The Dead Room (34 page)

She turned and started walking through the house, through the kitchen, to the servants' pantry. She lifted the hatch.

“Leslie, what are you doing?” Nikki demanded from behind her.

“Listening.”

The crying sound floated faintly in the air, hollow, haunting.

“Are we going down?” Nikki asked.

Leslie spun around to face her. “Don't you hear it?”

Nikki looked back at her and sighed. “Yes, I hear something, like a keening. But it isn't real.”

“Not this time,” Leslie said. Then, decisively, “Come on. We're going for that walk.”

She closed the hatch and started back toward the front of the house. Nikki followed her, questions in her eyes, but patient.

Leslie let Nikki leave first, then looked back into the house.

“Don't leave me,” she whispered. “Matt…don't leave me.”

She set the alarm, then closed and locked the door. “I want to go around the block, if that sounds okay to you.”

“Wherever you want to go,” Nikki assured her.

They started walking.

 

There was no way out of the fact that a lot of investigative work was time-consuming and tedious. Such had been Joe's day.

But by the time he was due to meet with Brad, he had discovered several new links. For one thing, he now knew that Genevieve had almost certainly known Hank Smith well.

Furthermore, the building where Heidi Arundsen lived and Betty had once resided wasn't owned by a single man. It was managed by a drunkard with a record, a man named Sylvester Swanson. But Swanson was paid by something called the Jigger Land Corporation, which had been purchased by a megacompany two years ago.

Tyson, Smith and Tryon.

He had sifted through facts on the building and the facts on cars. Laymon drove a white Ford SUV. Brad had a refurbished classic Mustang. Hank owned a Mercedes, a Rolls and a Jaguar. Ken Dryer wheeled around in a beige Infiniti, and Robert Adair had a ten-year-old Buick. None of them owed a black sedan.

But as Eileen Brideswell had pointed out, there were hundreds of them parked in the financial district on a daily basis. He knew for a fact that both police officers, given their positions, would have access to city vehicles, plenty of which were black sedans. Hank could probably drive anything he wanted from the corporate motor pool.

Did that cut down on the possibility that Brad was the likeliest suspect?

With that information tempering the edge of his suspicions, he was able to meet Brad with a pleasant greeting. In a few minutes, they each had a Guinness and were seated in a corner booth. Joe had intentionally chosen the seat facing the door so he could see who else came and went.

“All right, why am I here?” Brad asked suddenly.

Good, Joe thought. No messing around.

“You were friends with Genevieve O'Brien,” Joe said flatly.

Brad didn't seem thrown by the question. “Yes. I knew her.”

“You dated her?”

He laughed. “She turned me down flat. No, wait, I can't say that. She was charming, but she still said no. Said she was too busy to spend time on a casual affair with a guy who liked too many casual affairs. I tried to convince her that I was actually the perfect guy for her—I wouldn't be too time consuming.”

“Certainly not—especially since you were living in Virginia.”

Brad waved a hand in the air. “It was a long time ago, a couple of years.”

“And you haven't seen her since?”

“Oh, sure. Now and then. I'd, um, run into her.”

Joe set the enhanced photo with Betty, Genevieve and Brad on the table.

“This you?”

“Sure looks like me.”

“You do realize that the other girl in that photo is one of the prostitutes who disappeared.”

“No!” Brad's jaw fell. He was either a hell of an actor or he was honestly surprised.

“Did you ever, shall we say, enjoy her services?”

Brad was studying the picture; he seemed distracted. “No…there were one or two girls, but not her.” He looked up. “Hey, don't go judging me. I like the bar scene. I like women. Sometimes I'd rather find a good whore than play games at a bar. Cut and dried. Payment up front. Look, my career means everything to me. I'm not interested in getting involved at the moment. Who knows? I might have fallen in love with Leslie, but she was already in love with Matt from the time I first met her. She's still in love with him. Don't kid yourself.”

“You can be connected to at least one of the missing hookers. You were friends of a sort with Genevieve. Some people might say that makes you look mighty damned suspicious.”

“For hiring whores?”

“How often did you come up from Virginia?” Joe demanded.

“A few weekends, that's all.”

“It would be interesting to know what weekends.”

Brad stared at Joe, his jaw set. Then he shook his head. “You want my calendar? I'll get it for you.”

“Do you want me to clear you? Get off your back?” Joe asked.

“Hell, yes, I want you to clear me. Maybe I should have offered you some of this information before, but, hell. You didn't exactly explain that in a city of millions—more than a few of them total loonies—you'd decided someone around Leslie had to be a murderer. Or kidnapper. Or whatever.” He looked irritated. “Hey, you want to know who Genevieve had a beef with? Hank Smith.”

“What was her beef with him about?”

“I don't know. I do know that one night when I was out for a stroll—looking to pick up a hooker, if you must know—I saw her with him in a coffee shop. I'd have said hello, but they didn't see me. They were too busy fighting.”

Joe was glad he'd taken the seat facing the door when he saw Eileen Brideswell come in. She was with Robert Adair.

