The Deadhouse (44 page)

"That's my job, Professor. I'd appreciate it if you let me do the
interviews."

"If your question, Mr. Chapman, is whether Lavery faced
administrative action of any other kind, then the answer is no. We'd
leave that portion of the case up to you."

"You want to tell us, Mr. Lockhart, what you learned from your
grandfather this morning, when you went there to ask him about Freeland
Jennings's legacy? You find anything in the attic?"

The young instructor blushed as his colleagues all turned to follow
Mike's jab. "I, uh, I had forgotten all about that model until Sylvia's
message. Of course I tried to see if it was still at the house.
Obviously, I would have brought it back here to the meeting. That's
what Miss Cooper wanted to know about, wasn't it?

"I'm planning to drive back up to White Plains after this meeting.
Sit down and try to have a lucid conversation with my grandfather, if
you all think that would help." Skip Lockhart looked at the faces
around the table.

"Maybe Ms. Foote told you, buddy. We're going to keep you company."
Mike circled his hand in the air, drawing the group in the room into an
imaginary ring.

"I'm game," Shreve said. "We're all interested in this, Skip."

"Well, we can't just pile in on him. The excitement would be too
much." Lockhart fidgeted in his chair.

"We don't all have to talk to him at once," Shreve went on. "The
detective and you can do the interview. We can wait in another room, so
we can brainstorm if he remembers anything. After all, we've got a
pretty good collective knowledge of Lola and her habits."

The phone rang and Sylvia answered it. "Just a minute. I'll have him
pick up an extension." She motioned to Mike, who stepped out of the
room.

"I don't think I need to go," Recantati said. "None of this has
anything to do with me."

"Well then, Sylvia," Shreve said, "you can ride up in my car if you
like. I've always wanted to meet your grandfather, Skip. Lola told me
about his fascinating stories. I assume Miss Cooper and the detective
will go together?"

"Yes, we'll meet you there."

Skip seemed reluctant. He had little choice but to offer to drive
Nan Rothschild and Thomas Grenier with him.

The door opened and Mike waved me out to the secretary's anteroom.
"You mind grabbing a ride with one of them and trying to charm the
pants off Grandpa?"

I started to ask him why but turned my head as I noticed that both
Winston Shreve and Skip Lockhart had followed me out, looking for paper
on the desk behind me to write directions.

"Listen up, blondie. You put the Rand McNally in a safe place,
right?"

I was distracted again as Lockhart dropped his pen on the floor.
"What?"

"The map."

I nodded that I had.

He looked at his watch and noted that it was almost three o'clock.
"I can be in White Plains in an hour. I just got to swing over the
bridge to Newark and take a peek in the Hertz parking lot by the
airport."

The two professors reentered Sylvia Foote's office.

"How come?"

I was pleased to see his trademark grin. "Tony Parisi called. He's
working round the clock on Bart Frankel's unexpected demise. Found out
that one of the private investigators Ivan Kralovic had been using on
Lola the last year may have a connection to Saturday morning's
'accident.'"

"What kind of connection?"

"A very direct one, apparently. Enough to make Parisi tell me the
Jersey prosecutors think they can put the cuffs on Ivan the Terrible
and lock him up before he has to shovel the snow out of his driveway
tomorrow. Looks like the PI rented a van at the airport on Friday and
brought it back in yesterday afternoon, claiming he'd had a fender
bender on the turnpike."

"Any damage?"

"There's a big dent on the right front fender and it's covered with
chipped paint and what looks like blood, so he's having it tested.
Wants you to check the jerk's bank account for deposits from Kralovic
when you get a free minute. And he wants me to eyeball it before they
haul it off for repair."

31

I returned to Sylvia's office as the group was breaking up. "Mike
has to make a slight detour," I explained to the academics. "Another
case. He'll meet us in White Plains, if I can ride with you and
Professor Shreve."

Sylvia deferred to Shreve, who confirmed that he had plenty of room.
Nan was calling her husband to explain why she would not be back in the
city until six or seven this evening as Sylvia and I walked down the
hall to use the rest room.

