Wicks had turned around, facing me and moving backward, my wrists in his hands. His eyes were on fire now, the only thing I could see as I haltingly walked along with him.
“I wrapped her in a sheet that I brought here from the house, and I tied it with some of her favorite ribbons. In the middle of the night, I walked from this cave, holding Lucy in my arms.”
“And no one stopped you?”
“It was the ’70s, dear. You had to be crazy to be in this Park at night,” Wicks said. “And it isn’t far to the cemetery. It’s near 85th Street, just west of here.”
8521. I almost said the numbers out loud. I remembered the first day we had walked in the Ramble with the park rangers, and the reminder that every lamppost bore the number of the street location nearest to that point.
8521 was the number written on the Day & Meyer receipt that Mercer picked up from the dusty room on the ninth floor of the Dakota. It must have marked the place in the Park-in the very middle of what used to be Seneca Village-where Eddie Wicks had buried the body of Baby Lucy Dalton.
“I can’t walk anymore,” I said. “The ties on my ankle are too tight. And it’s cold in here. I need something to stop my chills.”
“You won’t be cold much longer,” Wicks said. “You shouldn’t complain so much.”
“But why is Lucy here?” I asked. “I don’t want to leave her alone.”
“Because someone had the bad judgment to dig up the area around the cemetery, to dig up the little village and churchyard.”
Nan Rothschild and the Barnard-Columbia project-the dig to examine Seneca Village a couple of years ago-must have unsettled Eddie Wicks completely.
“I had to go back and rescue Lucy-”
“Rescue?”
“I didn’t want anyone digging up that poor child, disposing of her somewhere else.”
Profilers and shrinks were going to have a field day with Eddie Wicks, if I could get both of us out of this godforsaken place alive. Behavioral scientists would claim that Wicks’s mind-set was shown by how he treated Lucy’s corpse. They would tell us that wrapping her in a sheet, decorating her shroud with her favorite ribbons, and burying her in a proper-if out-of-sight-churchyard demonstrated a degree of attachment to the child. The Lindbergh baby was tossed to the side of the road in the Jersey woods-a point often underscored-to be scavenged by animals.
“So you brought her body back here, before that dig?”
“Well now, there isn’t much of a body, Wisconsin, is there?”
“Let go of me, please. I can walk faster if you loosen the ties on my legs.”
“You looked in the box, didn’t you? She’s only just bones now. But I’m going to bury them with the proper respect, too. Right there, in the floor of the cave. And Lucy will be surrounded by the things she loved most.”
The Carousel, the Angel of the Waters and other silver pieces from the Dalton collection must have been part of what Eddie Wicks stole from the storage unit after his escape from Bellevue. Some of the other treasures-Belvedere Castle, the Obelisk, and even the ebony angel that undoubtedly came from underground, from somewhere in the churchyard that was once Seneca Village-must have become separated from this cache.
My thoughts flashed to Vergil Humphrey. He told us that the black figurine came from the churchyard that he and another man-a man he had known since his childhood-found when they were digging at Seneca. Had Wicks relied on the unreliable storyteller to help him retrieve the remains of Baby Lucy? Did Verge pilfer the black angel when he helped his old friend with the grim task of moving Lucy from the old churchyard?
I couldn’t help but wonder whether our Angel-the dead girl-realized that both men had something to do with this heartrending box of bones.
I had no doubt that Wicks was creating a shrine for the child he claimed to have adored.
“Please tell me where you’re taking me.”
“Almost there.”
“But I can’t help you hurt yourself. I’d never do that. Take me out of here with you and I’ll explain all this to the police. We’ll convince them that Lucy’s death was an accident.”
Wicks pulled on my hands again, and as I shuffled forward I kicked against an object that almost sent me flying over it. Something low, on the ground, that obstructed my path and scraped my shins.
I looked down and saw a platform of some kind, also wooden, as far as I could make out.
“You don’t have to hurt me, actually,” Wicks said. “You can just be my canary in the coal mine.”
“What-?” He was wide-eyed now and agitated. The canary was what miners sent ahead of them to test for deadly gases. What had his diseased mind conceived of as my fate?
“Step up on this, Wisconsin. Let’s see if I’ve got it right this time.”
“Got what right?”
“You step on this. Come, come. It will hold your weight quite easily.”
When I didn’t move, Eddie Wicks walked behind me and lifted me onto the improvised stand. That’s when I saw the pink gauze.
The metallic strands of gold in the precious fabric glittered above my head. I craned my neck to look up at the odd display.
While I’d been wriggling against my binds earlier, Eddie Wicks had come up here, to this second level of the vast man-made vault, and wrapped lengths of Lucy’s sparkling material around the tip of one of the boulders that jutted into the cave.
Wicks had fashioned a noose from a long piece of heavy rope and covered it with fragments of the pink-and-golden gauze that had crushed the life out of the little child. He was determined to kill himself this time, but he was more determined to kill me first.
FORTY-TWO
“What have you stuffed in your pockets?” he asked. He was standing in front of me again, reaching for the noose. “They’re bulging.”
Wicks patted me down, finding and removing the small silver objects with which I’d hoped to defend myself.
He dropped them on the ground, then stood squarely in front of me and smacked me across the face. “They belong to Lucy, you fool.”
I tried to lift my bound hands to my cheek, to lessen the sting, but Wicks grabbed them and held them directly in front of me.
“This is going to be painful for you, I know.”
“And what is it about watching me die that you’re looking forward to?” I asked. “Will that excite you?”
“Nothing about watching you excites me. I want to see how much it hurts you so I’ll know how much it will hurt me. The slower it is, the better,” Wicks said. “I’d kill my mother, too, if I could.”
“Your mother?”
“She made the scarf for Lucy. If she hadn’t made the damn thing in the first place, the child would still be alive.”
Wicks looked down to see why the platform was shaking so violently on the uneven ground of the cave floor. He leaned over and put his hand on it to steady it for his coup de grâce.
The moment he did-just as he started to straighten up-I lifted my hands over my head, seizing the noose and launching myself in the air, bringing my knees up behind me and then kicking my legs forward with all the strength I could muster.
Eddie Wicks doubled over. I swung back and forth, clutching the fabric-covered rope between my fingers-pumping my legs like a child on a swing-and this time I brought my feet up, scoring a hit directly in my captor’s groin.
He howled in pain, falling to the ground and rolling onto his back.
I lowered myself onto the platform. Although my hands were still tied, I was able to pull apart the binds on my legs, the ones I had been stretching before Wicks came back to get me.
I walked to the rock wall and rubbed the restraints on my hands against it for several seconds, till they tore in half and I was loose.
I guided myself back to the lower floor, running my hand along the cold stones. I had to try to uncover the entrance again, though I didn’t know how long it would take Wicks to get to his feet.