The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 17

Heather Randall stood at the window of Jeff's apartment, where Keith had been standing when she arrived half an hour ago. On the corner below, kitty-corner from the drugstore, she saw Jeff's favorite Chinese restaurant, where she had often found him sitting in the front booth, shoulders hunched in concentration as he pored over a textbook. Now she forced that memory away and turned from the window.

The room was exactly as it had been the night of Jeff's arrest. The last project he'd been working on-a design for a small office-cum-guest house for one of her father's neighbors in the Hamptons-was still pinned to the drafting board that covered the small room's only table. Her finger absently traced one of the graceful lines of the unfinished drawing-a line that managed to echo the architecture of the main house without imitating it.

The drawing, like the room itself, felt suspended in time, waiting for Jeff to come back.

But that was absurd-Jeff wasn't coming back, despite the strange story his father had just told her. Yet even as she tried once more to reject Keith Converse's fantasy, she imagined Jeff saying, We'll know when we get there.

Her eyes wandered over the room. Every object in it, from the posters on the walls that depicted Jeff's favorite buildings to the shelves of books ranging from architecture through poetry to zoology, were as familiar to her as the things in her own bedroom on Fifth Avenue. More familiar, in a way, for despite the cramped dimensions and worn-out furnishings of the tiny room, she had always felt more at home here than in the cavernous apartment in which she'd grown up. "I love this place," she said, almost as much to herself as to Keith. He was straddling a battered wooden chair she and Jeff had found at a flea market on one of their Sunday walks. At five dollars, it had been too good a bargain to pass up. Jeff had just begun re-finishing it when he was arrested. Now his father's arms rested on its sanded oak back, and he watched her in a way that reminded her of Jeff. "How long are you going to keep it?" she asked, her eyes sweeping the room once more.

"It's not mine to keep or give up," Keith replied. "It's Jeff's. All I'm doing is paying the rent till he comes back."

Heather moved back to the window, hugging herself in unconscious defense against the chill that suddenly wrapped itself around her. "You're so sure he's coming back?"

"If he was dead, I'd know it. He's my son. If something happened to him, I'd feel it. And I don't feel it." Though she still had her back to him, she could feel his eyes boring into her. "You don't feel it, either," he went on. "That's why you came here tonight."

Heather spun around, her eyes glistening. "I don't know why I came here tonight," she began. "I just-I was-" But then the truth of his words hit her, and her tears dried up. "You're right," she said, her voice steady now. "I don't feel like he's dead. So what do we do?"

"We find out what happened," Keith replied. "And we find him."

Heather dropped onto the chair opposite Keith. "Do you have any idea what you're saying?" she asked.

Keith's eyes narrowed and she saw his jaw set exactly the same way Jeff's did when he'd made up his mind about something. "What is it with all you people?" he demanded. "How come everyone in this city thinks they know every goddamn thing there is to know, and the rest of us don't know jack shit? Pardon my French, but if all you're gonna do is patronize me-"

"Patronize you!" Heather cut in. "When have I ever patronized you or anybody else?"

"All you people-"

"All ‘us people'? What's this got to do with ‘us people'? This is about Jeff, remember? And I'm not trying to act like I know everything about anything! All I know is that you don't just go out and find someone in New York City. Especially if they don't want to be found."

A flicker of uncertainty tempered the anger in Keith's expression. "What do you mean, not want to be found? Why wouldn't he-"

Heather was back on her feet. "He was going to prison, remember? So even if you're right, and he got out of that van, where was he going to go? The police? All they'd do is send him back to jail."

"But he didn't do anything, goddamn it!"

Now Heather's eyes were blazing as angrily as Keith's. "And who cares about that, except you and me? No one. So tell me-even if we can find Jeff, what are we going to do?" She turned back to the window and gazed into the night. At the corner, a shabbily dressed woman was maneuvering a small wire shopping cart down the stairs to one of the entrances to the 110th Street station. She did it with as much care as if it contained boxes packed with crystal and china instead of a jumbled mass of filthy clothes and blankets. The old woman paused, turned around, and looked up, almost as if she felt Heather watching her. She seemed to look right at the window for a moment, just as Heather had looked up at Keith a little while ago. Then the woman turned away and continued down into the subway.

As Heather's eyes remained fastened on the subway entrance, something flickered at the edge of her mind- something Keith had said earlier, as he was telling her what happened that morning. As she continued to stare at the subway entrance, it came to her.

She whirled around and said, "I'll bet no one ever even talked to them!"

Keith looked up at her in confusion. What was she talking about?

"The homeless people!" Heather said, her excitement growing as the idea gripped her mind. "The people who live in the subway stations and the train stations. What if one of them saw what happened to Cindy Allen that night?"

"The police must have talked to them…" Keith began, but his words died away as he remembered what he'd heard at the Fifth Precinct that very morning: "They're all addicts and crazies… you can't believe a word they say."

Heather's voice trembled with excitement. "The police- the whole city-hardly even admit they exist! Daddy says the police won't even go into the tunnels where most of them live. He says it's way too dangerous. Keith, what if no one ever even asked any of them? Let's try!"

He was going to die.

