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I saw that he was carrying a shotgun. I thought of the professor-Noah
Tormey-and the marksman who had nearly taken him out that day at the Hall of
Fame. How logical to need weapons-and a marksman-in an urban park like this,
where so many vermin were likely to have wreaked havoc on the precious plant
life.
"Now, I think you're going to have to climb down from that perch, Miss
Cooper. We've got work to do."
I didn't respond. I thought I could hear police sirens in the background and
I wanted Phelps to think the game might be over for him.
"I do hear that noise, Miss Cooper. But it's not for you the bell tolls. My
boys are out stirring up a little trouble on Fordham Road. It's a very
dangerous city beyond these gates. You know that better than anyone."
So his teenage thugs would create a diversion on a Bronx sidewalk and 911
calls would flood the switchboard. Even Mike and Mercer might think it was I
who was in trouble out on the nearby street, that I had somehow been spirited
off the garden grounds or had been stupid enough to follow the kids who had
attacked Ellen Gunsher after Mercer told me he had seen them leaving the gate.
"Call off your dogs," I said, stalling for time. Some of the bats were still
circling above us while others had settled on tree branches, wizened little
faces staring into mine from their upsidedown positions.
"They're so hard to discipline, Miss Cooper. Coydogs, actually. I breed them.
It's one way to keep the deer population down. Gets rid of the rabbits and
moles that are so destructive to plants."
A mix of wild coyotes and feral dogs. They were rumored to be a vicious
hybrid.
"Let's go," Phelps said, louder this time.
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I heard an engine turn on and saw the minivan start to move. One of his young
troops, no doubt, getting rid of the car so the police wouldn't make our
location. My eyes followed the vehicle till it disappeared around the bend,
but I didn't move.
"You can sit up there. You can even keep climbing to the top. But then where
do you go? Besides, I've got hiking boots on and can overtake you in a couple
of minutes," he said.
I wanted to tell him to shoot me-it would be faster than whatever he had in
mind-but I didn't mean it. And I knew it wasn't his first choice of disposing
of me because anyone out searching would hear the gunshots echo throughout
this quiet preserve.
I started to inch myself backward up the large boulder but couldn't get a
toehold without looking down. By the time I had raised myself a couple of
feet, Phelps had put the shotgun on the ground and was making his way up to
me. He grabbed my left ankle and wrenched it around, pulling me toward him. He
lowered himself off the rocks and kept tugging at me until I landed in the
dirt on my tailbone, smacking my head against the stony surface behind me.
"I certainly didn't mean to knock you out," he said, kneeling beside me. "Not
before you help me carry a few of these."
Phelps gestured to the loose rock piles that some glacial movement had thrown
off as it passed through the river gorge and woodlands a few thousand years
earlier.
"Of course," he said, standing and extending a hand to me, "you're probably
thinking I could just let the coydogs have a go at you. You've never seen them
take down a deer, have you? They can each grab hold of a leg and head off
together on a brisk run-and when you find the carcass in the woods a few days
later it looks like it snapped in half as easily as a wishbone might at a
Thanksgiving dinner."
I was on my feet, rubbing the back of my head.
"The problem with that is the poor dogs would suffer for it in the end. I've
got them so well trained at this point, and Zeldin or someone else in the
administration here would decide they'd have to be put to sleep for hurting
you. Wouldn't that be a sorry trade?" Phelps said, shaking his head. "So what
does that leave me instead?"
I didn't have to say it aloud. There could be only one thing he wanted to do
to me in the cave.
"Perhaps you knew this, Miss Cooper, that the very first crypts were in
caves? Deep, cool, wonderful recesses in which to entomb people. We're going
to custom-make a crypt for you, Alex. Poe's way."
45
There was no point screaming. Not yet. I didn't want to be gagged or bound
until I had exhausted every other possible means of helping myself get out
alive.
"Start over there." Sinclair Phelps poked me in the back with the point of
the shotgun. "You're a big girl-you can carry a few of those."
I could see his plan. He would arrange this to look like a rock slide, as
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though I had been trapped inside-running away from goodness knows what-had
panicked and was unable to get help. That would only work if he thought no one
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