The Dead Room

“Solid construction,” Reverend Donegal said sternly. “Folks to care for her. Why, I remember, years and years ago, of course, when I came many a Sunday to this house for my tea following services…ah, lovely then, it was. So much excitement and fear. A new country.” His eyes darkened, and he seemed troubled for a minute. “Pity…one war always leads to the next. It hurt me to be here…to see so many fine men die, North and South, believing in the same God…. Ah, well, never mind. There’s always hope that man will learn from his mistakes.” He paused, his old eyes clouding, and she knew he was looking back to his own time, firmly fixed in his mind.

Of course, she knew his story. He had worshipped the hostess of his very house from afar, always entirely circumspect, but enjoying every opportunity to be in her company. He had faithfully served his flock of parishioners; a good man. His one pleasure had been his Sunday tea. And so, one day, he had come here, had his tea…and then died of a heart attack in the arms of the woman he had secretly adored for so many years. Leslie had thought at first that he must have been a very sad ghost, seeking the love he hadn’t allowed himself in life. But that hadn’t been the case at all. She had discovered that he had been at peace with himself; that his distant and unrequited love for Mrs. Adella Baxter had in actuality been a pleasant fantasy but not one he had truly hoped to fulfill. He had enjoyed his life as a bachelor, administering to his flock. He had stayed all these years because he felt so many of his flock needed to be remembered. In short, he had wanted the graveyard found.

At first, he hadn’t trusted her. He’d tried a dozen tricks, moving her brush around, locking her suitcase, hiding her keys. He hadn’t expected her to see him, and he certainly hadn’t expected her to get angry, yell at him and demand that they talk. Once they had, he’d become an absolute charmer. Through his eyes, she’d seen the house as it had been in his day. She’d experienced his passion as he’d spoken of what he and so many others had gone through to establish a new country; his fear that he might be hanged as a traitor—something that had been a distinct possibility many times during the brutal years of the Revolution. He was deeply disturbed that so few of the people who passed through the old house were aware of just how precarious the struggle for freedom had been. “You can’t understand,” he had told her. “We almost lost the war. In fact, it’s a miracle that we won. And all those men who signed the Declaration of Independence? They would have been hanged! So many risked so much. Ah, well, God does show his will, against all odds.”

Right now he seemed lost in thought.

“Thank you for your help,” she said very softly to him.

He nodded, then wagged a finger at her. “I expect you to play fair, young lady. You see that the right thing is done by my people. Especially little Peg. You did find her grave, didn’t you, right where I sent you?”

Leslie nodded, then stared at the fire for a moment, as lost in the past as he had been. It was strange. Before the blast, she’d had intuitions, like the one that had helped her find the homeless man. As if she could close her eyes and imagine something of a life now gone, then home in on it. Logic? Instinct? Something more? She couldn’t have said. But now…

Now ghosts came into her life.

“I will see that Peg’s story is told,” she assured Reverend Donegal. She repeated what he had told her before about the girl. “Peg, aged ten, walked the ten miles from town through a pouring, freezing rain to bring the men from the county together when she knew an attack was coming. She rallied the local troops, and they successfully defended the river and the plantation here, all because of her bravery. She died of the fever that came on her that night, after her journey through the rain and cold and enemy lines. And after the war…well, people were poor. She was given the best burial they could manage.”

He nodded in satisfaction. “A statue would be very nice. You will get someone to pay for a statue?”

“I’ll pay for a statue of her myself, if need be,” she assured him.

He looked at her indignantly. “A statue of me!” he declared. “Oh, well, of course, Peg must be honored, too, I suppose.”

“You’ll have a place when they rebuild the church, and Peg will be honored in the graveyard. How’s that?” she said, glad she could smile.

He nodded, staring at the fire. “There’s a chill in here,” he said. “Ah, these old bones…”

“It is chilly tonight, but I don’t think you’re really feeling your old bones,” she teased. She set her cup down and rose, walked to the fire and let it warm her hands. When she turned to speak to the reverend again, he was gone.

