Lethal Legacy

by Linda Fairstein

  “Figures,” Mike said. “They’d need a guide to find the old Hunt property. Also useful for Travis Forbes, the chloroform kid, to be in a cop’s uniform to get close enough to knock the guy out, probably before Minerva stepped out of the car.”

  Mercer was on the ground, trying to do CPR on the fallen man before the medics arrived. He took a pen-size LCD flashlight from his pocket and passed it to Mike, who was on his way toward the opening. I hurried after him.

  “You’re not gonna like this, Coop. I’ll go alone.”

  We had been in claustrophobic situations often enough for Mike and Mercer to know they were a problem for me. But I couldn’t imagine letting Mike, who had covered my back more times than I could count, go down without a partner.

  He took his blazer off and threw it on the ground, unholstering his gun as he put his hand on the top of the hatch.

  Mike started down into the entrance shaft of the burial space and cleared the short staircase. I listened for voices, but heard none.

  I put my foot on the top step and, afraid to lose the light that Mike was leading with, hurried down ten more until I touched the earthen floor.

  I stood up straight and looked around the grim necropolis. On either side of me were narrow passageways that led between enormous stone vaults. Long slate shelves supported some of the coffins, mostly made of stone, which were stacked on top of one another.

  I stayed as close to Mike as I could get while he moved the light over the dirt, then up and down among the coffins, looking for names of the dead and numbers of their vaults.

  We had passed the forties, seen the markers for Deys and Cruikshanks, Wetmores and Wheelocks-adults and far too many infants, typical of the mortality rates of that century.

  As we came to the intersection that marked the divide between the vaults numbered in the fifties from those in the sixties, Mike’s flashlight framed a woman’s face.

  Minerva Hunt was seated on the ground, her hands tied behind her with a length of rope. A silk scarf-probably her own-served as a gag between her teeth, wrapped around the back of her head.

  Next to her, Travis Forbes was holding a taxidermist’s skife-the sharp tool designed to skin dead animals.

  “Forget it, Forbes,” Mike said.

  “No, you forget it.” He pressed the edge of the blade to Minerva’s slender neck and the first drops of blood spurted out. “I can end it for her much faster than you can shoot.”

  “I have no doubt you can. I’ve seen your work.”

  I could picture the deep, gaping wound in Tina Barr’s neck.

  Minerva Hunt’s eyes were opened wide with fear, flitting between Travis Forbes’s hand and something behind me.

  I turned to look but saw only the massive outlines of stone caskets and slate shelves.

  Travis pulled at Minerva’s arm to get her to her feet. “Give me the gun, Detective, or I’ll cut her throat.”

  “Did you get what you wanted?” Mike asked. “Can’t kill her before she lays the golden egg, can you?”

  Again Minerva Hunt’s eyes darted from Forbes to the staircase through which we had entered. I glanced back, hoping to see Mercer and the cops he had summoned, but no one was there.

  “Make yourselves comfortable, Mr. Chapman,” Forbes said, positioning the terrified woman between himself and Mike. If Mike had considered firing his gun at Forbes, he had missed his brief opportunity.

  “Ms. Hunt and I have to go,” Forbes said, pushing Minerva to take baby steps forward. “We haven’t finished our conversation. Pick yourself out a slab and get some rest while we find a less crowded place to talk.”

  Minerva looked to the staircase again, then jerked back her head, just as I heard the hatch crash to a close.

  This time, Mike flashed his light in that direction. Against the blackness of the wall, it caught Alger Herrick’s shiny chrome hook.

  FORTY-SIX

  “There’s a shaft at the other end, Forbes,” Alger Herrick said, coming down the steps. “You’ve got to take her that way. There’s another detective outside here.”

  Forbes was focused on Mike’s gun. He tried to move Minerva around and drag her away from where we stood. Strapped to him was a backpack, open at the top, which appeared to have a large book-the size of a double folio-sticking out of it.

  “Hurry, Forbes.”

  “I want his gun.”

  “We can do better than that,” Herrick said, coming up directly behind me. “We’ll take his girl.”

