Entombed

42

"Is it taking them as long as it feels?" Ellen asked.

I had removed all the thorns from her face. Blood had streaked down her cheeks and lined her neck. It caked on my hands as well.

"Are you okay if I go back to the door? Maybe Mercer's having trouble getting in."

She nodded.

"Scotty-don't even think about moving a hair until Mercer and I get back," I said, but he didn't seem capable of trying. I balled up my bloody scarf and tucked it beneath his head.

I retraced my steps through the African desert. The late-afternoon sun was casting shadows now, and all of the plants seemed more sinister than they had before Ellen's assault-branches and tendrils and leaves as large as elephant ears reaching out over the path as though to slow my retreat and grab on to me.

I broke into a trot as the walkway sloped downhill, tree limbs grazing the top of my head and catching on the sleeves of my jacket. The long cylindrical tunnel was dark and claustrophobic, almost like an empty subway tube. I kept looking behind me because it sounded as though I were being chased, but it was just the noise of my own footsteps echoing off the metallic walls.

Out of Africa now, and passing through the end of the tunnel, I slipped in a puddle of water that had dripped from an overhead sprinkler, and grabbed the moss-covered rocks to stop myself from falling. Their surface felt hairy and damp, like a handful of caterpillars resting in the shade.

I pushed off and jogged up the curving ramp, snagged on the head by hanging jade vines and the pods of cacao plants. The Victorian reflecting pool was like an oasis in the middle of the other, overgrown faux environments, but it took only seconds for me to dash through it before being launched back into the dank humidity of the tropical jungle.

There was no sign of human life in the dense growth, but as I ran around the base of the huge tree trunk, I could hear feet pounding on the skywalk above me. I ducked off the path and into a mass of ferns, looking up and fearing another encounter with the three young thugs. It was only the same workman I had seen on the way in, oblivious to everything but the browned tips of his plants. He seemed anxious to find out who was racing through his sanctuary this time, and from the expression on his face was more frightened by the encounter than I.

By the time I reached the Palm Dome, I could hear pounding against the front door, and through the glass windows could see Mercer, a security guard, and two EMTs. Once I let them inside, I started to double back-out of breath myself-and told them what they would find as they ran on ahead, pointing in the direction where I had left Ellen Gunsher and Scotty Taren.

Mercer stopped me and tried to calm me down. "Why did you call for medics?"

"Ellen's cut up pretty badly, but I think it's all superficial. I'm worried about Scotty, though. He's got some kind of coronary history and he's just collapsed in there like a lump."

"Take some deep ones," he said, as I bent over, my hands on my knees, trying to regulate my breathing. "You never met with Zeldin?"

I straightened up. "Yeah, he was here. Didn't you pass him on your way in?"

"No. The security guard said I just missed him. He sped off the grounds in one of those minivans."

"Who was driving?"

"According to the guard, Zeldin himself was behind the wheel," Mercer said.

"What about kids? Did you see any 'wild child' types?"

"Yeah. When the guard opened the gate for me, a trio ran out. Hoodies?"

"Exactly. We've got to get the local precinct on it. They're the ones who pushed Ellen, and it seemed to me it was on some kind of signal from Zeldin."

A blue and white squad car pulled up in front of the conservatory with its lights flashing. Uniformed cops got out on each side and we met them at the door, repeating the story and suggesting that they get started in case the three teens were still moving through the neighborhood in a pack. They radioed out the generic description with orders to bring the group in for questioning and then took off to sweep the area before darkness enveloped the city streets.

"There's a second ambulance on the way. You want to stay here by the door while I see if they need a hand with Scotty?" Mercer asked.

"Sure. But if you pass one of the gardeners on your way through, send him back to relieve me. Ellen's a mess. I might as well help with her-she's hysterical."

I stared out the tall windows and watched as the setting sun threw long shadows across the frozen flower beds. Looking at the bleak landscape I found it hard to believe that within two months' time, a dazzling array of chrysanthemums, zinnias, and peonies would color every inch of these same borders.

The vibrations of my cell phone startled me and I pulled it out of my jacket pocket to answer it. Maybe a DNA match to the rapist we'd been calling John Doe would brighten the bloody afternoon.

"Hello?" I said tentatively, hoping to hear a cheerful reply from Dr. Thaler.

"Maybe your skinny little ass fits through this gate, but I'm too big to squeeze in and too old to climb over."

"Where are you, Mike?" The sound of his voice was the best antidote to my fatigue and depression.

