Tony nodded. “But she had to go to the hospital.”
Ryan kept his eyes on Fleming’s, searching for the truth, but could see nothing at all — just that strange emptiness. And there was something about his stepfather’s skin — it almost looked like there were scars on his cheeks. But they hadn’t been there yesterday. “Can I go see her?” he asked, his voice quavering.
“Not today,” Tony said just a little too quickly. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Ryan asked. “I thought all she had was the flu.”
Anthony’s eyes narrowed. “Flu can be very dangerous,” he said. Then he tilted his head toward the untouched plate of food in front of Ryan. “Eat your breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry,” Ryan countered. Then he repeated the question his stepfather hadn’t yet answered: “Where’s Chloe? She was in my room last night, but she wasn’t there this morning.”
Tony Fleming’s strange flat gaze fixed on Ryan. “I took her out this morning,” he said. “She ran away.”
Ryan’s jaw tightened. “She wouldn’t do that,” he countered.
His stepfather seemed not even to hear him. “Just eat your breakfast.”
“I don’t have to eat it,” Ryan flared. “Besides, how do I know it’s not—”
He caught himself just before ‘poisoned’ slipped out, but it was too late; he could tell from the way Tony was looking at him that his stepfather knew what he was going to say.
Anthony Fleming reached out and closed his fingers on Ryan’s upper arm. “Why do you think I would want to poison you, Ryan?” he asked, his voice soft, but carrying a note of menace that made Ryan want to draw away. But his stepfather’s grip was too tight, his fingers digging too deeply into Ryan’s flesh.
“I–I didn’t say that,” Ryan said, and this time his stammer was utterly genuine.
“But you thought it,” Tony insisted. “Why?” Now his eyes were boring into Ryan, and Ryan had the terrible feeling his stepfather could see right into his head. “Were you really asleep when I came in last night, Ryan?”
Ryan nodded too quickly, and this time his words escaped his lips before he could control them. “I didn’t see anything! Honest!”
“You’re not telling me the truth,” Anthony Fleming said, his voice as cold and flat as his eyes. “I don’t like that.”
“I am!” Ryan wailed, but even he could hear the lie in his voice.
Fleming pulled Ryan to his feet and steered him out of the kitchen, down the long hall, up the stairs, and back to his room. “I think you should stay here for awhile,” he said. “In fact, I think you should stay here until you learn to tell me the truth. I’ll be back at lunchtime. If you’re ready to talk to me, you can eat. If not…” Leaving the words hanging, he pulled the door closed, he took a key from his pocket, twisted it in the lock, and tried the door. Satisfied that it was locked, Anthony Fleming returned the key to his pocket.
Ryan waited until he heard his stepfather’s footsteps fade away before he went to the door and tested it, even though he knew it was locked. Then he went to the window, opened the latch, and raised it. Sticking his head out, he peered down at the sidewalk below, the dizziness he was feeling just looking down the six floors telling him he’d never succeed in creeping along the narrow ledge outside the window even if he could work up the nerve to try. But there had to be a way to escape from the room — there had to be!
He went to the big walk-in closet and peered up at the ceiling, but there was nothing — just the same cedar planks that lined the whole closet. He was just about to abandon the closet when he remembered last night, when he was in his stepfather’s study and had seen the open closet door.
And heard the voices that sounded like they were coming from inside the closet.
Or maybe from another room that was hidden behind the closet?
He went back into the closet. There was a built-in chest of drawers at one end; open shelves at the other. The back of the closet was bare except for the cedar paneling. But when he tapped on the paneling, it sounded hollow, like there was empty space on the other side of it instead of a solid wall.
He went over every inch of it, trying to find some kind of hidden latch, but there was none.
Next he pulled out every drawer in the built-in chest, searching behind them. Nothing.
Finally he turned to the shelves, but nothing on the wall that backed them, either. With nothing left to try, he climbed up the shelves, using them like a ladder, until he could reach the ceiling.
He pushed. At first nothing happened, but when he pushed harder, he felt something start to give. Lying down on the top shelf so he had better leverage, he tried once more. And this time there was a faint squealing sound as first one nail and then a second and third gave way. Praying that the sound wouldn’t get any louder, Ryan pushed harder, and more nails gave way. Then one end of the ceiling lifted in a single panel.
It wasn’t solid at all — it was a trapdoor! But a trapdoor that was completely invisible when it was closed, and had been nailed shut.
Nailed shut how long ago?
And who besides Ryan knew it was there?
And most important, where did it lead and what was it for?
Frank Oberholzer, with Maria Hernandez in tow only because their chief had insisted, glared dyspeptically at The Rockwell as he waited for a break in traffic. There wasn’t anything he liked about the building at all — not its ornate architecture, or its ill-lit lobby, or its death-trap of an elevator.
Not to mention the doorman, who crouched behind the counter of his booth like some kind of gargoyle guarding the gates of hell.
Why would anyone want to live in a building like that? And how did it happen that Caroline Evans Fleming was living in it?
Of course, it could just be coincidence, but Oberholzer had figured out a long time ago that with murder, coincidence didn’t happen very often. Unless you counted something like what had happened to Brad Evans — being at the wrong place at the wrong time — as coincidence, which up until this morning Oberholzer had been almost willing to concede. This morning, though, he’d gone back over the Brad Evans file, which hadn’t taken very long since it consisted mostly of notes about interviews that had gone nowhere. But the interviews weren’t what had interested him anyway. Instead it had been a nagging thought that had kept him awake until almost midnight last night, which was something that usually only the acid in his stomach could accomplish. This nagging thought, though, had nothing to do with acid at all, but with the way Brad Evans had died. So when he’d arrived at his office that morning, he’d looked at the M.E.’s report on Caroline Fleming’s first husband.
Broken neck. Approached from behind, left arm slipped around the neck, followed almost instantly by a hard push from the assailant’s right hand.
Or at least that was the supposition made by the M.E., which was pretty much the same supposition that had been made about Andrea Costanza.
Who was a good friend of Caroline Evans Fleming.
Who now lived in The Rockwell — the same building in which the last person to see Costanza alive lived. All that, together with the fact that neither he nor Hernandez had been able to turn up even a hint of a boyfriend for Costanza, was making Oberholzer willing to take another look not only at Dr. Theodore Humphries, but at whoever else lived in the building as well.
Now, with the building looming across the street, Oberholzer could feel the acid in his stomach starting to burn — the fact was, he didn’t much like talking to people who lived in buildings like this one; they always acted like their address should give them some kind of immunity from having to talk to anyone as lowly as a cop, detective or otherwise. Caroline Evans, on the other hand, hadn’t been like that at all. She’d always been more than helpful, spending hours telling him more about her husband than he’d really needed to know. But that was okay, too — she’d obviously needed to talk, and he’d always been a good listener. A good listener and a good observer. That was all being a detective was about, really: listening and watching until you either heard or saw what was going on. And this morning he was going to listen to Caroline Evans very, very carefully indeed, and watch just as suspiciously as he listened, because suddenly she seemed to be the common denominator of both killings.