The Dead Room

by Heather Graham

  “Yes,” Nikki admitted. “And I think we should call the cops.”

  Leslie grinned at her and ducked behind the barricade. Nikki swore, looked around, then followed her quickly.

  A few feet along the alley, they hit what looked as if it had once been a shaft.

  “Look,” Leslie said excitedly to Nikki.

  They could see where the opening had been covered and the cover nailed shut. “I think,” Leslie said thoughtfully, “that this is an old subway entrance. In use sometime around 1915. See, you can just see a hint of tile there….”

  “Possibly,” Nikki agreed.

  Leslie started pulling at one of the boards that covered the opening. To her amazement, it came free instantly, so easily that she staggered backward. “Someone has pulled up that board before,” she said.

  “Leslie, we really need to call the police,” Nikki said.

  “Wait…just let me be sure.”

  She trained her flashlight into the opening. “There are stairs!” she said excitedly. “It is an abandoned subway entrance.”

  “Great, now let’s go.”

  “Just let me get a better view,” Leslie implored.

  She knelt down and rested her left hand on one of the boards that was still in place, leaning down to get a better view. The board gave way, and she gasped and went careening forward.

  “Leslie!” Nikki yelled as she made a grab to save her.

  Too late. Leslie hit the stairs and began to roll. When she reached the bottom, she bumped up against something that broke her fall.

  “Leslie!” Nikki yelled again.

  “I’m all right!” she shouted back. “I’m at the bottom of the stairs.”

  She trained her light over the wall. This area had been boarded up, as well, in an effort to keep anyone from getting onto the unused tracks. There were weeds growing here and there, and at some point people had managed to throw empty bottles and trash down the opening.

  She trained her light on the barrier. It was old. She was sure that it had been put up decades ago. Shops, houses, the street itself, must have changed time and time again since the entrance had originally been abandoned and covered. Beyond the boards, she knew, there would be darkness. An old tunnel, dangerous, unused. She closed her eyes for a minute, trying to remember the old subway maps she had copied at the library. The tunnel was right where it should have been—and very close to the basement under the servants’ pantry at Hastings House.

  She started to rise, then remembered that her fall had been broken by something at the bottom of the steps.

  Curious, she trained her light downward.

  It appeared to be a bundle of old clothing.

  Suddenly she realized that there was an unpleasant scent in the air.

  The scent of decay…

  She reached down, her light still trained on the bundle of clothing.

  It was then that she realized she was looking at the body of a dead woman.

  18

  Joe’s heart was in his throat when he arrived on the scene.

  The street was crowded with police cars, the coroner’s wagon and a dozen detectives. He arrived with Robert Adair, who immediately took charge. At first, Joe couldn’t even find Leslie, there was so much commotion.

  Then he saw her.

  She was standing by one of the police cars, with Nikki beside her. She didn’t appear to be hurt or even fazed. In fact, she looked incredibly calm.

  He went over to her immediately, taking her by the arms, searching her eyes. “Okay,” he said, and he cast a reproachful glance toward Nikki. “Explain to me how you happened to be down at the bottom of an abandoned subway entrance.”

  She stared at him, opened her mouth to speak, then paused as if to rephrase her answer. “I just…found it. The boards were loose, so I took a peek.”

  “Like hell,” Joe muttered. “Excuse me. I need to see if they’ll let me see the body.”

  Luckily, one of the cops guarding the entrance to the alley happened to be the guy Joe had talked to a few nights earlier. He sent Joe through to Robert Adair, who was down at the foot of the stairs. One of the detectives tried to stop him, but Robert shouted up that it was all right for Joe to come down.

  The body was badly decayed, and insects and other scavengers had obviously been dining on it for a while.

  The M.E. stood, dusting his gloved hands. “She’s been down here a long time, probably four to eight weeks. Some of the flesh has been eaten entirely away. They’ve got a serious rat problem here.”

  “But it’s definitely a woman?”

