Midnight Voices

by John Saul

  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.

  Now all he had to do was fit it together.

  He glanced at his watch—two minutes before nine, which meant that Caroline Fleming’s kids—Ryan and Laurie, which he’d remembered without any help from the file on their father—would have left for school and her husband would have gone to his office, assuming he had an office, which was an assumption the detective wasn’t ready to make. If Humphries worked out of a home office, there wasn’t any reason why this Fleming character couldn’t, too. “You ever been in this place before?” he asked Hernandez as a break in traffic appeared and he started across the street, ignoring the fact that the light was still red.

  “Actually, yes,” Hernandez replied.

  When she said nothing more, Oberholzer shot her a sour look. “So you gonna tell me about it, or what?”

  “Nothing to tell. My mamma cleaned for Virginia Estherbrook for a while when I was a kid. She brought me along a couple times.”

  “So?” Oberholzer prompted. “What did you think?”

  “Creepy,” Hernandez replied. They were at the front door now, and suddenly Maria Hernandez chuckled. “Once a kid at school told me the doorman was a troll.”

  Oberholzer pulled one of the heavy oak doors open for Hernandez, then followed her into the vestibule. As they pulled open the inner doors, Rodney looked up from the paper he had spread out in front of him on the counter. “I’m afraid Dr. Humphries isn’t in right now.”

  “Not here for Humphries,” Oberholzer replied. “Which apartment do the Flemings live in?”

  “I’m afraid I really can’t divulge—” the doorman began, but Oberholzer had already flipped his wallet open to expose his detective’s shield.

  “I’m not asking you to divulge a damned thing,” he interrupted. “Just answer the question.”

  Rodney looked as if he was on the verge of arguing further, but then seemed to think better of it. “5-A,” he said. “Fifth floor, overlooking the park.”

  “Thank you,” Oberholzer said with exaggerated politeness. Then, as he and Hernandez headed for the elevator and Rodney reached for the telephone, he spoke again, not even bothering to turn back to face the doorman. “And don’t call ahead.”

  Rodney waited until the elevator—and the two detectives—had disappeared upward before dialing Anthony Fleming’s number upstairs.

  The elevator jerked to a stop, and Oberholzer pulled the door open. It stuck halfway, and he gave it a jerk. “You’d think they’d put in a new elevator, wouldn’t you?” he grumbled.

  “There’s nothing new in this building,” Hernandez replied. “Everything looks exactly like it did when I was a kid. Even the doorman looks the same.” She shivered slightly. “He’s got a creepy look in his eyes.”

  “He’s a doorman,” Oberholzer retorted. “They all have creepy eyes—it’s part of the job.” He jabbed at the button next to the door of 5-A, then jabbed it again when there was no immediate response. He was about to punch it a third time when the door opened and he found himself facing a tall, dark-haired man that he figured was maybe in his mid-forties. Oberholzer could tell from the look in the man’s eyes—a look that wasn’t quite hostile, but couldn’t be called welcoming, either—that the doorman had called ahead, which only made the acid in his stomach bubble a little higher. “Mr. Fleming?” he asked. When the man nodded, Oberholzer flashed his badge and introduced himself. “Actually, it’s your wife I’m here to see.”

  Anthony Fleming pulled the door open wider. “I think you’d better come in,” he said, the neutrality of both his expression and his voice dissolving into worry. “We can talk in my study.” He led Oberholzer and Hernandez into the wood-paneled room, and the detective took in every stick of furniture with a single sweep of his eyes. Had anyone asked him a week later to describe it, he could have repeated not only the entire inventory, but diagramed its placement in the room as well. By the time Anthony Fleming had reached his desk, then leaned against its edge when neither O
berholzer nor Hernandez accepted his offer of chairs, Oberholzer’s focus had already shifted from the room to the man.

  “I assume this must be about Andrea Costanza,” Fleming said, resting his hands on the desk at either side of his hips.

  “Your wife was a friend of hers,” Oberholzer replied. “We’re talking to everyone she knew. Is your wife here?”