She sat back in her chair. In a little while she heard the others returning. It had grown late; she assumed they would head right up to their beds, but she sensed someone behind her, and this time she heard breathing.

She turned. Brad was there, just inside the doorway, staring at her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he echoed, still staring at her.

“What?” she demanded.

“Laymon really didn’t say anything to you yet?” he asked, looking surprised. “I thought he called you.”

“About what?” she asked.

“They’re researching another site in Lower Manhattan,” he said.

She felt a streak of cold sweep along her spine, as if she’d been stroked by an icy sword. She looked at the fire, trying to speak perfectly calmly. “I’m sure that at any given time, someone is always digging somewhere in Lower Manhattan.”

“This is going to be a major project.” He was quiet for a minute. “Near Hastings House.”

“Great,” she murmured, still staring at the flames.

He hunkered down by her chair. “You know, only the one room was severely damaged. They’ve pretty much got the place back up and running now.”

Her fingers tensed on the arms of her chair. “Glad to hear it.”

“What happened there was a tragic accident, Leslie.”

She stared at him—hard. “Yes, I do know that, Brad.”

“The point is, you don’t seem to get it, to understand what that means. I’m not trying to be brutal here, Leslie, but Matt died. You didn’t.”

She stared blankly back at him for several moments.

“I almost died there.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I know. And I’m grateful to be alive. I truly appreciate every day.”

“It’s time to go back.”

“Time to go back?” she repeated.

“You need to accept the past, and move into the present and then into the future. No, you’ll never forget Matt. But you have to accept that he’s dead. You’ve been…well, kind of weird since it happened. Maybe you need to confront your memories.”

Again, she stared at him.

Oh, Brad. You don’t get it, do you? And I will never, ever explain, I can assure you of that.

“We still have work to do here,” she said flatly.

He waved a hand in the air. “We’re the pros—there are lots of worker bees. Thanks to you and your amazing instincts, all that’s left is the grunt work. We can move on.”

She shook her head.

“Listen, this new site is really important…. I know Laymon wants to talk to you about it. He’s going back to lead the team, with or without you. With or without us,” Brad amended quickly.

Her nails dug into the arms of the chair. She stared at the flames. “I’ve made some promises here,” she said.

He looked puzzled. “You made promises? To whom?”

“To myself. To see that people are honored, that bones are buried with the proper rites,” she said.

“We’ll tell Laymon, and he’ll make sure it happens,” Brad said. “It’s not like we’re leaving the country. With the way your reputation has grown, you can drop a word and people will hustle, you know that.”

“Okay,” she murmured.

“Laymon got the call when we were on the way to the tavern, and he talked about nothing else once we got there,” Brad said softly. “New York City, Leslie! You know you love it.”

“I can’t go back.”

“You need to go back.”

“Brad…”

“Leslie, please.”

She stared at him and saw the earnest plea in his eyes. She lowered her head quickly, not wanting him to read her thoughts.

Hastings House. It was fixed, repaired, reopened. Brought back to life again. But the dead…the dead couldn’t be brought back to life…?

And some of the dead had never left.

She lowered her head, biting her lower lip. It had started immediately. In the hospital, she’d thought she’d gone mad. There had been the horrible pain, the ache like the loss of a limb or half of her soul, knowing Matt was gone. The concussion, the bruising, the cuts, scrapes, burns…

Those had been nothing compared to the pain of losing Matt.

At first she had lived in a stage somewhere between consciousness and dreams. One night she’d awakened in the hospital morgue, drawn there by a man who had lost his wedding ring when they’d rolled him down. All he had wanted was to have his ring put back on his finger. But she hadn’t known that, and she’d freaked. She was lucky she hadn’t wound up in the psychiatric ward that night. Luckily for her, the next day she’d discovered an article in a news magazine about a man named Adam Harrison and the group of paranormal investigators who worked for him. No matter how the reporter had tried to trip him up, the man had come off as intelligent and well spoken, and not at all like a kook. She had started to shake, reading the article. She had called Harrison Investigations immediately, and, to her amazement, Adam Harrison himself had shown up in the hospital. They had talked then, and again when she had been released. It was as if she had instantly acquired not only a new best friend, one she felt she had known forever, but as if she’d gotten her father back, though her real father had been gone since she was a little girl.

