Dance Of Death

basement and up into the kitchen. Security at River Oaks was a joke: half the kitchen staff seemed to have keys to the basement, from the head chef on down to the dishwashers, and the door was always being unlocked, opened, and relocked during working hours. When the sous chef had gone down to get a piece of equipment, Smithback seized his chance and-when nobody was looking-pocketed the key that had been left in the lock. The chef had come back up, grunting under the weight of a vertical broiler, the key completely forgotten.

It had been that easy.

Now Smithback tensed, preparing to open his door again. He was wearing three shirts, a sweater, and two pairs of pants, and was sweating profusely. It was a necessary precaution: if everything went according to plan, he had a long, cold ride ahead of him.

While on duty in the kitchen, he'd learned that the first food service truck arrived at the loading dock at 5:30 a.m. If he could make his way through the basement, wait until the truck arrived, and then sneak into its rear compartment just before it departed, nobody would be the wiser. Two hours or more would pass until his absence was discovered-and by then he'd be well on his way back to New York, beyond the grasp of Dr. Tisander and his legion of creepy, black-uniformed nurses.

He cracked the door open again. Deathly silence. He opened it wider, then slipped out into the corridor and closed it noiselessly behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder, then began making his way cautiously down the corridor toward the landing, keeping close to the walls. He stood little chance of being spotted: the chandeliers were dimmed and their amber pools of light faint. The landscapes and portraits hanging on the walls were dark, indistinguishable rectangles. The soft carpeting was a river of maroon so deep it looked almost black.

It was the work of five minutes to reach the landing. Here the light was a little brighter and he hung back, listening for the sound of footsteps on the stairway. He took a step, then another, listening intently.

Nothing.

Gliding forward, hand on the banister, Smithback made his way down, ready to dart back up the stairs at the first sign of an encounter. Reaching the second-floor landing, he retreated to a dark corner, crouching behind a sideboard. Here he paused to reconnoiter. The landing widened into four corridors: one leading to the dining room, another to the library and west parlor, the others to treatment areas and administrative offices. This floor seemed as silent and deserted as the first, and Smithback, encouraged, began creeping out.

From down the administrative hallway came the sound of a closing door.

Quickly, he darted back to his hiding place, crouched down, and waited.

He heard a key turning in a lock. Then, for perhaps a minute, nothing more. Had somebody been locking himself inside an office? Or out?

He waited another minute. Still nothing.

Just as he was gathering himself to rise again, someone came into view from the darkness of the administrative corridor: an orderly, walking slowly, hands clasped behind him. The man was looking from left to right as he strolled, as if checking that all doors were properly closed.

Smithback shrank back farther into the darkness behind the sideboard, not moving, not even breathing, as the man walked across the far side of the landing and vanished down the corridor leading to the library.

Smithback waited, motionless, another five minutes. Then, keeping low, he made his way down the staircase to the first floor.

Here it seemed even gloomier. After making sure nobody was in sight, Smithback darted down the wide corridor that led to the kitchen.

It was the work of thirty seconds to reach the heavy double doors. Taking one last look over his shoulder, he pushed against the door, preparing to back into the kitchen.

The door didn't budge.

Smithback turned to face it, pressed harder.

Locked.

Shit. This was something he hadn't anticipated: a door that was never locked during the day.

He sounded his pocket for the basement key, hoping against hope it would open the kitchen door as well. No luck.

He glanced over his shoulder again, disappointment and a rising despair flooding over him. It had been such a good plan. And he'd been so close to getting out. To be thwarted like this…

Then he paused. There might-just might-still be a chance.

Cautiously, he made his way back to the landing. He peered up, straining for any sound, but the velvety darkness remained silent. Noiselessly, he crept up the stairway to the second floor, flitted across the landing, and entered the dining room.

The vast, ghostly space seemed sepulchral in its stillness. A few bars of pale moonlight slanted in through tall windows, bathing the room in an eerie, almost phosphorescent illumination. Smithback threaded his way quickly between the tables-already laid for breakfast-until he reached the rear. Here, a decorative partition ran parallel to the wall, concealing the service ports and waiters' stations behind. Smithback ducked behind the partition and-now in deeper darkness-moved carefully toward his destination: the dumbwaiter, covered by a four-by-three-foot metal panel set into the back wall.

Slowly, careful to make no noise, Smithback grasped the metal panel and pulled it open. Inside was an empty shaft. A heavy rope, mounted to a pulley mechanism on the chute's ceiling, vanished in inky depths below.

Smithback couldn't help but smile.

During his kitchen duty, he'd seen gray tubs of silverware and dirty dishes come down from the dining room via this same dumbwaiter. Now, with any luck, it would carry a very different cargo.

There were a series of buttons beside the access panel, used to raise and lower the dumbwaiter. Smithback peered at them in the faint illumination, then reached out to press the up button. He'd bring the thing up from the kitchen, clamber in, and descend…

Then he froze. The motor would make a lot of noise in the stillness. And there was the faintest chance somebody might still be inside the kitchen: the last thing he wanted was to betray his presence.

Leaning forward, he grasped the heavy rope, gave one or two exploratory tugs, and then-with a grunt-began to haul upward with all his might.

It took ages to hoist the dumbwaiter from the kitchen below. By the time he was done, Smithback was gasping and puffing, his triple layer of shirts soaked in sweat. He paused to rest a moment and look around. Still nobody.

Returning his attention to the dumbwaiter, he clambered inside, squeezing his long limbs into its narrow confines. He pulled the access panel closed behind him.

Utter darkness.

Sitting inside the dumbwaiter, knees up around his ears, Smithback realized there was no easy way to lower the device. Then he discovered that, by placing his hands against the front wall of the chute and exerting upward pressure, he could force the dumbwaiter down, inch by inch. It was blind, sweaty, exhausting work, but in a few minutes he felt his hands brushing against the steel frame of another access panel. He'd reached the first floor- and the kitchen.

He paused a moment, despite the stifling, claustrophobic space, to listen. Hearing nothing, he pushed open the panel.

The kitchen was empty. The only light came from the emergency exit signs, which threw a faint crimson light over the sprawling space.

Smithback climbed out, worked the kinks out of his limbs, and looked around. There, set into a far wall, was the door to the basement.

He stiffened with excitement. Almost there. Nothing could stop him now. River Oaks might be able to incarcerate slack-jawed wackos like Roger Throckmorton, but it couldn't hold the likes of William Smithback.

The kitchen was a strange melange of old and new. The soot-blackened walk-in fireplace was flanked by professional stainless-steel mixers large enough to hold a family. Long bunches of braided garlic cloves, peppers, and fines herbes hung from the ceiling: the head chef was a native of Brittany. The granite countertops gleamed with ranks of cookware. Dozens of top-quality German carving knives sat behind locked frames of steel and