Entombed (46 page)

"So your real name?"

"That hardly matters,
does it? You see, if anyone put Aurora's disappearance together with
the former NYU student who hallucinated about killing her, they'd be
out of luck if they tried to find him. He just ceased to exist. One
less junkie the world had to worry about. One less dropout never even
likely to make an alumni contribution.

"But Sinclair Phelps?
However you try to find him-the best private investigator, the most
determined Cold Case Squad, even- what do you call it?-Google him on
the Internet-and all it comes back to is a dead man, with no male
heirs, who hardly ever left Keene, New Hampshire, when he was alive.
There are so many periodical and philanthropic records that connect to
Sinclair Phelps, owner of the largest paper-manufacturing company in
the region, that a humble groundskeeper at a city garden doesn't even
pop up on the screen. I simply reinvented myself."

On the distant roadway
below us I could see headlights moving slowly along. The red bubble
flasher on top of it illuminated the blue and white colors of a patrol
car.

Phelps pivoted and
pushed me back inside the cave, pinning me against the wall and holding
the shotgun to my cheek.

"They'll find us, you
know. They're good at that," I said. "There's all kinds of equipment
they can use to search for bodies in an area like this."

"It worked long enough
for bin Laden, didn't it? My bet's on the guy inside the caves."

"Why here, Mr.
Phelps?" I asked softly. "Why a groundskeeper at the gardens?"

"It's the perfect
solution, don't you think? At least it was for a good while. I like
working outdoors-that part never bothered me. And it's as close as I'm
going to get to living like a Phelps. A nineteenth-century carriage
house surrounded by hundreds of acres of the most glorious park and
plantings in North America. Time for my poetry, and then there's Zeldin
himself, who dropped into my lap with the world's greatest collection
of Poeiana. I had access twenty-four hours a day to all those
privileges of the Raven Society. It's not a bad way to go, Miss Cooper,
if you've got to work for a living."

Phelps had stepped
back and ordered me to continue lifting and carrying rocks. The car had
passed through without any sighting of us.

"You identify with
Poe?" I knew there was a name for this syndrome in the psychiatric
literature but I was too terrified to pull it up.

"I'm not foolish
enough to think my own writings can compare, but he was always, shall
we say, my inspiration."

"He's the reason you
killed Aurora?"

"Not at all. I had
reason enough of my own to do that. It's just that he had composed the
most brilliant manner in which to do it. It still excites me every time
I think of what her final thoughts must have been when she realized
that I was sealing her behind that wall. Alive."

The rock slipped from
my hands. I was losing my focus.

"Every time there was
another insult in my life, another rejection, another defeat, I
consoled myself by the thought that Poe had overcome all those similar
things and more to become the greatest writer of his time."

I thought about the
tragedies that had overwhelmed Poe's life from infancy. He had all the
psychological torment that could have created a monster, a serial
killer. Aaron Kittredge believed he might have been one. It seemed more
plausible to me with every second in Phelps's presence.

"Don't I get any
credit for my rehabilitation, Miss Cooper? After Aurora's death, I
was-well, nearly a model citizen for a very long time."

"Until you murdered
Emily Upshaw."

"Emily knew too much."
Phelps sighed. "Once the newspapers showed such an interest in the
skeleton, it wouldn't have taken long for her to spill her guts about
me."

"She knew you as
Phelps?"

"It's not the name I
used in those days," he said, "but she certainly knew who my
stepfather-well, whatever you want to call him-she knew who he was. She
knew my story."

And that led to Dr.
Ichiko, I thought, stacking another rock on the pile. Undoubtedly the
shrink had all the information in his old patient files to help him
piece together who "Monty" really was.

"Dr. Ichiko?" I asked.

"Now there's a man who
wasn't all that clever. Information isn't of any value unless you use
it properly. Dr. Ichiko was just unfortunate."

"He was smart enough
to find you," I said, wiping some debris from the corner of my eye.

