from some kind of shotgun, not a pistol. I tried to buy into Mike's theory that it was simply pranksters with an early burst of holiday fireworks.
It was almost nine-thirty when I rang the bell at the neo-Victorian home on a quiet dead-end street in White Plains. The sandy-haired man who opened the door to us looked no older than Mike. He had fine, chiseled features and an athletic build. 'I'm Skip Lockhart. Why don't you come inside and warm up?'
The large living room was filled with antique furniture and decorated in a very formal style. There were pictures on all the tabletops, which I tried to scan as he led us into a study.
'Thanks for coming up here. I'm kind of stuck for the next week.'
'We just assumed that you lived here.'
'It's my parents' home, actually. They've gone out to Scotts-dale to visit my sister for the week, and I promised I'd come up here after Christmas to keep an eye on my grandfather, who lives with them. He's ninety, and as much as he thinks he can take care of himself, we need to keep an eye on him. I was a friend of Lola's. Anything I can do to be helpful, I'd like to try.'
'Where's home?'
'In the city.'
'Near campus? Near Lola's apartment?'
'A few blocks away.'
Lockhart told us that he was thirty-eight years old, single, and an assistant professor of American history at King's College. He had known Lola for five or six years, and had never been romantically involved with her. Yes, he admitted that he had dated several students at the school, despite the fact that it was against the administrative guidelines. But he had never known Charlotte Voight and never given any thought to her disappearance.
'How much time did you spend with Dakota, on campus or off?'
'Very little, until she got me involved in the Blackwells Island project.'
'What was your interest in that?'
'Two things, really,' Lockhart answered, sitting back in his leather armchair and crossing one leg over the other knee. 'Obviously, being a student of Americana, I'm quite familiar with the history of the area. An astounding number of well-known people have spent time there, and as a social phenomenon, it's a great resource for teaching students how we've dealt with society's outcasts throughout time.'
He cleared his throat several times as he talked, looking us over and trying to get comfortable with us, it seemed to me.
'But I've always had a personal reason to be fascinated with that little strip of land. You see, my grandfather used to work on the island.'
Mike was engaged now, both because of the investigation and because of his own love for historical nuggets. 'What do you mean?'
'You probably know that the place was once covered by institutions-hospitals, asylums, jailhouses. And the New York Penitentiary.'
'We were over there yesterday. That building doesn't exist at all anymore, does it? Just a pile of rubble and rocks.'
'You're right. It used to stand directly to the north of the Smallpox Hospital, but it was demolished before the Second World War. It was the gloomiest place on the island, which is saying quite a lot. Unless you've made a study of it, as I have, there'd be no reason for you to know about the terrible scandal that took place there shortly before it was closed.'
'What kind of scandal?'
'During the Tammany Hall days, the prison was a cesspool of corruption and graft. The place was actually dominated by mob members who were inmates. You'd have to see photographs to believe the way they lived.'
'You mean how awful it was?'
'Not for the top dogs. They had quite a luxurious lifestyle, with personal pets and private gardens, food and liquor that was smuggled in to them. A few even dealt drugs inside.'
'That piece of it hasn't changed too much,' Chapman said.
'Finally, when Fiorello La Guardia was elected to the mayoralty and Tammany Hall fell, he named a new commissioner of correction. A gentleman named Austin MacCormick. My grandfather was a young lawyer at the time, hired out of your office, Miss Cooper.'
Lockhart leaned over and handed me one of the old photographs from the side table. 'He wasn't even thirty years old. MacCormick hired him to work on the cleanup of the penitentiary. He and his cronies planned a huge surprise raid of the prison-a very successful one, which ended up shutting it down. It was quite a big deal. Gramps still has all the clippings to prove it.'
Lockhart stood to adjust the thermostat in the room and check on the heat.
'Did Lola Dakota ever meet your grandfather?'
'Meet him? I thought she was going to elope with him.' He laughed as he said it. 'Once she found out that he had actually spent time on the island, there was no keeping her away from this house. And it was a godsend for my folks to have someone who took a real interest in the old guy, who could listen to his stories day in and day out.'
'What did they talk about?'
'Everything he could remember. She listened to him describe the raid itself, she looked at his photo albums and read his diaries. In fact, I think she may still have had some of the volumes. I suppose someone will sort that all out and get them back to us. Seems rather irrelevant in light of what happened to Lola.'
I made a note to look for the diaries among the inventory of Lola's books and papers.
'Were you there for those conversations?'
'Two or three times, at the outset. But I grew up on these stories and I've heard them all my life. I don't suppose there was anything he told her that I didn't already know. She'd just take the train up here, have lunch with my grandfather, spell my mother for a couple of hours. I don't think any great revelations came of it, Miss Cooper.'
'Can you think of any reason, any motive for someone to kill Lola?'
'Is Ivan too obvious a choice? I've only met him a couple of times, but I know she was very frightened of him. There are plenty of students who hold her responsible for their not making the dean's list or bringing down their averages, but I don't think we had any homicidal maniacs among them.'
'Did you ever accuse her of being a gold digger or a treasure seeker?'
Lockhart blushed. 'That's what I get for being out of town when all this started. You've clearly covered some territory.' He looked down at his Top-Siders and back up at Chapman. 'Not in a literal sense. She wasn't after Ivan's money-if he really had any. It's just that she would latch onto people and use them for whatever she could suck out of them. Then she'd just discard them when they couldn't give her anything else. It wasn't a nice thing to watch.'
'What do you know about Claude Lavery?'
Lockhart was slow to answer. 'More than I ever wanted to. I can't tell you I objected to his activities at the college. I can't say he was selling drugs to kids, exactly, but he introduced so many of them to a culture in which there was a general acceptance of substance abuse. There are so many rumors about his misappropriation of funds-well, it just makes me furious. We've been struggling awfully hard to get King's off the ground, and Lavery did everything he could to allow intellectuals at the better schools to think we were just all about street jive.'
'What do you know about the missing money?'
'Not a thing. I'm on a tenure track myself, trying to keep my hands clean and mind my own business.'
'Lavery and Lola?'
'I didn't meddle with it. They were pals. Nothing intimate, of course. She was working on something else with him, and I just put up a Chinese wall between us.'
'Would you mind if we talked with your grandfather, as long as we're here?' I asked.
'Not at all. I'm sure he'd be delighted, too. Hope you don't have to be anywhere very soon. You get him going on the MacCormick raid and he'll bend your ear off.'
Lockhart stood up to lead us out of the room, then turned back, biting the corner of his lip.
'Something wrong?'
