Entombed

23

Mike Chapman screamed my name and came running around the last curve.

Tormey was crawling to me on his left elbow, his right arm hanging limp beside him.

Mike's gun was drawn, and with his other hand he flattened Tormey on the cold brick pavement. "Get down, both of you."

I couldn't see where the students had scattered but I could hear them shouting in the background.

Mike positioned himself in front of Poe, face-to-face with the bronze head, rising to his full height and peering around the writer's brow at the steep hill below.

I tried to dislodge myself from beneath Tormey's arm. Blood was seeping through the sleeve of his jacket onto my leg and he was groaning in pain. I tried to sit up.

"Down, dammit," Mike said.

He waited a second until I lowered my head again and let off two shots. Again I heard the sound of the rifle as it returned fire, bullets wildly hitting pillars and pedestals and poets before bouncing onto the floor. Beneath the canopy of the brick ceiling, each volley sounded magnified, like rounds from a cannon.

"You-Tormey-you okay?"

He was lying on his stomach now, his left hand covering the top of his head. Mike ducked and pulled him flush up against the front part of the wall.

"I'm gonna stand up and throw off a shot, Coop. I want you to get on all fours and retrace your steps back to the entrance as fast as you can."

I turned my head to the side as I squatted behind Mike and looked up at him.

"Don't fuck with me, kid. Target practice isn't my strong suit. Move!"

All my attention was on moving forward. I tried to do it as quickly as possible, knowing that Mike was exposed to the shooter while he was trying to cover my back. I doubted there would be enough bullets left in his gun to get us to the iron entrance gate if the assassin was tracking our retreat.

I could hear the sound of sirens coming closer. I was hoping the gunman could hear them, too.

More shots echoed around my head. I couldn't tell how many had actually been fired and how many were simply resounding off the various surfaces. I looked back and saw that Mike was still standing, just a few feet behind me, shielded by the statue of David Farragut.

I was as low to the ground as I could manage to be and still propel myself forward, passing Henry Ward Beecher and John James Audubon. I hadn't heard Louis Agassiz's name since I left Wellesley and didn't stop to make note of his many accomplishments.

I took another corner and Mike let go with another round. I glanced back again to make sure he hadn't been hurt. "Keep going, Coop. You're almost there."

Pushing along the rough surface of the bricks had worn back the tops of my gloves. My wrists were raw from rubbing against the ground as I tried to scoot along.

Now I could hear what seemed like a small army of footsteps pounding toward us. "Stay back. Someone's shooting at us," I yelled, as I saw a guard dressed in the uniform of the campus police coming toward me. I pointed at Mike. "He's a cop!"

Mike was too engaged to pull out his gold badge. The danger was off to the side and below him, not in the form of bewildered and unarmed security guards.

He took one look at the startled officers, called out to them to watch me, and vaulted over the two-foot-high balcony that bordered the hilltop. In that split second given me to decide what to do, I knew that if I made the mistake of calling out his name, it would cause him to look back and think I needed help.

I picked my head up and watched him slide down the embankment, rolling only ten or twelve feet until he crashed into a tree trunk. Everything down there was silent now, with no sign of an attacker.

"The professor's been shot," I said to the officer who reached me first. "He needs an ambulance."

"Who's the…?" one guard asked, while I directed two others down to the far end to tend to Tormey.

I looked over the side of the wall. Mike was sitting with his back against the large tree trunk. The guards glanced back and forth at each other, uncertain about what lay below.

"Can you help him, please? He's a detective-NYPD-Homicide."

"He do the shooting?"

"No, we were fired at," I said. "From somewhere down there."

I had just killed their enthusiasm for climbing down to help Mike. One of the men leaned over and picked up a bullet.

"Looks like a twenty-two-caliber-"

"Please don't touch anything. We'll have to get the Crime Scene Unit here."

I could hear more sirens. Guards checked on Tormey and assured me that he was conscious and coherent, and that an ambulance had been called. I stood up, and ignoring Mike's gestures for me to stay with the men from security, I swung my legs over the balcony and lowered myself onto the densely wooded hillside.

"Graceful, huh?" Mike asked as I made my way down the slope to him, bracing myself against trees along the way, and helped him to his feet. "How's Tormey?"

"Looks like he's hit in his upper arm, from the way he's just dragging it and the amount of blood soaking through his jacket. They've got a bus on the way. D'you see anything?"

"Somebody knew exactly what he was doing. Had Tormey's arrival timed to the minute, didn't he? And wouldn't have minded shaving some peroxide off the top of your scalp, either. He was comfortable in these woods," Mike said, looking around at the rough terrain.

"Unless he was over there," I said, pointing at the railroad tracks on the far side of the highway. "There's enough scrub to conceal yourself, especially if he was shooting with a scope. Did you fire down because you saw someone?"

Mike started to walk back up to the colonnade. "Nothing. Nada. I just wanted to draw the guy out if he was still around."

"Hey, Chapman. Clara Barton's down the hall, if you need a hand," a uniformed cop called out, clearly delighted to have seen Mike on his ass, then being guided back up the hill by a woman Sherpa.

