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Faith sighed. “Well, I can understand that, but it’ll have to wait. We have a third victim.”
“Shit,” Michael said, “I’m on my way. See if you can keep the vultures off for now.”
“Will do,” she said.
She hung up and looked around, but no one had yet taken notice of the lone FBI agent and her K9 standing in front of a woman who was not merely sleeping. She decided the best way to keep the vultures at bay was to simply remain quiet. She sat on the bench next to the body and continued to scan the crowd for signs of anyone looking their way.
No one looked.
***
The police arrived first, three minutes after Faith hung up. They reached the scene and immediately began to cordon the area off. Faith counted eight officers. Six of them wore riot gear, complete with batons and shields. Of the two that weren’t wearing riot gear, one cordoned off the bench while the other—a sergeant—approached Faith.
He wasn’t the only one to approach. One woman and a dog may have been invisible to the crowd, but a full squad of police in riot gear was another thing entirely. Before the approaching sergeant could reach Faith, someone screamed. Another person—a young man of maybe nineteen or twenty wearing a sweater emblazoned with the flaming torch logo of New York University—called, “Hey! They found another body on the subway!”
“Goddammit,” the sergeant muttered.
Chaos ensued after that. The crowd around the bench first receded, melting away in shock as people panicked and scanned for signs of danger, then collapsed on them like a tsunami.
“Disperse that crowd!” the sergeant shouted.
“No!” Faith called. “Keep them away from the bench but don’t clear the platform!”
The sergeant turned to her incredulously. “Are you serious?” he said. “What the hell are you doing? There’s only eight of us right now!”
“Do you have more officers on the way?” Faith asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Another dozen riot officers plus whoever Detective Rameses is bringing with him.”
“How long before the riot squad gets here?” Faith asked.
“Fifteen minutes, at least.”
“Good,” Faith said. “Your job is to keep the crowd away from this bench—andonlythis bench—for those fifteen minutes. Anyone who respects the cordon is to be left alone, do you understand?”
No sooner had Faith said that than the man in the NYU sweater rushed the riot officers. He launched himself into one of the officers, phone outstretched, clicking madly until the officer threw him backwards. One of the other officers drew his baton, but the sergeant shouted, “Keep your weapon at your side, Jenkins!”
The officer snapped his head to affix his sergeant with the same incredulous look the sergeant gave Faith a moment ago. “Are you kidding?” he asked. “There’s hundreds of them, Sarge!”
Faith looked around and saw that he was right. The crowd had grown swiftly, quickly filling the platform and spreading to the neighboring platforms. Security officers began to converge, and Faith flagged them down. They made their way slowly through the rapidly energizing crowd, and when they reached within earshot, Faith cupped her hand over her mouth and shouted, “Help the police maintain the perimeter!”
They nodded and expanded the circle of officers protecting the bench. With the reinforcements, the sergeant was able to talk to Faith again. “Who noticed the body?”
“My K9 smelled her,” Faith said, continuing to scan the crowd.
“He smelled her?” The sergeant turned toward the slumped woman and sniffed gingerly. “I don’t smell anything.”
Faith didn’t bother trying to tell him that a dog’s sense of smell was many times more sensitive than his own. She continued to look around, but there was no way of knowing which of the employees that gawked along with the rest of the crowd might be the killer, if any of them were.
“Dammit,” she whispered under her breath.
There were just too many people. She couldn’t hope to spot one person from a crowd this size.
The sergeant returned to her and asked, “Did you find any ID on her?”
“No, I haven’t examined the body yet,” she said. “I wanted to keep from alerting the crowd.”
A trace of frustration must have crept into her voice when she said that because the sergeant immediately went on the defensive. “Well, I’m sorry, ma’am. Detective Rameses called me and told me to get my ass here with some riot officers ASAP. Said your partner told him you had found another body and needed help right away.”
