The Dead Room (Harrison Investigation #4)

She was quiet. “How’s Brad?”

Joe frowned, startled by the question. “He’s fine.”

“So you didn’t…?”

“I told you I wasn’t going to hurt him and I didn’t.”

“But you still think…?”

“I think he’s a jackass, but one with a certain amount of integrity. Is he guilty? I still don’t know. What I do know is that the area around here is honeycombed with underground passages. And there are a few things I have to do tonight, but I’m going to see to it that you’re safe. I’m going to rejoin the police, and we’re going to find the truth. Without you. Do you understand?”

“Joe,” she said firmly. “Maybe things happen for a reason. Maybe I’m back here to help, to stop this bastard. For all I know, maybe I wasn’t supposed to survive the explosion, but now I have a chance to try to help. You have to let me. Please.”

“You have helped, Leslie. But now you have to let the pros take over.”

He took her into his arms then and cradled her against him. Every male cell in his body wanted more. Every caution in his mind warned him that he could offer no more than his support right now, his friendship, his strength…his life.

He drew away, even though she wasn’t fighting his hold. She was staring up into his eyes.

She touched his cheek, a smile slowly curving her lips. “I’ll behave. Where are you going?”

“I want to get back to Robert. The rest of that tunnel needs to be checked out.”

She frowned and backed away from him, her words suddenly urgent. “That’s the most important thing you can do. She’s down there somewhere, Joe. Genevieve is down there.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because of the crying.”

“But you said—”

“I heard the echo of the dead girl’s tears, but I hear Genevieve crying, too, and her tears are real. And she’s not far from this house. I know it.”

He pulled out his cell phone. Then he hesitated. It was ridiculous to suspect Robert. But Robert had been on his list, and Robert was the one handling what was now no longer a missing persons case but a homicide.

Leslie didn’t want to suspect Brad.

No one wanted to believe someone they knew and liked was capable of evil.

He realized he was going to have to head straight over to police HQ as soon as Adam and Nikki got back. To be professional, he had to work this as he would any other case, and that meant involving law enforcement. Luckily, it wasn’t far. His feeling of urgency seemed to be increasing by the minute.

Just then he heard the door open. “Pizza!” Nikki called out.

Leslie smiled. “It’s okay, go.”

He nodded. “And you be careful. When I get back, we have to talk.”

She smiled, rose on her toes and kissed his cheek.

He left the kitchen just as Nikki and Adam entered carrying pizza boxes and a bag of sodas.

“You’re not eating?” Nikki asked.

“Leslie will explain,” he said. “Don’t leave her,” he ordered as he left.

“Not a chance,” Nikki assured him.

After he left, Leslie ate pizza, drank soda and carried on what she thought was a calm conversation, but she felt as if she were going insane.

“Why don’t we try it?” Nikki asked.

Leslie stared at Nikki blankly. Apparently she hadn’t been managing the conversation as well as she’d thought. “Try what?”

“A seance.”

“A seance?” She almost choked on her pizza. “A seance? Nikki, isn’t that pretty silly for people like us?”

“Maybe not,” Adam told her. “Maybe Matt has some learning to do and this will help.”

She stared at them both. “Okay. If you think it can help.”

Nikki shrugged. “The goal now is to find Genevieve alive. Whether any of the ghosts here can help with that or not, I don’t know. But…”

“Okay, let’s try it. If there’s anything we can do, we should do it,” Leslie said.

“Where?” Adam asked.

“Where else?” Leslie said. “The dead room.”

After several frustrating minutes in which he was continually told that the man to talk to was Robert Adair, Joe was tempted to give up. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have other suspects.

But Robert, Ken Dryer and Hank Smith were probably the only ones in his group to have access to a contemporary black sedan at a moment’s notice. Tyson, Smith and Tryon would have a fleet of cars. And as high-ranking officers, both Dryer and Adair could use any car in the police motor pool.

He put through a call to Eileen Brideswell. “I need help. Now,” he told her.

In a few minutes he was ushered through to the office of Lieutenant Grayson. Grayson was nearing sixty, thin and haggard. He lowered his head in thought as Joe laid out what he knew, which was, sadly, mostly hypothetical. He refrained from saying that he didn’t want to take this evidence to Robert Adair because he was on the suspect list; he managed to make out that Robert was overworked and he didn’t want to burden him any further.

