Fever Dream

What, exactly, had he learned so far?

In 1870, Horace Greene had been a farmer in Carmel, New York. Wife, Chastity Greene; one daughter, Mary, aged eight.

In 1874, Horace Greene was living at 16 Water Street in Lower Manhattan, occupation stevedore. He now had three children: Mary, twelve; Joseph, three; Constance, one.

In 1878, New York City Department of Health death certificates had been issued for both Horace and Chastity Greene. Death in each case was listed as tuberculosis. This would have left the three children--now aged sixteen, seven, and five--orphans.

An 1878 police ledger listed Mary Greene as being charged with 'streetwalking'--prostitution. Court records indicated she had testified that she had tried to find work as a laundress and seamstress, but that the pay had been insufficient to provide for herself and her siblings. Social welfare records from the same year listed Mary Greene as being confined to the Five Points Mission for an indefinite period. There were no other records; she seemed to have disappeared.

Another police ledger, from 1880, recorded one Castor McGillicutty as having beaten Joseph Greene, ten, to death upon catching the boy picking his pocket. Sentence: ten dollars and sixty days of hard labor in The Tombs, later commuted.

And that was it. The last--and indeed only--mention of a Constance Greene was the 1874 census.

Felder returned the documents to the folder and closed it with a sigh. It was a depressing enough story. It seemed clear that the woman calling herself Constance Greene had seized upon this particular family--and this lone bit of information--and made it the subject of her own delusional fantasies. But why? Of all the countless thousands, millions, of families in New York City--many with more extensive and colorful histories--why had she chosen this one? Could they have been her ancestors? But the records for the family seemed to end with this generation: there was nothing he could find to foster any belief that even a single member of the Greene family had survived beyond 1880.

Rising from his seat with another sigh, he went to the research desk and requested a few dozen local Manhattan newspapers from the late 1870s. He paged through them at random, glancing listlessly at the articles, notices, and advertisements. It was of course hopeless: he didn't know what he was looking for, exactly--in fact he didn't know why he was looking in the first place. What was it about Constance Greene and her condition that puzzled him so? It wasn't as if...

Suddenly--while leafing through an 1879 issue of the Five Points tabloid New-York Daily Inquirer--he paused. On an inside page was a copperplate engraving titled Guttersnipes at Play. The illustration depicted a row of tenements, squalid, rough-and-tumble. Dirty-faced urchins were playing stickball in the street. But off to one side stood a single thin girl, looking on, broom in one hand. She was thin to the point of emaciation, and in contrast with the other children her expression was downcast, almost frightened. But what had stopped Felder dead was her face. In every line and detail, it was the spitting image of Constance Greene.

Felder stared at the engraving for a long moment. Then, very slowly, he closed the newspaper, a thoughtful, sober expression on his face.

60

Caltrop, Louisiana

A RAPID SERIES OF SHOTS RANG OUT AS HAYWARD threw herself sideways, instantly followed by the roar of the shotgun. She landed hard on the ground, feeling the backwash from the cloud of buckshot that blasted by her. She rolled, yanking out her piece. But the phony doctor had already wheeled about and was flying toward the parking lot, white coat flapping behind him. She heard more shots and a screeching of wheels as a vintage Rolls-Royce came careering across the parking lot, tires smoking. She saw Pendergast was leaning out the driver's window, firing his pistol like a cowboy firing from a galloping horse.

With a scream of rubber the Rolls went into a power slide. Even before it came to a stop, Pendergast flung the door open and ran up to her.

'I'm fine!' she said, struggling to rise. 'I'm fine, damn it! Look--he's getting away!'

Even as she spoke she heard an unseen engine roar to life in the lot. A car went screeching away, a flash of red taillights disappearing out the access drive.

He hauled her to her feet. 'No time. Follow me.'

He pushed through the double doors and they ran past a scene of growing panic and alarm, a security guard crouching behind his desk yelling into the phone, the receptionist and several employees lying prone on the floor. Ignoring them, Pendergast charged through another set of double doors and grabbed the first doctor he encountered.

'The code in Three Twenty-three,' he said, showing his badge. 'It's attempted murder. The patient has been injected with a drug of some kind.'

The doctor, almost without blinking, said: 'Got it. Let's go.'

The three ran up a staircase to D'Agosta's room. Hayward was confronted with a buzz of activity: a group of nurses and doctors working purposefully and almost silently next to a bank of machines. Lights blinked and alarms softly sounded. D'Agosta was lying in the bed, unmoving.

The doctor calmly stepped into the room. 'Everyone listen. This patient was injected with a drug intended to kill him.'

A nurse raised her head. 'How in the world--?'

The doctor cut her off with a gesture. 'The question is: Which drug are these symptoms consistent with?'

A rising hubbub followed, a furious discussion, a review of charts and data sheets. The doctor turned to Pendergast and Hayward. 'There's nothing more you can do now. Please wait outside.'

'I want to wait here,' Hayward said.

'Absolutely not. I'm sorry.'