The Deadhouse (16 page)

Mike had opened his notepad and was ticking off his new requests.
"We'll move on to the permanent residents, Ms. Foote, faculty and
administration. Here's a list of the people I'd like to see tomorrow.
At
my
office. Let's start with the acting president, Mr.
Recantati. I'd like Professor Lockhart—he's the historian, right?—and
Professor Shreve, from anthropology, and the heads of each department
involved in the project Professor Dakota was working on. I want—"

"I'm just not certain of the availability of these people on such
short notice."

"Coop, have you got any paper with you?"

I opened my folder and removed several grand jury subpoenas. Foote
knew exactly what that meant. "They can be in Detective Chapman's
office in the morning, or they can come directly to the courthouse at
the end of the week and be questioned by me, under oath, before the
grand jury. Their call, Sylvia." I scribbled in the names and dates
while Chapman kept talking.

Foote ushered us into a small room adjacent to her own. For the rest
of the afternoon, we saw a stream of young adults who attended King's
College and lived in the five boroughs or surrounding suburbs. Most of
them acted as though they would rather be boarding the
Titanic
than
talking to a detective and a prosecutor. Not one of them admitted to
having any personal knowledge about Lola Dakota or Charlotte Voight.
Drugs were everywhere on campus, they seemed to agree, but none of
these kids had ever inhaled and didn't know who the dealers or steerers
were.

One of the last to straggle in was a senior who had lived on the
same floor as Charlotte during the spring semester. Kristin Baymer was
also twenty. Her home was a Fifth Avenue apartment, where her father
and stepmother were raising her infant half brother. She parked herself
on the sofa opposite the desk at which I had been working and curled up
with her knees underneath her, stifling a yawn as she greeted us.

"I'm not gonna get in trouble for this, am I?"

"Depends what you did," Mike said, trying to apply his charm, along
with his best grin and most collegiate affect.

"Drugs. You probably know that I was on academic probation sophomore
year. Got caught with some pills. Amphetamines tranquilizers. That kind
of stuff."

"We're not here on a drug bust, Kristin. We've got a murder to solve
and a girl to find. Hey, I'd like it if nobody stuck needles in their
arms or snorted coke, but I'm not the Vice Squad. What you say to us
about any of that stays right in this room "

Foote hadn't given us the student files, so we hadn't known
Kristin's background. She looked too wasted and too tired to worry
about whom she could trust. She just started talking

"Charlotte and I had a lot in common. Both loners, both stubborn
both enjoyed getting high. My mom died a few years ago hke hers. And my
father married my big brother's girlfriend. My stepmother's two years
older than I am, and now I've got an eight-month-old brother. Classy,
huh? And they call
me
dysfunctional."

Did you and Charlotte spend a lot of time together?"

"Only when we were doing drugs. Otherwise, neither one of us was
very sociable."

"Did she have a favorite? Not person. I mean drug of choice "

"Charlotte? She'd try almost anything. Pills were nothing for her.
She'd take ups when she was depressed. Then she'd get so manic she
needed something to bring her down. She liked cocaine a lot. And
heroin."

Heroin had ravaged the drug users in urban America throughout the
sixties and seventies. It had rarely appealed to young women, experts
thought, because so many of them were averse to injecting themselves in
the arm and developing track marks. The late nineties saw a surge of
heroin use, with a new and potent strain that could be snorted and
smoked, just like the more fashionable cocaine.

Kristin was biting at a hangnail now, twisting the torn skin between
her teeth. "And Ecstasy. That girl loved her Ecstasy." She said it like
an endorsement for cornflakes. Good old wholesome Ecstasy.

The pills, originally patented by the E. Merck pharmaceutical
company in Germany, in 1914, were now made in Holland, Belgium, and
Israel. They were being smuggled into the States in enormous quantities
and had taken over the drug scene faster than any substance tracked
before. The euphoric condition Ecstasy produces, along with its
reputation for enhancing sexual enjoyment, made it hugely popular among
young adults. The tablets stimulate the nervous system like speed, but
at the same time create a sense of well-being and an almost
hallucinogenic haze. So new on the scene that it wasn't even a
controlled substance in New York until 1997, it was now a staple on
high school and college campuses.