She’d called Adam right away when she’d started talking to the ghostly Colonial churchman, and soon after, she’d noticed a couple in the crowd of visitors hanging around the site. They’d stood out, and eventually they’d introduced themselves as two of Harrison’s employees. Brent and Nikki Blackhawk—he dark and strikingly handsome, his wife blond and beautiful—had gone back to the house with her and taught her how to become friends with the ghost, even chatted with him casually themselves. There really were others like her, she’d realized, and that meant she was sane.

“Leslie,” Brad said softly, recalling her to the present. “I told Laymon I’d work the new dig, so I’ll be there with you. You need to go back, to put the past to rest, to put the pain behind you.”

She stared at him. Smiled slowly.

Brad didn’t know about Adam Harrison, the Black-hawks, or that there were others like them to help her. Brad didn’t know that it was thanks to Adam and his associates that she had been able to sit calmly in a Colonial kitchen, talking to a long-dead reverend, and that she could feel entirely sane as she did so.

But as to going back, facing her own ghosts…That was something else again, something she dreaded but something she needed to do.

Brad let out a soft sigh. “Okay, I’m sorry. Too soon,” he said.

She stared back at him. “I didn’t say that,” she murmured quickly. “Maybe I should go back. I think…I think maybe I want to go back to Hastings House.”

He hesitated. “I know you have an apartment in Brooklyn, but…” He stared, paused, then said quickly, on a single fast breath, “There are a few rooms available for the workers at Hastings House.”

“What?”

Brad shook his head quickly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t even have mentioned that.”

“Who is this work for?” she demanded.

“The Historical Society, of course. Greta will be the official liaison between the society, the contractors and the workers. And once again, it’s Tyson, Smith and Tryon who bought and are developing the property. They’ve been legally blocked from building until the significance of the site is established and any necessary excavation is done. Laymon says they’re taking it well, though, basking in their national publicity as good guys. But the lost time must be costing them a bundle. Anyway, the site is really close to Hastings House. It’s in the next block, actually.”

“And that’s why they’re offering the rooms at Hastings House?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know why I even mentioned that, honestly. Hell, I have an apartment in the city, and you have your place in Brooklyn.” He took a deep breath. “Of course, you lived there with Matt, so maybe you don’t want to go back there. But I’m glad you’re holding on to it. Real estate in your neighborhood is rising sky-high. Oh, God, I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right. I’m stumbling all over here.”

“It’s all right, Brad.”

“Yeah. Right.” He tried to smile.

“I didn’t even get to go to his funeral. I was in the hospital,” she murmured, staring at the flames.

Suddenly a massive ache seemed to tear through her heart.

Ghosts came to her, sought her out sometimes, asked for her help.

But not Matt.

The ghost she wanted to see, desperately longed to tell—one last time—how much she had loved him, how he had been her life, how he had filled the world with wonder with his simple presence…that ghost she never saw.

“I want to stay at Hastings House,” she said.

He lowered his head. He was smiling, she realized. He was convinced that he had handled things just right, and that by talking about lodging, he had tricked her into deciding to go back.

Maybe he deserved his self-congratulations.

Or maybe it was just time for her to go back.

“You really want to stay there? You’re serious?”

“Dead serious.”

She stood, patting him on the shoulder as she started out. She paused in the hallway, looking back at him. “No pun intended,” she said lightly, and offered him a dry grin. “You’re right. I’m ready to go back. Excited to go back. Good night.”

She left him, still down on his knees by the chair.

Excited? Dear God, she was a liar.

And yet…

It was true. She never would have thought of it herself. Never would have woken up one morning thinking, Wow, I’d really love to head back to Hastings House.

But now that she was going…

The past beckoned to her. She needed to come to terms with it.

She had to go back.