  Mike pointed his pistol at Herrick, but it was too late. The man was upon me, the cold steel of his prosthesis gripping my forearm.

  “Let go of me. I’ll walk,” I said, trying to shake myself loose.

  He held me tight, angling so that I was always between him and Mike, and led me around the central burial chambers to an earthen path parallel to the one on which Mike stood, inches away from Minerva Hunt and Travis Forbes.

  “Shoot, Mike!” I yelled. “Shoot Forbes.”

  The stark confines of this dungeonlike underground chamber smelled of death.

  Forbes responded with a laugh, a loud, guttural laugh. What was Mercer doing up above that he couldn’t hear us? Probably helping to load the injured man into an ambulance.

  Hunt tried to speak-or maybe she was crying. All that emerged from behind the gag was a muffled noise.

  Herrick turned the corner, and for the first time I could see that the fieldstone cap had been removed from vault 65, marked with the name Jasper Hunt II. Books were strewn about, no doubt the result of this unusual break-in undertaken by Herrick and Forbes. The old eccentric had in fact gone to his grave-the first time-with some of his beloved treasures.

  Minerva Hunt had played right into their hands, trusting Travis Forbes to help her search for the missing panels of the great map. She’d fallen prey to the same double cross that had proven lethal to Tina Barr.

  “In fact, Detective, why don’t you come over here?” Herrick said, pushing me faster, understanding the urgency with which he had to escape before more police arrived. “There’s a vacancy. Several of them, to be honest.”

  Mike wasn’t giving up his gun, and Herrick seemed confident he wouldn’t find a way to use it, with both Minerva and me serving as human shields.

  “Drag her, if you can’t pick her up,” Herrick shouted to Forbes. “If he kills her, just run. Let’s get out of here with what we have.”

  Herrick was ready to sacrifice Minerva Hunt, confident perhaps that she had nothing more of value to give to him.

  “Minerva is your sister,” I screamed as loud as I could. “Let her be, dammit. She’s your blood sister.”

  Alger Herrick froze at my words, reflexively tightening his grip on my arm. I winced at the pain, but knew I had shocked him.

  “Her father is your father,” I said, listening as he took deep breaths, startled by the information. His chest heaved against my back. “You’re a Hunt, too. We’ve got the DNA to prove it.”

  Mike steadied his gun with both hands, aiming at the spot where Forbes was moving with Minerva. “You’re entitled to the damn map. You didn’t have to kill to get it.”

  This was no time to correct Mike on the fine points of the law. I didn’t think Alger Herrick would expect to go to court now to collect on the Hunt fortune.

  “I never murdered anyone, you fool,” Herrick said. “He did. He’s your killer.”

  Herrick pulled at me again, moving me farther into the darkness, farther away from Mike.

  Now I could hear pounding from the direction of the entrance shaft. Mercer and the backup team must be trying to get to us, but Herrick had found a way to secure the hatch from within.

  “I’ll give you three seconds to let Minerva go,” Mike said, moving in toward Travis Forbes and his hostage. “Kill her, and you die, too.”

  Alger Herrick heard the commotion. “Drop her, Forbes. Run as fast as you can go to the other end. There’s a staircase just like the one we came in. Beat them out of here with the book-they�
��ll think you’re an officer, too. You’ll walk right through them.”

  Forbes’s fake-or stolen-uniform might serve him well in the confusing mix of cops responding to a call for help. I didn’t care if it did. I didn’t care about the missing panels of the rare map and whether they were lost forever. I wanted to get out of this hellhole, with Mike, alive.

  Travis Forbes was beginning to fidget like a caged animal. Herrick would give him up as Tina and Karla’s killer, claiming not to have known his young accomplice was going to use violence. It would make no difference to a jury, but Herrick must have thought it would save his neck.

  Mike was gaining on him. “You wanna cut somebody? Cut yourself, Forbes. Slice your own throat.”

  Over my shoulder, I thought I saw a sliver of light in the farthest remove of the room. I looked again down the dirt corridor of death, but all was darkness.

  Had there been movement, or was my mind frozen with fright? It was getting harder to breathe in the dank, airless space. I knew there was a chance that none of us would make it out alive.

