by Jane Haddam
There were four phone numbers under Shelley’s name in the red leather book, next of kin to call just in case. Two of these were identified as belonging to “Robert.” The other two were identified as belonging to “Stephen.” Two of these were the phone numbers—at home and at work—of Shelley’s husband. The other two were the phone numbers—at home and at school—of Shelley’s oldest son. It was such a pain when parents gave their children their own private telephone lines. Sarah’s parents would never have done any such thing.
Husbands come before children, Sarah told herself, and home comes before work. She punched in the number and her phone credit card and waited. She heard the phone picked up in New York and a deep bass voice say,
“Hello?”
“Hello?” Sarah could do breathlessly upset very well over the phone. The only thing she couldn’t make convincing was her face, and she didn’t have to. “Is this Mr. Robert Feldstein I’ve got hold of? Husband of Shelley Feldstein?”
“If you’re some kind of a reporter,” Robert Feldstein said, “I have already made it perfectly clear—”
“Oh, I’m not a reporter, Mr. Feldstein. I’m Sarah Meyer. I’m an assistant on The Lotte Goldman Show. Do I have the right Mr. Feldstein?”
“Yes,” Robert Feldstein said reluctantly. “Yes, you do. Has something gone wrong? Is Shelley all right?”
“Oh, Mr. Feldstein,” Sarah said. “I don’t know what to do. Let me tell you the story from the beginning.”
Sarah Meyer then proceeded to tell Robert Feldstein the story from the beginning, complete with names, dates, times, places, and preferences in romantic restaurants and out-of-the-way sexual venues, like the roof of the Hullboard-Dedmarsh building.
By the time Sarah was through, Shelley Feldstein’s life sounded like a chapter from Peyton Place.
SIX
1
AT JUST ABOUT THE time Carmencita Boaz was listening to Itzaak Blechmann explaining the ceremonies of Hanukkah—before she was able to tell him “not no,” significantly before there was a knock on the door and everything began to get nasty—Gregor Demarkian was getting out of a police car on the far side of the street from St. Elizabeth’s south-side door, so tense with impatience he felt as if his muscles had turned to glass. It would have been quicker to go in through the front doors, or the north-side entrance, but he didn’t have access to either. The north-side entrance was on a side street now blocked entirely by eighteen-wheel tractor trailer trucks, bringing in supplies for the hospital and the few businesses that surrounded it. St. Elizabeth’s was in one of those parts of Philadelphia that looked as if it had stopped being part of a city and started being part of the interstate highway system. What was going on around the front doors was bad. Stuck at the corner, realizing what it all meant, Gregor almost longed for the return of the reporters. Reporters only stabbed people with their rapier wits, which were far less sharp than they liked to think. Whoever had stabbed the two men now bleeding into the steps leading up to St. Elizabeth’s front doors had either used a very sharp knife, or gone at his victims over and over again. The rescue effort now taking place in the curving drive was a full-scale object lesson in emergency mobilization. Maybe whoever had done the stabbing was up there, too, half-dead on the ground. Wherever he was, Gregor and John Jackman were not going to be able to go through St. Elizabeth’s front doors.
“It might be different if we could claim an emergency,” John told Gregor, “but not much. We have other options.”
“Let’s use them,” Gregor said.
The other options turned out to be the south-side door, a gray metal slab with a tall rectangle of glass in the upper half of it that opened onto a small staff parking lot. The parking lot was deserted and the security light that was supposed to shine right at the door’s knob and keyhole was broken. At least half the lights in the parking lot were broken, too. Gregor looked into the deserted space and grimaced. Staff parking lot. Nurses’ cars. Aside from serial killers, there were animals known as serial rapists. Gregor had run across one or two. This was just the sort of place they liked. It was infuriating. It was so easy to fix a situation like this. It was cheap, too. A couple of the right lights, a fence—
He was always doing this. He had someplace to go and something to do. John Jackman was already at the fire door, rattling the lock.
“There’s a buzzer,” he called out. “I rang it.”
“Fine,” Gregor said.
He lumbered up to the fire door and looked through the rectangular window. The window was composed of two panes of glass with wire edging pressed between. Beyond it there was a deserted hall with doors opening off it on both sides, dimly lit. The far end wasn’t lit at all. Gregor thought this place ought to have a sign on it that said:
REALLY BAD SEX CRIME
TROUBLE EXPECTED HERE.
At least it would give the women who were forced to use this passage a shot at informed consent.
Out of the dark spot at the back of the hall came a middle-aged woman in a nun’s habit, carrying too much weight on too short legs and looking as if she were getting winded. Bennis said so many nuns got heavy because they weren’t required to do anything to make themselves attractive to men. If women ever got feminist enough, a lot of them would get heavy. Considering the fact that Bennis could eat her way through four pounds of yaprak sarma and a foot-tall mound of halva and never gain an ounce, Gregor didn’t think he could trust her opinion on this.
The nun stopped at the door and peered out. John Jackman raised his identification to the window. The nun began to open up. There were a lot of locks on this door, a bad sign. It would take a woman a good two or three minutes to open up, and two or three minutes was more than an attacker would need.