  The M.E. nodded. “I’d say between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. She was about five and a half feet tall, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds.”

  One of the detectives nervously joked, “Hell of a way to lose weight, huh?”

  “All right, all right,” Robert said. “Cause of death? Can you tell me that yet?”

  “Strangulation. Her own scarf.”

  “Is it one of the prostitutes?” another officer asked.

  The M.E. shrugged. “Guys, as you can see, I don’t have a lot to work with here. I’ll get you facts as fast as I can.”

  “Right,” Robert said, then swore. “Hell, we knew they had to be somewhere. Dead two months or so…has to be our last girl.”

  Or Genevieve O’Brien? Joe thought.

  “Unless it’s Genevieve O’Brien,” someone said, voicing his own fears.

  Except that, despite the state of the body, Joe knew it wasn’t. There wasn’t so much as a hint of red in the hair. It was Betty. He didn’t need the M.E.’s report to settle that in his mind.

  He prayed that whatever sixth sense Leslie had accessed during her “vision” was right and Genevieve was alive somewhere.

  When he headed back toward the police car where Leslie was waiting, Joe discovered that she was giving a detailed report to one of the officers—and she was lying through her teeth. She had stepped behind the barricade to pull up her panty hose, stepped on the boards over the opening without realizing it, and they’d given way under her weight and she’d fallen down the steps. Then Nikki had dialed 911 and made certain Robert Adair was alerted.

  Robert had followed Joe up to the surface and joined them over by the car. “Detective Langdon, are you done with these ladies?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take them home, Joe. As soon as I have anything on the body, I’ll let you know.”

  Joe nodded. “Thanks. You know, this may not even be one of our girls.”

  “May not be,” Robert said with a shrug. “But their street is only a block away. Anyway, I’ll call you.”

  “All right, you two,” Joe said to Leslie and Nikki. “Let’s go.”

  “Joe, don’t be angry,” Leslie implored.

  “I’m not angry.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, you’ve just found a murder victim, maybe helped solved a puzzle the police haven’t gotten a grip on in almost two years. Was it at great personal risk? Yes. But am I angry? No. But, Leslie, why the hell didn’t you call someone?”

  “I was going to. I fell down the steps,” she said. “Honest.”

  He sighed, setting an arm around her shoulders and staring at Nikki.

  “We were going to call for help just as soon as we got a look,” she said.

  Joe groaned. “I’m getting you back to Hastings House, and we’ll send out for pizza,” he said, starting down the sidewalk.

  Leslie looked at him, puzzled. “Uh, sure.”

  “I’d like to keep you off the streets and away from holes in the ground for a while. I’ve got to go back out, but you’re staying in. I’m going to hire an off-duty cop to watch Hastings House tonight.”

  He was walking too quickly, he realized. Leslie and Nikki were both having to hurry to keep up. “Joe, why do we need a guard at the house? Adam will be there, Nikki will be there, and later on you’ll be there.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll get there. An
d I want the code on the alarm changed—” why hadn’t he taken care of that before? he berated himself “—and another bolt added to the door. Also, I want a steel bar for the hatch cover in the dead room.”

  “The dead room?” Nikki asked.

  “The servants’ pantry,” Leslie explained.

  When they reached the house, they didn’t have to explain to Adam what had happened. They found him in the kitchen, watching the news. He ignored Joe and looked directly at Leslie. “You knew she was down there?”

  “Not exactly,” she said.

  “Oh?” Adam persisted.

  “But earlier, I heard crying,” Leslie said.

  “You heard a dead woman crying?” Joe asked in disbelief.

  She stared at him, standing tall and straight, hands on her hips. “Yes.”

  “Nikki and Leslie can both…see things from beyond the grave,” Adam said delicately.

  “You see ghosts?” Joe accused Leslie.

  “Sometimes.”

  He shook his head. “Matt? Do you see Matt?”

  “No,” she said, but her voice quavered.

