“Not from down there, I hope,” he told her, pointing back down the stairs. “I doubt you’ll get a signal down in your basement.”
“I’m not going back to the basement,” she said. “Do me a favor? Tell Melissa I’m going up to take a shower and not to worry about me, just to lock up when she leaves, okay?”
“Sure,” he said, studying her. “You need a vacation, you know.”
“We’ve just started.”
“You still need a vacation.”
She smiled. “Do you really want to miss your chance to be famous? Or infamous? One or the other, anyway.” She laughed. “Now, get out of here. I’ll see you later.”
She waited until he was gone, listening as he talked to Melissa at the exit and then, when she was sure he was out the door, headed back down to the basement. She felt a desire so strong it was beyond resisting to go back to the basement.
Where the hell had the box that Brad had tripped over come from?
“Matt?” she whispered, then shook her head. Was there a feel to the room?
She had discovered the remains of a murdered woman, she told herself. It was natural that the basement would feel…haunted. But as she looked around, she could see various items that had been used to renovate the house. A few rolls of wallpaper, some paint cans, stirrers, boxes of nails and tools. She didn’t feel as if it were a tomb, even though it had been exactly that for the poor woman in the wall. But there was something here that drew her, kept her from leaving. She needed to call Joe, she realized, and let him know that she’d left the hospital, in case he was planning to go visit her, and invite him to dinner. She reached in her pocket for her cell phone, making a tour of the room as she did so.
It was exactly the size of the servants’ pantry above. There was another basement beneath the main house; this area had been used strictly for food and kitchen storage.
From the hearth, she walked around the perimeter of the room, her phone forgotten in her hand. The wall was entirely bricked. She tried to estimate her whereabouts. If she were able to tunnel through the earth and went north, then a bit to the east, she would reach the dig. The crypt she’d found there was quite a bit deeper than this basement, though. If she were to head further east, she realized, she would come to City Hall.
Curious, she laid out the subway construction records she had copied alongside those of the house. By the late 1900s, there had been elevated trains, or els, in Lower Manhattan. At the very beginning of the twentieth century, the first subway lines had gone in. The very first had run from City Hall to 145th Street. By 1910, there had been several lines. On a later map, she could see how many of the original tunnels had been abandoned. There were also work shafts that had once aided the subway workmen, and many of those had been abandoned, as well.
Okay, so there were a lot of holes in the Manhattan earth. What did that mean?
She hesitated, wondering if she was imagining the rush of air and looked around.
“Matt?” she said softly, hopefully. “I know…oh, Matt, there’s something of you here, I know it,” she whispered.
It seemed, she thought, that she felt a touch. A caress, soft and tender, against her cheek. And then a whisper.
Leave…please, leave.
“I can’t.”
You must.
“Let me see you, touch you. I know you’re here.”
She waited.
Nothing.
“Leave the basement?” she wondered aloud.
Go!
There was an urgency in the voice this time.
“Leave the basement? Leave the house? Leave New York?” Again, she spoke aloud. Again, all she felt in return was a movement of the air.
Or was it a cruel trick of her imagination?
“Matt…in the subway, I saw you. I know Joe was there, too, and he pulled me out. But at the beginning…it was your face. Your voice.”
Go. Go!
“All right!”
She started to roll up her maps, and that was when she heard the sobbing.
13
The place really was a rat hole. Joe wondered if there was an agency in the city that looked into situations like this. Probably. It would mean a lot of red tape, he was certain. Still, it was worth checking into, he decided.
Space was at a premium in New York, that was a given. But he knew there were laws to protect tenants against these kinds of situations. But since most of the inhabitants were either in the country illegally or made their living in a doubtful manner, he doubted their complaints drew much response, if they even dared to make them.
Still, Heidi Arundsen was a good hostess. She had a studio with a tiny kitchen, separated by a counter from the main room, and a screen that separated the main room from the little bedroom area she had created. She kept the place spotlessly clean, but that couldn’t help the leakage marks on the ceiling and walls, or hide the fact that the plaster was peeling and that some of the wires weren’t properly installed.
“I’m sorry,” Heidi said as they entered. “I’m really sorry.”
“You keep a lovely home,” he told her. “Under the worst circumstances.”
“Well…thanks. Can I get you anything? I keep everything in the fridge. No bug eggs in my stuff.”
“No, honestly, I’m just fine.”
Didi had joined them. She strode across the room. “Here are the boxes with Betty’s things. The cops looked for a diary and didn’t find one,” she said.
“There’s not much there, but I kept it all anyway. Just in case,” Heidi said.
Her words seemed to linger on the air. Just in case. None of them believed Betty was ever coming back.
“Mind if I just dig in?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” Heidi said. “I’ll go make some coffee.”
Joe heard the women turn on a little television in the kitchen and talk softly to each other while he dug into the boxes. He didn’t know what he expected to find. The first box was clothing. Washed, smelling pleasantly of fabric softener, neatly folded. Betty must have been tiny. She had skirts that would have served as a handkerchief for him.
