Dance Of Death

'Roscoe Wall.'

Hayward nodded to one of the detectives to note this.

'Then the paramedics came. They basically pushed me away.'

Hayward nodded. 'Mr. Enderby, if you could just step aside with Detective Hardcastle for a few minutes, I might have more questions.'

She returned to the first room of the exhibition, looked around, then walked slowly back. A thin scattering of sawdust on the floor, despite having been stirred up, retained traces of the struggle. She bent to examine the small sprays of blood. A mental splatter analysis helped finalize her general understanding of what had happened. The victim had been ambushed in the first exhibit room of the hall. Perhaps he'd even been followed from the opposite end of the exhibition-there was a rear door, she'd been told, although it had been found secured and locked. It looked like they had circled each other for a moment. Then the killer grabbed the victim, twisted him sideways; struck him with the knife while moving fast in a lateral motion…

She closed her eyes a moment, visualizing the choreography of murder.

Then she reopened them, zeroing in at a tiny spot, off to one side, that she'd noticed in passing on her initial circuit of the room. She walked over and stood looking down at it: a drop of blood about the size of a dime, a quiet little drop that appeared to have fallen vertically, from a stationary subject, from a height of about five feet.

She pointed at it. 'Hank, I want this entire drop taken out, floorboard and all. Photograph it in situ first. I want DNA on it, yesterday. Run it against all the databases.'

'Sure thing, Captain.'

She looked around, her eyes traveling on a tangent from the chalk outline, through the lone drop of blood, to the far wall. There she saw a large dent in the new wooden floor molding. Her eyes sharply narrowed. 'And Hank?'

He looked up.

'I think you might find the victim's own weapon behind that exhibit case.'

The man rose, walked over, peered behind.

'I'll be damned.'

'What is it?' Hayward asked.

'A box cutter.'

'Blood?'

'Not that I can see.'

'Bag it and run every test in the book. And run it against that spot you just took out. You'll find a match, I'll bet my last dollar.'

As she stood there, somehow unwilling to take her eyes off the scene, another thought occurred to her. 'Bring Enderby back.'

A moment later, Detective Hardcastle returned, Enderby in tow.

'You said you gave the victim mouth-to-mouth?'

'Yes, Captain.'

'You recognized him, I assume.'

'Her, not him. Yes, I did.'

'Who was it?'

'Margo Green.'

Hayward stiffened, as if coming to attention. 'Margo Green?'

'Yes. I understand she used to be a graduate student here. Anyway, she'd returned to be editor of…'

His voice faded into the background. Hayward was no longer listening. She was thinking back half a dozen years to the subway murders and the famous Central Park riot, when she was a lowly T.A. cop, and to the Margo Green she had met back then-the young, feisty, and deeply courageous woman who'd risked her life and helped crack open the case.

What a shitty world it was.

THIRTY-FIVE

Smithback SAT glumly in the same chair he had occupied the day before, feeling an unpleasant sense of deja vu. The same fire seemed to be flickering in the ornate marble fireplace, lending a faint perfume of burning birchwood to the air; the same sporting prints decorated the walls; and the same snowy landscape presented itself through the bow windows.

Worse, the same director sat behind his gigantic desk with the same pitying, condescending smile on his well-shaven face. He was giving Smithback the reproachful-stare treatment. Smithback's head still throbbed painfully from running full tilt into a cement wall in the dark, and he felt deeply humiliated for panicking at the footsteps of a mere orderly. And he also felt like a real jerk for thinking he could beat the security system in such a ham-handed way. All he had accomplished was to confirm the director's opinion that he was a nutcase.

'Well, well, Edward,' said Dr. Tisander, clasping his veined hands together. 'That was quite an escapade you had last night. I do apologize if orderly Montaney gave you a start. I trust you found the medical care at our infirmary satisfactory?'

Smithback ignored the patronizing question. 'What I want to know is, why was he sneaking around after me like that in the first place? I could've been killed!'

'Running into a wall? I hardly think so.' Another genial smile. 'Although you were lucky to avoid a concussion.'

Smithback didn't respond. The dressing on the side of his head' tightened uncomfortably whenever he moved his jaw.

'I am surprised at you, Edward. I thought I'd already explained it to you: just because we don't appear to have security doesn't mean we don't have security. That's the whole purpose of our facility. The security is unobtrusive, so that our guests don't feel uncomfortable.'

Smithback felt irritated by the word guest. They were inmates, pure and simple.

'We followed your nocturnal perambulations via the infrared beams you interrupted and the motion sensors you moved past. It wasn't until you actually penetrated the basement that orderly Montaney was dispatched to tail you unobtrusively. He followed protocol to the letter. I imagine you thought you'd escape on one of the food service trucks; that's usually what they try first.'

Smithback felt like leaping up and wrapping his hands around the good doctor's neck. They? I'm not crazy, you idiot! But he didn't. He realized now what an exquisite catch-22 he was in: the more he insisted he was sane, the more excited he became, the more he validated the doctor's opinion to the contrary.

'I just want to know how much longer I'm going to be here,' he said.

'That remains to be seen. I must say, this escape attempt does not lead me to think your departure will be any time soon. It shows resistance on your part to being helped. We can't help you until we have your cooperation, Mr. Jones. And we can't release you until we've helped you. As I am fond of saying, you are the most important person in your cure.'

Smithback balled his fists, making a supreme effort not to respond.

'I have to tell you, Edward, that another escape attempt will result in certain changes to your domestic arrangements that might not be to your liking. My advice is, accept your situation and work with us.

Right from the beginning, I have sensed an unusual amount of passive-aggressive resistance on your part.'

That's because I'm as sane as you are. Smithback swallowed, tried to muster an obsequious smile. He needed to be a lot more clever if he was going to escape, that much was clear.

'Yes, Dr. Tisander. I understand.'

'Good, good! Now we're making progress.'