhausted, they retreated to the edge of the crowd. Ford's face was dark. "What was his title in the personnel file?" he asked Abbey.

"Senior data analysis technician."

Without another word, Ford flipped open his cell phone and called the NPF switchboard, and in a moment was connected to Derkweiler.

"This is Ford from the Agency," he said in a clipped voice. "This fellow Corso who was working for you--what exactly did he do and why was he fired?"

There was a long silence as Ford listened into his phone. Abbey could just hear the squawk of Derkweiler's voice on the other end. Ford thanked him and hung up.

"Yeah?" Abbey asked.

"He was in charge of processing radar and visual data from the Mars Mapping Orbiter."

"And?"

"He was fired for cause. Derkweiler said he didn't have 'adequate prioritization skills,' became 'obsessed with irrelevant gamma ray data,' refused to follow instructions, and caused a scene at a scientific meeting."

Abbey thought for a moment. " Obsessed , huh?"

Ford cleared his throat. "What do you know about gamma rays?"

"That there shouldn't be any from Mars."

52

Harry Burr sat in a Greek diner opposite McGolrick Park with a cheeseburger, coffee, and the Post , watching the rain run down the plate glass window in ever-changing rivulets. There were mathematical rules in the rivulets, rules that described chaos. It was sort of like the rules that described a hit. Controlled chaos. Because you could never anticipate everything. There was always a surprise: like dear old mother being in the house after Corso told him he was alone. Or being forced to kill Corso.

Always a little surprise.

He refocused his eyes farther away and had a clear view across the corner of McGolrick Park to the row house where he'd done Corso and his mother. The geek had been about to tell him where the drive was, he was pissing his pants with eagerness to tell him--and then the old lady walks in.

He nursed the strong coffee, leafed through the Post , and watched the show. He hadn't found the hard drive but he knew the bar where Corso worked and he knew his ex-roommate's address. The hard drive would be at the bar or the friend's place. He'd check out the bar first. If Corso were really smart he might have mailed it back to himself or even stuck it in a safe-deposit box. But he was pretty sure he'd have kept it close by.

He took another sip of coffee, turned the pages of the paper, pretending to read. It had been slow in the restaurant and now it was empty, most of the customers having finished up quickly and gone into the park to check out the show. He kept an eye on the crowd, looking for anyone who might be a relative, a friend--a girlfriend--to whom Corso might also have given the drive.

Two people in the park began attracting his attention, a black girl and a tall, craggy man. They seemed just a little too alert, a little too detached from the rest, to be neighborhood rubberneckers. They were watching, observing. They were involved.

He marked them in his memory in case he saw them again.

53

Abbey slid onto the bar stool at Moto's, Ford taking the stool beside her. It was an ultra-hip New York bar along the waterfront in Williamsburg, done up in black and white, with faux zebra-striped shoji screens and lots of black-and-white enamel, frosted glass, and chrome. Behind the bar stood a wall of liquor bottles, gleaming in a cool white lighting. The place was empty at four o'clock on a rainy weekday afternoon.

As they took their seats, a bald Japanese man with a bricklike physique and black-rimmed glasses, dressed in traditional garb, came over. He slid his hand along the bar holding a small napkin by the corner, which stopped in front of Abbey. "Lady?"

Abbey hesitated. "Pellegrino."

The hand slid down in front of Ford with another napkin tweaked between thumb and forefinger. "Gentleman?"

"Beefeater martini," said Ford. "Straight up with a twist. Dry."

Sharp nod, and the man began making the drinks with virtuosic efficiency.

"You must be Mr. Moto," Ford said.

"That's me!" Moto's face broke into a dazzling smile as he shook the drink and poured it out with a flourish.

"Name's Wyman Ford. Friend of Mark Corso."

"Welcome! But Mark isn't here. He'll be in tonight. Seven." He poured the drink out with a flourish, flipping the shaker in the air, catching it, rinsing it, and sliding it into a holder.