32
My first sensation was of the cold, biting and urgent, piercing every pore of my body. The stinging pain that grated on my wrist and ankles was caused by bindings of some kind, although I could not see them as I lay facedown in the darkened space. A soft piece of cloth covered my mouth, tied behind my scalp.
Wind shrieked above my head and still the blur of white flake: fell around me. I was inside some structure, flattened against the remains of a wooden floorboard that had been partially destroyed by years of exposure to the elements. Whatever it had been, the draft and snow told me there was now no roof covering the walls
I heard no sounds of a human presence. No inhalation o exhalation of breath. No footsteps. No words.
I shifted my weight and turned my body onto its side. Still, no response from anyone to the rustling sound made by my own movement.
Even this slight change of position charged the flashes of light that raced inside my brain, and the pounding waves of dizziness and nausea returned. I had been in my office, I remembered that. I was talking with Mike Chapman, and I was pretty certain that had happened. But now the crests and swells of wobbly images flooded my head again and I was sure of nothing.
Thoughts would not come clearly and my eyes closed, ceding to whatever it was that had overpowered all my senses.
I don't know for how long I lost consciousness this second time, but when I was able to see again, the inky surroundings were identical. I was dressed in my ski parka, and the lapel of a gray suit stuck out above the zipper. I pushed to order my thoughts, trying to recall when I had dressed this way to leave my home. There was a moth-eaten old plaid blanket stretched out down the length of my body, heavy now from the wet snow that it had absorbed.
My hands were gloved and boots were still on my feet. I could feel them. Only my face was exposed to the pelting drops of ice. I rolled it back onto the flooring. Think, I told myself over and over again. Think where you were today and who you were with. Think where you were going that brought you to this godforsaken place. But the neurons were short-circuiting and something had poisoned my brain's ability to connect the dots. All I knew for certain was that I was cold.
I drifted off again and wakened later still. Now I could see a brick wall a few feet away from my head, the side of whatever building I was in. I arched my back and saw, two or three feet above the floorboards, the empty frame of a window. Get to that, I directed myself. Get to that and find out where you are.
Turning back onto my side, I started to wriggle my feet, making sure I could control their movement. I bent my knees and drew them up toward my waist. Slowly, like some primitive, reptilian apoda, I extended my legs as far as possible and edged my body forward toward the wall. Repeating the motion eight or nine times, I worked myself across the splintered floor until my head touched the crumbling rows of brick.
I rested there for several minutes before trying to slide my body into an upright position. Sitting up would bring back the dizziness, since the oxygen would flow away from my brain. Expect that, I reminded myself. Mental and physical processes were all operating in slow motion. Don't fight it, I said, forming the words with my mouth.
Inch by inch, I righted my body and twisted to lean my back against the wall. It felt sturdier than its uneven surface appeared, and I knew it could support my weight. My head pounded as I forced it to remain erect. I settled there for several more minutes, adjusting my eyes to the darkness around me.
Something moved within the walls of my enclosure. I blinked and tried to clear my vision, tensing for the arrival of my captor. But these were scratching sounds, sharp and rapid, playing off the icy surface of the floor.
Rats. Two or three of them, chasing each other through an open portal and out the gaping hole where glass once fitted in a window.
For the first time, I had a reassuring thought. Large rodents terrified me, but I was relieved to think the odds were good that I was still somewhere in New York City.
Now I saw the outline of the building walls. The window beside me was on the ground level, but it looked as though there were two tiers of empty frames on flights above-three stories in all, though the flooring was missing from all but the foundation The four sides, without a roof, seemed to be the entirety of the structure. Too small to be an institution, but too grim to have been a private home.
I dragged myself closer to the smooth orange brick that marked the window jamb closest to me. My left ear ached anew as the wind howled past. Straining my neck to look out the rough stone archway, I saw sharp icicles jutting down from every overhanging surface.
Cutting through the storm's gray haze was the glare of huge red neon letters. Read the words, I charged myself. Over my shoulder, the rats danced again, in and out of the asymmetrical cavities at the far end of the building.
I concentrated on the giant script sign, which was like trying to make out the object inside the dome when a snow globe has been turned upside down.
Why did I know that graphic? A huge red advertisement that I had seen more times than I could ever count, I thought. Focus on it, I urged myself. Make the pieces come together. The district attorney's office, my home, the skyline, the city. Make each image relate to another. Every night when I left the office and headed uptown on the FDR Drive, I saw the
I twisted farther to the left, an icy stalagmite gnawing at my chin as I tried to widen my view. Yes, there were the four great smokestacks of Big Allis, belching dense clouds into the night sky, blowing back at nature's offering.
So this must be the island in the middle of the river. Not Roosevelt, not the one I had visited several days ago. But Blackwells. Some gutted shell of a nineteenth-century building that had been abandoned and was waiting to be explored by scholars and students, historians and treasure seekers.
Now I began to reconstruct the puzzle. I remembered being at my office with Chapman. I had a clear recollection of our ride uptown to the King's College meeting with Sylvia Foote. But then everything turned hazy, and I couldn't figure whether I had sustained an injury to my head or ingested something that affected my memory.
It was difficult to move because of my restraints, but it was impossible for me to remain still. With my hands bracing my behind my back, I pushed away from the window and prop myself in the opposite direction, toward what looked like gabled opening of the building entrance.
Wrenching myself back onto my knees, I tried to read an inscription that had mostly faded from a plaque on the wall bottom corner credited the Bible, and from what was left of the letters it looked like Hosea. Something about ransoming son from the power of the grave and redeeming him from death. I didn't know the biblical context but I cherished the thought
In the dim light, I could make out larger letters carved in the plaque into the terra-cotta panel that bordered the archway:
STRECKER MEMORIAL LABORATORY.
I sank back to the floor as though I had been punched in the gut. This was the morgue.
What had Nan told us about it? One of the first path-laboratories built in America, she had said. This must have the place to which all the bodies on Blackwells Island had taken. Why was I here? Who had bound me and left me in this frigid shell?
I could hear the screech of rats again, sprinting closer 1 entryway. I half crawled, half pulled myself to the far side of the door, fearing that the filthy animals would find me in their path.
Another window sucked in frigid air from the night sky slithered past it, trying to get to one of the building's corners a bit more shelter. My feet were tied so tightly together that unable to raise myself and stand on them. My back bumped against the contour of a wooden cabinet and I came to a stop. The top and edges had rotted completely and come loose fro support, jutting out into the room and making my passage difficult.
I rested for a minute then pushed forward around this antique chamber, but my jacket snagged on a rusted metal strip that I had not seen, ripping a tear down the length of the sleeve.
