Trent hurried over and lifted her down into her wheelchair. “But now he’s going to know I was in on it. He was never supposed to find out!” Trent shook his head in disbelief as his plan of returning with Dopp to find Arianna’s apartment empty—an apparent shock—faded into oblivion.
“So you’ll flee with us,” Arianna shot back. “Now you have to. But as long as we’re safe, who the hell cares where we are?”
Trent gulped, nodding. “Let’s go, let’s go. We already lost five minutes.”
She reached up her arms to him. “Just carry me.”
“And leave the chair behind?”
“There’s too much slush outside. We have to run.”
He scooped her up as if she were a fragile bird and raced out the door.
TWENTY-TWO
Dopp drove as fast as he could, following the directions of the car’s built-in GPS system. Crossing over to the East Village, he hit traffic made slower by the slick roads, which forced him to keep stepping on the gas and then the brake, jerking forward in frustrating bursts. His left hand gripped the steering wheel, and his right clutched the keys that Trent had produced. On the silver metal ring hung eight keys of different sizes and ridges, and Dopp rubbed his thumb over all of them, wondering which one he needed. Maybe Trent was not so useless after all. It must have taken some kind of quick thinking to look for her keys, though Dopp hadn’t asked where they were. But who cared? For once, finally, Trent had done a good job.
Dopp’s head whipped back against the headrest as he slammed on the brakes for maybe the ninth time. He pounded the steering wheel with his fist. The keys stuck out between his fingers like a weapon. Even a siren would not get him very far in this. Reminding himself that God was in control, he tried to let go. The avenues past Broadway were less clogged, and he started moving east in longer spurts, crossing Fourth Avenue and then Third, Second, First, all the way to Avenue C. Then up two blocks, to Tenth Street.
“Your destination is on the right,” the car’s automated voice announced. He stopped at the curb and jumped out, keys in hand. A tall, magnificently constructed church rose in front of him, pockmarked with troubling signs of abandonment: On the landing above the front steps, an arm stuck out of a makeshift shelter of cardboard boxes. The rest of the body was hidden under blankets, either sleeping or drunk or dead. From the sidewalk, Dopp smelled urine. He grimaced and held his breath, studying the church itself. Oval-shaped stained glass windows on either side of the front door were smashed in, and a painted cross on the door was peeling. He squinted at the door and walked a little closer to the steps that led up to it, covering his mouth and nose with his hand, barely aware of the cold. A name was engraved above the peeling cross: SAINT JAMES CHURCH OF CHRIST.
Dopp read the words several times; this was the place Arianna had frequented?
She had talked about a back alley, a filthy back alley. Dopp turned and headed to the end of the block. To his right, sure enough, a few yards away, there was a narrow opening. He walked to it and leaned his head around to peer inside. A warning surge of fear swept through him—this was the type of place where he could be killed and the body could go unfound for days. It was completely black inside; he could discern only the two steep walls on either side, the backs of other buildings that were nearly contiguous, but not quite. He stepped inside, leaving the comforting glow of the streetlight. About a half block away, the steeple of the church rose high. He pulled out his cell phone and shone it on the ground. It was covered with debris sunken into yellowed slush, and right away he noticed curious footsteps planted into the slush at regular intervals. Fresh, he concluded, since the storm had stopped only hours ago. He trudged forward, keeping his arms close to his sides, hoping it was too cold for rats. A metal railing came into view, directly under the church’s steeple. As he came closer, he saw that about ten concrete steps led down to a door. A basement. He shivered as he descended the stairs, gripping the left railing; it was freezing.
At the bottom of the stairs, he opened his fist holding the keys. There were three locks on the door: one next to the knob, one above, and one below. Pretty high security for such a God-forsaken place. He thrust one random key into each lock, but it did not fit any of them. He tried again with another, and another, until the middle lock turned. It took two more keys to unlock the top, and the last key turned the bottom.
His heart was beating furiously. As he opened the door, he pulled his gun out of its holster and cocked it. Inside, it was pitch black, but he heard tiny feet pattering across the floor. Something ran over his foot, small and plump. He jumped back with a shriek, his scalp bristling with fear.
“Anyone here?” he called loudly. Gauging from the fading echo that the room was not so small, he inched forward, shining his cell phone on the nearest wall until he saw a light switch. He moved closer and flipped it on. Fluorescent lights buzzed to life overhead, and he could only squint at the floor as he tucked his cell phone away.
Little by little, he looked up, and what he saw first was somehow both astonishing and expected: a row of microscopes. Three stood on a counter in the back of the room. On the floor, he saw what had touched him: rats. Five hairy rats with long tails.
