Fever Dream (43 page)

But Felder had not come here to look at books. He had come for the library’s equally vast collection of genealogical research
materials.

He walked to the research assistance station that bisected the room, itself made of ornately carved wood, as large as a suburban
house. After a brief whispered exchange, a library cart full of ledgers and folders was presented to him. He wheeled it to
the nearest table, then took a seat and began placing the materials on the polished wooden surface. They were darkened and
foxed with age but nevertheless impeccably clean. The various documents and sets of records had one thing in common: they
dated from 1870 to 1880, and they documented the area of Manhattan in which Constance Greene claimed to have grown up.

Ever since the commitment proceedings, Felder had been thinking about the young woman’s story. It was nonsense, of course—the
ravings of someone who had completely lost touch with reality. A classic case of circumscribed delusion: psychotic disorder,
unspecified.

And yet Constance Greene did not present like the typical person totally out of touch with reality. There was something about
her that puzzled—no,
intrigued
—him.

I was indeed born on Water Street in the ’70s—the
1870s.
You will find all you need to know in the city archives on Centre Street, and more in the New York Public Library… I know,
because I have seen the records myself
.

Was this some clue she was offering them: some morsel of
information that might clear up the mystery? Was it perhaps a cry
for help? Only a careful examination of the records could provide an answer. He briefly wondered why he was doing this: his
involvement in the case was over, and he was a very busy man with a successful private practice. And yet… he found himself
damnably curious.

An hour later, Felder sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. Among the reams of yellowing documents was a Manhattan
subcensus entry that indeed listed the family in question as dwelling at 16 Water Street.

Leaving the papers on the table, he rose and made his way down the stairs to the Genealogical Research Division on the first
floor. His search of the Land Records and Military Service Records came up empty, and the 1880 US census showed nothing, but
the 1870 census listed a Horace Greene as living in Putnam County, New York. An examination of Putnam County tax records from
the years prior provided a few additional crumbs.

Felder walked slowly back upstairs and sat down at the table. Now he carefully opened the manila folder he had brought and
arranged its meager contents—obtained from the Public Records Office—on its surface.

What, exactly, had he learned so far?

In 1870, Horace Greene had been a farmer in Carmel, New York. Wife, Chastity Greene; one daughter, Mary, aged eight.

In 1874, Horace Greene was living at 16 Water Street in Lower Manhattan, occupation stevedore. He now had three children:
Mary, twelve; Joseph, three; Constance, one.

In 1878, New York City Department of Health death certificates had been issued for both Horace and Chastity Greene. Death
in each case was listed as tuberculosis. This would have left the three children—now aged sixteen, seven, and five—orphans.

An 1878 police ledger listed Mary Greene as being charged with “streetwalking”—prostitution. Court records indicated she had
testified that she had tried to find work as a laundress and seamstress, but that the pay had been insufficient to provide
for herself and her siblings. Social welfare records from the same year listed Mary Greene as being confined to the Five Points
Mission for an indefinite period. There were no other records; she seemed to have disappeared.

Another police ledger, from 1880, recorded one Castor
McGillicutty as having beaten Joseph Greene, ten, to death upon catching
the boy picking his pocket. Sentence: ten dollars and sixty days of hard labor in The Tombs, later commuted.

And that was it. The last—and indeed only—mention of a Constance Greene was the 1874 census.

Felder returned the documents to the folder and closed it with a sigh. It was a depressing enough story. It seemed clear that
the woman calling herself Constance Greene had seized upon this particular family—and this lone bit of information—and made
it the subject of her own delusional fantasies. But why? Of all the countless thousands, millions, of families in New York
City—many with more extensive and colorful histories—why had she chosen this one? Could they have been her ancestors? But
the records for the family seemed to end with this generation: there was nothing he could find to foster any belief that even
a single member of the Greene family had survived beyond 1880.

Rising from his seat with another sigh, he went to the research desk and requested a few dozen local Manhattan newspapers
from the late 1870s. He paged through them at random, glancing listlessly at the articles, notices, and advertisements. It
was of course hopeless: he didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly—in fact he didn’t know why he was looking in the first
place. What was it about Constance Greene and her condition that puzzled him so? It wasn’t as if…

Suddenly—while leafing through an 1879 issue of the Five Points tabloid
New-York Daily Inquirer
—he paused. On an inside page was a copperplate engraving titled
Guttersnipes at Play.
The illustration depicted a row of tenements, squalid, rough-and-tumble. Dirty-faced urchins were playing stickball in the
street. But off to one side stood a single thin girl, looking on, broom in one hand. She was thin to the point of emaciation,
and in contrast with the other children her expression was downcast, almost frightened. But what had stopped Felder dead was
her face. In every line and detail, it was the spitting image of Constance Greene.

Felder stared at the engraving for a long moment. Then, very slowly, he closed the newspaper, a thoughtful, sober expression
on his face.

Caltrop, Louisiana

A
RAPID SERIES OF SHOTS RANG OUT AS HAYWARD
threw herself sideways, instantly followed by the roar of the shotgun. She landed hard on the ground, feeling the backwash
from the cloud of buckshot that blasted by her. She rolled, yanking out her piece. But the phony doctor had already wheeled
about and was flying toward the parking lot, white coat flapping behind him. She heard more shots and a screeching of wheels
as a vintage Rolls-Royce came careering across the parking lot, tires smoking. She saw Pendergast was leaning out the driver’s
window, firing his pistol like a cowboy firing from a galloping horse.

