The Dead Room
Page 43

“Perfect, thanks. See you soon.”
She jumped into shower, then paused. The house seemed so…empty. There had to be at least fifty people downstairs, and yet she felt…
As if the house was quiet. As if it were silent, watching, waiting….
“Matt?” she whispered. He wouldn’t leave her. He would trust her. If he could, he would come to her. But she had no sensation of him being near.
Thank God she would be able to explain some of what was going on with her now, and to people who wouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that she had become delusional in the wake of her loss.
The thought made her feel cheerful as she dressed in heels and a knit halter dress, then threw an embroidered shawl over her shoulders. When she went to transfer her essentials into a dressier handbag than she usually used, she saw that there was a message on her phone.
It was Joe. He wanted her to call and tell him where they would be, and said he would join them at some point during the evening.
By the time she went downstairs, the tours were gone, Melissa was getting ready to leave, and Adam and Nikki were waiting in the hall.
Melissa, like Brad, looked as if she would like an invitation to hang around. Normally, Leslie would have asked her to join them at least for a drink, but not tonight. She was too desperate to spill her guts to her friends. “I’ll get the doughnuts tomorrow morning,” she told Melissa in answer to her hopeful look.
“Okay…cool. I’ll be in early, like usual. Will I see you two again?” she asked Adam and Nikki, trying to hide her disappointment at being excluded.
“I don’t have to be at the airport until around ten or eleven,” Adam said, smiling. “I’m sure I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
At last Melissa was gone, and the alarm had been set, and Leslie spun around on the stairs to face her friends. “I’m so glad to see you guys!” she exploded.
“Was it a mistake to come back here?” Nikki asked gently.
“No…no, I would never say that, but…”
“Is Matt here?” Adam asked.
“Yes. And no.”
“Why don’t we find a place to eat and you can tell us all about it?” Nikki asked.
“There’s a great pub around the corner, O’Malley’s. It’s been there since before I first came to New York,” Adam said.
“Sounds good to me. There’s…a lot to tell,” Leslie said.
“We’ve got all night,” Nikki said.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” Leslie said.
“Start with your arrival,” Adam said. “We can talk as we walk.”
On the way back to his car, Joe realized with a touch of anxiety that there were no messages on his phone. He’d thought he’d simply missed Leslie’s call while he was out of cell range down in the crypt, but it looked as if she hadn’t called him back at all.
His association with her had apparently given him free access to the site, so he’d decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check out the work being done in the crypt for himself, just to make sure there wouldn’t be any more “accidents” of any kind down there. He wondered how happy Laymon would have been to find out that the people working the find considered it to be far more Leslie’s dig than his. He was certain Laymon wouldn’t appreciate the fact that he was prowling around on his own.
The crypt yielded no clues to anything, though he stood there just looking around for a long time. While he stood there, he found himself talking aloud to his dead cousin again. “What’s going on here, Matt? What the hell am I looking for?”
Damn it, Joe, don’t you think I’d be doing more if I knew? It’s a mystery to me, too. It has something to do with what’s happening underground, I know that much. I mean, that room where I died is right over the basement, and there are bones in the basement…Watch out for her, Joe.
Was that his own wishful thinking talking? Yeah, Matt, give me your blessing. She was the love of your life, and she’s still in love with you, but I’ve got to be near her, at least. And I hope to God I’m helping.
After a while he decided he’d spent too much time by himself in a hole in the earth carrying on an imaginary conversation with his dead cousin, so he left and headed for his car. Once there, he looked at his watch, thought about what traffic was going to be like, swore and decided on the subway. As he was waiting on the platform, he found himself deep in thought again. He couldn’t guarantee yesterday’s whereabouts of any of the men who were becoming suspects in his mind. To imagine that any one of them could be an unbelievably crafty killer was beyond imagination. And yet, he was convinced that the missing hookers, the missing heiress and the explosion were all connected and that all he had to do was get the dots connected in the right order. He considered the possibilities as he stepped onto the train and grabbed the pole for support. The cops: Ken Dryer and Robert Adair. He’d known Robert forever, and it was Robert who’d connected him with Eileen Brideswell. Robert was a good old nose-to-the-pavement detective. Dryer was a peacock. Good at his job, though, a job that took him all over the city. The others: Hank Smith…the builder. He would know a lot about basements. Laymon. Seriously, did the man ever think about anything other than his work? Then again, maybe still waters ran deep, as the saying went. Laymon was so dedicated during his working hours that maybe he went off like dynamite when he wasn’t digging. And Brad. Both Brad and Laymon had been working in Virginia when several of the disappearances had occurred. But the distance from New York wasn’t that great.
