'Did you tell them about Dylan?'
'No, I didn't, Grace. I didn't think that would help the situation. It would only confuse things.'
He didn't tell the police his daughter was missing? Grace was overwhelmed by anger. They walked downtown, moving with the crowd. She hadn't eaten anything for nearly two days. Somehow, she wished that Jerry would ease her suffering and offer to take her to lunch so she could talk about the daughter she'd loved and nurtured for so many years, pour her heart out, and receive some comfort that she was not alone in caring about what happened to her.
'I went to see Maslow's supervisor, Dr. Frank,' he went on.
'Oh?' What good would that do?
'I told him about Dylan.'
'Was he surprised?' she asked. What about me, Grace thought. 'What did you say about me?'
Jerry shook his head. 'He asked some questions about her life, our life together. I told him the information was confidential. We don't want the police to know about this.'
'Why not?'
'My hope is that he will try to contact Dylan himself.'
'I told you Dylan is not at home.'
'I know, but don't upset yourself, Grace. She always comes home. She has nowhere else to go.'
Grace felt her frustration spiral. Sometimes she wanted to kill Jerry. So many things about him were infuriating. He collected their receipts, even from the drugstore and Starbucks. He knew every purchase. That irked her and Dylan so much. He went over their credit card expenses as if he were the one who was responsible for them. But the truth was he didn't pay his own share of their life together. She even paid his cleaning bills, and she was
'Who is this person who's supposed to get in touch with Dylan?' she asked.
'I told you. He's a psychiatrist. He'll talk to her, find out what's going on with her. If she knows something about Maslow's disappearance, I know he'll tell us.'
'I thought you were so against psychiatrists.'
'But you were so worried, my sweetheart, my darling.' He stopped and gave her a tender look. 'I did it for you. You said you wanted all the children safe. Well, I have the appropriate people working on it. Whatever you want I do for you.' He took her hand and squeezed it.
She knew how his mind worked. As far as he was concerned, the situation with her was now under control.
'Now be patient. I think we'll have this taken care of soon and then we'll get back to normal,' he told her.
She gave him a look. Get back to normal? They'd never get back to normal. They'd never been normal.
'Don't look at me like that. When everything settles down, I'll marry you and adopt Dylan, I promise.' He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers in the middle of a whirling crowd.
Grace couldn't bring herself to say she'd heard all this before. After the kiss to her fingertips, Jerry left her without offering lunch, and she went back upstairs to her office. In the kitchen she poured herself some very old coffee and tossed in two packets of hazelnut nondairy creamer. Lunch. She took the cup and returned to her office. Craig wasn't there. But she knew his habits. He'd gone off to sneak a few cigarettes and have a piece of cheesecake. In the quiet moment she called the police and asked for the detectives handling the Maslow Atkins case. The man on the phone asked her name. She told him who she was. She was put on hold for a long time. Finally the man came back on the line, gave her a name, and told her where to go. The address was across town on West Fifty-fourth Street. She took a taxi.
Forty-seven
As the black of night gave way to gray, Maslow knew he was not in a tomb limited to the size of his own body. Beyond his feet was an open space large enough for at least four people to move around. That was comforting. He was stuck in the back of a cave and needed to get to the front, the mouth, the opening. Out. And he had to get out soon. He had more than himself to think of now; he had to get Allegra out.
Hours after the attack her cries still tormented him. He replayed the horrific moments over and over and tried to calculate from her screams what had happened and how badly hurt she might be. Had she been stabbed by the knife the girl had waved at him? Was she slowly bleeding to death? Who were that boy and girl? What did they think they were doing and why? Were they stoned on something? Would they return? How soon? Never? The questions kept coming. And the big one- what could he do to get help?
Through the long night hours Maslow heard Allegra moaning, struggling to breathe, and he talked to her, kept talking. He had no idea what he was saying. All he knew was that the girl was injured, and she was crying. He wanted her to get up, move closer, and help him get out of there. Then he wanted her to talk to him, but he knew from the sounds she made that she was gagged- she couldn't talk. Then all he wanted was for her to stop crying. And now she had stopped. For an hour or more, there had been no sound from her but the ragged pull of her breath. He could hear the rats scuffling around her.
'Allegra, hang in there, kid,' he told her.
Then through a solid wall of pain in his back, Maslow heard the whine of chopper blades and the wailing ambulance sirens. He heard a helicopter come, and he heard it go. It seemed to happen in only seconds. Too fast it was gone. His voice was hoarse from calling. Somewhere outside there was activity. Someone was getting help. But no help came to them.
'Allegra! Hey, Allegra.'
No sound now.
A new panic seized him, not that he would die, but that she was dying. She was being eaten by rats as he lay there, doing nothing. They went for the soft tissue, for the eyes first. He was terrified, kept talking to her and calling for help. And when she stopped whimpering, he began clawing at the crumbling ceiling over his head, no longer afraid of the dirt falling into his face. He braced his hands against the earth above and dragged himself forward with his heels and bottom. He was not paralyzed, not helpless. He had only inches, hardly enough room to raise his knees and force his burning calf muscles to grab hold. He forced himself to move.
Again came the memory of childhood when he'd hid under the bed with the springs in his face, how he'd crawled in and out. That had been a safe place. This one could be a grave for two. His arms and shoulders were stronger now, his feet full of the bee stings of reviving life. By centimeters he snaked himself across the sharp rocks of the cave floor, tearing skin off his back and legs and bringing down sand and gravel on his face.
Agonizingly, he shoved himself along, a few inches at a time. Searing pain nagged at the muscles in his buttocks. He kept going. Two more feet, and the solid rock was much higher above his hands. A sudden shifting of a rock over his head made him scramble. He rolled over and inched backward on his hands and knees. He was in open space when a rock gave way and fell on the place where his head and shoulders had been only moments ago. The shelf had collapsed like a sand castle on the beach. The cave was narrower now, the air was foul with thick clouds of sand. His heart raced as he tried to catch his breath. Two rats scuttled over his bleeding hands. He smacked them away and sat up. Ahead of him he could see Allegra's motionless body.
Maslow reached his arms over his head and stretched his back, then he flexed his knees and feet. He was dizzy and disoriented. A lump on the side of his head felt as big as a tennis ball. A gash in his forehead hurt like hell. His stomach growled, but he felt no obvious break in his legs.
'Shhh. It's okay. It's okay,' he mumbled. He had no idea he was making the sounds or to whom he was talking. His back still hurt, but his legs were moving. He was muttering, moving along the cave floor, feeling the rough stones with his hands. In the dim light he could see the form of Allegra. A lump, not a very big one. It looked as if her head was half buried in sand. Beyond that, bars and dim light.
'Allegra.' He crawled toward her.
His knee snagged a jagged rock. He collapsed forward. His hand slipped into a puddle of stagnant water. Furious movement from the water. A ball-sized slimy something jumped out and hit him in the face with a
