The Chemistry of Death

Chapter 1

Joe Tesla had acquired the best modern and antique maps when the tunnels under New York City became his primary domain. Much information was written down, but when he walked the tunnels, he often found things not marked on the maps: filled-in tunnels, bricked-up doors, a deserted train car, and hidden passages. The tunnel system grew and decayed like a living thing. And like any living thing, it held on to its secrets.

In companionable silence, he and his psychiatric service dog, Edison, walked along at a brisk clip. The dog ranged a little farther ahead, sniffing the ground. Joe checked for the flashlight in his pocket as he walked. He had extra batteries in his backpack, and he might need them. The tunnels he intended to map probably wouldn’t be lit.

Joe stifled a sneeze. The tunnels had their own smells — steel dust, engine oil, rocks, and rat urine. The sense of adventure that came from exploring this hidden world buoyed him. It was still early, and nothing ran down these tracks at this time of day.

He kicked a rock, and it pinged against the metal track. Far to his left, a quick patter of tiny feet told him that he’d disturbed a rat. Edison pricked his ears and looked toward the sound, but he stayed close in front of Joe.

Joe slipped on his night vision goggles, and the world appeared in shades of green. The change always made him feel like he was playing a zombie video game.

Eventually, Edison’s greenish form stopped. The dog looked over his shoulder at Joe, waiting for instructions. His tail wagged in an electric green blur. Next to him loomed the black maw of an unknown tunnel.

Edison looked into the unexplored tunnel, then back at Joe.

Joe pulled the map out of his backpack, a signal they’d be here for a while. Edison trotted back and sat next to him. Joe handed him a treat.

Night vision goggles weren’t ideal for reading maps, so Joe slid the goggles onto his forehead and clicked on his flashlight. He traced their journey with his finger. They’d made good time through their well-known haunts to reach this blank spot on his map.

“You know what they say about the blank spots on maps, don’t you, boy?”

Edison didn’t.

“Here there be dragons,” Joe told him.

Clearly unimpressed, Edison scratched his ear.

Joe took out a compass to get the direction exactly right, then marked the new tunnel in pencil. With precise strokes, he filled in the blank spot. Hopefully that would vanquish the dragons.

He walked to where Edison had first stopped and aimed his light down the new tunnel. Brackets that had once held pipes protruded from the stone, but the pipes were gone, leaving only long streaks of rust that showed where they had leaked. An abandoned steam tunnel.

Probably the building those pipes once serviced had shut off its steam, or maybe the tunnel had been built by a competing steam company long since devoured by Con Edison. Either way, the short tunnel dead-ended at a rusty old door. Barely worth exploring, but he was already here.

The dog pressed against Joe’s leg. Ever since being shot in one, the dog didn’t like steam tunnels. Joe didn’t really blame him.

“It’s OK, Ed,” he said. “Ain’t nobody here but us chickens.”

Edison didn’t find the reference comforting.

“You’re too young to know that song,” Joe said. He stroked the dog’s back and shoulder, fingers grazing the lump of scar tissue where the bullet had entered. Edison relaxed and cocked his head, ready to go.

Pausing at the tunnel entrance, Joe listened. Faraway, a train clattered, then the underground labyrinth again fell silent. He heard only his own breathing and the light panting of the dog. They were alone.

He aimed his flashlight toward the new adventure. The beam revealed lines of footprints on the dusty floor between him and the door. Someone had walked back and forth several times. Without wind or weather to disturb them, tracks stayed down here for a long time. The walker could have been here last week or last decade. Hell, the tracks might even have belonged to the workers who took away the pipes; they might be older than Joe.

“Just a quick look, Edison,” he said, “then we’ll head back to the siding by FDR’s car and play some fetch before we go to work. How’s that sound?”

Edison’s tail usually wagged at the word fetch, but this time he just stood by Joe’s side, looking forward.

Feeling guilty about putting the dog through this trauma to fill in a white spot on his map, Joe walked to the door. Raised letters spelled out Consolidated Gas. That company had predated Con Edison, so it was definitely an old door. He pressed down on the cold, metal handle. It didn’t budge.

Interesting. Maybe the door was connected to a building above, and that was why it was kept locked. If so, Joe might be able to venture outside of the tunnel system from here. That was definitely worth exploring.

As part of the terms of his lease of a house built in the tunnels, he had keys that pretty much granted him access to all the underground doors he was likely to encounter. He’d gone through a lengthy background check before he was given them, but they’d proven worth the time and expense. He took the massive antique key ring out of his backpack and crossed his fingers.

He sorted through keys, settling on an old one with a top like a clover. Consolidated Gas would have been merged with Con Edison years before, so the key for this door was probably pretty old. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure the merger had taken place before 1936. Joe had synesthesia, and the numbers lit up in his mind (cyan, scarlet, red, orange).

The clover-topped key didn’t work. Nor did the next. He resigned himself to going through all the steam tunnel keys in order and found the right one on the seventh (slate) try.