Before Genevieve O’Brien was found as a rotting corpse, as well.

“I can give you three men,” Grayson said. “And permission to enter the tunnels.”

“That’s all I need. Thanks.”

“Thank Eileen Brideswell,” Grayson said. It was obvious that he was feeling pressured into offering help. Why not? He already had a key officer on the case.

Grayson put through a call to a man in charge of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and then Joe was on his way with three uniformed officers in tow. In a few minutes they were met at the functioning subway entrance nearest Hastings House by an MTA employee named Gregory Breen.

He offered Joe a map. “How good this is, I don’t really know. Once you leave the main system, you’re in no man’s land. No one has used a lot of the old tunnels since…hell, the twenties, maybe.”

Breen took them down, leading them through an employee route to a tiny station somewhere below Broadway, where they came to a locked door. He unlocked and opened it, and they came face-to-face with a wooden barricade.

“Told you,” Breen said. “These tunnels have been blocked off for decades.”

Joe reached toward the wooden barricade, which collapsed at his touch, the wood rotted and soft.

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” Breen exploded.

“Do we really need candles?” Leslie asked.

“Why not set the mood?” Adam replied cheerfully.

“Got any good wine?” Leslie asked dryly.

“Sit,” Nikki told her.

They’d brought a table into the servants’ pantry, and set three candles on it. Some light still filtered in from the main kitchen, but the small room itself was shrouded in shadow.

“What now?” Leslie asked.

“We hold hands,” Adam said.

“And then…?”

“Leave it to Nikki.”

As they sat there, Leslie closed her eyes. Somehow it seemed like the right thing to do.

She waited, wondering what words Nikki would say to try to conjure the spirits. But there was no hoopla.

“Matt,” Nikki said softly. “If you’re there, we need help. We know that you’ve been trying to reach Leslie, that you have reached her, but we need more help from you. Please, if you can…”

Nikki was still speaking when Leslie first felt him. Somehow she knew he was by her side.

And when she turned, she could see him.

He was there, and yet he wasn’t there. He was only the merest suggestion of a form in the air, but at the same time he was the man she had known, tall, handsome and, at that moment, serious. She forgot that Nikki and Adam were present and stood, slipping into his arms. He wasn’t real, but somehow she could feel him, feel his touch on her hair, his strength as he pulled her against him. And she could hear him. “Leslie, you’ve got to get out of here, all of you. He came in by the front door. He knows the combination.”

“Who?” Nikki’s question was Leslie’s first indication that she wasn’t the only one hearing Matt.

“I don’t know, but I know he’s close. I fought him last time, but I couldn’t stop him. Please…get out.”

Suddenly the house was pitched into blackness, only the candles offering a respite from the all-encompassing darkness

“Someone’s here,” Adam said.

And Leslie felt suddenly cold.

Matt had left her.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Officer Dale Nelson was young, just out of the academy. Joe didn’t mind that fact. Nelson was willing and adventurous. He was just uncertain. Whether Nelson or O’Hara and Myers, the two older cops, believed in their quest or not, they had been told to listen to him and give him their best. He’d sent the two veteran cops down a northeastern tunnel, while he had chosen the more westerly one for himself and Nelson.

Closest to the prostitutes’ street, Hastings House, the dig—and the site where they had found the body earlier. If Leslie really had heard sobbing from inside Hastings House, he had to be going in the right direction. If only the remains of the system didn’t add up to such a labyrinth. Progress had left behind a bone structure that was now sad and dilapidated.

And dark.

“We’re looking for a room of some kind. A room that might be used as a cell,” Joe explained. “Look for anything that might be a door.”

“Gotcha,” Nelson said. Suddenly he let out a hoarse cry.

“What?” Joe demanded.

“Rat,” Nelson said apologetically. “Sorry.”

“Right.”

They kept on trudging.

“Douse those,” Adam said, and Nikki quickly put out the candles. They stood in the pitch dark, and Leslie nearly jumped a mile when she felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Adam. “I’m going for the gun.”