The door swung open and the nun peered out. “Yes? Didn’t you want to go in the front door?”
“There’s a medical emergency going on at the front door, Sister,” John Jackman said politely. “We couldn’t get through.”
Sister made a face. “Stabbings. Always with the stabbings. Two or three times a week.”
“Right at the hospital doors?” Gregor asked.
“Father McCormack came and talked to us about it. It has something to do with where we are. The neighborhood to the north is controlled by one gang, and the neighborhood to the east is controlled by another, so—”
“Never mind,” John Jackman said. “We get the idea.”
“It causes everybody no end of problems when they do this,” the nun said. “And they get terribly hurt and somebody always dies. How do you talk people out of behaving like that?”
“If I knew the answer to that, ma’am, I could retire to Miami.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go to Miami,” the nun said. “Miami is worse. I know. The Sisters always watch the reruns of that show on television.”
“Nuns who watch Miami Vice,” John Jackman said into Gregor’s ear. “I think that makes my week complete.”
Gregor ignored him. The hall was not only dimly lit but much too well heated. It was so hot, Gregor thought steam was going to rise from the floor beneath his feet.
“You come right this way,” the nun told them, padding off down the hall into the dark. “The elevators are right over here. Just push the button for lobby and get off when the elevator stops. Unless you’re looking for a room on the south side. Are you looking for a room on the south side?”
“North side,” Gregor told her.
“Oh. Well, then. You get off at the lobby and use the other set of elevators. They’ll take you right up. And there’ll be a Sister on duty at the desk to give you any other directions you need.”
“Thank you,” John Jackman said.
They were at the elevators now. They had passed into a lightless place. Then the Sister had flicked a switch and an entire ceilingful of overhead fluorescents had come on.
“Saving on electricity, you know,” she said. “Looking out for the environment.”
Gregor punched the call button and
looked at the whitewashed concrete walls. Somebody had gone to the trouble of putting up candles cut out of construction paper and a bright silver tin foil star.
“Take a little advice from me, Sister,” Gregor said. “Stop worrying about the electric bill. And leave the environment to somebody else. Keep the lights on.”
“But—”
“Sister, you’re in a very bad place in the middle of a very tough part of Philadelphia, and in the dark the way you are you’re asking to get hurt.”
The elevator bounded down to them. The doors slid open. Gregor and Jackman stepped into the car.
“But,” Sister said again.
“Trust me,” Gregor told her.
Then he pushed the button marked “L” and the doors slid closed.
2
THE LOBBY WAS ALMOST as deserted as the hall downstairs had been. There was one Sister at the reception desk. She recognized them and nodded them past. There was a policeman on duty in front of the north side elevator bank. He was sitting in a chair reading The Body Lovers by Mickey Spillane. It was an old paperback falling apart at the spine. Its cover was a 1950s hard-boiled cliché, complete with shapely high-heel-clad leg coming out of nowhere and snaking up into the cover. It was the kind of cover Tibor disguised by pasting it over with brown paper cut out of grocery bags. Tibor loved Mickey Spillane.
When they came up to the cop, he put down his book. When the cop saw who he had in front of him, he stood up.
“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I didn’t expect to be here,” John Jackman said. “Anybody go up?”
“Not for over an hour. There was a big rush between seven and eight. That was because of visiting. Since then it’s been dead. You could ask Shecker upstairs.”
“Shecker’s on duty on Five North?”
“That’s right. But I don’t think anything’s happened up there, either. I mean, except for what you would expect.”
“What would you expect?” Gregor asked.
“People from the show,” the cop said. Then he looked a little worried. “That was what I was told. They could come and go as they liked. I wasn’t supposed to stop them—”
“No, no,” Jackman said. “That’s absolutely right. We don’t have anything to stop them for. I just want to keep an eye on them. Which of that crowd has been up?”
“Well, it’s like I told you, nobody’s been up for at least an hour. Before we got a flurry or two, during visiting hours, you know. There was that black lady, you know, with the hair—”
“DeAnna Kroll.”
“Yeah. Shecker says she gives him heart palpitations. And he’s white. I mean, excuse me. I didn’t—”
“Never mind,” John said wearily, “who else?”
“Oh, the two crazy ladies. You know. Shirley and Sheila. Susan and Sandra—”
“Shelley and Sarah,” Gregor said.
“Yeah, them. They’re nuts. First one of them goes tearing up, then the other one does. Then one of them goes tearing up, then the other one does. I think they’re following each other.”
“Which was it the last time? Up or out?” Gregor asked.
“Up,” the cop said. “The tall thin one—”
“Shelley Feldstein,” John put in.
“She went up. That was just around eight o’clock.”
“What about the other one?” Gregor asked.
“The short fat one. I didn’t see her.”
“Had she gone out previously?” Jackman asked.
“Oh, yeah. But that doesn’t mean anything. You have to go through the lobby to get to the cafeteria, so she may have never left the building.”
“Wouldn’t you have seen her when she came back?” Gregor asked.
