Entombed (32 page)

"I'm going to ask you
again. What happened?"

Mike and Mercer looked
at each other.

Mercer spoke first.
"The cops in the precinct think it was a prank. They-"

"A prank? Are they
nuts? Haven't they ever read Poe?"

"Hear me out." He
stood up and walked to my bed, lowered the rail and sat beside me.
"There was a mugging down at the end of the park, in the playground
behind the bandshell. A fifteen-yearold girl was watching over her kid
brother and she got roughed up by some homies. Threw her down, snatched
her wallet, touched some body parts they shouldn't have."

"I heard the screams.
I remember that much."

"It was three guys,
part of a gang. Wannabe baby Bloods. Punks from the 'hood who were just
running around roughing folks up."

"Were they caught?"

"Not yet. They
scattered in different directions."

"I saw one run across
the street."

"Yeah," Mike said.
"He's the one I figured maybe you tried to follow."

"The girl who was
mugged-she knows who they are?"

Mercer smoothed the
bedcover. "She's not saying yet. She's got to live there on One Hundred
Ninety-second Street without any protection-and she's smart enough to
know that."

"And what does that
have to do with me?"

"The cops figure the
gang was just wilding. While a few of them were causing trouble at the
south end of the park, a couple of them saw you standing alone and-"

"I was alone for maybe
sixty seconds."

"It only took two to
smack you over the head with a two-by-four."

"Is that what it was?"

"There was one at the
bottom of the front steps. It's at the lab now, being tested for blood
and hair," Mercer said. "Then they carried you into the root cellar,
tied your hands with your own scarf, gagged you, and tucked you under
the boards."

"How could they know?
Why would they-"

"Trust me, Coop," Mike
said. "It ain't nothin' they picked up spending time at the local
library reading short stories. Ms. Bailey says that root cellar is just
an empty little room that's been an attractive local nuisance for ages.
It's too damp to keep any of their supplies in, it's got no security,
except when the entire park is locked at night. All those floorboards
are loose-it's not like they were nailed down or anything. Hoodlums
break in all the time to sit there and smoke dope. These kids just
picked up a few planks and dropped you in to scare you to death."

"And that part of it
worked just fine. Tell them for me when you find them. What was I
gagged with? And tied?"

"The gag was a sock,"
Mike said.

"Just like Aurora
Tait," I said, thinking of our skeleton in the basement.

"Your scarf was around
your hands. Really loose."

"Loose to you, maybe.
I'm telling you I couldn't move a muscle. Somebody put me in there to
kill me."

Mike looked at Mercer
again.

"Don't treat me like a
psycho, like I'm exaggerating this. Have they ever found anything under
the floorboards there before?"

"Yeah. Dead animals.
Half-eaten sandwiches. Weapons. It's a natural. It's like the local
haunted house."

"And you're going to
tell me no one saw anybody lurking around the cottage before this
happened, or running away from it afterwards?"

Mercer hesitated.
"We've got a 'scrip, actually. Two kids, probably part of the same gang
that worked over the teenager."

"Well, what's the
description?"

"What's the difference
if you never got a look at them?" Mike asked. "You're not the one who's
going to make an ID. The docs tell us even if you'd seen someone or
heard them coming right before you got whacked on the head, the blow
would have wiped out the short-term memory. You'd never call it up."

"Who's the witness?" I
asked.

"You know the rules."

"Well, I can only hope
it's not you," I said to Mike. "After today I would hate to have to
rely on you for anything. And just for the record, I want the police
reports to say that whoever stored me in that-that hole in the
ground-was either leaving me there to die-"

"Yeah, right. With
visiting hours just about to begin."

"Or planning to come
back and get me after dark and then take me somewhere to finish me off."

"These kids wanted you
to wiggle loose and pop out of your box right in the middle of some
school tour and give the third-graders from the suburbs an urban legend
to take home with them," Mike said.

The phone rang. I
stared at it and inched farther down in the bed. "Who knows I'm here? I
don't want to talk to anyone."