  Fleming shook his head. “I’m afraid my wife has taken this very hard. Andrea was her best friend, and after—” He hesitated, then began again. “My wife’s first husband was killed in Central Park a little over a year ago. And now with her best friend being killed. . . .” His voice trailed off a second time, then he took a deep breath and spoke one more time. “I’m afraid I had to take her to a hospital last night. Ever since she watched them take Andrea’s body away, she’s been having a rough time of it. Bad dreams, and—it’s hard to describe it. Paranoia, I suppose. Yesterday she came home from work early, and when I got home she was nearly hysterical. Certain that people were watching her—that sort of thing. When I couldn’t get her calmed down—” He spread his hands helplessly, sighed, and shook his head. “I’m hoping she’ll be home in a few days.”

  “Where is she?” Oberholzer asked, his pencil poised over his notepad.

  “The Biddle Institute,” Fleming replied. “Up on West 82nd Street.”

  “How well did you know Costanza?” Maria Hernandez asked.

  “Hardly at all, actually,” Fleming replied. “We had dinner with her once, and she was at the wedding of course, but it was one of those woman things—she and my wife were friends from college, and they stuck together like glue. The other two are Beverly Amondson and Rochelle Newman.”

  Oberholzer nodded. “And can you tell us where you both were last Friday evening?”

  “Last Friday—?” Fleming began, but then grasped what Oberholzer was getting at. “Ah. The night Andrea was killed. Well, for the most part we were here. We had dinner with the kids, and then I had a board meeting.”

  “A board meeting? At night?”

  “The co-op board,” Fleming explained. “We meet once a month, mostly to argue over money.”

  “And who else was at that meeting?” Oberholzer asked.

  Fleming’s brows rose slightly, but then he began ticking them off on his fingers. “Well, let’s see. I was there, of course, and George Burton and Irene Delamond. And Ted Humphries.”

  “Just five?” Maria Hernandez asked.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get five people to agree on anything?”

  “And the meeting lasted . . . ?” Oberholzer left the question hanging.

  “An hour and a half maybe. Certainly I was home by eleven. Now, if we’re about through, I’d like to go up and check on my son—he seems to have picked up a bug himself.”

  “Okay,” Oberholzer said, closing his pad and slipping it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Do you have any problem with us visiting your wife at the hospital?”

  “My wife is very sick,” Fleming replied. “If you could wait a few days—”

  “I wish I could,” Oberholzer cut in. “But we’re investigating a murder, Mr. Fleming.”

  For a moment Anthony Fleming appeared to be on the verge of arguing, but then seemed to think better of it. “Of course,” he said, leaving the desk to usher Oberholzer and Hernandez toward the door. “If there’s anything else, let me know.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Oberholzer assured him.

  Neither he nor Hernandez spoke until they were downstairs and out of the building, and even then they waited until they were across the street and halfway down the next block. “Well?” Hernandez asked. “What do you think?”

  “I think I go up to the Biddle Institute, while you go back to Costanza’s address book,” Oberholzer replied.

  “I meant what did you think of him?”

  Oberholzer shrugged. “Won’t know til I check out everything he said.”

  “I didn’t like him,” Hernandez informed him, even though Oberholzer hadn’t asked. “Something about his eyes.”

  “His eyes,” Oberholzer repeated darkly, rolling his own. “Okay, I’ll bite. What about his eyes?”

  “They looked dead,” Hernandez said. “I mean really dead. Like a corpse.”

  Which is why I’m a sergeant, and you’re not, Oberholzer thought silently, and by the time he got up to 82nd Street, he’d dismissed the idea from his mind.

  CHAPTER 35

  The Biddle Institute . . . West 82nd Street . . . The Biddle Institute . . . West 82nd Street . . . The Biddle Institute . . . West 82nd Street . . . Ryan kept repeating the words over and over again in his mind, terrified that he’d forget the name of the place where his mother was, or where it was located. But right now he was even more terrified that Tony Fleming would catch him.

  His first impulse when he’d discovered there was a trapdoor in the ceiling of his closet had been to climb up through it and see if he could find a way out of the building. But the darkness beyond the shaft of light coming up from the closet was so complete that just peering into it made Ryan’s skin crawl, and in an instant he was imagining the dangers that could be lurking just out of sight. There had to be rats—he’d seen one creeping along the bottom of the drainage moat that ran all the way around the building only a couple of days ago. There’d be spiders and cockroaches, too. Maybe even black widow spiders, or brown recluses. Ryan had read all about them in a book on poisonous bugs he’d found in the library last summer, and it seemed like the worst ones—the black widows and brown recluses, like to live in dark places where you couldn’t see them. There could even be bats. He was pretty sure of that, though not as sure as he was of the rats, cockroaches, and spiders. But bats lived in caves, and the space around him had to be just as dark as a cave.

