Entombed

43

I turned the key to start the golf cart. Without flipping the switch for the headlights, I jammed the pedal and swung the small machine around in a tight circle. Instead of driving out as I had come in, I followed the stone wall behind the house in the opposite direction-certain that I could avoid Phelps and the hoodie and just as sure that I could connect around to one of the main paths.

The strong afternoon breeze seemed to have died down with the sunset. I was grateful for the cart's overhead cover and windshield, which sheltered me somewhat from the winter chill. I hadn't stopped to retrieve my jacket from the kitchen chair, but I was glad for the silk camisole I had put on beneath my cashmere sweater and slacks when I had dressed so many hours ago.

The road looped around a fenced-in area of several acres in which bushes were covered with a large tarp to ward off the frost. I was racing through an urban oasis-the most natural of settings in the most unnatural neighborhood-hoping to find homicide detectives from whom I was separated by fields of rose gardens, lilac bushes, and a conifer arboretum.

Had I identified the murderer, who was indeed hiding in plain sight, whose bold imitation of Poe's fictional brick crypt had been revealed accidentally by the destruction of the old building in which the grand master of crime stories had lived for a brief time? And had the tragic circumstances of his own childhood led him to live out the fictional tortures of the literary master of revenge?

I took no chances with lights, and slowed down only to look at the path markings at the first intersection. From the direction of the carriage house I heard shouting-perhaps Phelps and the young man still arguing or-maybe worse-commands being given to the thugs to hunt me down.

In the distance I could hear the gurgling sounds of the river, and I followed the pavement toward the noise, as it intensified into a pounding of water against rock.

There was a sign to the snuff mill, and I veered off in that direction before the small overpass, hoping to see familiar NYPD Crown Vics parked nearby.

I paused above the driveway entrance to the three-story building. It was completely dark with no cars in sight. Of course Phelps had lied to me about Mike and Mercer wanting to meet me there.

I juiced the machine and was about to retrace my route when I saw headlights coming from the direction of Phelps's carriage house. I didn't want to take the chance of crossing his path, so I drove away from the mill instead. Anxious to get back to the conservatory and a populated area of the gardens, I turned left at the first possible break in the road. It was a larger stone structure-the sign said Hester Bridge-and as I ramped up and over it I could hear the rushing noise of the waterfall at the foot of the Bronx River Gorge where Dr. Ichiko had met his death.

There were only two choices as I rolled down the incline. A left would lead me to the farther bridge, toward which I had seen Phelps or his cohort heading just minutes ago. According to the arrow on the signpost, the straightaway would take me back to the conservatory and administration building-after a drive through New York City's only native forest-fifty acres of undisturbed stands of hemlock, birch, and beech.

I was pushing the cart as fast as it could go, and it bounced me around on the seat as it rattled over branches and rocks that winter storms had thrown down in its path.

The birds and animals that populated the dense trees and exotic park in warmer months had either flown south or hibernated, and there was a dreadful silence that hung over the dark woods-a quiet appropriate to a greenhouse, but not one that I had ever known before on a city street.

Ahead of me, between bare brown tree trunks and filtered through the evergreen branches, I could make out the headlights of another cart. They were coming my way.

I turned the wheel sharply and tried to make a U-turn on the path, hoping to find a foot trail on which to drive. The little machine lurched and threw me forward against the dashboard, stalled in place. I played with the ignition but there was not even a flicker of life. The cart had run off its charge. It was dead.

The blunt nose had bumped against the curb on the left-hand side of the road. I jumped out and looked around to get my bearings, and decided to run for cover in the opposite direction from which I had come.

The ground was firm when I stepped onto it. I was glad the snow had melted from its edges so that no tracks would be obvious to anyone heading along this way. I looked for a clear path between the trees, and set off racing when I found a narrow hiking trail. A small sign identified a grove of Himalayan white pine, and their flexible branches covered with long green needles gave as much protection as I could have hoped for. I ducked and took myself as far off the roadway as I could navigate without much visibility.

The pair of lights got closer to me now and came to a stop in what I assumed was the vicinity of my abandoned cart.

