Entombed (24 page)

I picked my head up
and watched him slide down the embankment, rolling only ten or twelve
feet until he crashed into a tree trunk. Everything down there was
silent now, with no sign of an attacker.

"The professor's been
shot," I said to the officer who reached me first. "He needs an
ambulance."

"Who's the…?" one
guard asked, while I directed two others down to the far end to tend to
Tormey.

I looked over the side
of the wall. Mike was sitting with his back against the large tree
trunk. The guards glanced back and forth at each other, uncertain about
what lay below.

"Can you help him,
please? He's a detective-NYPD-Homicide."

"He do the shooting?"

"No, we were fired
at," I said. "From somewhere down there."

I had just killed
their enthusiasm for climbing down to help Mike. One of the men leaned
over and picked up a bullet.

"Looks like a
twenty-two-caliber-"

"Please don't touch
anything. We'll have to get the Crime Scene Unit here."

I could hear more
sirens. Guards checked on Tormey and assured me that he was conscious
and coherent, and that an ambulance had been called. I stood up, and
ignoring Mike's gestures for me to stay with the men from security, I
swung my legs over the balcony and lowered myself onto the densely
wooded hillside.

"Graceful, huh?" Mike
asked as I made my way down the slope to him, bracing myself against
trees along the way, and helped him to his feet. "How's Tormey?"

"Looks like he's hit
in his upper arm, from the way he's just dragging it and the amount of
blood soaking through his jacket. They've got a bus on the way. D'you
see anything?"

"Somebody knew exactly
what he was doing. Had Tormey's arrival timed to the minute, didn't he?
And wouldn't have minded shaving some peroxide off the top of your
scalp, either. He was comfortable in these woods," Mike said, looking
around at the rough terrain.

"Unless he was over
there," I said, pointing at the railroad tracks on the far side of the
highway. "There's enough scrub to conceal yourself, especially if he
was shooting with a scope. Did you fire down because you saw someone?"

Mike started to walk
back up to the colonnade. "Nothing. Nada. I just wanted to draw the guy
out if he was still around."

"Hey, Chapman. Clara
Barton's down the hall, if you need a hand," a uniformed cop called
out, clearly delighted to have seen Mike on his ass, then being guided
back up the hill by a woman Sherpa.

Mike scrambled over
the metal railing behind the entrance gate, while I stretched my arms
out overhead so two cops could hoist me up onto the balcony next to a
stone-faced Elias Howe.

Medics were loading
Noah Tormey into the rear of the ambulance and I followed Mike over to
check on him.

One of the EMTs spoke
first, shaking his finger at us. "Sorry. You'll have to question him at
the hospital. We can't hang out here with a gunshot wound."

Mike boosted me up
into the rear of the van. "We're going with you. We need medical
attention, too. I'm full of cuts and scrapes." He stepped up and swung
the door closed behind him. "We're going to Columbia Presbyterian," he
said, flashing his badge.

"This ain't a taxi
service, boss. We're a Bronx unit."

"And I think too much
of the professor's life to go to an emergency room in the Bronx, okay?
Right across the river and you're practically there."

The medic chose the
path of least resistance. He told his partner to go across the
University Heights Bridge to one of Manhattan's premier medical
facilities, near the northern tip of the island, which was actually the
closest hospital.

We watched while the
serious young EMT stabilized Noah Tormey, removing his jacket, ripping
off the sleeve of his shirt to examine the wound in the fleshy part of
the upper arm, and starting an intravenous drip so that he could go
straight from the ER into surgery, if that was necessary.

My wrists were
bleeding, and there was a long scrape on the side of my chin from the
moment Mike directed me to flatten out on the pavement. I rested my
head on his shoulder and could feel the rapid beating of his heart.

Mike's face was cut in
several places from the tree branches that had whipped against him as
he rolled down the incline. I dabbed at the marks on his forehead with
some tissues until he pushed my hand away.

"How are you feeling,
Professor?" Mike asked.