The subway rattled on, the lights occasionally blinking off, then back on. They were deep underground. You had to love Manhattan. What it couldn’t supply above—speedy transportation—it did beneath. Dark, damp and deserted, the tunnels down here seemed to stretch forever.
Had it been an accident when Leslie was pitched onto the tracks? It was actually surprising that things like that didn’t happen more often than they did. So many people, a wave of humanity. The only way it could have been intentional was if someone had been following her. And he hadn’t been able to clear any of his suspects; none of them had been at the dig.
So Leslie was very likely a target now, he thought.
What if she’d been the actual target all along, not Matt?
But why?
Because she had an eerie ability to find human remains.
He reached his stop and made his way up through the crowds to the street, then the photo shop on Christopher Street. The storefront was simple, with cameras on display. It was narrow and looked like a hole-in-the-wall, but it stretched back forever. Cops and P.I.s used Harry constantly; he had a unique way with photos, no matter what their source.
“Hey,” Harry said, seeing him when he entered. He had been helping an elderly lady with her cat photos, and while she was busy oohing and aahing, Harry was able to excuse himself. “Joe. How are you?”
Harry pumped his hand. Harry always reminded Joe of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from the Muppets. He had a thatch of white hair that stood straight out to all sides, huge glasses, and was impossibly tall and thin. And he always wore a lab coat.
“Did you find anything?”
“Maybe. It would’ve been easier with a digital image, but I’ve been playing with it. Come on back and I’ll show you what I’ve got.”
Harry led Joe along a narrow hallway to the rooms behind the public area. They entered an office to the left.
“I’ve run off a few copies for you,” Harry explained, sitting down at his computer. “But I thought you might want to see it on screen.”
“Thanks.”
Harry hit a button, and the photo popped up. There was Genevieve, her beautiful eyes wide and her arm around Betty.
The man was a bit to the side. Had he actually been with them? Or had he simply been caught in the photo?
No photographic manipulation in the world could change the fact that he hadn’t been facing the camera. But with the shot blown up and enhanced, Joe was able to get a sense of the man’s profile. He stared for a minute, sensing that he should know who it was but unable to make an ID.
Then he swore softly.
“Did I help?” Harry asked.
“You bet,” Joe told him, his heart racing. “Son of a bitch, you bet.”
15
E ven though she was the one who might be in trouble, Leslie had to find out how Nikki and Adam were doing—she couldn’t help it. She was curious about her friends. But Nikki, sensing that Leslie had something on her mind, quickly steered her back to her own situation. But though she loved Adam, she realized that she just couldn’t quite explain everything that had been happening, not to him. She merely said that Matt had been coming into her dreams, even though he hadn’t made contact in any other way. She also talked about the “accidents,” and she tried to explain Joe and the fact that he was so much like Matt…and yet not like Matt at all.
The hardest thing to explain, actually, was the incident on the subway platform. She’d been so certain that she’d seen Matt there at first, urging her to move, and yet, it had been Joe who pulled her out.
“Accidents,” Adam murmured.
“Perhaps you should get out of here,” Nikki said.
“I’m not afraid of ghosts.”
Nikki smiled. “Well, we’ve both had the opportunity to learn that it’s the living who are the most dangerous.”
Leslie nodded; Nikki had voiced her own thoughts.
“And then,” Leslie said, “there are the prostitutes who’ve gone missing, along with a young social worker who knew some of them and is also missing. Plus there’s a good possibility that the explosion that killed Matt and almost killed me may not have been an accident.”
“Another good reason for you to leave,” Adam said.
“And another good reason for me to stay.”
“Because…?” Nikki prompted.
“Because I think I may be here because I can somehow help. There are ghosts in the house. I saw and spoke with Elizabeth—and Matt was the one who told me she needed help.”