While I’m shuffling these ideas—ideas with no answers, no substance—around in my brain, my cell phone rings.

“I’ll be at the Third Avenue Medical Waste Pick-Up entrance in two minutes,” Troy says, his voice breathless, intimate, maybe even a little frightened.

“What kind of car are you driving?” I ask as I rush down the corridor to the side stairwell.

“I got me a McCoy Miller heavy-duty Type III,” he says.

I’m completely baffled by Troy’s answer. “What the hell is a McCoy Miller heavy whatever?” I ask.

“It’s what the Office of Transportation Requisitions calls an ambulance.”

Chapter 70

Chapter 70

TROY DRIVES. I RIDE shotgun. I’m focused on my cell phone’s GPS program like I’m playing Mozart on the piano.

“Not FDR Drive,” I yell. “I don’t want to go to the East Side. Get over to the West Side.”

“Calm down, for the good Lord’s sake,” Troy says. His voice is understandably impatient at my barking orders.

Just about the only thing Troy is enjoying is sitting behind the wheel of an ambu—er, excuse me, a McCoy Miller. The red lights on the ambulance roof are blinking. The siren is screeching. Suddenly Troy throws the vehicle into a sharp U-turn on 57th Street. Well, at least he listened to me. Now we’re heading to the West Side.

“I don’t know what you do for driving directions, Lucy, but when I’m driving to towns in Westchester, near Long Island Sound, I always go FDR Drive,” Troy says.

“There’s been a minor adjustment to our plans,” I say. “But first of all, I want to apologize for yelling. To say that I’m tightly wound is putting it mildly.”

He ignores the apology. He’s tense now also.

“What’s the minor adjustment?” he asks.

“Detective Blumenthal is heading toward Harrison, New York. You and me are going to Harrison, New Jersey.”

We drive for a minute or so. Finally, Troy breaks the silence.

“What in Satan’s hell is the matter with you, woman?” he says.

I don’t answer his question. The GPS tells Troy to make a left on Ninth Avenue. “We’re going through the Lincoln Tunnel,” I say.

As Troy speeds left onto Ninth Avenue, he says, “And maybe you’ll tell me why we’re headed to a whole other state than the one Blumenthal and the NYPD and the FBI and the Westchester County police are all going to.”

I say nothing as we maneuver past the other traffic, which barely pulls out of our way, and Troy eventually turns into the loop that enters the tunnel. Now I’m busy again on my phone, trying to get info from the internet on anything even vaguely connected to medicine or medical research or infant care or adoption services in Harrison, New Jersey.