He opened the second box and found pictures. Betty, looking young and innocent, hopeful, a brilliant smile on her face as she cradled a baby. People who might have been her parents. There was a picture of several women, Betty among them, playing softball in Central Park. There was a picture of a beautiful greyhound; on it, Betty had written, Someday! There were more pictures of Betty with friends in front of the sagging old tenement, at the zoo.
Then he found a picture that arrested his attention. It was of Betty and Genevieve O’Brien—and there was a man with them. He was turned away from the camera, but his stance spoke of assurance, and he was wearing a suit that looked to have been expensively tailored.
“Heidi?” he called.
“Yeah?” she asked, hurrying over to where he was, Didi on her heels.
“Who is that?”
“That’s Betty. And Genevieve. I thought you were hired to find her?”
“No, the man. Who’s the man with them?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Didi?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “Hey!” she said, her attention caught by the television. “Hey, Joe, your girlfriend is on the news.”
He set the box down quickly and strode into the kitchen to join them. The mayor himself was on, sternly warning people to be careful in the subway.
Ken Dryer was at his side. He went on to announce that it was Leslie MacIntyre, the archaeologist who’d been in the news recently, who had fallen and been pulled up just ahead of a speeding train. She had been taken to the hospital, but she was all right. There was a shot of Leslie, grimy and a bit tousled, smiling up at him as he walked beside the stretcher as the paramedics carried her up from the subway.
The anchorwoman went on to mention that in addition to her archaeological career, Leslie MacIntyre had been of help to the police on occasion.
“The girl must have
special instincts,” the co-anchor said, shaking his head. “Think ghosts are coming out of the walls to give her a hand?”
“We’ll have to have her on the show,” the anchorwoman said, then turned to face a different camera. “In late-breaking news from the Middle East…”
“Is she psychic?” Heidi asked.
“Maybe she should go through Betty’s things, huh?” Didi asked.
Joe was already dialing the hospital on his cell, pacing the room as he was forwarded from extension to extension.
At last a nurse informed him that Miss MacIntyre had checked herself out a few hours after being admitted to the ER.
“Damn!” he swore violently, then turned to the two women. “I’ve got to go. Listen…” He wanted to throttle Leslie. He really needed to work on Genevieve’s disappearance, but he was growing more and more afraid to leave Leslie alone for a minute. “Do you think I could hire the two of you?”
They looked at each other in surprise.
“I didn’t think you—” Didi began, but he cut her off.
“No…no. I mean as assistants.”
“Assistants?” Didi murmured.
“Does he mean…a threesome?” Heidi asked.
“I mean, to work for me.” He picked up the picture of Betty, Genevieve and the mystery man. “I need to get this picture to a man named Harry Barton, up in Soho. If I give you an address, can you get it to him for me? And tell him that I need the man in the picture enhanced as much as he can. I’ll pay you for being messengers, of course.”
“That’s a relief,” Heidi muttered. “Sorry—I guess I didn’t want you to turn out to be a weirdo. I can still dream, you know.”
“And you don’t have to pay us,” Didi told him.
“I’m going to pay you because you work for a living and I’m using your time, plus I’m being paid, okay?”
They looked at each other again.
“It’s a rich lady’s money,” he said. “You might as well get your piece of it.”
“Done deal. Give us the address. And if you think of anything else…?” Didi said, a question in her tone as her voice trailed off.
“Actually, yes. I want you both on the streets tonight,” Joe said.
“He’s a real reformer, isn’t he?” Heidi asked Didi.
“Not taking tricks. I want you to keep an eye out all night.”
“For a black sedan,” Didi said.
“You got it. Okay, address…and I’ll be in touch.”
Joe ran down the six flights of stairs, thinking again that something needed to be done about the place. He hoped he knew the right people to do it.
If Matt were alive, he would write a column that would have the landlord all but boiled in oil by enraged citizens.
But Matt wasn’t alive.
When he reached the street, he paused. Strange. This morning it had been as if he was being warned to get to Leslie. Now…
Now, nothing. Where the hell had she gone? Back to Hastings House. He was sure of it.
The crying had faded.
Leslie walked around and around, listening for it, but it was gone. She sat on the box Brad had tripped over, frustrated. Then, suddenly, she heard it again.
She leapt up, trying to determine where the sound was coming from. At first, as she neared the hearth, she thought she had zeroed in on it. But when she got there, it seemed to be coming from the other side of the room. She walked around the small room, one hand on the wall as she went. It was all brick, and it all looked as if it had been there, getting grimy, forever.
The sound faded away again, and she went back to sitting on the box. Okay, so she was hearing ghostly tears. But she’d dug the woman out of the wall. She was doing all she could. “You know,” she said aloud, “if you would all just show yourselves, I could be much more helpful.”
She began to walk around the room again, this time pressing on the bricks, looking for…something.
She couldn’t help thinking that there was more here than met the eye. She thought about the underground railroad. And here, it might really have been underground. There were so many tunnels nearby. Underground tunnels, underground chambers. A city beneath the city.
“Leslie!”
She froze, stepping away from the wall, stunned.
The voice had come from above, from the servants’ pantry.
“Leslie?”
Someone was coming down the stairs. Instinctively, she backed away, looking toward the stairs and the man coming toward her.
