Lethal Legacy (49 page)

He was fixed on something on the ground.

I knelt beside him and saw the body of a
man—short, over-weight, middle-aged—slumped beneath a small evergreen bush, his
feet protruding into the pathway from beneath the branches.

FORTY-FIVE

“He’s alive,” Mike said.

I looked up to see Mercer and Shalik standing over
us. Mike was already dialing 911 to ask for an ambulance and backup.

“Move the kid, Mercer. Get him out of here.”

There was something white on the ground, next to
the man’s head. It was a handkerchief, and when I picked it up—ignoring all
crime scene protocol—it reeked of sickly sweet chloroform.

I told Mike and stuffed the cloth in my pants
pocket, then reached for the card in the man’s outstretched hand. It identified
him as a caretaker of the New York Marble Cemetery.

“Figures,” Mike said. “They’d need a guide to find
the old Hunt property. Also useful for Travis Forbes, the chloroform kid, to be
in a cop’s uniform to get close enough to knock the guy out, probably before
Minerva stepped out of the car.”

Mercer was on the ground, trying to do CPR on the
fallen man before the medics arrived. He took a pen-size LCD flashlight from
his pocket and passed it to Mike, who was on his way toward the opening. I
hurried after him.

“You’re not gonna like this, Coop. I’ll go alone.”

We had been in claustrophobic situations often
enough for Mike and Mercer to know they were a problem for me. But I couldn’t
imagine letting Mike, who had covered my back more times than I could count, go
down without a partner.

He took his blazer off and threw it on the ground,
unholstering his gun as he put his hand on the top of the hatch.

Mike started down into the entrance shaft of the
burial space and cleared the short staircase. I listened for voices, but heard
none.

I put my foot on the top step and, afraid to lose
the light that Mike was leading with, hurried down ten more until I touched the
earthen floor.

I stood up straight and looked around the grim
necropolis. On either side of me were narrow passageways that led between
enormous stone vaults. Long slate shelves supported some of the coffins, mostly
made of stone, which were stacked on top of one another.

I stayed as close to Mike as I could get while he
moved the light over the dirt, then up and down among the coffins, looking for
names of the dead and numbers of their vaults.

We had passed the forties, seen the markers for
Deys and Cruikshanks, Wetmores and Wheelocks—adults and far too many infants,
typical of the mortality rates of that century.

As we came to the intersection that marked the
divide between the vaults numbered in the fifties from those in the sixties,
Mike’s flashlight framed a woman’s face.

Minerva Hunt was seated on the ground, her hands
tied behind her with a length of rope. A silk scarf—probably her own—served as
a gag between her teeth, wrapped around the back of her head.

Next to her, Travis Forbes was holding a
taxidermist’s skife—the sharp tool designed to skin dead animals.

“Forget it, Forbes,” Mike said.

“No, you forget it.” He pressed the edge of the
blade to Minerva’s slender neck and the first drops of blood spurted out. “I
can end it for her much faster than you can shoot.”

“I have no doubt you can. I’ve seen your work.”

I could picture the deep, gaping wound in Tina
Barr’s neck.

Minerva Hunt’s eyes were opened wide with fear,
flitting between Travis Forbes’s hand and something behind me.

I turned to look but saw only the massive outlines
of stone caskets and slate shelves.

Travis pulled at Minerva’s arm to get her to her
feet. “Give me the gun, Detective, or I’ll cut her throat.”

“Did you get what you wanted?” Mike asked. “Can’t
kill her before she lays the golden egg, can you?”

Again Minerva Hunt’s eyes darted from Forbes to
the staircase through which we had entered. I glanced back, hoping to see
Mercer and the cops he had summoned, but no one was there.

“Make yourselves comfortable, Mr. Chapman,” Forbes
said, positioning the terrified woman between himself and Mike. If Mike had
considered firing his gun at Forbes, he had missed his brief opportunity.

“Ms. Hunt and I have to go,” Forbes said, pushing
Minerva to take baby steps forward. “We haven’t finished our conversation. Pick
yourself out a slab and get some rest while we find a less crowded place to
talk.”

Minerva looked to the staircase again, then jerked
back her head, just as I heard the hatch crash to a close.

This time, Mike flashed his light in that
direction. Against the blackness of the wall, it caught Alger Herrick’s shiny
chrome hook.

FORTY-SIX

“There’s a shaft at the other end, Forbes,”
Alger Herrick said, coming down the steps. “You’ve got to take her that way.
There’s another detective outside here.”

Forbes was focused on Mike’s gun. He tried to move
Minerva around and drag her away from where we stood. Strapped to him was a
backpack, open at the top, which appeared to have a large book—the size of a
double folio—sticking out of it.

“Hurry, Forbes.”

“I want his gun.”

“We can do better than that,” Herrick said, coming
up directly behind me. “We’ll take his girl.”

Mike pointed his pistol at Herrick, but it was too
late. The man was upon me, the cold steel of his prosthesis gripping my
forearm.

“Let go of me. I’ll walk,” I said, trying to shake
myself loose.