  His skin crawling with just the thought of all the things that might be lurking in the inky darkness, he’d dropped back onto the closet floor and rummaged around in his drawers until he’d found the flashlight he used to read under the covers at night. When he turned it on, the bulb glowed brightly. He was just about to close the drawer when he remembered something else that was in the drawer. It was a knife. It wasn’t very big, and even though most of the scrimshaw was worn off its handle it was still one of Ryan’s favorite things. It had been his father’s, and he could still remember his father showing him how to hone the blade on a whetstone until it was so sharp you could cut your finger without even feeling it. He wasn’t supposed to carry it with him because if he forgot and took it to school he’d be expelled right then. But as he thought of all the things that might be in the space above the closet once again, he picked up the knife and slipped it into his pocket.

  A moment later he was back up on the top shelf in the closet, peering once again into the darkness. But this time the beam of the flashlight cut through it, and even though he was pretty sure he’d seen something scamper away from the light, it wasn’t nearly as scary as it had been before.

  There was about two feet of space between the ceiling of his room and the beams supporting the floor above. Not enough room for him to stand up in, but plenty if he crawled along on his hands and knees. All kinds of pipes and wires ran through the space, some of them looking like they’d been there forever, others looking pretty new. Then, as he shined the light toward the back of his room, he saw something that shouldn’t have been there at all.

  Though it didn’t make any sense, it looked like three steps, starting from the ceiling on which he lay, and rising the two feet up to the floor above his head. But that didn’t make any sense—why would anyone build stairs in a crawlspace? But even as the question formed in his mind, so did an answer.

  A secret passage! That was it—it had to be!

  His fears suddenly forgotten, he started crawling across the rough boards that had been laid over the beams of the ceiling, clutching the flashlight in his hand and keeping his head low so he didn’t bang it on the joists above him, he crawled toward the steps
as quickly—and silently—as he could. A few seconds later he was peering at a narrow staircase, less than three feet wide, that led steeply down to an equally narrow passageway. Ryan gazed at it for several seconds, then turned to peer back over his shoulder at the shaft of light still rising through the open trapdoor.

  It seemed like the passageway had to be in the wall between his room and some room in the apartment next door, and when he twisted his neck to look upward, it seemed as if the steps ended one more floor up. But where did the passage downstairs lead? His heart racing, he crept onto the steep flight of steps and made his way down. As he descended into the narrow passage, the walls almost seemed to be closing in on him, and for a moment Ryan felt an almost overwhelming urge to scurry back up the steps, across the ceiling, and drop back into the safety—and light—of his room. But then he steeled himself against the fear; if he was going to find a way out, it was going to have to be through the passage.

  He moved forward, and about thirty feet ahead came to a cross passage. He hesitated, trying to get his bearings, but in the confines of the narrow corridor, he couldn’t be certain which way he was going. And if he came to another intersection, and then another, he’d never find his way back. But even as the possibility of getting lost came into his mind, so did the answer. He fished in the right front pocket of his jeans and his fingers closed around his father’s knife. Taking it out of his pocket and flipping its blade open, he crouched down close to the floor and carved two small grooves into the wall, forming a tiny arrow that pointed toward the staircase. When he was done he straightened up and shined his light on the mark. Satisfied that it would barely even be visible to anyone who wasn’t looking for it, he chose a direction, and turned right. A few paces further along he suddenly froze, then waited, uncertain what it was that had caused him to stop.

  Instinctively, Ryan snapped off the flashlight and held his breath, waiting.

  After a few seconds that seemed like endless minutes, the pupils of his eyes expanded to the maximum in the near total darkness of the passageway, and he saw a tiny speck of light a few paces ahead. Once again he was seized by an urge to race back to his room; once again he conquered his fear. When the light didn’t move, and the sound didn’t come again, he finally crept forward, still not daring to turn on his flashlight, and feeling his way in the darkness with his hands and feet. And finally he found the source of the faint glimmer of light: there was a tiny hole in the wall of the passage, just low enough so that if he stood on his tiptoes, he could peer into it.