The DeadHouse

31

I returned to Sylvia's office as the group was breaking up. "Mike has to make a slight detour," I explained to the academics. "Another case. He'll meet us in White Plains, if I can ride with you and Professor Shreve."

Sylvia deferred to Shreve, who confirmed that he had plenty of room. Nan was calling her husband to explain why she would not be back in the city until six or seven this evening as Sylvia and I walked down the hall to use the rest room.

On our way back, I noticed the lanky figure of a young man silhouetted against the wall beyond her door. "Efrem?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Alex, this is the young man I told you about, Efrem Zavislan.

He's one of Lola's brightest students. He called Nan this morning to ask her a question about the dig, and when I learned he was still in town, I thought you might want to meet him. Lola entrusted her most important research projects to Efrem. Everything all right? Any reason you didn't go home to Colorado for the break?"

"My folks came east to see my grandparents, so we're all in town. Miss Foote said you might have questions about Professor Dakota that I can answer," he said, turning to me.

Skip Lockhart came out of Sylvia's office with Winston Shreve, each buttoning his coat and lifting his collar against the brewing storm outside. "What's up, Efrem?"

"Nothing, Professor Lockhart. Just wanted to see if there was any progress in finding the guy who killed Professor Dakota."

"You're not working out on the island in this weather, are you?" asked Shreve.

"All closed down for a few weeks. Most of us weren't in the mood anyway."

"We'll be back in a few minutes with the cars. I'm parked in the garage over on Broadway. Sylvia, can I bring you a cup of coffee for the road? Miss Cooper?"

"Thank you, Winston," Sylvia answered. "How about some hot chocolate for me? Extra milk, if you would. Alex, coffee?"

"I've had enough caffeine to keep me wired for weeks. Chocolate sounds good."

I waited for the men to walk away before stepping aside with Efrem. "Do you mind, Sylvia, if I just have a few minutes with him?"

I led the student around the corner for a bit of privacy. Although I guessed he was not more than twenty years old, he towered over me, and seemed possessed of a maturity that most of the others I had met these past ten days lacked. He was eager to talk about Dakota, clearly sharing her passion for scholarship, and for the Blackwells project.

"Do you know anything about the miniature model of the island that one of the prisoners built for Freeland Jennings when he was in the penitentiary?"

Efrem's hands came out of his jeans pockets and he began to speak with great animation. "Have you seen it? It's amazing."

I wanted to keep our voices down. No need to alert the others that this kid might actually know the whereabouts of the mysterious piece. "No. But the police and I are quite interested in taking a look at it. Do you know where it is now?"

"Well, no. I mean, Professor Dakota had it. She let me see it a couple of times, but that was months ago."

"Where was it when you saw it?"

"At her office, right in this building. But she moved it out of here a while back."

"To?"

"I don't know. She told me she had to find another place for it. No room in her office."

"Do you know why it was so important?"

He looked puzzled. "I'm not sure it was. Least, not that she ever told me. I just thought it was beautiful. Made with such painstaking devotion, accurate to the most minute detail."

Lola may have liked this kid a lot, but she didn't seem to have trusted anyone with the importance of her discovery.

"Would it help you guys if I poked around the island some more? There's lots of places to hide things over there. Places nobody goes to or looks in."

"I don't want you doing anything to get in trouble at school. How about you let the detectives do it with you?"

"Yeah, that's fine. You want me to take you around there tomorrow?"

"I don't want to screw up the visit with your family." I checked the time. "I'm going to see the detective I'm working with in another hour or so. Why don't you give him a call later on tonight and we can work out a way to do this together? Any day that it's convenient for you will work for us." I took out one of my business cards and wrote Mike's beeper number on the back. "In the meantime, just give some thought to where you think she would have stored the model for safekeeping, okay?"

If we weren't able to jog Orlyn Lockhart's memory, then maybe Mike and I could more thoroughly interrogate Efrem later tonight. I thanked him for coming by and rejoined the disgruntled-looking characters who were marching down the staircase to the lobby. This was not a good day for a ride in the country.

Lockhart pulled up in front of the building and honked his horn. Thomas Grenier held Nan by the arm and walked her to his SUV, closing the back door after he helped her inside, and then settling himself in the passenger seat.

Recantati waited several minutes with Sylvia and me until Winston Shreve arrived in a gray minivan. He slid back the door and I hoisted myself into the rear. Recantati boosted Sylvia up by the elbow and Shreve held her bag while she buckled up the seat belt, telling Recantati she would call him in the morning. He whispered something to her that I was unable to hear, then shut the door and walked away as the engine started up.

"Turn up the heat, Winston," she ordered with her usual display of charm. He angled the rearview mirror into place, and I could catch the corner of his smile as he then adjusted the temperature controls on the dashboard.

There was a steaming container of cocoa in the cup holder of each of our armrests. Shreve opened his and sipped at the hot drink.

"You know the way, do you?" Sylvia asked.

"Yes, Sylvia. Skip's given me directions," he said, holding up a slip of paper. "It's right off the Saw Mill River Parkway. Won't take long to get there. I just want to drink a bit of this before I start driving. Otherwise it will spill all over us."

"Good idea."

We uncapped the lids and I blew on the chocolate, warming my hands as I took a swallow. "Detective Chapman and I were up there the other day. The house is easy to find. I grew up not too far away."

"In White Plains?"

"No, in Harrison." I sipped a few more times before Shreve pulled away from the curb, making the westbound turn to head over to Riverside Drive and the entrance to the West Side Highway. "Spent a lot of time there. I was a competitive swimmer in high school and they were our archrivals. Next town over."

"Just get us up there and back before this snow starts piling in," Sylvia said.

The liquid sloshed around the rim of the cardboard cup as Shreve accelerated past the yield sign, and I took another big gulp of hot chocolate, wiping the drops off my parka.

We were passing under the cloverleaf roadway that led up to the George Washington Bridge, following the signs to Westchester County, when I heard Sylvia make a gurgling sound. Her neck snapped forward and her chin dangled against her chest.

I reached for the headrest behind her seat to pull myself forward and yelled for Shreve to stop the car. "Are you all right, Sylvia?" is what I tried to say, but my tongue twisted around the words and they slurred as they came out.

My arms felt like leaden weights as I unbuckled my seat belt, pushed the strap out of the way, and attempted to reach toward Winston Shreve. Snowflakes swirled outside at a dizzying speed, blurring into one as I slid off the seat and onto the floor of the van.