With a scream of rubber the Rolls went into a power slide. Even before it came to a stop, Pendergast flung the door open and
ran up to her.

“I’m fine!” she said, struggling to rise. “I’m
fine
, damn it! Look—he’s getting away!”

Even as she spoke she heard an unseen engine roar to life in the lot. A car went screeching away, a flash of red taillights
disappearing out the access drive.

He hauled her to her feet. “No time. Follow me.”

He pushed through the double doors and they ran past a scene of growing panic and alarm, a security guard crouching behind
his
desk yelling into the phone, the receptionist and several employees lying prone on the floor. Ignoring them, Pendergast
charged through another set of double doors and grabbed the first doctor he encountered.

“The code in Three Twenty-three,” he said, showing his badge. “It’s attempted murder. The patient has been injected with a
drug of some kind.”

The doctor, almost without blinking, said: “Got it. Let’s go.”

The three ran up a staircase to D’Agosta’s room. Hayward was confronted with a buzz of activity: a group of nurses and doctors
working purposefully and almost silently next to a bank of machines. Lights blinked and alarms softly sounded. D’Agosta was
lying in the bed, unmoving.

The doctor calmly stepped into the room. “Everyone listen. This patient was injected with a drug intended to kill him.”

A nurse raised her head. “How in the world—?”

The doctor cut her off with a gesture. “The question is:
Which drug are these symptoms consistent with?
”

A rising hubbub followed, a furious discussion, a review of charts and data sheets. The doctor turned to Pendergast and Hayward.
“There’s nothing more you can do now. Please wait outside.”

“I want to wait here,” Hayward said.

“Absolutely not. I’m sorry.”

As Hayward turned, another alarm went off and she saw the EKG monitor flatlining. “Oh, my God,” she burst out. “Let me wait
here, please,
please
—”

The door shut firmly and Pendergast gently led her away.

The waiting room was small and sterile, with plastic chairs and a single window that looked out into the night. Hayward stood
by it, staring unseeing into the black rectangle. Her mind was working furiously but going nowhere, like a broken engine.
Her mouth was dry, and her hands were trembling. A single tear trickled down her cheek—a tear of frustration and unfocused
rage.

She felt Pendergast’s hand on her shoulder. She brushed it off and took a step away.

“Captain?” came the low voice. “May I remind you there’s been an attempted homicide—against Lieutenant D’Agosta. And against
you.”

The cool voice penetrated the fog of her fury. She shook her head. “Just get the hell away from me.”

“You need to start thinking about this problem like a police officer. I need your help, and I need it now.”

“I’m not interested in your problem anymore.”

“Unfortunately, it isn’t my problem anymore.”

She swallowed, staring into the darkness, fists clenched. “If he dies…”

The cool, almost mesmerizing voice went on. “That’s out of our hands. I want you to listen to me carefully. I want you to
be Captain Hayward, not Laura Hayward, for a moment. There is something important we must discuss. Now.”

She closed her eyes, feeling numb to the core. She didn’t even have the energy to rebuff him.

“It would seem,” said Pendergast, “we’re dealing with a killer who is also a doctor.”

She closed her eyes. She was tired of this, tired of it all, tired of life. If Vinnie died… She forced the thought out of
her mind.

“Extraordinary measures were taken to keep Vincent’s location a secret. Clearly the would-be killer had special access to
patient charts, medical supply and pharmaceutical records. There are only two possibilities. The first is that he or she was
a member of the team that is actually treating Vincent, but that would be both extremely coincidental and extremely unlikely:
they have all been carefully vetted. The other possibility—and the one I believe to be the case—is that Vincent was found
by tracing the pig valve used in his recent operation. His assailant might even be a cardiac surgeon.”

When she said nothing, he went on. “Do you realize what this means? It means Vincent was used as bait. The perpetrator deliberately
induced a deadly coma, knowing it would lure us to the bedside. Naturally he anticipated we would arrive together. The fact
we didn’t is the only thing that saved us.”

She remained with her back turned, hiding her face.
Bait.
Vinnie, used as bait. After a brief silence, Pendergast continued.

“There’s nothing more we can do about that for the present. Meanwhile, I believe I have made a critical discovery. While we
were separated, I looked into June Brodie’s suicide and found some interesting coincidences. As we know, the suicide occurred
only a week
after Slade’s death in the fire. About a month afterward, June’s husband told his neighbors he was going on a
trip abroad and left, never to be seen again. The house was shut up and eventually sold. I tried to trace him but found the
trail completely cold—except I could find no evidence he had left the country.”

Despite herself, Hayward turned slowly around.

“June was an attractive woman. And it appears she’d been having a long-term affair with Slade.”

Hayward spoke at last. “There you have it,” she snapped. “It wasn’t a suicide. The husband murdered her and took off.”

“There are two pieces of evidence against that supposition. The first is the suicide note.”

“He forced her to write it.”

“As you know, there’s no sign of stress in the handwriting. And there’s something else. Not long before her suicide, June
Brodie was diagnosed with a particularly fast-acting form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: Lou Gehrig’s disease. It would
have killed her fairly quickly anyway.”

Hayward thought. “The disease would argue for suicide.”

“Murder,” murmured Pendergast. “Suicide. Perhaps it was neither.”

Hayward ignored this typically Pendergastian comment. “Your PI, Hudson, was killed while investigating Brodie. In all likelihood,
that means whoever’s behind all this doesn’t want us on her trail. That makes June Brodie a person of key importance for us.”

Pendergast nodded. “Indeed.”