"You told me ol' Gun-shy was here, didn't you?" he said, referring to Ellen by the nickname the office trial dogs had given her for her well-noted fear of the courtroom. "I kind of missed abusing her. Thought you two broads might need a hand. I went to the gate, exactly where Mercer told me to be, only nobody was there to let me in. So I drove back around to the other entrance on Fordham Road. Same story."

"Damn it, he's got the security guard from the Mosholu gate in here with him. There's been a bad scene-I'll tell you about it. Are you-do you think you're ready-"

"C'mon, Coop. Commandeer one of those golf carts the staff scoot around in. Pick me up and get me inside."

I started back to find Mercer, but first walked right into the gardener he had sent to take over my post. "Do you speak English?"

"No, señora," he said, shaking his head.

"Mi amigo, el detectivo?"

"Sí."

" Lo dice que yo soy buscando un otro amigo. Yo soy buscando Mike.Okay?"

I didn't know whether I came close to making sense but counted on the quiet man to tell Mercer that I had gone to find Mike. It was the best I could do under the circumstances.

I pushed open the door and ran down the path. Three electric golf carts were lined up on the roadway. I sat in one and turned the key in the ignition, pressing down on the pedal to get onto the main drive, heading east and looking for the road signs that marked the direction of each of the gates. I was bound to run into another guard along the way.

I traveled a few hundred yards before the road forked, one arrow pointing to the Twin Lakes and the other toward the children's adventure garden. One thing I didn't need was another adventure, so I skirted around behind that plot of land in the direction of the new visitors center.

The paths were meant to be scenic. Rock gardens gave way to gazebos that were surrounded by vast swaths of seasonal plantings that would bloom when these dismal days gave way to spring. The daylight was dimming and I had to stop in the middle of the next intersection to read the signs.

I dialed Mike's number as I drove near the conservatory gate. "I can't spot you," I said. "Do you see the headlights on this thing I'm driving?"

"Where the hell are you?"

"Near the ticket booth, in the middle of a big parking lot. I'm the only jalopy in the joint."

"Wrong gate. C'mon, blondie. Try finding the building that Zeldin took us to, where he's got that Raven Society office. I'm over on that side. How can you possibly lose Fordham Road?"

Two hundred and fifty acres of pristine land in the middle of the Bronx-absolutely deserted-and I couldn't find a street sign for one of the city's largest thoroughfares.

I stepped on the pedal and chugged along until the next intersection, where Azalea Way crossed Snuff Mill Road. The latter led, I knew, to the building we had visited with Zeldin, and near the carriage house in which Sinclair Phelps lived.

I flipped open the phone again. "Now I got it. I'm on the bridge crossing the river. Get back in your car-you must be freezing. I'll get Phelps to help me. He can call someone from security if he hasn't got keys himself."

"I got the heat on. Make it snappy, kid."

"I'm flooring this buggy, Mike. Mercer and I have been worried about you." Then I said quietly, "I've missed you."

I could hear the river running over the rocks below me, and the roar it made as it dropped from the gorge just beyond me drowned out whatever Mike whispered to me in response.

I steered on past the snuff mill, which was as completely dark within as it was getting to be outside. I remembered that Sinclair Phelps's carriage house was not much farther along, so I kept driving around the curving path until I made out its outline, pulled up behind it, and turned off the cart's motor.

The stone building standing alone on the wooded grounds looked like a small English manor house in the Cotswolds. I knocked on the back door several times and called Phelps's name, but no one answered.

I tried the handle, which was not locked, so I let myself into the kitchen. A phone was mounted on the wall next to the refrigerator, and there was a list of the organization's telephone extensions beside it, so I assumed it to be a direct connection to the gardens' employees.

I dialed zero and waited several rings before someone on the switchboard picked up.

"Yes, Mr. Phelps?"

"I'm, uh-I'm sorry-I'm not Mr. Phelps, obviously. But I am calling from his house. Can you connect me to security, please?"

"Is there a problem at the carriage house, ma'am? I'll get someone right-"

"No, no. There's a New York City detective trying to get into the gate on-"

"The police are already inside, ma'am. We're aware of the commotion at the conservatory. Can you hold? That's another line ringing."

She was back to me in thirty seconds.

"I'm talking about the Fordham Road gate."

"Yeah, we just heard about that other guy. You stay where you're at. Security will bring him to you there, okay?"

I hung up and called Mike again on my cell phone. "I gave up on you, Coop, and called Mercer," he said. "He's got a couple of guards on their way to get me. You inside? Stay warm-see you in ten."

"Did he tell you what happened?"

"Yeah, I know you've been looking to smack Ellen in her long, sour puss for years, but dumping her into the briar patch? I hope you saved a little of your strength for the next guy."

