floor above, and started toward the glow of light rising through the open trapdoor. By the time he dropped back into his closet, there was only enough electricity left in the batteries to make the bulb glow a dim red.
Had he stayed in the passages, he would have been left in the dark.
Left in the dark, and lost.
But he wasn’t lost, and he was back in the light of his room, and he knew where his mother was.
Now all he had to do was wait for the right time to find his way out. But before he could do that, he had to get his stepfather to let him out of this room, at least for a little while.
Less than a minute later, when his stepfather unlocked his door and came into his room, Ryan gazed contritely up at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did see something last night.” His stepfather said nothing, but his strange, dead eyes remained fixed on Ryan. “I–I woke up, and heard something, and went out into the hall. And I heard you saying everything was going to be all right. But I didn’t know what was wrong, and I was scared and when you came into my room I pretended to be asleep.”
“So that’s all you heard?” Anthony Fleming asked.
Ryan nodded, and he was pretty sure his stepfather believed him.
Frank Oberholzer’s stomach began sending warning signals the moment he found the Biddle Institute. The building wasn’t large for a hospital, and Oberholzer was almost certain that hadn’t been its original purpose. Its brownstone facade gazed down on nearly a hundred feet of street frontage and the street floor, which was several steps above sidewalk level, boasted a series of eight large bowed windows, four on each side of the double doors that were the only entry to the building except for a small service door dropped into a well at the west end of the building. Above the main floor were four more, the second and third sporting carved stone pillars above each of the bowed windows, which supported what appeared to be a terrace fronting the entire length of the fourth floor. Until this morning he’d assumed it was a private home that was now being used by a private foundation or maybe some kind of consulate. The only thing that identified it was a brass plaque set into the stone to the right of the door, a plaque that was so discreet that Oberholzer hadn’t even noticed it when he’d looked at the building from across the street. The fact that he hadn’t noticed it told Oberholzer two things: first, that The Biddle Institute was not interested in attracting any walk-in trade, and second — and far more important — that he was slipping. A few years ago, he never would have missed the plaque.
And if he’d missed that, what else might he be missing?
His stomach grumbled a response that didn’t help his mood at all, and he reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of Tums, and stuck a couple of them in his mouth in the vain hope they might be able to calm his stomach’s anger at the pastrami he’d fed it for lunch an hour ago. The fire in his belly quenched at least for a couple of minutes, he mounted the steps, searched for a bell, then tried the door. To his surprise, it opened, and he stepped into a room that could have been the lobby of one of the small hotels over on the Upper East Side where you weren’t sure whether you were in a hotel or a high-priced retirement home.
The furnishings of the lobby — Oberholzer was pretty damned sure they didn’t call it a waiting room — were of the same vintage as the building itself, and unless Oberholzer missed his guess, they were the real thing, not reproductions. A middle-aged woman dressed tidily in a pleated blouse and a dark blue suit sat at a desk just to the right of a second set of doors — twins of the ones he’d just come through — that protected the interior of the building from the eyes of anyone who might wander in from the street. The woman behind the desk looked up, her expression a careful mask of absolute neutrality, tempered by the mildest of curiosity.
“May I help you?” Oberholzer flashed his badge, which didn’t cause even a twitch in the woman’s face, and identified himself. All that got him was a repeat of her question, which produced yet another flare-up of the glowing coals of acid smoldering in his belly. “And how may I help you, Sergeant Oberholzer?” Didn’t the badge impress her at all?
“I’m here to see a patient,” he growled. “Caroline Fleming?”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the woman said with an equanimity that fanned the embers in his stomach into flames.
Oberholzer’s eyes raked her desk in search of some kind of nameplate, but found nothing. “And you would be—?” he asked, leaving the question hanging.
“Ms. Nelson.”
“And your position is—?”
“Reception.”
Oberholzer took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, but the air in his lungs did nothing to soothe the fire in his stomach. Now he could feel the acid boiling up into his trachea. On television, the receptionists always cooperated with the cops — you never saw anybody but the guy at the very top stonewalling. “And is it the responsibility of the receptionist to decide what’s possible and what isn’t?”
The Nelson woman didn’t so much as flinch, but one of the inner doors opened and a man of about the same age as Ms. Nelson appeared, wearing a suit every bit as conservatively cut as the receptionist’s, but in a shade of blue so dark it was almost black. “I’m Harold Caseman,” he said, advancing toward Oberholzer with his right hand extended. “How may I help you?”
A buzzer, Oberholzer thought as he produced his badge one more time.
Caseman’s brows knit into a worried frown. “First, we don’t refer to our clients as patients; and as for visiting, I’m afraid we have a policy—”
“The NYPD has a policy, too, Mr. Caseman.”
“
“But one who has no patients,” Oberholzer reminded him. “And I guess if she’s not a patient, then doctor — patient confidentiality wouldn’t apply, would it?”
“Semantics, Sergeant Oberholz.”
“Oberholz
Caseman sighed as if he were trying to educate a recalcitrant six-year-old. “The word ‘patient’ implies illness,” he began, but Oberholzer had finally had enough.
“So does the title ‘doctor,’ ” he interrupted. “So what do you say we cut the crap, okay? Is Caroline Fleming here, or not?”
“She is,” Caseman admitted, after a hesitation in which Oberholzer could see him calculating the chances of winning this particular battle. “Very well, if you insist.” He held the inner door open for Oberholzer, followed him through, and led him to an elevator that took them to the third floor. Stepping out of the tiny oak-paneled car, Oberholzer found himself in a corridor that ran the full length of the building. Like the reception area, it resembled a small and elegant hotel far more than a hospital, and another conservatively dressed middle-aged woman sat at a desk in an alcove very much like that of a floor concierge. “The key to Mrs. Fleming’s suite, please, Mrs. Archer.”
Opening a glass-fronted case, Mrs. Archer lifted what looked like an old-fashioned hotel key — from long before the days of computerized cardkeys — off a hook.
Less than a minute later, Oberholzer was facing Caroline Evans Fleming. She lay in bed, propped up against three pillows. Her hair hung limply around her ashen face, and there was a glazed look in her eyes. “Mrs. E—” Oberholzer began, but caught himself before he’d completed even the first syllable. “Mrs. Fleming?” he asked, but Caroline Fleming stared straight ahead, as if she neither heard nor saw him.
“She’s exhausted, and she’s had some sedation,” Caseman explained.
Oberholzer moved closer to the bed, and bent closer. “Mrs. Evans?” he said, this time deliberately using the name he’d known her by when he first met her months ago. “It’s Detective Oberholzer.”
For a moment there was no reaction at all, but then Caroline’s head slowly swung around until she was looking at him. Something flickered in her eyes, and she lifted a hand as if to reach out to him.
“Dead,” she whispered. “Every one of them. They’re all dead.”
Oberholzer took her hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re going to find out what happened to your