  “Adam, let’s you and I go get some takeout,” Nikki suggested.

  “Come right back, please,” Joe said, the words clearly an order, but his eyes stayed hard on Leslie’s.

  She was silent as they left.

  “You actually see ghosts,” he said at last

  “Sometimes,” she repeated. “In this case…I heard crying. But, Joe—”

  He waved a hand to cut her off.

  “You don’t believe me,” she said.

  “I do believe you. That’s the problem,” he told her.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Leslie, you’ve got to get out of here. I mean it.”

  “But, Joe—”

  “Leslie, I think you were the target on the night of the gala, not Matt. I just don’t know why. And now someone out there is kidnapping and killing women. And I think it’s someone who knows you. Who knows you have a gift for finding the dead. For whatever reason—maybe for lots of reasons—someone sees you as a threat, don’t you see that? And you’re in danger here.”

  She was quiet. “How’s Brad?”

  Joe frowned, startled by the question. “He’s fine.”

  “So you didn’t…?”

  “I told you I wasn’t going to hurt him and I didn’t.”

  “But you still think…?”

  “I think he’s a jackass, but one with a certain amount of integrity. Is he guilty? I still don’t know. What I do know is that the area around here is honeycombed with underground passages. And there are a few things I have to do tonight, but I’m going to see to it that you’re safe. I’m going to rejoin the police, and we’re going to find the truth. Without you. Do you understand?”

  “Joe,” she said firmly. “Maybe things happen for a reason. Maybe I’m back here to help, to stop this bastard. For all I know, maybe I wasn’t supposed to survive the explosion, but now I have a chance to try to help. You have to let me. Please.”

  “You have helped, Leslie. But now you have to let the pros take over.”

  He took her into his arms then and cradled her against him. Every male cell in his body wanted more. Every caution in his mind warned him that he could offer no more than his support right now, his friendship, his strength…his life.

  He drew away, even though she wasn’t fighting his hold. She was staring up into his eyes.

  She touched his cheek, a smile slowly curving her lips. “I’ll behave. Where are you going?”

  “I want to get back to Robert. The rest of that tunnel needs to be checked out.”

  She frowned and backed away from him, her words suddenly urgent. “That’s the most important thing you can do. She’s down there somewhere, Joe. Genevieve is down there.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because of the crying.”

  “But you said—”

  “I heard the echo of the dead girl’s tears, but I hear Genevieve crying, too, and her tears are real. And she’s not far from this house. I know it.”

  He pulled out his cell phone. Then he hesitated. It was ridiculous to suspect Robert. But Robert had been on his list, and Robert was the one handling what was now no longer a missing persons case but a homicide.

  Leslie didn’t want to suspect Brad.

  No one wanted to believe someone they knew and liked was capable of evil.

  He realized he was going to have to head straight over to police HQ as soon as Adam and Nikki got back. To be professional, he had to work this as he would any other case, and that meant involving law enforcement. Luckily, it wasn’t far. His feeling of urgency seemed to be increasing by the minute.

  Just then he heard the door open. “Pizza!” Nikki called out.

  Leslie smiled. “It’s okay, go.”

  He nodded. “And you be careful. When I get back, we have to talk.”

  She smiled, rose on her toes and kissed his cheek.

  He left the kitchen just as Nikki and Adam entered carrying pizza boxes and a bag of sodas.

  “You’re not eating?” Nikki asked.

  “Leslie will explain,” he said. “Don’t leave her,” he ordered as he left.

  “Not a chance,” Nikki assured him.

  After he left, Leslie ate pizza, drank soda and carried on what she thought was a calm conversation, but she felt as if she were going insane.

  “Why don’t we try it?” Nikki asked.

  Leslie stared at Nikki blankly. Apparently she hadn’t been managing the conversation as well as she’d thought. “Try what?”

  “A seance.”

  “A seance?” She almost choked on her pizza. “A seance? Nikki, isn’t that pretty silly for people like us?”

