The DeadHouse

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.

36

Shreve talked to me but I could not take my eyes off the rope. He crouched in front of me to remove my bindings, and they seemed like doll's clothes compared with the powerful weapon he had just dropped onto the fraying, stained mattress pad.

'That's only if things go terribly wrong, Ms. Cooper. Don't let it scare you.'

I see. So far, things are right on schedule. Going really well. What had I unleashed when I'd stormed out of Jake's apartment on Sunday night? I shut my eyes tight and willed myself back on his living room sofa, thinking about how good it would feel to have him caress me and make love to me. What could go more terribly wrong than the events of the past twenty-four hours?

I played with my wrists and ankles, trying to limber the feet tingled from the deadening effect of pins and needles hours of restricted circulation.

Shreve had a plastic bag from some twenty-four-hour deli he must have passed on his way back to the Second Avenue tram. He unwrapped sandwich halves from their aluminum foil and took the lids off two large Styrofoam cups of coffee.

'Here, perfectly safe.' He took several sips from the container to show me that it had not been doctored. I drank the lukewarm liquid and it heated a few of the cold-restricted inches throat as I downed it. Maybe I didn't care if it was drugged. Sleep might be better than whatever I was facing in this urban finished the entire container in three minutes. Something-the caffeine or Shreve's return-had jolted me to full attention.

He passed the foil to me but I refused the sandwich. My hunger had been intense for hours, yet now I was gripped again by and unable to look at solid food.

'What do you know about my grandfather's miniature of the island, Ms. Cooper?'

I didn't speak.

'You'll feel better if you put something in your something in your stomach. You're going to fight me, aren't you?' He helped himself to some turkey while I watched in silence. 'Trying to drag this out until daylight?'

I knew that Mike and Mercer would never have let Shreve walk out of the station house without putting a tail on him, especially once he came up with the phony line about the Jeopardy! question. If I could stall for a bit, I was certain that the homicide squad would find me.

'What did Detective Chapman say?'

'I'm sorry. I should have started with that. Mr. Chapman was nowhere to be seen tonight.'

My right hand flew to my face to cover my mouth and I gnawed on the damp glove leather to mask my emotion. It wasn’t possible that Mike hadn't been there to intercept the one clue I thought might lead him to me.

'Something about following a lead on another part of the investigation in New Jersey. A different fellow took all the information. An African-American gentleman, Mr. Wallace. He's getting married tomorrow, on New Year's Day. Everyone was quite cheerful there, actually. Bottles of whiskey out, toasting him and his bride. A bit distracted from the business of finding you, I would say.

'Wallace seemed to know about this television game, too. Said that sounded just like you. Always watching the final question.'

Dammit. He was right. The information would have been reassuring to Mercer. The idea that I would have watched the quiz show in the hospital waiting room would have made perfect sense to him, and he had not been with Mike and me when the question about Elizabeth Blackwell had been aired last week. It would not set off any