“Even an ignorant cop knows what happens to a male spider after sex, Mr. Rigden.”
“That’s a myth,” said Don. “Well, it’s a matter of dispute. Because it’s been observed among laboratory spiders it doesn’t mean it happens in the natural state. Most males are off the web immediately after mating.”
“And if a male doesn’t know he’s in danger?”
“It’s instinctive. They behave automatically.”
“Spiders, yeah. How about men?”
Don hesitated.
The lieutenant said, “What if Saville didn’t know the routine? What if he stayed on the web?”
The phone rang and he picked it up. He listened, made a couple of notes, and put it down. “Sarah Jordan spent last night at a small hotel on Christopher Street. Of course, she used a phony name. The manager had never seen her before. She checked out at eight-thirty this morning.”
“What about Meg?”
“She wasn’t mentioned, Mr. Rigden. Now, unless you can think of someplace she could be, I’d be glad if you would get the hell out of here.”
Don was glad to go. He needed air. He was reeling from the lieutenant’s assumptions. To hear Sarah labeled a psychopath and a killer was more than he could take. But deep inside, he knew it could not be ruled out as a possibility. There were things he couldn’t explain or ignore, like the savage and pointless killing of Pelé. But whatever the truth might be, the police were treating her as a dangerous killer. That in itself was dangerous. Although Sarah liked to think she was independent, events had shown she was highly suggestible. She adapted herself to people’s expectations. They had called her Spider Girl and she had convinced herself it was true. Now they were calling her a psychopath. If she was alerted to the police operation, had spotted them around the hotel and near her car, how would she react to it? If she were holding Meg somewhere, too scared to release her, the outcome could be tragic.
And the responsibility would be his. He had panicked Sarah by letting her know Meg was going to the police. If anything happened to Meg, it would be on his conscience. It was up to him to prevent the unthinkable from happening.
But how?
Find them.
She had left her car on St. Mark’s Place. Stayed at a hotel on Christopher Street. Alone. Where was Meg?
Why downtown? Did Sarah seriously think she could hide there? There were plenty of places better for holing up. Cunningham had said she would go somewhere that fitted the fantasy. A small hotel in the Village? It made no sense.
He found a bar and ordered a beer. He would not go back to his apartment or to the campus until Meg and Sarah were found. They had to be somewhere at this end of town. Sarah, anyway. But it was pointless to stand waiting by the car or the hotel when the police were already there. He had to find Sarah now, before she walked into an ambush.
Somewhere that fitted the fantasy.
A spider would look for a place where it was safe. The underside of a stone. The inside of a cupboard. A lumber room. An attic. An empty house.
Months back, he had gone looking for Sarah in empty houses out in the wasteland of the Lower East Side. She had been studying the colonizing potential of spiders in a locality gutted by arsonists. She had missed a meeting they had arranged and he had gone looking for her, without success. Later she had come back, but she had never explained why she was away so long.
An empty house would be an ideal place to keep a hostage.
He left the bar and found a cab. The driver, hearing “Avenue C,” treated him as if he were crazy, but agreed to make the trip for double the fare.
It was five-forty-five P.M. when he was dropped off on the blitzed street Sarah had once told him she was using as a location for research. It looked deserted. Blocks that had once housed hundreds stood waiting for demolition, stripped of anything saleable, surrounded by rubble, smelling of decay.
He walked through an open doorway and shouted Sarah’s name. And Meg’s. He heard only the scuffle of vermin alarmed by the sound. He climbed the stairs and checked the upper floors.
There were more than thirty buildings, although some were shells only. For more than two hours he searched and shouted without result. It was past eight o’clock when he entered a building almost hollow inside and got the feeling at once that he was not alone. He couldn’t say why. There was no sound. No response to his shouts. But when he looked up through the gaping levels to the roof, he saw a single rope suspended from one of the crossbeams. Obviously it had been put there by some kids. He had played games like that when he was eleven or twelve, except that the rope had been fixed to a tree over a stream in a California suburb.
“Anyone here?”
He picked his way over the debris toward the cellar. By now he knew the layout of these buildings better than the architect. The door was bolted, which was unusual. When the looters. went through a place, they didn’t stop to shut doors after them. He withdrew the bolt and noticed that the metal wasn’t rusted like everything else. It had been used. Recently and often.
He repeated his question and got only the echo.
He started to go down the steps; then a thought stopped him. If there was someone hiding in the building, they had only to slam the door behind him and shoot the bolt to make him a prisoner.
So he came out and took another look. There was precious little cover for anyone there. The interior walls had practically all collapsed with the floors.
His eyes traveled upward, noting the charred stubs where joists had once supported floors with whole families and their possessions. Every window was smashed.
Then a movement caught his attention. The rope suspended from the roof was swinging very slightly, as if it had just been touched.
He would certainly have seen and heard anyone moving over the rubble. But there wasn’t any wind strong enough to have disturbed the rope, unless the window spaces higher up provided a cross draft.
He went over and tested the rope. It was thick and heavy, no doubt pilfered from the docks along the East River. It was knotted in several places, where the kids had made hand-and footholds. He couldn’t understand how it had moved. He looked up the fifty or so feet to where it was fixed. Was that where the movement had originated?
The building was flat-roofed, and he could see daylight in places up there. It didn’t look safe, but the kids had got up there somehow to sling their rope from the beam.
He stepped outside to look at the iron fire escape. It went up five floors. There was no ladder connecting the top level with the roof. He decided to go up and take a look. It was dark now and sharply cooler as he mounted the stairs. He heard the sound of a vehicle moving somewhere in the neighboring streets, the first sure indication of life for hours.
On the top level of the fire escape he leaned through the empty window frame and called Sarah’s name again. Then Meg’s.
Silence.
He could see no way from here to the roof. The floor had gone except for one joist that jutted precariously into space. “This is Don. Is anyone up here?”
Below in the street, about two blocks down, a police car had stopped. Its way was barred by rubble. They must have had a tail on him. He swore and climbed out of sight inside the building on a small ledge formed by the joist and the residue of the fallen floor.
“Sarah, if you’re here, I want to help you. You need help.”
Then he heard her voice say, “Get lost.”
She was there, somewhere above him on the roof.
“Is Meg with you?”
No answer.
“She’s okay, isn’t she?”
“Who cares?”
It was vital to keep her talking. “How did you get up there, Sarah?”
No answer.
“I mean, I’d like to join you.”
“What for?” Her voice was indifferent.