The DeadHouse

35

"Really, Ms. Cooper, you don't believe that all of us who grub around in the groves of academe have purely intellectual motives? Each of the scholars you've met has a selfish goal, whether it stems from the Blackwells project or his or her own special interests. Grenier stands to make a fortune from the drug companies for his research, Lavery's success would solve all his problems with the scandal, Lockhart gets on a fast track for tenure-" He interrupted himself when he mentioned that name.

"Do you have any idea how sick it made me to hear Skip pontificate about his grandfather leading the raid on the corrupt scum of the penitentiary? My grandfather died in that raid. My family was destroyed by those events."

"Did Professor Lockhart know that Freeland Jennings was your grandfather?"

"He's blinded by his own greed. And I had no intention of telling him, anyway. It just would have made him and the others more intent on their own ends."

"I'm not sure I understand the connection either," I said. In fact, I couldn't make sense of anything any longer. Dizziness had yielded to simple exhaustion, and the cold was numbing.

"My grandmother was Ariana, Freeland Jennings's beautiful young wife. The eye-talian, as Orlyn Lockhart used to say. After my grandfather was convicted of killing Ariana, his sister took my father in. He was only seven years old. But once Granddad was murdered during the raid on the island, that sister and the rest of the Jennings family put my father in an orphanage."

He paused. "They weren't quite sure whether Freeland was really his father, after all. So why bother to split that lovely Jennings' fortune with a possible bastard? No one protested when it was decided to send the child out West. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of the will."

"And that's what became of your father?"

"That was the plan. But in the end, Ariana's lover took him off their hands. You see, it was the Church orphanage that was making all the arrangements to send the boy out West-very common in those days. Brandon Shreve apparently had reason to believe that he might be the father. Either that, or he loved Ariana enough to want to keep her child." He hesitated, then said what we both were thinking. "I suppose your DNA technology would answer all this for us today. But not in those times.

"So Brandon Shreve just gave the Church double the money the Jennings family had offered to lose every trace of the child, and both sides were happy. Shreve adopted my father and, of course, changed his name."

"But the boy remembered, didn't he?"

"Vividly. He talked to me about it all the time. Shreve was a good father, but my father's first seven years as a Jennings had instilled in him an interest in the Jennings birthright. Those diamonds were meant to be his, Ms. Cooper. Now they're meant to be mine.

"So I'm going to leave you for just a little while. If the snow breaks off, it's not a bad view. It's the same vista my grandfather had from his room in the penitentiary-straight across the water to his home in the River House. I'll be sure to give your regards to the gendarmes."

Shreve led himself out with the tiny flashlight and I was once again surrounded by darkness in my frigid quarters. Outside and on the ground just below the window frame, a spotlight beamed up at the brilliant architectural detail of the building's trim. If I could concentrate its aim just thirty feet lower, someone far away might be able to see the ghostly outline of a desperate woman and come to save me.

Dreaming about rescue didn't help. I tugged at my ties and squirmed to loosen the knots around my ankles. I told myself to slow down and make the attempts one at a time. I was far too rattled and weak to take on both tasks at once.

My efforts to work myself free were unsuccessful. I slumped against the back of the chair and closed my eyes. Think, I commanded myself. Do anything but give in to the paralyzing cold. Think. All I could think was why we should have smelled a rat in Winston Shreve.

Just looking at his resume, Mike and I should have known the Blackwells project didn't suit his professional interests. This man had devoted his academic career to classic historical sites and digs on ancient civilizations like Petra and Lutetia. This little strip of land was too modern and too devoid of cultural importance to pique his interest.

And wasn't it Lola Dakota who had told him about the diamonds? She knew he was Freeland Jennings's descendant, must have known. That night, so many years ago, when L brought him out to the island and made love to him while t watched the fireworks, they, too, had looked back at the fat apartment building. What had he said to Mike and me in describing that romantic scene?-"Where my father lived before I born"-not too far from the view that his grandfather had in jail cell.

My weariness was fueled by my growing anger at myself wondered if Mike would remember the fit Shreve had thrown when we said that we'd be getting a tour of the island. How had insisted that he wanted to be the one to bring the two of us here. What better control could a killer have? I could picture his demeanor and attitude. He would have let us in the security and driven us within spitting distance of the hospital and laboratory, cautioning us against the dangers of falling granite and broken glass. For the sake of our safety. All the time, he would known that Charlotte Voight's body was under our noses.

It was probably Winston Shreve who had called Paolo Recantati's wife and pretended to be Professor Grenier. Shreve smart enough to know that Recantati was thoroughly insecure about the growing scandal at the college. He could have easily prodded into retrieving an envelope from Dakota's office especially if such a harmless action could make all the trouble fade away. And Mrs. Recantati hadn't met any of them, she wouldn't have known the difference between Shreve's voice and Grenier's.

For the first hour after regaining consciousness I had wanted to believe Winston Shreve. I wanted to believe that I would be and could trust him. He hadn't killed Charlotte Voight. But cruder fate could he have masterminded than to leave her be this desolate place?

And what about Lola Dakota? Why had Lola Dakota Her death, unlike Charlotte's, was not an accident.

And then I remembered what Claude Lavery had told us. He had tried to convince us that he had not seen Lola since almost a month before her death. From Bart, we knew otherwise. But Claude was firm in his recollection that the last thing Lola had told him was that she knew where Charlotte Voight was, and that she was going to see the girl.

That statement had raised in Mike and me the false hope that Charlotte was still alive. Now my brain fought the sedatives that had slowed its normal processing and focused on the logical sequence of events.

If Bart had been right, then Lavery and Lola had encountered each other on their way into the building. Lavery was already facing a jail sentence from the feds. He didn't need to become a scapegoat in the murder investigation, the last person to see Lola Dakota alive.

But suppose she trusted him enough to tell him what she had finally figured out? That she knew where the Voight girl was, and she was going to see her, to find her. Like me, Lavery had assumed that meant that Charlotte was alive. Lola knew better. Did she confront Shreve with that fact, between the time she got to her apartment and the time she tried to leave, less than one hour later? Did she threaten to go out to the island to prove her theory? And was it Shreve who prevented her from doing that?

Now I was squirming again. Feet first, exerting every remaining ounce of my energy against the restraints. I couldn't tell if they truly felt looser or whether I just wanted to believe that they did.

I stopped to rest. Wind rushed in the oversize hole that had once been a window. It found every crevice around me, blowing in the sides of my parka's hood to sting my ears and whooshing up my sleeves to test the strength of my thermal underwear.

Homeless people survived this every winter night, I told myself. Older men and women, infirm and insane, were at this very moment hunkered down in cardboard boxes and storefront doorways all over the city streets and sidewalks. You can make it, little voices whispered to me. People know you're missing and they're looking for you. How many empty morgue trays were there on either side of Charlotte? What did I have to do so that I didn't wind up in one of them, waiting for the spring thaw?

I heard the footsteps packing down the thick snow before I saw the narrow sliver of light. Winston Shreve was back, carrying with him a six-foot-long piece of thick rope.