He held me tight, angling so that I was always
between him and Mike, and led me around the central burial chambers to an
earthen path parallel to the one on which Mike stood, inches away from Minerva
Hunt and Travis Forbes.

“Shoot, Mike!” I yelled. “Shoot Forbes.”

The stark confines of this dungeonlike underground
chamber smelled of death.

Forbes responded with a laugh, a loud, guttural
laugh. What was Mercer doing up above that he couldn’t hear us? Probably
helping to load the injured man into an ambulance.

Hunt tried to speak—or maybe she was crying. All
that emerged from behind the gag was a muffled noise.

Herrick turned the corner, and for the first time
I could see that the fieldstone cap had been removed from vault 65, marked with
the name Jasper Hunt II. Books were strewn about, no doubt the result of this
unusual break-in undertaken by Herrick and Forbes. The old eccentric had in
fact gone to his grave—the first time—with some of his beloved treasures.

Minerva Hunt had played right into their hands,
trusting Travis Forbes to help her search for the missing panels of the great
map. She’d fallen prey to the same double cross that had proven lethal to Tina
Barr.

“In fact, Detective, why don’t you come over
here?” Herrick said, pushing me faster, understanding the urgency with which he
had to escape before more police arrived. “There’s a vacancy. Several of them,
to be honest.”

Mike wasn’t giving up his gun, and Herrick seemed
confident he wouldn’t find a way to use it, with both Minerva and me serving as
human shields.

“Drag her, if you can’t pick her up,” Herrick
shouted to Forbes. “If he kills her, just run. Let’s get out of here with what
we have.”

Herrick was ready to sacrifice Minerva Hunt,
confident perhaps that she had nothing more of value to give to him.

“Minerva is your
sister,
” I screamed as
loud as I could. “Let her be, dammit. She’s your blood sister.”

Alger Herrick froze at my words, reflexively
tightening his grip on my arm. I winced at the pain, but knew I had shocked
him.

“
Her
father is
your
father,” I said,
listening as he took deep breaths, startled by the information. His chest
heaved against my back. “You’re a Hunt, too. We’ve got the DNA to prove it.”

Mike steadied his gun with both hands, aiming at
the spot where Forbes was moving with Minerva. “You’re entitled to the damn
map. You didn’t have to kill to get it.”

This was no time to correct Mike on the fine
points of the law. I didn’t think Alger Herrick would expect to go to court now
to collect on the Hunt fortune.

“I never murdered anyone, you fool,” Herrick said.
“
He
did. He’s your killer.”

Herrick pulled at me again, moving me farther into
the darkness, farther away from Mike.

Now I could hear pounding from the direction of
the entrance shaft. Mercer and the backup team must be trying to get to us, but
Herrick had found a way to secure the hatch from within.

“I’ll give you three seconds to let Minerva go,”
Mike said, moving in toward Travis Forbes and his hostage. “Kill her, and you
die, too.”

Alger Herrick heard the commotion. “Drop her,
Forbes. Run as fast as you can go to the other end. There’s a staircase just
like the one we came in. Beat them out of here with the book—they’ll think
you’re an officer, too. You’ll walk right through them.”

Forbes’s fake—or stolen—uniform might serve him
well in the confusing mix of cops responding to a call for help. I didn’t care
if it did. I didn’t care about the missing panels of the rare map and whether
they were lost forever. I wanted to get out of this hellhole, with Mike, alive.

Travis Forbes was beginning to fidget like a caged
animal. Herrick would give him up as Tina and Karla’s killer, claiming not to
have known his young accomplice was going to use violence. It would make no
difference to a jury, but Herrick must have thought it would save his neck.

Mike was gaining on him. “You wanna cut somebody?
Cut yourself, Forbes. Slice your own throat.”

Over my shoulder, I thought I saw a sliver of
light in the farthest remove of the room. I looked again down the dirt corridor
of death, but all was darkness.

Had there been movement, or was my mind frozen
with fright? It was getting harder to breathe in the dank, airless space. I
knew there was a chance that none of us would make it out alive.

Suddenly, I heard a loud grunt from Travis Forbes.
He lifted Minerva Hunt off the ground and threw her at Mike. She couldn’t even
brace herself for the fall, her hands still bound behind her.

It looked like Mike’s gun—the glint of silver
flashing against the black backdrop—fell to the ground as he tried
unsuccessfully to catch Minerva. He was knocked backward by the impact of her
body against his own.

Forbes was running in the direction Herrick had
sent him, un-burdened by his captive. And Alger Herrick was moving faster, too,
pulling me with him, while Mike tried to extricate himself from beneath Minerva
Hunt.

I was coughing now as dust particles from the
ground scuffed up by the skirmish seemed to choke my airway. My own sense of
panic made it harder for me to regain control.

“Forbes,” Herrick yelled out. “Are you there?”

I could still hear his footsteps running away from
us. I reached in my pocket for a handkerchief to cover my mouth.

The first thing I touched was the heavy piece of
cotton cloth, the one that had been doused with chloroform to knock out the
cemetery guide.