The twitch was less
pronounced than earlier. "I've never been so frightened in my life. Why
was that person shooting at you?"

"You got that wrong,
pal. Why was he shooting at
you
? That's what we'd like to know.
You
got any problems you want to tell us about?"

The medic was
monitoring Tormey's vital signs. "How about you take it easy on the
guy's blood pressure, Chapman?"

Tormey whispered the
word no.

"This little ceremony,
did anyone know about it besides your students?"

"It was in the college
paper, of course. I think the Bronx Historical Society writes up all
the events, too. I simply can't imagine-"

"Think about it,
Professor. You'll have a couple of days in your hospital bed to
concentrate on nothing else but today's riflery exhibition. Your old
friend Emily Upshaw was killed. Stabbed to death in a particularly
vicious attack, right in her own home."

Tormey cringed and
closed his eyes.

"That probably has
something to do with the skeleton that was found in a basement in a
Greenwich Village tenement last week. In fact, inside Mr. Poe's house."

The twitch was back in
full force and his eyes were shut tight.

"Dr. Ichiko finds the
only waterfall in the city of New York to throw himself over-or get
pushed into-and crushes his skull in so many pieces you could play
Chinese checkers with the chips. And you, you're somebody's idea of a
bull's-eye."

Tormey opened his eyes
and looked for me. "Miss Cooper, will there be protection for me while
I'm in the hospital? I mean, you don't suppose this was just some
drive-by shooting from the highway?"

"The shots didn't come
from a car, Professor. Detectives will analyze the scene, but there's
little doubt someone was positioned in place, waiting for you to
appear. And yes, the NYPD will have someone with you the entire time
you're in the hospital."

His eyes shifted in
Mike's direction. "Not-?"

"Not him." It seemed
to be Tormey's worst fear. Wounded, bedridden, and attached to an IV
tube with Chapman at his side, relentlessly asking questions.

"I haven't given any
thought to Emily Upshaw in years, Miss Cooper. Do you really believe
this could have something to do with her?" Tormey asked.

Mike sensed that the
professor wasn't comfortable talking to him and turned his back,
pretending to busy himself making notes about the day's events.

"It's hard to think
otherwise," I said.

"The incident with the
bail? It's coming back to me a bit," Tormey said.

Funny how a good scare
can improve the memory of almost every witness.

"Emily was working as
my research assistant that semester. She was desperate for money-not
that I realized at the time how much of it was going to support her
drug habit. Two or three times she actually wrote articles for me, ones
that were published under my name. I needed those credits for the
tenure process."

"Okay."

"When she was
arrested, she called me because I owed her money. Several hundred
dollars, if I'm not mistaken. I don't imagine there was anyone else she
could have called who'd give her money."

Tormey's mind was
drifting in another direction. He turned his head to the other side,
but before he did I thought I saw tears forming in the corners of his
eyes.

"I'll be looking at
Emily's college records tomorrow," I said, a bluff that I hoped to make
good on before too long. "What class did she take with you?"

He seemed unable or
unwilling to speak.

"Professor Tormey?"

"Emily wasn't in any
of my classes. You'll see that in her transcript."

"But she did research
for you?"

His head moved slowly
up and down.

"How did she find you?
How did you two get together?"

"Before…" he said,
choking on the words that followed.

"Before college?" I
asked.

Tormey's words were
muffled but I held my head close to his mouth and made them out. "I'm
the reason Emily came to New York to go to college. I don't know what
her family has told you about her background, Miss Cooper. I was her
faculty interviewer the week she came to the city to visit NYU at the
start of her senior year of high school. She was alone here-and,
well-we spent some time together."

The story Emily's
sister had told us took on a new significance as Tormey finished his
explanation. "I'm the guy who got her pregnant."

24

I knew the triage
process would begin the moment we hit the entrance to the ambulance bay
at Presbyterian. A medical team would be waiting for us, Tormey would
be evaluated for surgery, and if they put him under with anesthesia,
we'd be lucky if we could get back at him within the next forty-eight
hours.

