I kept it in one hand, figuring I could pretend to retie it if Eddie Wicks came back before I could get out of here.
I rushed to the pile of rocks he had stacked to cover the opening and lifted one off the top. It was so heavy, it practically fell out of my arms to the cave’s floor. I let it down and made no effort to get it out of the way.
I heard a noise above me. I stood still for a few seconds, not able to tell whether Wicks had said something or whether he was moving in my direction. I’d never be able to redistribute the large rocks fast enough to escape if he was on his way back down to me.
I turned and made my way over to the silver objects across the room, if that was what one called this claustrophobic site. I picked up the carefully carved stone that represented the Warriors’ Gate and stuffed it in one pants pocket.
The Carousel horses caught my eye. Each one was small, but their legs were long and sharp and might be useful to me in fighting off my enemy. I pulled two out of their bases and put them in the right pocket of my jeans.
And then I saw the box. Right next to the Carousel, and much larger than the miniature objects.
It was made of wood-homemade, it appeared-and perhaps had been used to store or steal the valuable pieces from Lavinia’s collection.
Maybe there was a tool inside-a screwdriver or a hammer or something with which I could arm myself.
I lifted the lid.
The only thing in the box was bones. Human bones.
I was looking at the skeleton of a small child. I was looking, I guessed, at the skeleton of Baby Lucy.
FORTY
I was engulfed by a wave of nausea.
More than forty years had passed since the kidnapping of Lucy Dalton-most likely by someone who knew her, by someone who knew his way around the home in which she lived, by someone who knew his way in and out of all the service entrances and design anomalies of the luxurious Dakota apartment building.
I needed to get out of this burial vault before Eddie Wicks came back for me. I needed to find a way to return Lucy Dalton’s remains to the grandmother who had lived four decades with the uncertainty of the fate of this beloved child.
I closed the lid on the box and went back to the stone wall, redoubling my efforts to clear the blockage and escape. Two of the oversized rocks were out of my way, but there was still not enough room for me to climb up and over the others.
When I reached for the third small boulder and swung it around, I wasn’t able to hold it up. It was much heavier than I’d anticipated and it slipped out of my arms, landing with a thud on top of another one.
Now I could hear Wicks moving above me, padding on his soft-sole shoes in my direction. I was certain he’d heard the commotion I’d created.
I pulled at the next-to-bottom rock but could barely budge it, so I climbed up on it and started to stick my right leg through the opening. I was over the top of the pile, and I was stretching to make contact with solid ground below, but Eddie Wicks had me by the neck.
“Mike!” I screamed. I thought the noise could be heard for miles around. But it was the last thing I got to say before Wicks clamped a hand over my mouth, shoving more dirt inside as he pulled me back onto the floor of the cave.
“I didn’t think you’d come alone.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think. If my friend was still around, he would have followed me in here by now,” I said, spitting out dirt as he tried to keep my head from moving. “We got separated hours ago.”
“Don’t move or I’ll have to hurt you.”
I was struggling against him, pushing at his chest with both arms. I could feel blood trickling down the backs of my legs where they had scraped against the rock surfaces when he dragged me inside again.
Eddie Wicks was about my height and outweighed me by a good thirty pounds. He kneed me in the abdomen this time, more worried now about my flailing arms than about my mouth.
“Let me out of here,” I screamed.
He had more of the same materiaclass="underline" a pale-pink gauze that he wound around my hands in a crisscross motion, and then another length that he loosely wrapped-despite my kicking-around my ankles. He knew as well as I did that it couldn’t hold me very long, but I didn’t know what else he had in mind to do to me.
Then Eddie Wicks stood up to assess his handiwork. He backed up, keeping an eye on me, while he refortified his fallen wall. He was so used to this dark interior that he didn’t seem to need anything to illuminate his way around.
That’s when he caught sight of the wooden box, the makeshift coffin that held the child’s yellowed bones. He saw-as I just realized now-that I had not replaced the lid properly, and that it was slightly ajar on top of the box.
He went into a rage, screaming at me-his words bouncing off the walls of the cave-until finally he knelt beside the box and lifted the lid off it completely.
“Why did you have to open this?”
“I-I didn’t open it.”
“You moved it. The box wasn’t open like this before.”
“I didn’t touch it. Maybe I backed into it when the rock fell,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, on an even pitch. “All I want is to get out of here. Out of your-your life. You have no reason to hurt me, and I have no reason to hurt you.”
I was trying to stretch the gauzy fabric he’d tied me with by pressing my legs apart while Wicks was preoccupied by the thought that I had seen the bones.
He was rocking back and forth on his haunches. “You saw her, didn’t you?”
“Her? All I can see are those silver things and a box. I just want to go home. I didn’t see anyone.”
“You saw the child, didn’t you?” Wicks rose up to full height, turning back to me.
“What child? There’s no child here.”
“My friend,” he said. “That little girl was my friend.”
I didn’t want him to talk. I didn’t care why he had Lucy Dalton’s remains in a box in a cave in the middle of Central Park. I just wanted to see daylight and run as far away from him as I could.
“Don’t tell me anything about it, sir. I don’t-”
“Nobody ever calls me ‘sir,’” he said, smirking at me.
“I’m very squeamish. I-I just want you to let me out of here before I get sick.”
“You’re the only one, then, that doesn’t want to know about the child,” Wicks said. “Why is that?”
“Because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything about a child-and I’m so tired and hungry. Let me out of here and I’ll run and I’ll never look back. I promise you that.”
“The girl was my friend,” Wicks said, coming closer to me. He had picked up another length of the pink gauzy fabric somewhere across the room-perhaps from behind the wooden box-and he squatted beside me, wrapping it around both his fists. “I didn’t have many friends when I was a young man. Do you?”
“A few. Only a few,” I said. But I knew they would do anything for me if they could only find me. I tried to stay confident that they would come back before too long, unless I could get this unhinged madman to let me loose.
“There was someone you called out to when I grabbed you.”
“Not a friend. Just a guy I met on the path today. He loaned me his field glasses to look at the birds.”
“If he’s your friend, he’ll try to find you, won’t he?”
“I’m very shy, really. He’s not my friend. I’ll never see him again.”
“I was seventeen when Lucy died,” Wicks said, jumping around from subject to subject, as though he was unable to hold a thought for very long.
“You were a kid yourself,” I said, trying to be empathetic.
“You’ve heard of her, of course. Lucy Dalton?” he asked.
“No. No, I haven’t. But I’m not from here. I’m-I’m from Wisconsin. I’m just visiting. That’s why if you just-”