Certainly, Mike and Mercer would be searching for me. There was no point in my trying to peer out of the foliage and see who had approached. If he were friend and not foe, he would have been calling my name.

The headlights cut off. My pursuer had decided to look for me on foot. I didn't hear him getting closer-maybe he had been fooled briefly by the direction in which the empty cart had been facing and started his search on the far side of the paved road. But I took the moment to climb deeper and higher into the woods, certain I would find an egress on the far side of the trail I had entered.

Seconds later, the intense beam of a high-powered flashlight made a 360-degree arc from the roadway where the man-probably Phelps-was standing. I crouched behind one of the fat pines. My clothes were navy blue and black. There was nothing shiny or bright to catch the attention of a flashlight, so I tried to stay calm and motionless.

When the glare no longer looked like it was focused on me, I found the trail again and kept walking, up a hilly slope and into a denser plot of trees. I patted my pants for my cell phone, but realized it was back in Phelps's kitchen, in the pocket of my blood-soaked jacket.

As I climbed higher I thought of Mercer and Mike. They knew I was inside the gates of the Botanical Gardens and they would know I would not have left here without them. Mike had sworn to me at the hospital after my spell beneath the floorboards at Poe Cottage that he would never again leave me behind without a thorough search. I expected to hear sirens any minute, and I knew they could call in choppers with infrared lights that were capable of finding my warm body in the darkest forest if it came to that.

I stopped for a few minutes, still spooked by the total silence of the woods around me. A groundskeeper who had lived on this property for more than twenty years would know every inch of the terrain, while I was feeling my way around like a blind person. I could walk myself in and around trails that Phelps would be able to trace from memory until I dropped from exhaustion, or I could shelter myself in the warmest place possible and let the NYPD come to me.

The long green fingers of the pine needles seemed as likely a cushion as anything I would find in this wilderness. I pulled at a few of the low-hanging branches, knowing I'd infuriate the garden's high-rolling contributors for destroying their plants and counting on their forgiveness if I survived the chase.

I covered the surface of the ground with several fronds and then seated myself atop them, pulling others over me as further camouflage. But the frozen turf beneath them was filled with the residual dampness of the winter's earlier storms, and fifteen minutes of sitting still chilled me more than I could bear.

On my feet again, I traipsed down the far side of the hill, hoping to find some way back to civilization. Now I could make out two sets of headlights, tearing across the roadway like a pair of bumper cars at an amusement park. What if Phelps had called on his army of teenage bandits to ferret me out?

Time to get off a comfortable path, I told myself. I bent beneath the boughs of several trees and started traversing the hillside. I wanted to be in a place where I couldn't see lights, and nothing short of night-vision goggles could spot me.

My cheeks tingled with the cold, and I wiggled my toes to make sure they were still moving. I soldiered on between and among the thick pine trees.

About thirty feet ahead, a dark gray mass seemed to loom behind the green foliage. I worked my way toward it, dragging several branches behind me to serve as a blanket, wondering whether spaces between the large boulders would offer any better respite for me.

I held on to a tree trunk and pulled myself up the last few feet, leaning on the side of the first rock I came to, gulping in the cold air to catch my breath.

A series of huge stones towered over that one, so I stepped around it to see whether there was a niche in which I could lodge myself. I was standing at the mouth of a small cave, and without thinking twice I stepped inside the black hole to get shelter from the elements-and from my pursuers.

It was dry inside, and I felt immediate relief as I tried to adjust my eyes to an even darker field of vision.

Looking at the ground so as not to twist an ankle or stumble on a rock, I got about eight or ten feet back into the cave, so that even a strong light beam would not catch me at the edge of the opening.

I didn't look up until my forehead brushed against something large and hairy dangling from overhead. I knelt on the floor in a panic as dozens of bats let loose with a volley of high-pitched squeals, routed from their roosts by my unexpected invasion. Some dove directly at me with their bared little teeth and extended claws displayed to my horror. Others flapped around my ears, ominously flaunting their four-foot wingspan before taking off out of the cave, leaving me quivering on its filthy floor.