On our way back, I noticed the lanky figure of a young man
silhouetted against the wall beyond her door. "Efrem?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Alex, this is the young man I told you about, Efrem Zavislan.

He's one of Lola's brightest students. He called Nan this morning to
ask her a question about the dig, and when I learned he was still in
town, I thought you might want to meet him. Lola entrusted her most
important research projects to Efrem. Everything all right? Any reason
you didn't go home to Colorado for the break?"

"My folks came east to see my grandparents, so we're all in town.
Miss Foote said you might have questions about Professor Dakota that I
can answer," he said, turning to me.

Skip Lockhart came out of Sylvia's office with Winston Shreve, each
buttoning his coat and lifting his collar against the brewing storm
outside. "What's up, Efrem?"

"Nothing, Professor Lockhart. Just wanted to see if there was any
progress in finding the guy who killed Professor Dakota."

"You're not working out on the island in this weather, are you?"
asked Shreve.

"All closed down for a few weeks. Most of us weren't in the mood
anyway."

"We'll be back in a few minutes with the cars. I'm parked in the
garage over on Broadway. Sylvia, can I bring you a cup of coffee for
the road? Miss Cooper?"

"Thank you, Winston," Sylvia answered. "How about some hot chocolate
for me? Extra milk, if you would. Alex, coffee?"

"I've had enough caffeine to keep me wired for weeks. Chocolate
sounds good."

I waited for the men to walk away before stepping aside with Efrem.
"Do you mind, Sylvia, if I just have a few minutes with him?"

I led the student around the corner for a bit of privacy. Although I
guessed he was not more than twenty years old, he towered over me, and
seemed possessed of a maturity that most of the others I had met these
past ten days lacked. He was eager to talk about Dakota, clearly
sharing her passion for scholarship, and for the Blackwells project.

"Do you know anything about the miniature model of the island that
one of the prisoners built for Freeland Jennings when he was in the
penitentiary?"

Efrem's hands came out of his jeans pockets and he began to speak
with great animation. "Have you seen it? It's amazing."

I wanted to keep our voices down. No need to alert the others that
this kid might actually know the whereabouts of the mysterious piece.
"No. But the police and I are quite interested in taking a look at it.
Do you know where it is now?"

"Well, no. I mean, Professor Dakota had it. She let me see it a
couple of times, but that was months ago."

"Where was it when you saw it?"

"At her office, right in this building. But she moved it out of here
a while back."

"To?"

"I don't know. She told me she had to find another place for it. No
room in her office."

"Do you know why it was so important?"

He looked puzzled. "I'm not sure it was. Least, not that she ever
told me. I just thought it was beautiful. Made with such painstaking
devotion, accurate to the most minute detail."

Lola may have liked this kid a lot, but she didn't seem to have
trusted anyone with the importance of her discovery.

"Would it help you guys if I poked around the island some more?
There's lots of places to hide things over there. Places nobody goes to
or looks in."

"I don't want you doing anything to get in trouble at school. How
about you let the detectives do it with you?"

"Yeah, that's fine. You want me to take you around there tomorrow?"

"I don't want to screw up the visit with your family." I checked the
time. "I'm going to see the detective I'm working with in another hour
or so. Why don't you give him a call later on tonight and we can work
out a way to do this together? Any day that it's convenient for you
will work for us." I took out one of my business cards and wrote Mike's
beeper number on the back. "In the meantime, just give some thought to
where you think she would have stored the model for safekeeping, okay?"

If we weren't able to jog Orlyn Lockhart's memory, then maybe Mike
and I could more thoroughly interrogate Efrem later tonight. I thanked
him for coming by and rejoined the disgruntled-looking characters who
were marching down the staircase to the lobby. This was not a good day
for a ride in the country.

Lockhart pulled up in front of the building and honked his horn.
Thomas Grenier held Nan by the arm and walked her to his SUV, closing
the back door after he helped her inside, and then settling himself in
the passenger seat.