"Where'd you get it? The Ecstasy, I mean."

"Are you kidding? It's easier than getting a pack of Marlboros. Kids
need proof of age for cigarettes these days. Ecstasy's everywhere."
Kristin smiled.

"It's expensive, isn't it?" I thought the pills went for at least
thirty dollars a pop. Fine for models and stockbrokers, but tough on a
college allowance.

"Charlotte used to call my prep school friends 'Trustafarians.' No
shortage of funds for a good time. My dad would rather send me money to
keep me away from home than have me bitching about his wife all the
time." She looked Mike up and down, then switched her scrutiny to me.
"I don't know when either of you was last in a bar in Manhattan. But a
Cosmopolitan costs nine bucks per drink. I can get the same buzz off
one Ecstasy that it takes me five cocktails to match. Do the math.

"Besides, Charlotte was sleeping with Julian for the better part of
a year. When you're putting out for the guy who's dealing the pills,
there's an endless supply." "Were you close to Julian, too?"

Now she was picking at her lavender nail polish. "Never slept with
him. Didn't have to. Like I said, I could afford to buy most things
that I wanted." "What was he like?"

Kristin shrugged her shoulders and went on flaking off the chips.
"He was an okay guy. He actually seemed to care about Charlotte. Maybe
that's why she dumped him. I don't think she liked anybody getting that
close to her."

"Did she leave him for someone else?" Mike asked.

"What's the difference?"

"'Cause maybe she's still alive. Maybe someone can help us find her."

"Some of us figure she doesn't want to be found. Just went off to
lead her own life." Kristin's cavalier attitude about Charlotte's
disappearance was disturbing.

"Did you know Professor Dakota?"

"Only by reputation."

"But Charlotte was a friend of the professor's, wasn't she?"

"No way," Kristin said, looking at me as if I were crazy.

"What makes you so sure?"

"Fall semester, last year, okay? Charlotte flunked Dakota's class.
Capital F in some bullshit course about the mayoralty in New York, La
Guardia to Lindsay. Set her off in a complete funk. It was one thing
for her to sweet-talk a guy like Julian into feeding her pills, but if
she was kicked out of King's, then she'd have no choice but to go home
to South America. Tuition was the only thing her father would pay for.
No frills. If she wasn't at college, hasta la vista, sweet Charlotte.
You two look surprised."

"I am a bit surprised," Mike led off. "Lola Dakota kept a bulletin
board behind her desk. Had some pictures of her relatives, had some
snapshots of famous people. But she also had a photograph of Charlotte
Voight. Like something from a freshman mug book. We just assumed it
meant she took an interest in the girl. Cared about her. Missed her."

Kristin nipped at her raw skin again. "Julian would have keeled over
at that one. He used to tell Charlotte that Dakota would get what was
coming to her someday. I just thought he was being macho for her sake.
Never thought anyone would kill the SOB. Must be some other reason that
Charlotte's picture's on her board."

"Who else can we talk to about Charlotte?" I asked. "There must have
been other people she confided in about her plans. You don't just
disappear into thin air."

"Can't think of a soul. I was the last person to see her alive, far
as I know."

"Where was that?"

"I was coming into the lobby of the dorm about eight-thirty at
night. She was on her way out, going to Julian's. She never got there.
Must have changed her mind. Found another source."

"Did she seem to be in distress? Unhappy? De—"

"Nope. She seemed just fine. Cheerful almost. I asked her if she
wanted to come up to my room to do a few lines with me. Charlotte
laughed and said she had a better offer. She was going to the lab."

"Where's that?"

"That's what she used to call Julian's room. If he didn't have what
you wanted, just wait ten minutes and he'd cook it up for you," Kristin
said, obviously pleased by the memory. "He was wasting his time in the
criminal justice department. He should have been a science major."

Chapman was disgusted. "Better living through chemistry," he said,
looking at his watch.