2

It was late. A strange time, Joe Connolly thought, to be having this meeting. The woman sitting nervously across from him was stunning, but she reminded him of a high-strung, inbred greyhound. She was excessively thin, and her long fingers were elegantly manicured and glittering with diamonds and other fine jewels. She had called that morning and set up this meeting. They were at the venue of her choice—a small Irish tavern off Wall Street. He would have expected her to suggest a private corner at an exclusive club, but perhaps she didn’t want to be seen with a private investigator. For whatever reason, she had chosen O’Malley’s, which was warm, small and inviting, a pub she had probably visited many a time in her youth.

She had originally come from humble stock, he knew. On her mother’s side, she was second-generation Irish; her father, an O’Brien, came from a line of hard-working laborers who had arrived in the United States during the 1840s. Blood, sweat and muscle had taken him far in the trades, and thus their modest family fortune had begun and then risen to riches. Then Eileen O’Brien had married well, and she was now Mrs. Thomas Brideswell, widow of the late senator and construction magnate.

She thrust an eight-by-ten picture of a young woman across the table at him. He stared down at the likeness. Genevieve O’Brien looked back at him. Her eyes were huge and blue, and she was as slender as her aunt Eileen, with beautifully defined features. Her hair was dark, with an auburn sheen. The photographer had captured laughter, eagerness and the optimism of youth.

“How old is this picture?” Joe asked.

“It was taken about two and half years ago,” Eileen said, and hesitated. With a weary sadness and a hunch of her shoulders, she looked down. “Just before her falling out with my brother and me.”

Joe shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to press the issue, but I need to understand. If she left home voluntarily, and there was already an estrangement between you, what makes you so sure that something’s happened to her?”

Eileen sighed deeply. “Donald died soon after she walked out of his house. She came back for his funeral. She wanted to keep her distance from me and what she called my ridiculous family devotion to a ridiculously dysfunctional family. I think she was upset that my brother died without the two of them ever having made their peace, but…” She lifted one of her bejeweled hands. “I suppose it was nasty growing up in my brother’s household. There was a lot to be said for everything my father and grandfather accomplished, but it came at a price. Impossible expectations for their children. So much fault-finding when something was wrong.” She shook her head, and Joe felt moved by her obvious distress. There was such a deep and underlying sadness in the woman, despite her reserve and elegance. She looked him in the face then. “Ever since my brother died, she’s called me every two weeks. At least once, every two weeks. I haven’t heard from her in over a month.”

He leaned back, watching her. He had learned a lot in his years with the police force, and a lot more in the years since he had gone out on his own. Watching someone’s face as they spoke was often as important as listening to the words that were said.

“Was there something said between you the last time you spoke that might have caused a greater rift?” he asked.

There was a very slight hesitation.

“No,” she said.

She was lying.

“I need to know everything,” he said firmly.

Again an elegant hand fluttered. “Well, there had been this awful article in one of those tabloids about the family,” she said.

“And?” he prompted.

“She was convinced that her father wasn’t her father.”

“She bears a remarkable resemblance to you. I’m assuming you and your brother must have looked quite a bit alike,” he said.

“Exactly,” Eileen said.

He waited. “What was the paper? When was the article printed?”

“You don’t want to read that dreadful piece of garbage,” she assured him.

“I need to read it. Mrs. Brideswell, I’m working in the dark here. Your niece is twenty-six. She’s an adult. Adults who choose to disappear are allowed to do so. I have almost nothing to go on. You’ve given me first names and street names for a few acquaintances, and I have her work contacts—though she resigned from her job a month ago. That in itself could indicate that she planned to leave the city. I have addresses for a few of the places where you believe she hung out. You can’t hold back on me. And when I find her—if I find her—I can’t guarantee I can convince her to call you.”

“No! You don’t understand. I believe with my whole heart that if she could call me, she would.”

Joe answered carefully. “Do you believe that your niece is dead, Mrs. Brideswell?”