Recantati waited several minutes with Sylvia and me until Winston
Shreve arrived in a gray minivan. He slid back the door and I hoisted
myself into the rear. Recantati boosted Sylvia up by the elbow and
Shreve held her bag while she buckled up the seat belt, telling
Recantati she would call him in the morning. He whispered something to
her that I was unable to hear, then shut the door and walked away as
the engine started up.

"Turn up the heat, Winston," she ordered with her usual display of
charm. He angled the rearview mirror into place, and I could catch the
corner of his smile as he then adjusted the temperature controls on the
dashboard.

There was a steaming container of cocoa in the cup holder of each of
our armrests. Shreve opened his and sipped at the hot drink.

"You know the way, do you?" Sylvia asked.

"Yes, Sylvia. Skip's given me directions," he said, holding up a
slip of paper. "It's right off the Saw Mill River Parkway. Won't take
long to get there. I just want to drink a bit of this before I start
driving. Otherwise it will spill all over us."

"Good idea."

We uncapped the lids and I blew on the chocolate, warming my hands
as I took a swallow. "Detective Chapman and I were up there the other
day. The house is easy to find. I grew up not too far away."

"In White Plains?"

"No, in Harrison." I sipped a few more times before Shreve pulled
away from the curb, making the westbound turn to head over to Riverside
Drive and the entrance to the West Side Highway. "Spent a lot of time
there. I was a competitive swimmer in high school and they were our
archrivals. Next town over."

"Just get us up there and back before this snow starts piling in,"
Sylvia said.

The liquid sloshed around the rim of the cardboard cup as Shreve
accelerated past the yield sign, and I took another big gulp of hot
chocolate, wiping the drops off my parka.

We were passing under the cloverleaf roadway that led up to the
George Washington Bridge, following the signs to Westchester County,
when I heard Sylvia make a gurgling sound. Her neck snapped forward and
her chin dangled against her chest.

I reached for the headrest behind her seat to pull myself forward
and yelled for Shreve to stop the car. "Are you all right, Sylvia?" is
what I tried to say, but my tongue twisted around the words and they
slurred as they came out.

My arms felt like leaden weights as I unbuckled my seat belt, pushed
the strap out of the way, and attempted to reach toward Winston Shreve.
Snowflakes swirled outside at a dizzying speed, blurring into one as I
slid off the seat and onto the floor of the van.

32

My first sensation was of the cold, biting and urgent, piercing
every pore of my body. The stinging pain that grated on my wrist and
ankles was caused by bindings of some kind, although I could not see
them as I lay facedown in the darkened space. A soft piece of cloth
covered my mouth, tied behind my scalp.

Wind shrieked above my head and still the blur of white flake: fell
around me. I was inside some structure, flattened against the remains
of a wooden floorboard that had been partially destroyed by years of
exposure to the elements. Whatever it had been, the draft and snow told
me there was now no roof covering the walls

I heard no sounds of a human presence. No inhalation o exhalation of
breath. No footsteps. No words.

I shifted my weight and turned my body onto its side. Still, no
response from anyone to the rustling sound made by my own movement.

Even this slight change of position charged the flashes of light
that raced inside my brain, and the pounding waves of dizziness and
nausea returned. I had been in my office, I remembered that. I was
talking with Mike Chapman, and I was pretty certain that had happened.
But now the crests and swells of wobbly images flooded my head again
and I was sure of nothing.

Thoughts would not come clearly and my eyes closed, ceding to
whatever it was that had overpowered all my senses.

I don't know for how long I lost consciousness this second time, but
when I was able to see again, the inky surroundings were identical. I
was dressed in my ski parka, and the lapel of a gray suit stuck out
above the zipper. I pushed to order my thoughts, trying to recall when
I had dressed this way to leave my home. There was a moth-eaten old
plaid blanket stretched out down the length of my body, heavy now from
the wet snow that it had absorbed.

My hands were gloved and boots were still on my feet. I could feel
them. Only my face was exposed to the pelting drops of ice. I rolled it
back onto the flooring. Think, I told myself over and over again. Think
where you were today and who you were with. Think where you were going
that brought you to this godforsaken place. But the neurons were
short-circuiting and something had poisoned my brain's ability to
connect the dots. All I knew for certain was that I was cold.