"That's gonna be
Sarah," Mercer said. "She's been concerned about you all day. I told
her to wait until they got you into a room this evening before she
called."

I took the receiver
after he answered for me. "Do I still have a job?"

My loyal deputy had
held down the fort for me through protracted trials, complicated
investigations, and personal turmoil-or mental health days, as we liked
to call them.

"How's the head?" It
was good to hear the normalcy of Sarah's voice. "You know I wouldn't
get to throw my weight around at all if you were here at your desk
every day. I'd written you off for the course of the Upshaw matter
anyway. The boss wants you to stay out for another week, and I'm just
adding my vote to his."

We chatted for a few
minutes, while Sarah assured me she was on top of everything that was
pending. I thanked her for her friendship and hung up the phone.

By the time my doctor
arrived, he had studied the test results and confirmed that I had
neither fractures nor a concussion. If I was stable throughout the
night, he would sign the release forms on his morning rounds.

Mercer called out for
my soup while he and Mike were eating their pizza. We were waiting for
the delivery when Mike turned the television on to catch the end of
Jeopardy!

Trebek told us the
final category was Famous Names.

"Level playing field,"
Mike said. "Twenty each?"

Mercer agreed.

"I'm not interested,"
I said. Then I thought of my handbag. "Did they get my pocketbook?"

"You left it locked in
the car when we went into the cottage. Don't you remember?"

"Not really. I feel a
little disoriented."

"It's still there. How
do you think I paid for dinner?" Mike asked.

"Great cartographer,
born Gerhard Kremer in 1512, who coined the word 'atlas'-after the
mythical Titan he idolized-for his collection of world maps, renamed
himself this," Trebek said.

"Help yourself to
another twenty. I'm out," I said.

The three contestants
drew the same blank I did.

"I guess Rand and
McNally weren't born in 1512," Mike said.

"Baby needs new
shoes," Mercer said, holding out his hand to Mike. "Who was Mercator?
Gerardus Mercator."

"Sometimes you
surprise me," Mike said. "The old man?"

Mercer's father had
been a mechanic for Delta Airlines. "He used to bring home maps all the
time, so I could study the pilot's routes. Don't you guys remember
Mercator's projections, with those rectilinear rhumb lines?"

"Sorry, Mercer. I'm
fading on you."

"I have one little
present I've been saving," Mercer said. "Transit's got the MetroCard
decoded-the one from the pocket of the Silk Stocking Rapist. They faxed
it up to the office this afternoon. You'll have it tomorrow."

"Any surprises?"

"Lexington Avenue
subway. Seventy-seventh Street mostly. Just where we figured he was
living or working. You can grid it out yourself when you get home. See
if it tells you anything."

By nine o'clock, I
could barely hold my eyes open. The guys were playing gin at my bedside.

"Give in to it, Coop.
You're whipped," Mike said. He put down his hand and walked out to ask
the nurse for my medications.

I was fighting sleep
because I was terrified of my dreams. The pain had subsided but the
feeling of being entombed infused every one of my senses. I ached to
shut down my body and brain, but dreaded the nightmares to come.

The nurse came in with
the white paper cup and dumped some pills into my hand. I didn't even
ask what they were before I swallowed them.

Mercer stood up to
pull the chain that turned off the light over my pillow.

"Leave it on, please,"
I said.

He kissed the tip of
my nose. "I'll keep the one next to my chair on all night. I'm not
going anywhere, Alex."

I turned on my side
and tried to get comfortable. Think wonderful thoughts, happy thoughts,
my mother used to tell me as a child, when I awakened during the night.
Then I would close my eyes and imagine myself walking on the beach with
my father, holding his hand while he told me stories about his youth
and his romance with my mother, or think of my last trip to my
grand-mother's farm, and how she indulged me whenever I visited there.
Now I called up memories of the happiest events I could conjure, but
they were interrupted by dark visions of the day barely over.

I remember opening my
eyes, seeing Mike and Mercer engrossed in their card game, and closing
them again. I felt the pills start to do their magic. I fell asleep.