Surprisingly, once he found the key that worked, the lock turned easily. Most of the older doors required lock oil and finesse, but every so often he stumbled across one that seemed to have withstood the depredations of time.

This door swung inward without a creak, and the smell of mildew drifted out. A delicate floral scent threaded through it, and the hair stood up on the back of Joe’s neck. That smell did not belong in these tunnels.

Edison growled. He’d only made that particular sound out in the tunnels once before, when they’d discovered the body of a recent murder victim next to FDR’s old train car. Joe was tempted to retreat, but he had vowed not to run from anything in the tunnels. He’d withdrawn from the world as far as he was willing to go. He had to take a stand.

Joe tightened his grip on the flashlight. The flashlight was big enough to make a formidable club, and it also contained a Taser. It’d have to be enough to take on whatever or whoever was in there.

He flashed the beam around the Spartan room.

“It’s OK, boy,” he said.

Still growling, Edison took a stiff-legged step inside.

Joe discovered a light switch to the right of the door. He didn’t expect it to work, but he flipped it anyway. Ghostly blue-white light flickered. The overhead fixture buzzed like an angry bee, and Edison gave it a quick glance before stalking forward another step.

The smell of flowers was gone, and Joe wondered if he’d imagined it. The room looked ordinary with walls once painted olive-green now grayed with mold and a hard-packed dirt floor. He examined the only furniture in the room: a gray chair and a battered metal table. Both looked government-issue, maybe World War II era, maybe more recent, but certainly not new. A thick layer of dust shrouded their surfaces.

A doorframe on the far wall showed where the room had probably connected to the building serviced by the steam pipes, but the door had long since been removed and the opening had been bricked closed. Joe walked across and tapped the bricks. Just as solid as they looked.

Edison kept growling. Joe didn’t want to shush him. The dog was spooked, and anything that spooked him had to be taken seriously, especially if Joe couldn’t figure out what it was.

Edison headed for the northwest corner of the room. Once there, he began to dig. At least the effort stopped the growling.

Joe stood guard over him and waited. Edison was onto something. A dead rat? Edison liked to roll around on dead rats. It was practically his only flaw. But dead rats usually made him excited, not on edge.

Edison ducked his nose into the hole and pulled out a small object. He dropped it next to Joe’s foot, and Joe bent to pick it up. Dirt clung to a black, plastic cylinder dripping with dog saliva. It took him a second to recognize the object.

A tube of lipstick.

Edison often dug up things in the tunnels. Usually those things were rotten and smelled terrible. He’d never found scented lipstick before.

“That’s a pretty girlie thing to be digging up,” Joe told him. “But at least you won’t need a bath when we get home.”

He pulled out a waste bag he carried around to pick up Edison’s poop and dropped the lipstick inside the empty bag. Why had someone or something buried a tube of lipstick here, and why did his dog care?

Edison dragged a small gray purse out of his hole. The surface was dusty but dry. It looked expensive and fairly new. Edison cocked his head and barked.

“You like the purse?” Joe held it out for him.

Edison sniffed it once and growled.

“That seems like a strong fashion statement,” Joe said.

Edison turned back to the hole and dug some more. He dropped two (blue) more lipsticks at Joe’s feet. Three (red) identical lipstick. Joe’s uneasiness grew. Why would someone bury lipstick in this out-of-the-way room, locked behind an antique door? Could a rat have done this?

“Sit.” Joe palmed a treat for Edison, and the dog sat.

Joe picked up the next tube using a fresh poop bag like a glove. The top had the letters C and D on it. He dropped each lipstick in a separate bag and put the bags into his backpack next to the purse.

He walked around the room, looking for places where a rat could get in. The brick wall was solid, as were the other walls. But the wall with the door had four (green) holes, round like boreholes and orange with rust. The steam pipes must have gone through here a long time ago. A rat might fit through them carrying lipstick, but not a purse. Even if he rolled the purse up, Joe wouldn’t have been able to force it through any of those holes, and he liked to think he was stronger and more enterprising than a rat.

Still, rats collected odd things. In his explorations, he’d come across empty nests containing all kinds of objects: old subway tokens, bones he didn’t want to identify, shredded tissue, grass, and once, a half-eaten roll of Rolaids (for the rat with acid reflux). A rat that liked the taste or smell of lipstick couldn’t be that unusual. But that didn’t explain the purse.

The tunnels had plenty of secrets. Maybe the rat had moved the purse in before the door was locked. Joe wasn’t an archaeologist. For all he knew, the purse was twenty years old or more. Or the door might have been locked last week, and the rat wasn’t able to get its treasures back out again.

He pictured a gray sewer rat with oily fur and yellow teeth returning to find the door locked, squeezing its burly form through the pipe holes to check on its booty. Maybe it had wanted to build an upscale nest but had been interrupted when the door was closed. No point in second guessing the motivations of a tunnel rat.

Edison looked at the hole he’d dug and barked a question at Joe. He wanted to go back to digging, so there must be more there. Maybe even the corpse of the rat himself. Or herself.

“No,” Joe told him. “We leave the rest of it undisturbed. Just in case.”