“Not if she went across the bridge on eleven. It’s a weird way around but some people—”
“That’s why we have a man on Five North,” John put in. “Because in a building this big there have to be half a dozen ways to get to any one place. It’s inevitable.”
“Mmm,” Gregor said.
“You want to get going?” Jackman said.
Gregor got going.
He hadn’t noticed it before, but this part of the lobby was decorated with all the feverish intensity Donna Moradanyan brought to Cavanaugh Street. There were Hanukkah candles and Stars of Bethlehem. There was a life-size statue of the Madonna cradling her Child. There was a tall wicker basket full of hard Christmas candy with a sign that said
“TAKE SOME”
on the side. Leave it to the nuns. Not “take one,” “take some.”
“Wait a minute,” Gregor said. “Let me work this out. DeAnna Kroll is in or out?”
“In,” the cop said.
“How about Lotte Goldman?”
“Also in.”
“Sarah Meyer?”
“Out, I think.”
“And Shelley Feldstein is in?”
“That’s right.”
“I suppose that leaves Itzaak Blechmann,” Gregor said. “He should be in.”
“He should be in all night,” John Jackman said. “That Kroll woman went to no end of trouble to get permission for him to stay with Carmencita Boaz for the night. The nuns were a little uneasy because the two of them weren’t married, but Señorita Boaz is in no shape to engage in any hanky-panky, so they relented. It would be odder if he had come down and gone out.”
“All right,” Gregor said, “but it still doesn’t add up.”
“Add up to what?”
“There are too many,” Gregor said. He punched the button to summon the elevator, but he didn’t have to wait. The cars were all at lobby level. The doors opened as soon as he put his finger on the button. Gregor stepped into the nearest car and beckoned John Jackman to follow him.
“There are too many people upstairs,” he said. “You’ve got to add the cop into the equation. Our murderer is not a stupid person.”
“Maybe our murderer is waiting for the day after tomorrow,” Jackman said. “If nothing happens between now and then, we’ll pull our cop off. And there’s no reason not to wait until then. Even if Carmencita Boaz knows who hit her, she’s not going to be able to say a thing about it for at least two weeks.”
“She’s going to be able to write.”
“Not for a couple of days,” Jackman said. “Right now, she can’t sit up in bed without giving herself a headache the size of Godzilla and totally impervious to painkillers. She’s out of the game for the next good little time now.”
“She’s going to be able to point.”
“Right. This is pushing it, Gregor.”
Gregor sighed. “She doesn’t know who hit her. I’ll practically guarantee it—”
“You didn’t ask, did you?” Jackman sounded alarmed. “The doctors practically said we’d kill her if we asked tonight and I told all my people to keep their mouths shut until tomorrow—”
“I didn’t ask,” Gregor said. “I just know. She didn’t see who hit her. But she does know who promised to sell her a forged green card. And that’s all we need.”
“You mean if we can’t get a murder charge to stick, we can go to the Feds and let them charge forgery and conspiracy and all that? That’ll get our murderer five years in Danbury and he’ll be out in eighteen months.”
“The Feds couldn’t make forgery and conspiracy stick,” Gregor said. “We’d have to get some physical evidence to go along with it. Carmencita Boaz’s unsupported word won’t do it, especially since Carmencita has a forged green card of her own, and our friend didn’t get it for her.”
“Then why does it matter if she knows who promised to sell her the green card? Why is that all we need?”
“Because we can use it.”
“For what?”
To be sure, Gregor thought, but he didn’t say it, because the doors had opened on the fifth floor and as soon as they had he could sense something off. Not wrong, not really. Not flagrantly out of place. Just off. He stepped out of the elevator
car and looked around. They had ridden in the car with Hanukkah decorations again, but Gregor hadn’t paid attention to them. Now he saw the Christmas decorations around the elevator bank and decided to ignore those, too. Whatever was bothering him had nothing to do with any of that.
John Jackman stepped out of the car behind him and looked around.
“It seems quiet to me,” he said to Gregor.
Too quiet, Gregor thought, but he didn’t say that either, because it was too much like what one of the detectives in the mystery novels Bennis was always giving him would say. Instead he looked around and then down the short corridor to Five North proper. There was nobody and nothing to be seen. Even the nurses’ station seemed to be deserted.
“Where would your cop be, if he was where he was supposed to be?”
“Not here,” John Jackman said. “Too much could happen behind his back, and he’d bother too many people who have a right not to be bothered.”
“Where?”
“Down by Carmencita Boaz’s room.”
Gregor looked down the corridor again. “He isn’t there.”
John Jackman came to stand behind Gregor and looked, too. “Don’t panic,” he said. “He could be in Carmencita Boaz’s room.”
“That’s true. He could be in the bathroom.”
“If he goes to the bathroom, he’s supposed to get someone to take over while he’s gone. You know that. You’ve been on stakeouts.”
“On the kind of stakeouts I was assigned to,” Gregor said, “there was nobody to take over for us when we were gone and no place to go anyway. We used to carry these little plastic jars…”