"Anyway, Charlotte walked out the door and I never saw her again. I
just assumed she was partying over at the lab."

12

I rang the bell at the Kramer-Rothschild town house shortly

before 7:30 P.M. Nan opened the door and I introduced her to

Mike Chapman.

"We might as well go upstairs to my study. All the information

about our project is there. I've lost my husband to a new client this

evening. He's working late." We declined her offer of a drink and

followed her up to the second floor.

"Could I trouble you for a television, ma'am?"

"Let's stop in the den first, then," she said, leading us around

the corner and clicking on the set. "Something breaking on the

news about your case?"

"No. Alex and I have a standing bet on the
Final Jeopardy!
question.
It'll only take a few minutes."

We caught up on small talk while we waited for Mike to find the
station and then for the commercial to end. Trebek was reminding the
three players that tonight's category was Famous Firsts.

"Twenty bucks, Coop. Could be anything."

"Be generous, in the spirit of Christmas. Make it forty."

Trebek stepped aside and the answer was revealed on the screen.
"First woman in America to receive a medical degree."

"I'm toast, blondie. I can never beat her on this feminist trivia,
Nan. Probably right up your alley, too."

Neither Chapman nor the flight attendant from Wisconsin even
ventured a guess. "Who was Elizabeth Blackwell?" I asked, before the
Maine fisherwoman or the Virginia enologist gave their wrong answers.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry, folks," Trebek said, chiding the three
contestants for their failure to come up with the right answer. "Born
in England, Elizabeth Blackwell immigrated to this country, and in
1849, she became the first woman in the United States to get a medical
degree, at Geneva Medical College in New York. So let's see how much
money that leaves—"

"The Blackwell family settled on Martha's Vineyard after that. Right
near my place in Chilmark."

"Not a bad lead-in to my story," Nan said, as Mike clicked off the
television and we walked down the hall to her home office. "This dig
we're working at is over on Roosevelt Island. But it wasn't given that
name until 1973. Before that it was Welfare Island, and in the period
we're studying, it was called Blackwells Island. Different Blackwells,
of course. This piece of land was owned by a colonial merchant named
Robert Blackwell, whose family lived there in the 1680s. Their original
wooden farmhouse is still standing."

"And before that," Mike interrupted, "the Dutch called it Hog
Island. It was a pig farm in the early 1600s. Covered with swine."

"You two will be light-years ahead of me," I explained to Nan. "Mike
knows more about American history than anyone I've ever met. The fact
that he's familiar with the island probably means it had some
significance in military life. That's his real specialty."

Nan shrugged her shoulders. "Not that I'm aware of."

Mike lifted a ruler from Nan's desk and pointed to the southern tip
of Manhattan on the huge map of the city she had pinned to the wall.
"In 1673, when the British and Dutch were still at war, the sheriff of
New York was a guy named Manning. The Brits put him in charge of the
fort down at this end, the entrance to New York Harbor. The Dutch
launched a naval assault to regain control of what had once been their
colony, New Amsterdam. Manning surrendered without a battle. So King
Charles court-martialed the disgraced commander and banished him rather
than put him to death." He moved the pointer up to a place in the East
River, halfway between Manhattan and Queens. "He was exiled to your
little island to live the rest of his life."

Nan responded, "It's always been a place for exiles. For outcasts.
That's part of its tragic background. Do you know much about it?"

"Nothing at all. I look at it just about every day, on my way up and
down the Drive. It can't be more than the length of a football field
away from Manhattan, and yet I've never set foot there. When you see it
at night, there's a hauntingly romantic look to it."

"It's got a wonderfully romantic aura, I agree with you completely.
It's a bit like the He de la Cite, in the heart of Paris. A sliver of
land, in a river, right in the midst of a great city. And a quiet,
small-town pace that makes you think you're in a private enclave, not
an urban neighborhood. It's even more dramatic from the heart of the
island. You get to see the magnificent skyline of Manhattan from every
angle, and then off to the other side, there's the industrial backdrop
of Queens that lines the river's edge—factories, smokestacks, and
barges.