It must have been
seven o'clock when I awakened. The morning routine in a hospital never
allows sleeping in. Nurses and aides changing shifts, meal trolleys
carting forty trays down the hall, and janitors mopping floors overcame
the strongest sleeping potions.

I stirred and looked
up. Mercer and Mike were gone, but the deck of cards was on the table
next to my water pitcher.

I sat up and outside
the door of my room saw the back of a cop's uniform. The officer seemed
to be dozing in his chair, his head hanging forward. I pushed down the
bed railing and started toward him. He must have heard the noise and
stood up immediately, walking into the room.

"Miss Cooper? Morning.
I'm Gerry McCallion, from the Thirteenth-"

"Where's Wallace?
Where's Chapman?"

"They were gone when I
got here, about one
A.M.
Don't worry, ma'am.
You were never alone. There was an interim shift-"

"I'm not worried about
that. It's not like them to leave once they told me they'd be here."

"It's the one from
Homicide, Miss Cooper. Around midnight, he got a call with some bad
news."

"What-?"

McCallion spoke over
me. "His ladyfriend was in some kind of accident up in Canada. Broke
her neck in a fall is what I was told. The girl is dead."

33

"Where are you?" I
asked Mercer. "Can you talk?"

"Yeah. I just stepped
out of the car when my phone rang. Mike's out cold. He fell asleep
about fifteen minutes ago. What time is it?"

"Almost eight o'clock.
What happened? Where-"

"Val's brother called
Mike on his cell phone. I had gone to the other room to put my head
down for an hour or so-must have come in around twelve. This ski
business, you know about it?"

"Val talked about it a
bit. A helicopter flies them out somewhere in the wilderness, drops
them on top of a mountain. Pure powder, that kind of thing. Experts
only."

"Yeah, well, one of
the dangers is that those uncharted runs can be pretty unstable,"
Mercer said, pausing. "The group of them jumping, or something the
chopper did letting them down, set off some kind of cataclysmic
reaction."

"She fell, is that
what did it?"

"Three of them, Alex,
they went off into a crevasse. The snow shifted and exposed an enormous
break in the surface. Val and two others just-just went over the edge.
Her brother was in the pack behind them. He watched it happen."

I thought of the
courage with which Valerie Jacobsen had fought to conquer the cancer
that had ravaged her body, only to lose her life to a treacherous sport.

"This happened
yesterday?"

"The day before. It
took them twenty-four hours to recover the bodies."

"And Mike only got the
call last night? What are those people thinking? Don't they have any
idea how much he loves her?"

"His fix on it? He's
sure Val's parents didn't want him out there. I don't think they knew
how serious the relationship was. He thinks they just didn't want to
know."

"The funeral?"

"First thing this
morning. Nine o'clock, in Palo Alto. Family only. He couldn't have
gotten there in time if he wanted to. Maybe they planned it that way."

I always thought it
was one of the things the Jewish religion dealt with best. Don't sit
with the body in a room for a week. Get the burial done before the next
day's sundown and then get on with the grieving. It was so at odds with
the practices Mike had grown up with in the Catholic Church, and so
foreign to his personal experience.

"There's going to be a
memorial service in two weeks, according to the brother," Mercer said.
"I'm telling you, Alex, Mike's in a blind rage. He doesn't know who to
lash out at."

"Where are you?"

"That's a good
question," Mercer said. "Ever hear of Jamestown, Rhode Island?"

"Sure, right over the
bridge from Newport. Why?"

"We're parked behind a
gas station here," Mercer answered softly. "We've been jackassing all
over the place since we left Manhattan. It's like he's trying to find a
piece of Val, something concrete to hang on to. I can't explain it any
better than that."

"But there?"

"When his phone
vibrated, he left your room so he wouldn't wake you up. Of course, he
had no idea who was calling or why. He came in and woke me up-must have
been just after he got the news."

"What'd he do?"

"He-he was just out of
control. He was angry-he knew he had to get out of the hospital before
he turned the place upside down. I'd say he was more furious than he
was sad."