The Night Shift(70)
Keller disconnects the line and follows the GPS link Atticus sent her, pulling into the driveway of a home in Elizabeth ten minutes later.
She bangs on the front door.
It opens tentatively. “I told you I have nothing to—”
“We’ve arrested Rusty Whitaker. He’s about to sing. Once he does, any deal for you is over. It’s now or never. And I know…”
There’s a long pause. The man hesitates, cricks his neck, then opens the door for Keller to come inside.
CHAPTER 62
ELLA
Ella glances at Chris, who’s staring at his phone. They’re bouncing around in the back of a cab, which just hit the exit to Forty-Second Street in Manhattan.
“He’s somewhere in Central Park,” Chris says.
That’s a stroke of luck. Ella’s family has an apartment on the park. She spent many weekends there as a kid, knows the terrain. On breaks from college, she’d stay there to avoid Phyllis. It made her popular with the kids in the dorm, a free place to crash on the Upper West Side. She’s kept in touch with none of them.
“Comments in the feed say his fans are already giving chase,” Chris adds.
Ella asks Chris for the phone. She examines the screen. It’s too dark to recognize anything. Mr. Nirvana’s in a dark area of the park. It’s dead quiet.
The traveler walks in silence as the screen moves down a path that soon turns black except for the light from the camera. There’s bramble on either side. The camera zooms in on a rat next to a trash bin. It doesn’t scurry away despite the light.
The traveler walks up the ominous path.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared,” Mr. Nirvana says, narrating the live feed.
A voice bellows from the woods. “Can you turn that fucking light off?”
The traveler turns out the light and fast-walks, the sound of wind brushing into the microphone.
The camera turns off, then back on. The traveler shines the light on a lamppost. The camera’s focus resolves on a placard with a number on it: 7802.
“If you know anything about the park, that’s a clue where I am,” he says. The camera pans the area. It’s crowded, but no one seems to be focusing on him.
Ella says, “He’s at East Seventy-Eighth.”
“How do you know that?”
“The lampposts have numbers. My dad taught me. The first two numbers are the street. If it’s an odd number you’re on the west side; even, you’re on the east side.”
Chris nods, impressed.
Ella says, “Seventy-Eighth. That’s near the Shakespeare Garden.”
That’s confirmed when the camera focuses on a small plaque surrounded by beautiful flowers and featuring a quote from The Winter’s Tale.
“How far away are we?” asks Chris.
Ella stares out the window looking for street signs. “Five minutes.”
In the stop-start traffic, her mind goes to her childhood, watching Shakespeare in the Park with her father and big brother. Renting remote-control boats at the pond, Shane standing too close to the water’s edge, even then flirting with danger. The two of them climbing the rocks, Dad calling after them to be careful.
The cab pulls up at Seventy-Second and Central Park West. Ella pays the driver and they vault out of the car.
She looks about. Another image comes to her. During breaks from college, trolling the park after midnight. A perilous endeavor, even in the much safer era of NYC. Essentially, tempting someone to try it. She’d find the darkest sections—the Ramble, the North Woods, the ruins—and walk alone. Pepper spray at the ready, she’d think: go ahead, just you try. It was her way to take back control, but it never eradicated the fear in her bones.
She stands close to Chris, examining the phone, then walks ahead of him.
On the screen, Mr. Nirvana is talking again: “This is the Whisper Bench, one of twelve secrets of the park I’ll cover in the next twelve hours. All night in Central Park!”
The vlogger places the camera at one end of the curved stone bench then goes to the far end, his back to the camera. In a soft voice, he says, “The secret here is that if you whisper on this end, you can hear it all the way over there where my camera is. Can you hear me?”
“This way.” Ella yanks Chris toward the Whisper Bench, just west of Belvedere Castle, which she marveled at as a girl.
As they run, Chris looks down at the screen, then up at their surroundings, then down again. They’re not the only ones tracking Nirvana. They need to find him before his fans chase him off.
“There!”
Chris points at a figure. The man is holding up a camera that has a light mounted to it, shining like a spotlight in the darkness.
The man is about twenty yards away. They’re getting closer. Chris stops unexpectedly, seemingly lost in thought. Like this is a moment he’s dreamed about, and it’s about to happen.
The light disappears; the vlogger either turned it off or rounded the corner. The livestream has a slight delay. Ella looks up from the screen to Chris.
“He’s just around the corner ahead. You ready?”
Chris drags a hand slowly over his face. Ella is concerned. He’s still looking ashen, slightly out of it. He’s concussed and the exertion might even be dangerous.