Mike scrambled over the metal railing behind the entrance gate, while I stretched my arms out overhead so two cops could hoist me up onto the balcony next to a stone-faced Elias Howe.

Medics were loading Noah Tormey into the rear of the ambulance and I followed Mike over to check on him.

One of the EMTs spoke first, shaking his finger at us. "Sorry. You'll have to question him at the hospital. We can't hang out here with a gunshot wound."

Mike boosted me up into the rear of the van. "We're going with you. We need medical attention, too. I'm full of cuts and scrapes." He stepped up and swung the door closed behind him. "We're going to Columbia Presbyterian," he said, flashing his badge.

"This ain't a taxi service, boss. We're a Bronx unit."

"And I think too much of the professor's life to go to an emergency room in the Bronx, okay? Right across the river and you're practically there."

The medic chose the path of least resistance. He told his partner to go across the University Heights Bridge to one of Manhattan's premier medical facilities, near the northern tip of the island, which was actually the closest hospital.

We watched while the serious young EMT stabilized Noah Tormey, removing his jacket, ripping off the sleeve of his shirt to examine the wound in the fleshy part of the upper arm, and starting an intravenous drip so that he could go straight from the ER into surgery, if that was necessary.

My wrists were bleeding, and there was a long scrape on the side of my chin from the moment Mike directed me to flatten out on the pavement. I rested my head on his shoulder and could feel the rapid beating of his heart.

Mike's face was cut in several places from the tree branches that had whipped against him as he rolled down the incline. I dabbed at the marks on his forehead with some tissues until he pushed my hand away.

"How are you feeling, Professor?" Mike asked.

The twitch was less pronounced than earlier. "I've never been so frightened in my life. Why was that person shooting at you?"

"You got that wrong, pal. Why was he shooting at you? That's what we'd like to know. You got any problems you want to tell us about?"

The medic was monitoring Tormey's vital signs. "How about you take it easy on the guy's blood pressure, Chapman?"

Tormey whispered the word no.

"This little ceremony, did anyone know about it besides your students?"

"It was in the college paper, of course. I think the Bronx Historical Society writes up all the events, too. I simply can't imagine-"

"Think about it, Professor. You'll have a couple of days in your hospital bed to concentrate on nothing else but today's riflery exhibition. Your old friend Emily Upshaw was killed. Stabbed to death in a particularly vicious attack, right in her own home."

Tormey cringed and closed his eyes.

"That probably has something to do with the skeleton that was found in a basement in a Greenwich Village tenement last week. In fact, inside Mr. Poe's house."

The twitch was back in full force and his eyes were shut tight.

"Dr. Ichiko finds the only waterfall in the city of New York to throw himself over-or get pushed into-and crushes his skull in so many pieces you could play Chinese checkers with the chips. And you, you're somebody's idea of a bull's-eye."

Tormey opened his eyes and looked for me. "Miss Cooper, will there be protection for me while I'm in the hospital? I mean, you don't suppose this was just some drive-by shooting from the highway?"

"The shots didn't come from a car, Professor. Detectives will analyze the scene, but there's little doubt someone was positioned in place, waiting for you to appear. And yes, the NYPD will have someone with you the entire time you're in the hospital."

His eyes shifted in Mike's direction. "Not-?"

"Not him." It seemed to be Tormey's worst fear. Wounded, bedridden, and attached to an IV tube with Chapman at his side, relentlessly asking questions.

"I haven't given any thought to Emily Upshaw in years, Miss Cooper. Do you really believe this could have something to do with her?" Tormey asked.

Mike sensed that the professor wasn't comfortable talking to him and turned his back, pretending to busy himself making notes about the day's events.

"It's hard to think otherwise," I said.

"The incident with the bail? It's coming back to me a bit," Tormey said.

Funny how a good scare can improve the memory of almost every witness.

"Emily was working as my research assistant that semester. She was desperate for money-not that I realized at the time how much of it was going to support her drug habit. Two or three times she actually wrote articles for me, ones that were published under my name. I needed those credits for the tenure process."

"Okay."

"When she was arrested, she called me because I owed her money. Several hundred dollars, if I'm not mistaken. I don't imagine there was anyone else she could have called who'd give her money."

Tormey's mind was drifting in another direction. He turned his head to the other side, but before he did I thought I saw tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

"I'll be looking at Emily's college records tomorrow," I said, a bluff that I hoped to make good on before too long. "What class did she take with you?"

He seemed unable or unwilling to speak.

"Professor Tormey?"

"Emily wasn't in any of my classes. You'll see that in her transcript."

"But she did research for you?"

His head moved slowly up and down.

"How did she find you? How did you two get together?"

"Before…" he said, choking on the words that followed.

"Before college?" I asked.

Tormey's words were muffled but I held my head close to his mouth and made them out. "I'm the reason Emily came to New York to go to college. I don't know what her family has told you about her background, Miss Cooper. I was her faculty interviewer the week she came to the city to visit NYU at the start of her senior year of high school. She was alone here-and, well-we spent some time together."

The story Emily's sister had told us took on a new significance as Tormey finished his explanation. "I'm the guy who got her pregnant."