"He got partway there.
He knew enough to look for someone named Phelps. He remembered my
affinity for Poe-some kind of psychological transference, he liked to
say it was. So he did his research and called information for the Raven
Society number, just to see if perhaps there was a member with my name.
There's a Manhattan listing that goes to Zeldin's home, Miss Cooper.
But if you check the Bronx directory, the same number rings at the
mill. And when he dialed over here, I just happened to answer the
phone. He didn't know that at the time, so when I heard the nature of
his inquiry, I pretended to be the great Zeldin and invited him here to
discuss the information he thought he had so brilliantly uncovered. He
should have watched his step more carefully."

Once the cover-up had
been set in motion, Sinclair Phelps had not been able to stop. It was
the fear that someone would come here to his sanctuary-whether it was
Aaron Kittredge more than a decade ago, or Dr. Ichiko or Noah Tormey
most recently. Someone with a connection to Aurora or a link to Emily,
someone who would expose the quiet life he had created for himself and
connect him to the murder of Aurora Tait, someone who would walk
through these gates and shatter the illusory world in which he lived.

"And your little
punks-why did they attack Ellen this afternoon? What was that about?"

"Quite frankly, Miss
Cooper, they had orders to go for
you.
I didn't know they'd be
creative
enough to impale someone on that gruesome plant, but they're good at
being bad. I told them you'd be the woman asking all the questions-the
ever-inquisitive Alexandra Cooper," Phelps said, shaking his head in my
direction. "I understand you were uncharacteristically quiet today.
They mistook that other lady for you."

The boulders were
stacked waist-high now. My time was running short.

I stepped back out
into the fresh air and looked in vain for any sign of human life. I
stalled for a minute, reaching into my rear pants pocket and realizing
for the first time that I hadn't left my gloves in the ski jacket back
at Phelps's house. Something stung me sharply as I tried to withdraw my
hand.

Stuck tightly to the
fine knit of the woolen gloves were several leaves of the plant-the
ferocious plant-that I had pulled from the wounds on Ellen's face. The
long thorns pierced the tips of my fingers and I winced in pain.

I had pocketed the
treacherous needles so they wouldn't accidentally injure anyone coming
to Ellen's aid. Now they might be my only defense against Sinclair
Phelps.

Holding the gloves in
my hand, I picked up a smaller rock, one that I could carry with a
single arm. Phelps was leaning against a large boulder and had placed
the shotgun on top of it. He was toying with a piece of material that I
assumed would be my gag and binds-ripping it into several lengths of
cloth.

There would be no
second chance for me. If I didn't make a clean strike, it would be my
very own, very premature burial.

I approached the mouth
of the cave and walked directly in front of Phelps. He started to say
something to me and as I turned to look at him, I shifted the rock to
my left arm. With a single thrust, I rammed the thorn-encrusted black
gloves into his eye with my right hand, pushing as hard as I could.

Sinclair Phelps howled
as the prickly needles embedded themselves in his eyelid. He doubled
over, covering his face with his hands. I lifted the rock and brought
it down as hard as I could, pleased with the sound it made as it
cracked against bone. Blood trickled from his ear as he fell to the
ground.

The two coydogs leaped
to their feet and charged at me.

I grabbed the shotgun
from the boulder, pointed its barrel straight overhead, and discharged
several rounds into the quiet night.

The dogs whimpered and
circled each other in distress, frightened by the blasts of the gun.
Dozens more bats swooped out of the cave, dipping their wings and
blackening the sky above us. I clutched the weapon in my hand and ran
down the slope as fast as I was able to move.

46

"Ratiocination, my
dear Coop. Edgar Poe would have delighted in your use of it."

Mike Chapman was
leaning against a bookshelf in the basement of the snuff mill,
surrounded by ravens of every shape and size.

My shotgun volleys had
rallied several pairs of police officers in the direction from which I
had come running. Two intercepted me on the roadway and took me into
their patrol car. They brought me back to Zeldin's office, the place
from which Mike and Mercer had been tracking the search mission.

