Free The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel by Dick Wolf Page B

have.”
    “And nobody knows this?”
    “Best if they don’t, at this point. The drones could do anything a police helicopter could do, at a fraction of the cost.”
    “A system with that capability seems wide open for abuse,” she said. “Any chance that’s what Yodeler used here?” Chay aimed a thumb at Castle Clinton.
    Fisk shook his head. “Shadowhawks run a couple hundred thousand bucks apiece. Yodeler’s going to use something more commonplace, assuming he wants to avoid getting caught.”
    “For the same reason he used an AR-15 and commonplace bullets?”
    “I don’t know a whole lot about drones, but I’d guess that the same relatively simple and inexpensive systems that can deliver packages from Amazon could be modified to carry an AR-15.”
    Chay looked toward the sky, not in trepidation, but with wonder.
    “The good news is that those drones are a lot fewer and farther between that AR-15s,” Fisk continued. “If we can get surveillance cam imagery of the drone in flight here or in Central Park, we can trace the drone to Yodeler. We also might be able to trace the radio signal he used to control it.”
    “If he was careful enough to use an untraceable gun and bullets, what would be the odds he used his Amex if and when he bought a drone?”
    “The odds aren’t great. But they’re a little bit better that he would use a prepaid Visa card to buy a drone online and have it delivered to, say, an out-of-the-way UPS store he’d chosen for his PO box because the place had no security cameras and the employees didn’t ask questions.”
    “Then he would have picked up his drone and left without a trace.”
    “As far as he knows. This is one of the reasons we’re not keen on publishing the locations of the cameras—or publishing any of our methods.”
    Chay crossed her arms, looking around the park again. She said, “If he is using a drone, even if you find surveillance camera footage of him, it may not be in time to stop him. He’s killed two people in the last two days. If people are forewarned, they can stay inside today. At the least, if there were a drone overhead, they would know not to stand on the sidewalk and gawk at it.”
    “Forewarned isn’t forearmed if there’s no way of seeing or hearing the thing coming,” he said. “Anyway, a drone can target peoplewho are inside buildings. So by warning them, you’d be doing little more than telling Yodeler that we’re onto him, in which case he covers his tracks and we’re back to square one.”
    “Detective Fisk, how would you feel if by the end of the day, you’ve found no further clues to Yodeler’s identity, and, meanwhile, he’s killed a child who was on a playground because his parents didn’t know to keep them indoors?”
    “I’d feel terrible. But you understand why we can’t evacuate the city every time we have a killer on the loose. And in this case, it’d be based on a hypothesis developed on the basis of a kid flying a remote-control blimp.”
    “Actually, a detective from Intel flying a remote-control blimp. But—point taken.” Fisk didn’t quite believe her. She plucked a spiral-bound reporter’s notebook from her back pocket and clicked a mechanical pencil to readiness, walking away.

CHAPTER 10
    T he sun slid from behind a cloud and through the corner windows, setting aglow NYPD Intel chief Barry Dubin’s eggshell head and all but igniting his golden Ermenegildo Zegna Venticinque silk tie, the sort more commonly seen on hedge fund bosses than on public servants. “I’ve gotta tell you, this reminds me of the time Salinger met with your dad in ’61,” Dubin said from Wallace McElhaney’s couch.
    “About the Air Force crewmen?” asked McElhaney from a wing chair across the big cherrywood coffee table.
    “Exactly. Their lives were at stake.”
    McElhaney was two years old in 1961, when his father, then the editor in chief of the New York Herald Tribune, received a surprise visit over the weekend from