"There's no time for
bullshit now, Professor. I need more honest answers or I can't protect
you from whatever's going on."

"But I thought Emily's
attack was a random one-a man who followed her in off the street."

"Maybe it is that. I
happen not to think so. Too many things are going on that seem to be
related. The child you fathered with Emily, have you ever tried to have
any contact with her?"

Tormey looked directly
at me. "The baby died, Miss Cooper. She was stillborn."

"That's what Emily
told you?"

"Yes. And that's what
her mother told me, in the one or two conversations we had together. I
felt responsible for the fact that her family disowned Emily. Then how
ironic it was that she lost the baby after all."

The truth about the
child and the fact that she had been raised by Emily's sister could
wait a day or two.

"But your relationship
with Emily, that continued?"

"Sexually? No, not
after she came back to New York and started at the college. She had
visions of setting up house together, of me replacing the family she
thought she had lost. Getting her pregnant had been a pretty sobering
experience for both of us- well, that's a particularly bad expression
for me to use. I was a few years older than she, and by the time that
year had passed, I was involved with someone else. Someone more
appropriate. The woman I married, actually."

The medic signaled me
to get out of his way as we turned onto 168th Street.

"We're almost there,
Professor. Those names Detective Chapman was asking you about? You know
he didn't finish."

Tormey sighed.

"Did you ever meet
Monty?"

"Who?" he asked. He
seemed weary from the pain and apprehension.

"A guy Emily lived
with before she was arrested. Someone who may have done something that
frightened her."

"It doesn't sound
familiar."

"This ceremony about
Edgar Allan Poe today, what's your interest in him?"

Tormey smiled and
closed his eyes. "I told you earlier, I think the man was a genius."

"And Emily, did she
agree?"

"I don't know what she
thought, Miss Cooper. She worked on projects for me. She did what I
asked her to do."

The ambulance lurched
as the driver stopped short and backed it into a bay. The men who were
standing by to receive Noah Tormey lifted the gurney out of the rear
and placed it on a set of metal wheels, rushing it into the doors that
opened automatically as they approached.

"Hey, loo, you got
nothing better to do than make house calls?" Mike asked. Raymond
Peterson, the lieutenant of the homicide squad, was standing with a
nurse at the ER entrance. He held out a hand and helped me step down.

"I was on my way in
when I got the call. Thought I'd stop by and check the damage. You all
right, Alex?"

"No worse than falling
off a bicycle. May I wash up inside?" I asked the nurse.

"I'll have someone
look you both over right away. You just need to go sign in at the desk.
They'll give each of you an examination cubicle and-"

"I really don't need
to waste anyone's time. I've just skinned my hands a bit."

"C'mon, Coop. We can
share a cubicle, put on those cute little gowns."

"It's policy, ma'am.
You came in in an ambulance and we can't let you go without an
examination."

"Go ahead, Alex. I've
got to make sure Mike doesn't claim any injuries that would get him out
on three-quarters," the lieutenant said, referring to the department's
generous retirement pension for injured cops.

It didn't take long to
determine that neither one of us had anything more serious than cuts
and scrapes. Noah Tormey was taken into surgery to remove the bullet in
his shoulder, and we described the morning's events to Peterson.

"You hear anything yet
about Dr. Ichiko from the autopsy?" Mike asked.

We both knew that no
reliable tests existed to permit forensic pathologists to make an
unequivocal diagnosis of drowning. Instead, that conclusion is usually
reached by the circumstances of the person's death.

"Water in the lungs?"
I asked.

"Yeah, but Dr.
Kirschner says it's not significant. When there's as much turbulence as
there is at those falls, water gets forced into the organs even after
death. There's a fracture to the skull-"

"And that doesn't give
us a homicide?" Mike asked. "Somebody splitting his head open before he
jumped in for a whirlpool spin?"

"Kirschner's not ready
to declare," Peterson said. "He wouldn't expect someone to go over
those falls and hit the rocks below- voluntarily or not-without
cracking his head fatally."