Something moved within the walls of my enclosure. I blinked and tried to clear my vision, tensing for the arrival of my captor. But these were scratching sounds, sharp and rapid, playing off the icy surface of the floor.
Rats. Two or three of them, chasing each other through an open portal and out the gaping hole where glass once fitted in a window.
For the first time, I had a reassuring thought. Large rodents terrified me, but I was relieved to think the odds were good that I was still somewhere in New York City.
Now I saw the outline of the building walls. The window beside me was on the ground level, but it looked as though there were two tiers of empty frames on flights above-three stories in all, though the flooring was missing from all but the foundation The four sides, without a roof, seemed to be the entirety of the structure. Too small to be an institution, but too grim to have been a private home.
I dragged myself closer to the smooth orange brick that marked the window jamb closest to me. My left ear ached anew as the wind howled past. Straining my neck to look out the rough stone archway, I saw sharp icicles jutting down from every overhanging surface.
Cutting through the storm's gray haze was the glare of huge red neon letters. Read the words, I charged myself. Over my shoulder, the rats danced again, in and out of the asymmetrical cavities at the far end of the building.
I concentrated on the giant script sign, which was like trying to make out the object inside the dome when a snow globe has been turned upside down.
Pepsi-Cola. I read it four or five times to convince myself those were the words.
Why did I know that graphic? A huge red advertisement that I had seen more times than I could ever count, I thought. Focus on it, I urged myself. Make the pieces come together. The district attorney's office, my home, the skyline, the city. Make each image relate to another. Every night when I left the office and headed uptown on the FDR Drive, I saw the Pepsi-Cola sign, several stories high, shining across the East River from its enormous perch along the Queens side of the water.
I twisted farther to the left, an icy stalagmite gnawing at my chin as I tried to widen my view. Yes, there were the four great smokestacks of Big Allis, belching dense clouds into the night sky, blowing back at nature's offering.
So this must be the island in the middle of the river. Not Roosevelt, not the one I had visited several days ago. But Blackwells. Some gutted shell of a nineteenth-century building that had been abandoned and was waiting to be explored by scholars and students, historians and treasure seekers.
Now I began to reconstruct the puzzle. I remembered being at my office with Chapman. I had a clear recollection of our ride uptown to the King's College meeting with Sylvia Foote. But then everything turned hazy, and I couldn't figure whether I had sustained an injury to my head or ingested something that affected my memory.
It was difficult to move because of my restraints, but it was impossible for me to remain still. With my hands bracing my behind my back, I pushed away from the window and prop myself in the opposite direction, toward what looked like gabled opening of the building entrance.
Wrenching myself back onto my knees, I tried to read an inscription that had mostly faded from a plaque on the wall bottom corner credited the Bible, and from what was left of the letters it looked like Hosea. Something about ransoming son from the power of the grave and redeeming him from death. I didn't know the biblical context but I cherished the thought
In the dim light, I could make out larger letters carved in the plaque into the terra-cotta panel that bordered the archway:
STRECKER MEMORIAL LABORATORY.
I sank back to the floor as though I had been punched in the gut. This was the morgue.
What had Nan told us about it? One of the first path-laboratories built in America, she had said. This must have the place to which all the bodies on Blackwells Island had taken. Why was I here? Who had bound me and left me in this frigid shell?
I could hear the screech of rats again, sprinting closer 1 entryway. I half crawled, half pulled myself to the far side of the door, fearing that the filthy animals would find me in their path.
Another window sucked in frigid air from the night sky slithered past it, trying to get to one of the building's corners a bit more shelter. My feet were tied so tightly together that unable to raise myself and stand on them. My back bumped against the contour of a wooden cabinet and I came to a stop. The top and edges had rotted completely and come loose fro support, jutting out into the room and making my passage difficult.
I rested for a minute then pushed forward around this antique chamber, but my jacket snagged on a rusted metal strip that I had not seen, ripping a tear down the length of the sleeve.
I backpedaled to free the fabric and saw for the first time what had snared me. The mouths of the cabinets were agape as I turned to disengage my arm from the metal spike. Side by side were three drawers of morgue trays, each mounted in double rows, the wood decayed but the metal still intact.
The steel grooves were fixed in place, some rolled back into the drawers and others hanging partway into the room. This is where every plague-ridden patient on Blackwells had been stored, studied, and dissected.
As my bound hands ripped away, I jerked forward and bumped my head against the middle set of drawers. On the bottom tray I could see the profile of a small body, wrapped in a blanket of the same plaid design that had covered me. I was swept by another wave of nausea.
Beside the feet, closest to me, was a slim leather-bound book. I leaned my arms toward it and pulled it out onto the floor.
As quickly as I could, I pushed myself away from the gruesome cabinet, kicking the book before me with my knee. It spun around and I tipped back the cover, revealing the title page of the volume of Garcia Lorca's poems, and the small print of the owner's name in the top corner.
I was here alone in the morgue with Charlotte Voight.
33
By the time Winston Shreve stepped through the old doorway, I had dragged myself back into the farthest corner of the deteriorated laboratory-away from the remains of Charlotte Voight, away from the rats, and away from the man who had kidnapped me.
He was dressed for the occasion-with a ski jacket, jeans, and heavy boots-and now I remembered I had seen him at the college, in Sylvia Foote's office during the afternoon, when he had worn a blazer and slacks. I still had no memory of how I had left the administration building and what had happened.
I shuddered when he spotted me in the dark recess into which I had crawled, but I had been shivering with cold for hours.
Shreve's tread crunched on the packed snow as he walked toward me, stopping to pick up the blanket that had fallen off my body as I'd moved myself around the room. He kneeled in front of me and replaced it around my shoulders.
"I'm not a killer. That's the first thing you've got to understand."
My eyes must have expressed my terror. He spoke to me again.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Alex. I've brought you here because I need your help tonight. I'm not a killer."
It was difficult to believe him with Charlotte's body between me and the front door.
"You've got something I need, I think, and we're going to have to trust each other for a while." He reached behind me and removed the binding from around my wrists. I could see that it was a man's necktie.
"I'm going to remove the gag from your mouth, too. Maybe that will help convince you that I'm not going to do anything extreme." He undid the knot in the handkerchief and then used it to wipe some of the moisture off my forehead and cheeks. I noted that his tools had been those of an amateur-spare pieces of clothing-rather than ropes and duct tape, and tried to draw hope from that fact.