“Leslie?”
It was Hank Smith.
“Hey,” he greeted her. “What are you doing down here? I saw the open hatch and came to check, but Brad said you were going to shower and meet him for dinner,” he said, coming toward her, looking concerned. “You know, you’re scaring the hell out of us. I can’t believe you didn’t hurt yourself with that kind of a fall.”
“A few bruises, that’s all. I was lucky,” she said. He’d closed the hatch behind him, she realized. It had gotten darker, with only artificial light around them. Corners became deep shadows.
Hank was, as usual, handsomely dressed, but his attire was GQ casual. White cotton shirt, beige jacket, jeans, Dockers. Hair clean and slick, smelling of a subtle aftershave.
“So…what are you doing here?” she asked.
“I came to check on you, of course.”
“Well, that was sweet of you. Thanks.”
He looked around the basement. Shuddered. “Dark and creepy down here, huh?”
She laughed, aware that she sounded a little uneasy. The whole house seemed to be silent now. And she felt…unnerved to be alone down in the bowels of the earth with him.
I felt safer down here alone listening to ghostly tears, she thought.
“Not at all, not to me,” she said, forcing a bright tone. Was it overly bright? Did he know that she was suddenly afraid to be with him?
He looked past her then and walked over to the wall, then turned to look at her. “You found more bones here?” he said incredulously.
“Brad found them, actually,” she said. The room was too small. There was no way to put enough distance between them. Why the hell was she suddenly afraid of him? Or was it just being alone here with him? Even being alone with Brad had felt frightening, especially when he’d tripped and she’d momentarily thought he was attacking her.
Why not be scared? a voice in her mind taunted. I was in the crypt and the ceiling fell. I was in the subway and someone pushed me onto the tracks. Sure, accidents. Like the accidental explosion right here at Hastings House.
Hank was staring at her as if she had just turned emerald-green.
“Hank, you’ve got an engineering degree, and I’ll bet you know when you’re going to encounter an old post or wall or…whatever.”
He lifted his shoulders, let them fall. “When there are old building plans, I can read them,” he told her. “But…how the hell did you—and don’t tell me it wasn’t you, it was Brad, ’cuz I know that’s bullshit—find bones here?”
“The same thing—I can read. You know how it is. When something doesn’t jive, you have to look for whatever the truth might be.”
“So…who is this?” he asked her.
“A Colonial housewife. Supposedly she left her husband and child, quite a scandal in those days. But women seldom desert their infants.”
“Oh, yeah?” he said, and he sounded a little weary, a little jaded. “Look at recent history. There are women who kill their own infants.”
“But, honestly, it’s not the norm.”
“Ah, yes, women are the fairer sex,” he said.
Did he sound bitter, or was he just teasing her?
“In this case,” she said, “it didn’t ring true to me.”
“So how did you know right where to look for the body?”
“Brad and I talked about a situation, about a time and place…a basement tends to be a good place, and because of the way a hearth is constructed, it’s easier to remove brick
s there than from a wall.”
“Well, there you go,” Hank said. “Has Laymon seen this yet?”
“No.”
“But Brad has?”
“Of course. I just told you—”
“Yeah, yeah. Brad was in on the find.”
“He knows it’s here, knows I’m always poking around down here,” she said.
“Oh, really?” He smiled at her. She didn’t like that smile at all. Maybe it was the light. Maybe it was the irrational panic that began to assail her when she was alone in an enclosed space with anyone larger than she was.
She opened her mouth to reply.
She didn’t need to.
He was standing by a stack of boxes. One suddenly teetered and fell, right by his side.
He jumped like a jack rabbit. A wrench bounced from the box and caught him on the knee. He howled with surprise and pain.
“It’s not safe down here!” he exploded.
“Right. We should go up.”
As she spoke, the hatch above them swung open. “Leslie?”
It was Joe, and he sounded deeply irritated.
“Joe!” she called in relief.
“You little liar! You said you were going to stay at the hospital.” He was walking down the stairs as he spoke, then came to a dead stop when he saw Hank Smith. “Hank, I didn’t know you were into archaeology,” he said, his tone skeptical.
“I came to see how Leslie’s doing—same as you, I suppose,” Hank said.
Joe ignored that. He looked as if he wanted to throw Hank across the room. She set an arm on his shoulder. “I did stay for a few hours, and I’m sorry, I meant to call you right away when I left. I felt fine, and I wanted to get back. I’d made an appointment with Brad earlier, and I didn’t want to break it.”
“I guess you were going to show Brad the discovery the two of you made together, right?” Hank inquired politely.
“No, I had to make some plans with him,” she said.
“Do you have a problem, Hank?” Joe inquired.
“You know, it’s getting really musty down here,” Leslie cut in quickly. “I’m going up. Oh, and Joe, we’re going to meet Laymon and Brad for dinner. Mind waiting while I grab a shower?” She was up the stairs as she spoke. Joe followed on her heels, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. As soon as Hank reached the top, she quickly closed the hatch, throwing the rug back over it. “Hank, it was very nice of you to come by, but I’m fine. I’ll see you over at the dig in the next few days, I imagine.”
The Dead Room Page 21