"Once I saw Phelps
outside the door of his cottage paying off one of the kids, it all
started to come together. It was a gang of teenagers who had assaulted
Aaron Kittredge when he tried to visit here almost ten years ago.
Phelps must have feared, then, that he might be spotted. He didn't want
to risk an accidental encounter with someone who could link him to his
other life. It was kids who hit me over the head, and who tried to-to
bury me." I paused to take a deep breath. "Who put me under the
floorboards at Poe Cottage."

Mercer refilled my
water glass. "And the same kids-Sinclair Phelps's roving band of bad
boys-who mistook Ellen Gunsher for you in the conservatory."

"He could have lived
out the rest of his life here, undisturbed, if no one had been able to
connect him to Aurora Tait. Or to Emily Upshaw," Mike said, folding his
paperwork in quarters and tucking the pages in his blazer pocket. "Or
to his own miserable past."

"Did you guys find
Zeldin?" I asked. "Do you think he knew anything about Phelps?"

"He's all fired up,
Coop. We even got him out of the wheelchair tonight, pompous old stiff
that he is. I think he was in the dark about Phelps. I mean, he knew
that the little hoodlums did all the groundskeeper's dirty work, but I
don't think he figured murder. When Ellen was attacked, he got himself
out of there like a rocket, but he phoned Phelps to call off his boys.
If Zeldin had known, he might have let Phelps into the Raven Society,"
Mike said.

I looked over at him
to see whether he was joking. "You still think that's a prerequisite
for membership?"

"I think Edgar himself
would have liked it that way, don't you? I intend to find out."

The brick coffin had
been inadvertently opened and everything Phelps thought had been
entombed with Aurora Tait had begun to spill out.

"Where are you going?"
I asked Mike, who had turned his back to me and was walking toward the
door.

"Just lie there and
mope as long as you want, kid. Let somebody else handle your big case
for you. If you hadn't run off into the woods, you'd have heard the
good news."

"What?"

"Hugo Maswana. The
DNA's a match. Annika's family is going to stay with her another week
so you can put together a lineup and arraign him on the indictment.
Substitute his name for John Doe."

I tossed back my head
and stared up at the ceiling. For almost five years I'd been trying to
put that bastard out of business.

"That means the
ambassador is waiving diplomatic immunity?" I asked Mercer.

"No such luck. It
means you've got to get back in the ring and fight him, Coop. Then you
got to get Noah Tormey to sit down with Amelia Brandon-his daughter.
She took the bus back home, but she's entitled to some answers."

"So am I."

"What's stumping the
normally know-it-all prosecutor?" Mike asked.

"When did Phelps have
time to set up the attack on me at the cottage?"

"He must have heard
Zeldin make the offer to call Gino Guidi's office to get us in. We sat
in the coffee shop for almost an hour waiting for clearance. That gave
him plenty of time to do it."

"But what were they
going to do when they came-?"

"Idle thoughts. You
don't want to go there," Mike said. "Anyway, it would have distracted
us from any bad business at the gardens. It would have looked like a
mugging in a tough neighborhood. Who knows where we would have found
you."

He continued on his
way to the door, waving a hand. "I'll give you a call, Mercer."

"We're not done," I
said, standing and rattling a porcelain bust of the great poet as my
elbow struck against the side table.

"Oh, yeah? I am. The
Upshaw murder is solved. How does it go in Clue? It was Colonel
Mustard, in the conservatory, with the knife. Case closed."

"The arrest, Mike.
You've got to stay to get all the facts from me so you can take Phelps
to his arraignment."

"Make yourselves
comfortable. Stick around for the next meeting of the Raven Society."
He pointed at Mercer. "Detective Wallace is taking the collar."

I looked from Mercer
to Mike. "But it's a homicide. It's your case."

"Not this time."

"Why not?" I could see
that I was losing him. He was tired and distracted, running his fingers
through his thick, dark hair and resting his arm on the mantel over the
fireplace.

"Police brutality."

"What are you talking
about?"

"Phelps stands up-if
he can-in front of the judge tomorrow morning. He'll be a full turban
job, his shattered skull packaged in layers of bandage and gauze wrap."