  Suddenly, I heard a loud grunt from Travis Forbes. He lifted Minerva Hunt off the ground and threw her at Mike. She couldn’t even brace herself for the fall, her hands still bound behind her.

  It looked like Mike’s gun-the glint of silver flashing against the black backdrop-fell to the ground as he tried unsuccessfully to catch Minerva. He was knocked backward by the impact of her body against his own.

  Forbes was running in the direction Herrick had sent him, un-burdened by his captive. And Alger Herrick was moving faster, too, pulling me with him, while Mike tried to extricate himself from beneath Minerva Hunt.

  I was coughing now as dust particles from the ground scuffed up by the skirmish seemed to choke my airway. My own sense of panic made it harder for me to regain control.

  “Forbes,” Herrick yelled out. “Are you there?”

  I could still hear his footsteps running away from us. I reached in my pocket for a handkerchief to cover my mouth.

  The first thing I touched was the heavy piece of cotton cloth, the one that had been doused with chloroform to knock out the cemetery guide.

  “Stop!” I said, pleading with Alger Herrick. “I can’t breathe.”

  His good hand, the right one, smacked the side of my head so hard that I saw stars. “I need you with me. Just keep moving.”

  “I’ll be back for you. You’ll do fine,” I heard Mike say to Minerva.

  He must have gotten to his feet and retrieved his gun. He’d be coming after us.

  Just then I heard a thud from the direction in which Travis Forbes had run.

  “Forbes?” Herrick shouted again. “Have you found the steps, man?”

  There was no answer.

  Herrick seemed distracted by the silence. I thought-and maybe he did, too-that Forbes had reached the exit and dropped the lid on us after he escaped.

  I pulled my arm from Herrick’s viselike grip, but he yanked me back, face-to-face. I swung my free hand up from my side, covering his nose with the chloroform-soaked cloth, using my height to my advantage.

  The silver hook released its hold as Herrick tried to swat me away. I pressed the rag to him again, not knowing whether there was enough of the gas on it to overwhelm him.

  He swiped at my neck with the hook, and I stepped back. He must have scored a cut. I felt a trickle of blood seeping behind my ear.

  “Get down, Coop,” Mike said, rushing out of the dark.

  Before Mike could reach me, Alger Herrick fell to his knees.

  I didn’t know if chloroform had done its job, or if he was brought down by Shalik Samson, who cracked him on the back of his legs with a baseball bat.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The night watchman at the Provenzano funeral home had opened it up for the chief of detectives while he was waiting for us to be led out of the cavernous burial ground.

  Mercer brought me inside the large parlor, decorated for old-fashioned comfort-sofas and armchairs of burgundy silk, with antimacassars-meant to soothe grieving relatives. It wasn’t where I wanted to be right now, but I had no choice in the matter.

  Detectives and uniformed cops, huddling in small groups to gossip about the case now that the emergency had passed, moved out of the way as I walked through the room.

  I lowered myself onto one of the sofas and rested my head against the pillow.

  The watchman was telling some of the officers about the old cemetery. “I bet you didn’t even know it was here, did you? We get asked about it all the time,” he said. “It was because of the terrible contagion in Manhattan back then-yellow fever, tuberculosis, scarlet fever. The city banned aboveground graves, so these rich guys decided to excavate this block and build marble vaults ten feet under. Regular plague pits, they must have been.”

  I shivered, wrapping a blanket around myself as I waited for Lieutenant Peterson to clear the room.

  I saw a couple of the guys who were leaving make way for Shalik Samson. Mercer brought him over to me to say good night.

  “You saved us, you know,” I said to him, mustering a smile.

  “You gonna say that to the judge?”

  “Of course I will, if you tell me how you did it.”

  “Mercer was helping that sick man, you know? He made me go wake up the chauffeur ’cause the amb’lance took so long. Carmine-that guy? He had a baseball bat in the car. Guess he thought I was gonna rob him. Mercer was like gonna shoot him if he didn’t drop the damn thing.”

  “How’d you get down into the burial vault?”