Jeff wasn't certain how long he'd known-wasn't certain even if there had been a moment when that terrible knowledge had crept into his mind, taken root, and begun to grow. It was like a disease, a cancer that had established an invisible beachhead on a single cell, then slowly reproduced, spread out, so that by the time it was big enough to be noticed, the tumor had a firm grip on the body. By now, however, the sure knowledge of his coming death was always in his thoughts.

The batteries in Jagger's flashlight had already died, though he still clutched it tightly in his hand, as if somehow he might transfer some of the energy from his body into the useless cells. Jeff's light was now the only weapon they had against the darkness. Every time he turned it on, the beam looked weaker. Soon it would completely die away.

Jeff tried to avoid that thought, but it kept coming back, and each time it did, it was harder to ignore. He knew what would happen when the light finally went out: they would have to feel their way along, keeping their fingers in contact with the walls as much to keep their balance as to guide them. But how long could they do that? How long would it be before they stumbled into one of the shafts that led downward, and plunged to an even deeper darkness?

Maybe, when the light finally died, he would find it better simply to sit down, rest against the wall, and wait until his soul slipped from the darkness of the tunnels into the final oblivion of death. By then, death might even be welcome. He began to imagine that the light he'd read about-the light people saw at the far end of the long tunnel that led toward death, the brilliant light that shone down out of eternity-was starting to become visible, offering a release from the darkness in which he was spending these final hours.

"There it is again," he heard Jagger whisper.

The words penetrated Jeff's mind slowly, pushing through the fog of exhaustion, hunger, and hopelessness.

How long ago had Jagger started leading? An hour? Two hours? Ten minutes?

When Jagger had first grabbed him in the darkness, jerking him to a stop, muttering about a glimmer of light up ahead, Jeff willed himself to see whatever his companion had seen. But he didn't see a thing, and when Jagger quickened his pace, certain that something had flickered in the darkness just ahead, Jeff had to struggle to keep up.

"Feel it?" Jagger whispered a little later. "We're getting close to something."Then, a second later: "There! Up ahead! See it?" But despite the certainty in Jagger's voice, Jeff had still seen nothing. He'd followed anyway, letting Jagger lead them toward the hallucinatory beacon. What did it matter where they went? They were lost in the labyrinth, and he was already sure that every passage would ultimately lead to the same place.

Death.

Now, finally seeing a tiny light himself, he wondered if it truly was a flickering beacon in the blackness, or the dying spark of his own mortality, glimmering in the darkness of his soul.

No, he told himself. I'm not going to die. Not yet. I'm going to live. I'm going to live, and I'm going to get out, and I'm going to be free.

Steeling himself, he fixed his eyes on the faint light…

Creeper peered through the night scope just long enough to confirm that the two figures were still moving through the murky green fog that filled the scope's narrow field. Satisfied, he let the instrument drop down to dangle from the strap around his neck. He didn't need it. This part of the maze of tunnels was as familiar to him as the backyard of the house where he'd grown up.

The herders had done their job well tonight-the two men were exactly where they were supposed to be. In another few minutes, Creeper knew, it would be time for him to take over.

Even through the scope, he'd been able to tell that these two were a little different from the others.

Maybe it was just because there were two of them this time. Always before, there had only been one, and by the time Creeper "found" him, the man was usually in such bad shape that he almost had to carry him to the camp. Usually they were talking to themselves. Once, the herders had let someone stay in the blackness so long that by the time Creeper got to him he'd gone crazy, babbling about monsters and demons. Creeper had done his job and gotten him to camp, but the man had screamed so long into the night that finally Willie hadn't been able to stand it anymore and had made him shut up.

The next morning, Creeper had to go find a couple of herders and have them take the guy up to the surface before he started to stink. They'd dumped him on the tracks up by Riverside Park, and after the first train came through, there was no way anybody would figure out what had really happened to him.

But these two still looked strong.

Too strong?

For the first time, Creeper wondered if maybe he should have brought someone else along. But that was always dangerous-last time he'd done that, the quarry had bolted the instant it saw two men, disappearing into the darkness and forcing the herders to start all over again.

He flicked his light one last time, letting it shine for just a fraction of a second, then went into the next phase of the operation.

Moving into a cross tunnel-a long-abandoned railroad tunnel lit only by a faint orange glow from a hundred yards farther down-he ran along the remains of the tracks until he came to a small alcove. A cut-off barrel stood in one corner, beneath a shaft that rose straight up fifteen or twenty feet before opening into yet another tunnel. In the barrel glowed the remains of the fire Creeper had kept going for the last four hours. Now he fed it with some old magazines one of the runners had brought down, poking at it with a stick to stir it up. The embers nibbled at the fuel for a few seconds, then flames leaped up and the warmth of the fire began to spread through the alcove, the light spilling out into the tunnel growing brighter.

Creeper sat down, crossed his legs and waited.

He heard them before he saw them.

Heard their steps on the concrete floor, heard their indistinct whispering as they tried to figure out what they were seeing.

Heard them trying to decide whether it was safe to come toward the light.

Creeper stood up, stepped out of the alcove, and turned on his own flashlight. A brilliant halogen beam sliced through the gloom and picked the two men out of the darkness, blinding them.

"Stop right there," Creeper barked, his words echoing through the tunnel. "One more step and you're dead."