The Dead Room (22 page)

“That's a busy agenda. You'll still be able to find me some old maps?”

“You want maps? I'll get you maps,” he assured her.

“Will you drop me at the library?”

“Sure. But you might want to shower and change again first. You're wearing a little too much brick dust to be fashionable.”

She looked down at herself and laughed. “Okay. I'll hurry.”

She was humming as she ran up the stairs.

 

Melissa and Tandy—who was leading the tours that day—were told about the discovery but sworn to secrecy. While Joe waited for Leslie, he found himself drawn to the main dining room, where Tandy was giving her speech to a group of college students from Columbia University.

“Imagine a very different place,” she began. “When the story of New York first began, the action was here, downtown. Times Square was a distant and savage land where the Algonquin-speaking natives still reigned. New York was first taken by the Dutch. The Dutch West India Company established a fur-trading post here in 1625. Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch colonial governor, was a tyrant. He closed the taverns at nine, for God's sake. When the English came in 1664, they easily ousted the Dutch without a fight and renamed the city—which had been called New Amsterdam—New York, after James, Duke of York, and brother of Charles II. We stand near the Five Points area of the Sixth Ward—the area roughly bounded now by Broadway, Canal Street, the Bowery and Park Row. Disease and death were a hallmark of the poorer, more densely populated areas. People used ponds and waterways to dump refuse and sewage. And with poverty came violence and finally rebellion.

“This city is one of the places where liberty began, where battles were fought and riots surged. When you walk out the door, you'll see the vital, high-stakes city of today. But I hope that by the time you leave Hastings House, you'll also have a better understanding of the city beneath and all the sins buried by time.”

The city beneath.

Buried sins.

The words haunted Joe. How many people disappeared, simply vanished, as if they'd never been? The rivers were too iffy—sometimes bodies escaped whatever weights held them down and bobbed to the surface, and New York City wasn't an easy place to dig holes where they wouldn't be seen.

The city beneath.

But where to begin looking?

 

Leslie was grateful that her job allowed access to areas of the library where most people couldn't go, and that the records regarding Hastings House were in good order.

She waded through a lot of information on the many roles the house had played during the years, having been a school and an office building, among other things. So many facades and changes had been added over the years that the building's true contours had almost been forgotten. Only the threat of demolition ten years earlier had brought the true persona of the place to light. Additions, later ornamentation and other changes had been painstakingly researched and removed and the historic gem been brought back.

At last she reached the early history of the house. Built by a sea captain in the late 1700s, it had been left to his niece, Elizabeth, at his death.

Her heart quickened; she had never expected it to be this easy.

Elizabeth had married a merchant, Jacob Martin. Martin had remarried in 1803. The parish register commented that Elizabeth Martin, age twenty-one, was presumed dead. But there was also a notation left in the register by a priest who had not wanted to assume the task of remarrying Mr. Martin. “Jacob claimed earlier that his wife deserted him and their babe for Gordon Black, a sailor who often came to port but has not appeared since. In his haste to remarry, he has convinced the elders that Elizabeth must have perished on the journey, else she would have returned to take their babe, young Sarah. I fear that for a man to be so certain of his wife's death, he may have been witness to it. He appears, however, to be a pillar of our dear parish, and it is she, Elizabeth, who is scorned, dead or alive, by the men of character around us.”

“Poor Elizabeth,” she whispered, shaking her head sadly. She paused a minute, feeling as if her heart had suddenly become very heavy.
Matt, were you with me? Did you try to tell me first? I can see Elizabeth, talk to her. Why can't I see
you,
talk to
you?

“All right,” she murmured aloud. “You wanted me to help Elizabeth, and I swear I'll do my best. Please, though…let me help you. And myself.”

She shut up. She was alone and talking to herself. Time to get back to work.

She'd had access to all these records earlier. But at the time she'd been looking for old delft plates, silver…other treasures left behind.

She went still suddenly. She was in a private section of the library; she was alone. But she'd had the feeling of being watched. A creeping sensation teased the back of her neck. She looked up. It was the way she had felt in the crypt the other night.
Not at all as if she were being stalked by a ghostly presence.

Ghosts were usually pale essences. They didn't want to hurt anyone; they wanted to be helped. Occasionally, they were bitter or liked to play pranks. Both Adam Harrison and Nikki Blackhawk had told her that they'd never encountered a ghost that was actually vicious—except against whoever had caused them to become a ghost.

She groaned softly, laying her head on her arms on the table. She could just see the conversation with a therapist.
Am I paranoid? I don't think so. I'm not afraid of the dark, and I'm certainly not afraid of ghosts. Hell, some of my favorite people are ghosts. In fact, I may never date again. I have this spectacular ghost who comes to me at night…But the thing is, I feel like I'm being stalked, but not by a ghost, by…evil.

She lifted her head, determined that she had far too much work ahead of her to fall prey to her imagination.

She dialed Brad's cell phone.

“Leslie?” he asked. “Where are you?”

“The library. Are the engineers still working at the site?”

“Yup. They think they'll finish around three.”

“Can you meet me back at Hastings House? I've got something exciting to show you.”

“When? I'll need a little time.”

“Four o'clock?”

“Sure. What did you find?”

“I'll show you.”