  “Maybe not,” Adam told her. “Maybe Matt has some learning to do and this will help.”

  She stared at them both. “Okay. If you think it can help.”

  Nikki shrugged. “The goal now is to find Genevieve alive. Whether any of the ghosts here can help with that or not, I don’t know. But…”

  “Okay, let’s try it. If there’s anything we can do, we should do it,” Leslie said.

  “Where?” Adam asked.

  “Where else?” Leslie said. “The dead room.”

  After several frustrating minutes in which he was continually told that the man to talk to was Robert Adair, Joe was tempted to give up. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have other suspects.

  But Robert, Ken Dryer and Hank Smith were probably the only ones in his group to have access to a contemporary black sedan at a moment’s notice. Tyson, Smith and Tryon would have a fleet of cars. And as high-ranking officers, both Dryer and Adair could use any car in the police motor pool.

  He put through a call to Eileen Brideswell. “I need help. Now,” he told her.

  In a few minutes he was ushered through to the office of Lieutenant Grayson. Grayson was nearing sixty, thin and haggard. He lowered his head in thought as Joe laid out what he knew, which was, sadly, mostly hypothetical. He refrained from saying that he didn’t want to take this evidence to Robert Adair because he was on the suspect list; he managed to make out that Robert was overworked and he didn’t want to burden him any further.

  Before Genevieve O’Brien was found as a rotting corpse, as well.

  “I can give you three men,” Grayson said. “And permission to enter the tunnels.”

  “That’s all I need. Thanks.”

  “Thank Eileen Brideswell,” Grayson said. It was obvious that he was feeling pressured into offering help. Why not? He already had a key officer on the case.

  Grayson put through a call to a man in charge of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and then Joe was on his way with three uniformed officers in tow. In a few minutes they were met at the functioning subway entrance nearest Hastings House by an MTA employee named Gregory Breen.

  He offered Joe a map. “How good this is, I don’t really know. Once you leave the main system, y
ou’re in no man’s land. No one has used a lot of the old tunnels since…hell, the twenties, maybe.”

  Breen took them down, leading them through an employee route to a tiny station somewhere below Broadway, where they came to a locked door. He unlocked and opened it, and they came face-to-face with a wooden barricade.

  “Told you,” Breen said. “These tunnels have been blocked off for decades.”

  Joe reached toward the wooden barricade, which collapsed at his touch, the wood rotted and soft.

  “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” Breen exploded.

  “Do we really need candles?” Leslie asked.

  “Why not set the mood?” Adam replied cheerfully.

  “Got any good wine?” Leslie asked dryly.

  “Sit,” Nikki told her.

  They’d brought a table into the servants’ pantry, and set three candles on it. Some light still filtered in from the main kitchen, but the small room itself was shrouded in shadow.

  “What now?” Leslie asked.

  “We hold hands,” Adam said.

  “And then…?”

  “Leave it to Nikki.”

  As they sat there, Leslie closed her eyes. Somehow it seemed like the right thing to do.

  She waited, wondering what words Nikki would say to try to conjure the spirits. But there was no hoopla.

  “Matt,” Nikki said softly. “If you’re there, we need help. We know that you’ve been trying to reach Leslie, that you have reached her, but we need more help from you. Please, if you can…”

  Nikki was still speaking when Leslie first felt him. Somehow she knew he was by her side.

  And when she turned, she could see him.

  He was there, and yet he wasn’t there. He was only the merest suggestion of a form in the air, but at the same time he was the man she had known, tall, handsome and, at that moment, serious. She forgot that Nikki and Adam were present and stood, slipping into his arms. He wasn’t real, but somehow she could feel him, feel his touch on her hair, his strength as he pulled her against him. And she could hear him. “Leslie, you’ve got to get out of here, all of you. He came in by the front door. He knows the combination.”

  “Who?” Nikki’s question was Leslie’s first indication that she wasn’t the only one hearing Matt.