“Mike? Mike?” Mercer said. “Are you still there?”
“Hanging by a thread.”
“That’s great news, Mike. Now, turn it over to us.”
I resumed my conversation with Paddy Duffy.
“Hold off,” I said to Mercer. And then to my prisoner, “How many people are in the lighthouse with Emmet Renner?”
“Two. Was just me and another guy, and then the girl.”
“Is she hurt?”
“Not so’s I can tell. Emmet’s waiting for the cops to show up,” Duffy said. “He’s got a beef to settle. I wouldn’t give a nickel for her chances after that.”
“About the same as yours,” I said. “Guns?”
“You got mine.”
“The other guy?”
“There’s a few guns inside.”
“The woman,” I said, “did you have her on Liberty Island?”
Duffy cocked his head and looked at me. “Not saying.”
“You don’t have to. Cormac Lonigan already gave you up.”
“Cormac had nothing to do with this,” Duffy said.
“You’re all singing the same song,” I said. “I guess Ms. Cooper just kidnapped herself.”
“You’re wasting your energy on me.”
“Do you know Cormac?”
“Yeah. You could say that,” Duffy said.
“Come all the way from the other side to hook up with a Renner, did you?” I said. “Westies redux.”
“I just work with him. Simple as that.” Duffy picked up his head to look at me.
“Don’t even think about spitting,” I said. “It’s already been done.”
I put the sock in Duffy’s mouth, stepped up, and slammed the lid of the bench.
I picked up my phone. “Got all that, Mercer?”
“Yes, sir, Detective Chapman. There should be a sniper team in place shortly. Let’s ride this one out,” Mercer said. “Duffy says Coop’s okay.”
“You can’t do it with guns.”
“What’s that about?”
“You can’t pick Emmet Renner off with a gun, okay? We’ve got to see Coop first.”
“I understand that part of it. But the choice of weapons isn’t up to you.”
I had the phone in one hand and was swapping positions of Paddy Duffy’s gun and my own. I knew my weapon and how it handled. I wanted his for backup, but my own in first place.
“Mike?”
“Almost there,” I said.
“You believe because your father shot Charlie Renner all those many years ago that we shouldn’t take this maniac out with a gun? Is that your thinking? That it will change the past?”
“I want to see Coop.” Because if Renner had done anything to hurt her, a bullet to the head would be too easy a death for him.
“So do we all,” Mercer said. “So do we all. What’s next?”
I was as ready as I could get to take on Emmet Renner. As soon as Scully made the public announcement of Coop’s kidnapping and the rescue teams were fully staged, there would be choppers flying overhead—police and press—and anything that could float on the river hovering around this desolate point.
“I have one idea, Mercer. A hostage exchange,” I said. “If I screw it up, then Renner’s all yours.”
“Let me in on the—”
I wasn’t looking for approval. Nobody was in a position to do better than I was.
I ended the call and climbed onto the giant boulder of Ceder Point. I stayed low and began to circle the rocks on Jeffrey’s Hook.
When I passed Cormac Lonigan this time, the swirling current of the river had brought the water well over his knees. I avoided looking at his face. I assumed panic had set in long before now.
I paused when I reached the foundation of the northern tower of the bridge. I had a clear view of the lighthouse, stuck out alone in the Hudson on the very tip of Jeffrey’s Hook.
Still no sound from within it. No movement.
I ran to the rear of the bridge foundation and then moved into the space between the towers, staying tight against the twenty-foot-high concrete wall supporting the south tower. The long shadows cast by the bridge lighting on the beams and cables made walking on the rough surface trickier than I had thought it would be. This was as close as I could get to the lighthouse without being seen.
The lantern room on top of the stubby red structure still seemed to be unoccupied. The lighthouse door at its base, the one from which Paddy Duffy had exited, faced the river. There was no way for me to see it from my position.
I thought Emmet Renner would grow impatient when Duffy failed to return. I held as still as I could for several more minutes.
And then there was the sound of footsteps. A hefty man emerged from the lighthouse. I hadn’t been able to see the door open, but he was walking around the building, his hand on the wrought iron railing that enclosed it.
“Duff?” He called out with his hand cupped over his mouth. “Duff, c’mon back.”
I had been prepared by the lieutenant’s statement to me about Emmet Renner’s plastic surgery. I wouldn’t make him, in all likelihood, when we came face-to-face. But this man was no more than my age—probably in his late thirties—while Emmet was over fifty by now.
I let him walk to both sides of the lighthouse and call out for his compatriot. There was no noise except for the waves stirred up by current, lapping against the rocks.
The man was farther away from me now, seeming to be calling Duffy’s name a bit more frantically.
I yelled back at him from my position in the shadows behind the bridge tower foundation.
“There’s been an accident,” I said. “Duff’s not coming back.”
The man started and flattened his back against the lighthouse wall.
Then a glimmer of light as the door of the building opened and closed again. It must have been Emmet Renner who threw his voice out into the dark. “You’re early, Chapman,” he said. “I was expecting you’d come looking for her tonight, but you’re early.”