“Not to mention a Tanner or Verge or Eddie Wicks,” Mercer said.
We walked up the muddy incline, encountering only a handful of people along the way. The first waterfall was the one to which Flo had been heading when Tanner struck her down. Mike balanced himself on the slippery rocks that led to it from the side of the stream. He ducked behind the falls, getting doused with water as he did, and then called out to us.
“It’s sweet in here,” Mike said. “Flo’s right.”
“How big?” I asked.
“Just a stone seat. Three, maybe four people could sit on it. I wouldn’t call it a cave ’cause it doesn’t go any deeper. But it’s just as Flo described it to you.”
Mike came out from beneath the overhang and shook himself off.
“You’re all wet,” I said.
“Hardly the first time. Let’s keep going.”
At some points the path hugged the edge of the stream, while at others it meandered off into thicker woods. This was so densely forested and so peaceful, a part of Manhattan that most New Yorkers didn’t even know existed.
The second falls was constructed in an entirely different manner. The boulders used were longer and flatter. The distance in the drop from the running stream to the water below was much shorter than the first one, creating its own distinct sound-apparently part of the Olmsted and Vaux plan.
Again Mike made his way over the rocks as water gushed around him and disappeared.
“Can you see him?” I asked Mercer.
“Nope.”
“Mike?”
“Be right out,” he called, his voice echoing from a hollow space within. He was on his hands and knees when he emerged, and stood up when he got right behind the curtain of water. “A bear could hibernate in there.”
Mercer extended a hand to help Mike back onto solid ground.
“Anything inside?”
“Empty. Empty and cold and damp in there, but it’s about four feet deep. I wonder whether it was built that way specifically to have an effect on the sound of the water dropping on the rocks. Wouldn’t seem to have any other purpose.”
We continued southwest, where the stream narrowed and curved around a stand of tall trees. I felt as though we could have been lost in these woods, were we not in the middle of Manhattan. The only noise I heard was the sound of branches crackling as we stepped on them and the amazing variety of birdcalls overhead.
“Here’s another tunnel,” Mike said. “Glen Span Arch.”
It, too, was an imposing stone structure that shrouded the pathway in total darkness when I entered. I hurried through it, noting the small grottoes built into the walls on its side but anxious to escape the dank interior.
When I came out on the other end, there was an even larger cascade than the others. Water pounded down onto layered steps of rocks.
“Where’s that coming from with such fury?” I asked.
Mike came up behind me. “It’s the Pool.”
“Not the Pond, not the Lake, not the Reservoir.”
“Nope. It’s the Pool.”
I climbed up on the rocks that topped the waterfall and looked out over the body of water, surrounded by weeping willows on its grassy banks-another setting, another type of vista altogether.
“All artificial,” Mike said. “New York City tap water gushing out of here, the Conservancy guy told me. Take a peek, Coop. The whole length of the stream we just walked is fed from that Pool…”
“Which is pumped-in water from upstate New York.” I stepped down onto the top of the flat rocks that created the formation. Here, unlike below, there was a wide opening, and the waterfall flowed over it, so I could actually kneel on the inside without getting wet.
I handed my sweater to Mercer and got on all fours while he shined a flashlight over my head.
“How far back does it go?” he asked me.
“I’ve seen smaller studio apartments in the city,” I said. “Can you give me more light?”
“You see anything?”
“There’s some paper a few feet ahead. I’ll keep going. And two frogs who are moving a lot faster than I can.”
The rocks that bordered the gushing stream were more slippery to the touch than the ones outside the cave opening. They were coated with a layer of something slimy, soft, and green. I moved forward a bit more and reached for the papers, picking them up and shoving them in the rear pocket of my jeans.
“Any more light, Mercer?”
He must have ducked down behind me and aimed his beam right over my back.
“I’ve got a pipe, guys. No kidding, I’ve got a pipe.”
I could hear Mike laughing. “Those dudes built the pipes in a hundred and fifty years ago, kid. That’s what makes the waterfalls run all the time, even in a drought like we had this spring.”
“Not that kind of pipe,” I said. “Give me a glove.”
Mercer crawled forward, and I reached back to his hand.
“What kind of pipe?” he asked.
I sat up and pulled on the vinyl glove, reached for the foot-long length of metal pipe.
Even in the darkness of the small cave, with only the shaft of light from Mercer’s flashlight, I could see a dark-red stain-the color of dried blood-on the cold cylindrical object.
“The kind Raymond Tanner uses to attack his victims. That kind of pipe.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Let’s walk up to the West Drive,” Mike said, referring to the vehicular roadway, closed to automobiles on weekends, that coursed through the Park and ran right across the Glen Span Arch. “I’ve got no cell reception down here.”
“Who are you calling?”
“The ranger in charge. He can find someone in uniform to pick this up and voucher it. Let’s get it to the lab and see if this stain is human blood. See if they can get any prints off it.”
“I’m thinking Raymond Tanner.”
“I know you are. And I’m thinking Angel, with her head bashed in. Good find, Coop.”
The pipe looked absolutely lethal. The idea of swinging the sturdy piece of metal against a human head made me shudder.
We reached the top of the incline, and Mercer pulled on a pair of gloves while Mike gave our location to the park ranger. “Let me see those papers you picked up, Alex.”
I handed him the wad that was in my pocket, and he squatted down to separate them and spread them out on the slats of a wooden bench.
“Food wrappers,” Mercer said. “Empty chip bags and cellophane from cookie packages. And this scrap of lined paper.”
I leaned in over him. It looked as though the ink had been soaked in water at some point and had run. “Can you make anything out?”
“It’s pretty blurry,” he said, passing it to me.
“Reads like part of a description of the Park,” I said. “How the Ravine is- Maybe the word is ‘fluid’? A fluid line. But the Ramble is a scrabbled- Scratch that. A scrambled maze. Some words just washed out completely, but I can make out ‘remote’ and ‘no one will find me.’ Something about a brother- No, no, it’s ‘not bother me,’ I think.”
“A journal.”
“And Jo told us that Angel,” I said, thinking of the dead girl whose real name we didn’t know, “kept a journal with her that might unfold her life to us.”
I flipped the torn piece of paper over, but there was nothing on the other side. The writing was an even script, where it hadn’t bled onto the page, and appeared quite feminine.
Mike hung up, and I showed him the fragment. “See if you can get the cops who come for the pipe to take another look in that cave. We need to find the rest of this book, okay? It may be the key to what happened to your girl.”
“Whatever you say, Coop. I think we’re looking at our own manpower, though. The ranger just told me there’s a commotion in the Sheep Meadow. I’ve got to hold on to the pipe till they clear it.”
“What’s that about?” Mercer asked.
Before Mike could finish saying that he didn’t know, an RMP with lights flashing and siren blaring came speeding up to us where the roadway intersected with the 102nd Street Cross Drive.