“You want some wings?” Joe asked.

“What?”

“Wings. Chicken wings. They call them clovers here. I'm starving.”

“Yeah, sure. Get some wings.”

“Unless that's all you have to say and you want me to get the hell away.”

“Wings sound good,” Brad said, sipping his Guinness.

Joe motioned to their waitress and put in the order. So far, neither Robert nor Eileen had noticed the two of them.

“So what's up with you and Leslie?” Brad asked, breaking into Joe's thoughts.

“Pardon?”

Brad leaned back. “You're not an old friend at all, are you? You may be Matt's cousin, but you just met Leslie recently, right?”

He stared at Brad. “I'll tell you this. I'd die for her. And I'd kill for her.”

Brad was dead still for a minute. “See, here's what you don't understand about me. I wouldn't die for anyone. Les actually knows that about me, and she doesn't hate me for it. The whole world can't be as noble as Matt—and you. What is it with her and dead people, do you think? It works out great for me. I get all kinds of credit I don't deserve. But how does she do it?”

“She's a great researcher.”

“Oh, bull. She was always good, but since the explosion…You know, she was actually more or less pronounced dead at the scene. They had her over with the corpses, but then one of the paramedics caught something…a pulse. They lost her, then zapped her back. Think she met a bunch of dead people and brought them back with her?”

Joe leaned forward. “Maybe she can smell out the dead. And maybe she can smell out the living—who create the dead.”

“I'm telling you, you need to question Hank Smith. You don't believe me? Ask your buddy about it, Sergeant Adair. He knew about it. Genevieve complained to him about the guy. I honestly don't know what her problem with him was, other than something to do with the company. But she wanted Robert's help—she wanted Hank arrested.”

Brad sounded on the up-and-up. And with the information he'd recently gleaned, Joe knew exactly why Genevieve would have had a beef with Hank Smith—and all of Tyson, Smith and Tryon. He really didn't like Hank Smith. It would be easy—and convenient—to discover the man was guilty.

The wings came. “You're not seeing Leslie tonight?” Brad asked.

“Yeah, I am. I'll be staying at Hastings House.”

Brad smirked. “It helps to look like the man she loved, huh?”

“Actually, it's none of your business.”

Brad laughed. “All right. I suppose you're not sleeping with her. You're too noble for that, right? Or are you? Maybe you're just playing the good guy, strong and reliable, and when the time is right…You're a player, the same as any man. And don't go looking at me like that. She's never going to love me, so good luck to you.” He shook his head. The wings had arrived, and he dipped one in hot sauce. “I'm not as big an asshole as you probably think. I love Leslie. She's a friend, one of my best friends. I was pretty nuts about Genevieve, too. I cared enough about her to respect her and
not
hit on her when she told me it wasn't happening.” He chewed for a minute. “I felt sick when I heard she had disappeared. Did you know her?”

“No.”

“She was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Huge eyes, hair like a deep auburn blanket of silk around her shoulders. And her voice…The main thing, though, what a fighter. When she thought something was right…”

“You're talking about her in the past tense.”

“Do you really think she could still be alive?” he asked.

There was genuine hope in the guy's voice, Joe realized. He wasn't using the past tense because he knew for a fact that she was dead, only because he was afraid to think otherwise.

“Maybe. No one's proved she's dead, so…”

“No one's proved that any of those girls is dead, either,” Brad said dully. “But I'll bet they are.”

At that moment, Joe's cell phone began to ring.

He noticed that Robert Adair's phone had just started ringing, as well.

 

“What if I'm wrong?” Leslie murmured.

“What if you're right?” Nikki asked.

They had walked around the block. And around the block again. And each time, Leslie had slowed as they had got to a certain section of the sidewalk. The way she figured it, if she really had heard crying when she'd been in the basement, it had come from somewhere around here.

Because of construction, there was a wire mesh fence surrounding the corner building, with a barrier of narrow boards across a gap about ten feet wide between the building being worked on and the one next to it.

Leslie tried to figure distances. Hastings House was on the opposite side of the block. But beyond the boards and wire, this building's basement would abut the basement below the servants' pantry.

The cocktail hour was still in full swing. There were people everywhere. Down the street, Leslie knew, cops would be on duty all night, guarding the perimeters of the dig.

“We can slip behind those boards,” Leslie mused.

“But we shouldn't. Why don't we call the cops?”

“What if I call the cops and they just laugh at me or, worse, tell me to mind my own business?”

“Call a cop you know, then. Call Joe.”

Leslie hesitated. “He's with Brad right now. If we just slip behind the boards and check out what's down that alley…Come on. Let's just take a quick look. And then we'll call someone.”

Nikki took a look around. There were people everywhere. “I guess we're safe. But it's pretty dark back there.”

Leslie grinned. “Hey, you forget what I do for a living. I
always
have a flashlight.” She reached into her purse, producing her slim but powerful flashlight.

“Okay, we take a quick look and then we call someone else.”

“You heard the crying,” Leslie reminded her firmly.

“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.