 

First things first. Joe put in a call to Genevieve's old office and, after only a few minutes of exasperation, got through to the voice menu and then to Alice. Bless her. She'd copied the files and agreed to meet him downstairs with them.

He took the files, giving her a big kiss on the cheek and promising her the best dinner the city of New York could offer. Flushed and pleased, she assured him it wasn't necessary but also that she would love it.

Then he hurried home. Time was of the essence—he felt that keenly. But he still had to shower, shave, change and get organized.

But the shower could wait another few minutes.

In the basement, he impatiently took a pickax to his wall. Dumb—it could have been done with much less damage—but he didn't have time.

What was it with people choosing to wall up their treasures—or their buried sins—in the fireplace wall?

At first he found nothing. Great. He had destroyed half his basement on a whim. But on what he had determined would be his last stroke, he hit a hollow spot.

And there, behind the bricks, was a little shelf. On the shelf was a single Civil War-era tobacco tin.

And in the tin were sheets of handwritten music.

He stared at the tin and its contents for several minutes, disbelieving at first, then uneasy. He looked around the house.
What? Was he suddenly going to start believing in ghosts?

Was it all logic and research, as Leslie sometimes claimed?

“I'll get it to a music publisher,” he said aloud. Then he was embarrassed. He was alone in his own house, talking to himself. Worse. Talking to someone who wasn't there. To someone who had been dead for more than a hundred years.

But he spoke aloud again. “I promise. I'll do it.”

He took the tin and left the basement, still feeling that sense of urgency, that certainty that time was of the utmost importance. He headed straight to the copies of the files from Robert Adair's folders and those Alice had given him, and started cross-referencing. He found one name in both.

Heidi Arundsen.

Genevieve had worked with her.

The cops had interviewed her regarding a girl who had disappeared about a month before Genevieve O'Brien.

On his way to the door, he was waylaid by a phone call.

Didi Dancer.

“Joe?” she inquired almost hesitantly.

“Didi. How are you? Is everything okay?”

“I'm fine. I think I might have found someone who can help you out.”

“Oh?”

“There's a Starbucks on my street. How about if we meet you there?” she added. “You know where.”

“I'm on my way.”

As he drove, he organized his mind, much as he organized his papers. Fact one: He was now convinced that Genevieve O'Brien had been kidnapped, and that she had been taken by the same person or persons responsible for the disappearances of the prostitutes. She had last been seen getting into a dark sedan.

She might still be alive somewhere.

Possibly beneath the city.

Buried sins.

Fact two: The explosion at Hastings House had not been an accident. Okay, that wasn't a proven fact, but it was a supposition so strong that he felt comfortable treating it as fact.

Fact three: Matt, who had died in that explosion, had written a number of articles on the disappearances.

Theory: All three things were related. Matt's death, the missing prostitutes, Genevieve O'Brien.

He felt a quickening in his heart. What had Matt known? What had he known that he hadn't realized he knew? Whatever it was, it had so disturbed a killer that he'd conceived and carried out the perfect plan, a targeted execution that appeared, even after a thorough investigation, to be an accident.

He reached for his cell phone. Robert Adair's assistant got him a number, and in moments he was talking with Greta Peterson.

She was surprised to hear from him, and he forced himself to chat with her a few minutes, explaining that yes, he was busy, yes, he was fine, yes, he'd seen Leslie, yes, they had a lot in common, yes…

She was more surprised when he asked her for list of everyone who had attended the gala, and for every caterer, police officer and private security person who had worked it. He also asked for a list of anyone who had recently done work at Hastings House.

“I'm sure I gave all those lists to the police.” She paused, then said sadly, “It was an accident, Joe. You looked into it yourself. The file is closed.”

It's been reopened, Joe thought. Aloud he said only, “Greta, you're a dear, but I can't let it go, not yet. Will you get the lists for me?”

“How could I refuse you?”

“Thanks. Can you messenger them over to Hastings House by this evening?”

She sighed. “Sure. If it will help you come to terms with what happened, go over it all you want.”

As he hung up, he had the strange sensation that he wasn't alone. The feeling was so strong that he actually looked to his right, at the passenger seat. There was no one there.
Of course not, you fool. You would have known if someone had jumped in the car.

But he looked in the rearview mirror, as well, feeling even more like a fool.

Suddenly he thought he heard a whisper. Something teasing in his ear, indistinct at first. It was the breeze, he told himself; he had the window rolled down. It was the sound of a radio on the street somewhere nearby. It was conversation coming at him from the crowded sidewalks of Manhattan.

Whatever it was, it seemed to form a name in his mind.

Leslie…

There was an urgency to the sound, which irritated him; common sense and logic were his bywords. Then again, ever since he had known Leslie, he had to admit that somehow what she saw was clearer, what she intuited was often real….

“Screw it,” he said aloud.

And then, despite his own plans, he headed to the library.

 

Leslie left the library with a roll of copies in her hands. She'd thought she would grab a taxi, but it was midday and the traffic was insane. Actually, she liked the subway, she thought as she headed for the nearest station. It was usually fast and rarely got hung up by traffic jams.

She hurried down the steps, finding her MetroCard as she went. The entry smelled only slightly of urine. There was an obviously handicapped man with a sign sitting by one wall, and she stopped to drop a dollar in his cap. Before she could reach the turnstile, she saw a skinny old woman with a skinny dog. That demanded another pause for a dollar.