Entombed

44

I was flying now, flying downhill as fast as I could move myself, with furry little mammals shrieking above me as their own fear forced them out of hibernation into the bracing shock of cold air. They blackened the sky beyond the treetops and swarmed like an angry army as they tried to organize into some kind of formation.

In what direction could I find safety? I brushed at the wings that neared my scalp, worried that a bat would become entangled in my hair. Worried also that the most aggressive ones were likely to be rabid.

Suddenly, I had a more important fear. Even if the detectives were scouring the park, a flock of brown bats would have no significance to them. Sinclair Phelps would know their seasonal habits, would know I had disturbed the roost, and would know exactly where on the property the bat cave was located.

As I approached the roadway from halfway down the slope, a minivan without headlights pulled into view and braked to a standstill. I doubled back and ran uphill to the boulders, climbing up on top of the lowest ones, rather than reentering the cave, as I heard heavy breathing and something charging up the underbrush toward me.

Panting at my feet were two dogs, German shepherds who barked furiously as they tried to scale the rocks. The bats that fluttered overhead made passes at them, too, and the dogs raised their snouts at the creatures that taunted them.

"Down!" shouted a voice a few feet farther down.

At the sound of Phelps's command, both animals squatted on all fours and impatiently waited for their master. The shrill screech of the bats, some beyond the range of human hearing, must have been disturbing to the canines, both of whom whined and growled as they lay in place.

I glanced again at the sky: treetops, bat wings, and not too far overhead the steady stream of flights landing and taking off from La Guardia Airport, directly across nearby Long Island Sound. No sign of any helicopter above, nor any police flashers below.

I was wedged into place in the crevice between two boulders, the dogs twelve feet below me, snarling and salivating as they waited for orders to attack.

Phelps took his time climbing up to meet me. He used the high beam of his flashlight to feature me as the bull's-eye within his target. When he reached the dogs they seemed to whine even louder, as though asking his permission to take a piece out of one of my legs.

"Shut up!" he said, and the whimpering stopped as they put their heads on their outstretched paws.

I saw that he was carrying a shotgun. I thought of the professor-Noah Tormey-and the marksman who had nearly taken him out that day at the Hall of Fame. How logical to need weapons-and a marksman-in an urban park like this, where so many vermin were likely to have wreaked havoc on the precious plant life.

"Now, I think you're going to have to climb down from that perch, Miss Cooper. We've got work to do."

I didn't respond. I thought I could hear police sirens in the background and I wanted Phelps to think the game might be over for him.

"I do hear that noise, Miss Cooper. But it's not for you the bell tolls. My boys are out stirring up a little trouble on Fordham Road. It's a very dangerous city beyond these gates. You know that better than anyone."

So his teenage thugs would create a diversion on a Bronx sidewalk and 911 calls would flood the switchboard. Even Mike and Mercer might think it was I who was in trouble out on the nearby street, that I had somehow been spirited off the garden grounds or had been stupid enough to follow the kids who had attacked Ellen Gunsher after Mercer told me he had seen them leaving the gate.

"Call off your dogs," I said, stalling for time. Some of the bats were still circling above us while others had settled on tree branches, wizened little faces staring into mine from their upsidedown positions.

"They're so hard to discipline, Miss Cooper. Coydogs, actually. I breed them. It's one way to keep the deer population down. Gets rid of the rabbits and moles that are so destructive to plants."

A mix of wild coyotes and feral dogs. They were rumored to be a vicious hybrid.

"Let's go," Phelps said, louder this time.

I heard an engine turn on and saw the minivan start to move. One of his young troops, no doubt, getting rid of the car so the police wouldn't make our location. My eyes followed the vehicle till it disappeared around the bend, but I didn't move.

"You can sit up there. You can even keep climbing to the top. But then where do you go? Besides, I've got hiking boots on and can overtake you in a couple of minutes," he said.

I wanted to tell him to shoot me-it would be faster than whatever he had in mind-but I didn't mean it. And I knew it wasn't his first choice of disposing of me because anyone out searching would hear the gunshots echo throughout this quiet preserve.

I started to inch myself backward up the large boulder but couldn't get a toehold without looking down. By the time I had raised myself a couple of feet, Phelps had put the shotgun on the ground and was making his way up to me. He grabbed my left ankle and wrenched it around, pulling me toward him. He lowered himself off the rocks and kept tugging at me until I landed in the dirt on my tailbone, smacking my head against the stony surface behind me.

"I certainly didn't mean to knock you out," he said, kneeling beside me. "Not before you help me carry a few of these."

Phelps gestured to the loose rock piles that some glacial movement had thrown off as it passed through the river gorge and woodlands a few thousand years earlier.

"Of course," he said, standing and extending a hand to me, "you're probably thinking I could just let the coydogs have a go at you. You've never seen them take down a deer, have you? They can each grab hold of a leg and head off together on a brisk run-and when you find the carcass in the woods a few days later it looks like it snapped in half as easily as a wishbone might at a Thanksgiving dinner."

I was on my feet, rubbing the back of my head.

"The problem with that is the poor dogs would suffer for it in the end. I've got them so well trained at this point, and Zeldin or someone else in the administration here would decide they'd have to be put to sleep for hurting you. Wouldn't that be a sorry trade?" Phelps said, shaking his head. "So what does that leave me instead?"

I didn't have to say it aloud. There could be only one thing he wanted to do to me in the cave.

"Perhaps you knew this, Miss Cooper, that the very first crypts were in caves? Deep, cool, wonderful recesses in which to entomb people. We're going to custom-make a crypt for you, Alex. Poe's way."