"What do you mean?"

"Mercer said Gino Guidi's on his way over here. You amateurs must have pissed him off this morning. He's all fired up-without his lawyer this time-no holds barred."

"Remind me, Mike. Is there anyone I haven't annoyed lately?"

"I'll be right there, kid. Just relax."

I replaced the receiver on the wall hook. I didn't want to rub up against anything in the house with my bloody ski jacket, so I took it off and put it on the back of a kitchen chair.

After three or four minutes of dead silence, I pushed open the swinging door and entered the living room. It looked like Phelps had been called away suddenly. There was a tall floor lamp that was on, next to a worn leather chair, and resting on a table between them was a book, turned upside down with its spine splayed. A half-filled coffee cup rested on a coaster.

I walked over and picked up the book. It was an academic treatise on the London plane tree. I flipped through the pages and as I did, a small stack of green bills fluttered onto the carpet. I bent over to pick them up-they were all hundred-dollar denominations- and stuck them back between two pages, replacing the book on the tabletop.

I was too restless to sit.

The room was rather impersonal. There were very few signs of homeyness for someone who had been in residence here for so long.

I walked to the mantel over the fireplace to look at the photographs displayed there. All of them were studies of gardens and trees, presumably favorites of Sinclair Phelps.

I was pacing now, walking from the front window, where I looked in vain for signs of the groundskeeper or Mike and Mercer, back to the bookcases on the far wall.

I returned to the window, parting the thin lace curtains again to search for headlights, then crossed the room again.

There were more photographs on one of the shelves. A rugged-looking young Phelps on skis, and another of a child in a young woman's arms-his mother's, perhaps. I smiled at her outfit, which so clearly dated the picture to the sixties-bell-bottom jeans, a peasant-style blouse, long stringy hair parted in the middle, and a peace symbol patched onto the arm of the child's jacket.

A car door slammed in front of the house, but before I could get to the entrance, Phelps had opened it and found me in the middle of his living room.

"Miss Cooper? Is there something wrong?"

"I apologize, Mr. Phelps. I-uh, we had a problem over at the conservatory-"

"Yes, I've just come from there. Everything's going to be fine. What are you doing here?" he asked, his eyes scanning the room to see if anything had been disturbed.

"Well, I was trying to tell you that one of the detectives got sort of stuck outside-"

"Chapman? He's on his way in. Zeldin wants you all to meet over at the office in the snuff mill and-"

"But Zeldin's gone," I said.

"I just saw him, Miss Cooper," Phelps said. His tone seemed to get more stern as we talked. "He's asked me to bring the detectives to meet with him. You might as well join them there."

I started to back up toward the kitchen door as he made a move toward me.

The sudden knocking on the front door startled both of us.

"I'll just step out a minute to take care of this. One of the staff must have a problem." Phelps walked toward the door, but before reaching it he turned back to the table and chair. He picked up the open book, stopped to make sure the money was still in place, and continued on his way to the door. I noticed his large hands, covered with calluses, dried and cracked from years of physical labor.

I was frozen in place-uncertain about what to do-one hand on the bookshelf and the other poised against the kitchen entrance.

I glanced beside me at the floor-to-ceiling array of books. The bottom shelves were all to do with plants and landscape gardening. The ones above my head were a neatly lined-up collection of volumes of poetry.

I tried to listen to the voices outside as I read the familiar names: Yeats, Eliot, Spender, Auden, Owen, Roethke, Thomas, Heaney. Edgar Allan Poe.

The man Gino Guidi knew as Monty-Aurora Tait's killer- was never without a book of poetry in his back pocket. Even in his teens and twenties, the jobs he had taken to support himself had imprinted their physical hardship on his hands.

The voice of the man that Phelps was talking to was raised a pitch. They were arguing about something. The visitor cursed, and the words were spoken in Spanish. The visitor stepped back away from the door, and through the gauzelike curtains I could make out a dark-hooded sweatshirt covering his head.

Packs of marauding teenagers. Aaron Kittredge had encountered a similar group outside the back gate a decade ago when he tried to visit Zeldin to talk to him. Others had attacked me at Poe Cottage while the rest of their gang caused a distraction at the bandshell. Today, a threesome assaulted Ellen when Zeldin ordered them to go and get Sinclair Phelps. Maybe Phelps was running them the way a spymaster would send his agents out on missions. Maybe the money stashed inside the book was a payoff for a job well done at the conservatory today. Maybe.

I made a sudden decision. I pushed against the kitchen door, padded across the linoleum flooring as quietly as I could, and let myself out into the cold, dark February night.