  “That way you went in got locked, you know,” Shalik said. It happened when Alger Herrick dropped the lid. “Me and Mercer, we just went around the whole garden, all along that crumbly stone wall, looking for another entrance. Had to be, he kept telling me. Couldn’t have just one way in or out for all those bodies.”

  “And you found it,” I said.

  “Back behind a tree. Mercer didn’t fit, but I did.”

  I hadn’t been wrong. That sliver of light I thought I saw had been Shalik opening the lid of the second hatch.

  “So you tripped the guy with the backpack?”

  “Dude didn’t even see me. That dungeon’s as black as I am.”

  “What do you think, Mercer? Gold shield?” I asked.

  “First, we’re taking him home. I’m not ready to give Shalik any commendations yet, but we’ll get those charges thrown out.”

  The kid high-fived me, and Mercer handed him off to the cops who were going to drive him home.

  Mike came into the room a minute later. He had cleaned himself up, and brought some hydrogen peroxide and a bandage to cover the cut on my neck.

  “You know the river Styx, Loo? Greek mythology?” Mike asked as he leaned over me, dabbing the small wound before he dressed it. “The river of hate, it was called. An old guy named Charon ferries the dead across the river to the underworld. I swear, Coop and me-we were on that ferry tonight.”

  “I don’t care if the whole magilla is made of marble or papiermâché,” Peterson said. “Couldn’t get me down in there for all the money in the world. Are you telling me, Alex, that Alger Herrick is the half brother of Minerva and Talbot Hunt?”

  “The lab is hot on this new familial search technology. Howard Browner says he can prove it with a sample from the father.”

  “Think of it, Loo,” Mike said. “Jasper the Third spent a lot of time in England, liked the ladies-young ones-as much as he liked his books. Herrick’s mother was a single girl who deposited him in an orphanage. Alex thinks Hunt’s father might even have paid to steer the infant to a good home. Placed him so well, they wound up with the same friends.”

  Mercer sat down beside me and held my hand. “You want us to put this together for you?” he asked the lieutenant.

  “It’s all about the map, isn’t it? The rarest map in the world?”

  “Seems to be.”

  The backpack that Travis Forbes had been wearing when Shalik brought him down
with the first blow of the bat was on a table next to me.

  While Mercer talked, Mike removed the large folio from the bag. It was a volume of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt-the atlas of the world-the same book in which the Grimaldis had concealed the panels for centuries.

  All conversation ceased as Mike lifted the cover. There were four folded sheets of paper, which he slowly and carefully opened before us.

  “The four corners of the earth,” he said. “Magnificent, Coop. Aren’t they?”

  We all leaned in to look. The three of us had seen a fake earlier in the day, and a real one in the library, under Bea’s tutelage. Experts would confirm it for us, but everything about these papers looked authentic.

  The first one, the top left section of the entire map, represented the North American continent, with exquisite drawings of Zephir and Chor-the wind and the sea-surrounding the land.

  The second piece, from the top right position, was Cathay and Japan, mapped with more detail than the previous segment, since they had actually been described as a result of Marco Polo’s thirteenth-century journeys.

  Mike opened the third of the large pages that would form the bottom right corner. Below the Spice Islands of Indonesia was the legend written by the mapmaker, attributing the name of America to Vespucci.

  The bottom panel, to the west, documented the extension of the new land-the South American continent-that Vespucci had explored as far down as the River Plata. The word America showed up for the first time, south of what is now Brazil.

  “You’re looking at history, Loo. Not many people beside the Hunts even knew this baby existed, and as time went by, scholars began to think it was a myth.”

  “How’d the Barr girl get mixed up in all this?” Peterson said, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “Eddy Forbes, the map thief, he seems to have been the driving force keeping the legend of this treasure alive. First he tried to get Minerva to back him in finding the panels. You’ll have to ask her, but I don’t think she believed him until Jane Eliot called her a few months back to give her a gift-a book she didn’t want, which happened to have a piece of the map inside,” I said. “I’d guess it was Eddy Forbes who educated Minerva about the Strassburg Ptolemy, and the panel inside it. That’s the book that Grandpa Hunt reclaimed from the library during the war.”