Pain flashed across her features. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I just…I know that she loved…loves me. No matter what came between us…Genevieve would call me. And if she’s out there somewhere…crying for help, she’s crying to me. Oh, my God, Mr. Connolly, I’ll admit there were awful times in the family, times when she was sent away…we were so embarrassed by her activities! My brother was…very strict. With reason, I suppose. My father taught us that we had to behave with propriety, or at least the appearance of it. But still…she loves me. And I know she needs me. I’ve had to admit to myself that she may be dead, but don’t you understand? I have to know. And if she has become a victim of…of some misfortune, I have to see justice done for her before I die.”

Joe wondered why she spoke so passionately about her own death; she couldn’t be more than forty-something, and she could easily be mistaken for thirty-five.

“A victim of misfortune,” Joe repeated, and asked flatly, “Do you suspect that she was murdered?”

Eileen inhaled deeply, and when she spoke, her words were bitter. “I’ve spoken to the police, Mr. Connolly, which of course you would imagine I had done. And I don’t know if he warned you or not, but it was your old friend Sergeant Adair who suggested I call you, but not until after he gave me a speech about all the other disappearances that are perplexing him. I gather the police are trying to keep what’s been going on with those prostitutes under wraps, though of course it’s not working. People talk. And those disappearances have been going on for more than a year.”

“But your niece wasn’t a prostitute plying her trade downtown,” he reminded her.

She waved a hand in the air. “I know. And we all know that plenty of people not involved in…in the trade disappear, as well. But I got the impression that Sergeant Adair sees some relationship between those disappearances and the fact that I haven’t heard from Genevieve.”

Joe was confused. He knew that Robert Adair was tearing his hair out over the continued disappearances of prostitutes in the downtown area. There were no clues, no trails of blood. The girls just disappeared, but the police knew they hadn’t just moved on—unless they’d moved on without saying a word and leaving all their belongings behind. But what would the daughter of a millionaire have in common with a bunch of missing prostitutes?

“I think this remains a very sensitive area for the police. The women who’ve disappeared are adults. Adults have a right to move on in their lives.”

Eileen stared at him, her eyes scorning his words. “We both know the truth.”

She was right. It had begun over a year ago. A few months apart, two prostitutes had vanished, but since there had been no clues and no signs of foul play, little had been done when their friends reported them missing. Then a homeless transvestite known as the Mimic had disappeared. Then two more young women.

She leaned closer to him, her eyes still flashing. She might be rich, but she could be tough when she needed to. “The thing is, prostitutes murdered by their johns usually turn up somewhere. A homeless man who freezes to death is found on the pavement. But these girls disappeared off the streets without a trace—just like Genevieve. Do you think aliens are beaming these people up, Mr. Connolly? I don’t. I think there is a serial killer at large in New York who knows how to dispose of bodies so they’ll never be found. I thought it was disgraceful when I first heard about the disappearances and the apparent lack of concern on the part of our government on the local and even the state level. Now? I’m incensed. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not angry with the poor cop just trying to work his beat. I’m furious that someone doesn’t step in and say, ‘These people count!’ And now I haven’t heard a word from Gen in so long, and every day I’m more and more worried, and though it doesn’t seem that I have any power, I do have money.”

“All right, let’s look at this from the beginning. Your niece was a social worker, yes?”

“Yes, here in the city,” Eileen murmured. “Up until a little more than a month ago. She found it terribly frustrating….” She inhaled deeply. “And not just the job itself. In my family, we were supposed to make—or marry—money. Both my brother and I were terribly hard on Gen, and all she wanted to do was make life easier on those who didn’t have the same advantages we did. The frustration and red tape got to her, as well, but…none of that’s what matters now. This is the point, this is why I think there’s a connection. She’d been working to help prostitutes in the same area where prostitutes have been disappearing into thin air. Don’t you see? I’m sure she knew some of those missing girls!” Eileen herself seemed ready to explode at that moment.

“Do you know any particulars on why she quit her job?”

Eileen waved a slender, elegant hand in the air. “Irritation with the system. She wanted to get workfare programs going…she wanted to help some of the girls keep their children. She is really an extraordinary human being, Mr. Connolly. Oh, I am so frustrated. No one seems to believe that I know that something’s really wrong. The police can’t—or won’t—do anything.”