Linda Farstein AC 07 Entombed

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I bent down and picked up a large rock-it must have weighed more than twenty
pounds-and slowly walked with it to the mouth of the cave.
"Go in. Go on in," he said, prodding me again with the gun. "All those
stories about bats are just myths. They're very timid creatures. Last place
they'd want to be is in your hair."
I walked a foot or two into the cave, pushed farther by Phelps, who told me
exactly where to drop my first load. Now I could see rows of the furry beasts
hanging from their roosts.
"'A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat,' Miss Cooper. You know that one?"
I shook my head.
"Poe's 'Coliseum.' A lesser-known work." He watched me as I maneuvered the
rock into place.
"Did Aurora Tait have to make her own coffin, too?" I asked.
Phelps laughed. "No, no. But then it was so much easier for me to get Aurora
into my lair, Miss Cooper."
"I suppose all you had to do was promise her heroin."
"High-test. Best shit on the street. She came to me like a baby for its
bottle."
"Why there? Why that building? Because it was Poe's house?"
"Keep moving," he said, conscious that I was stalling but pleased to show off
what passed for his intelligence, after serving for all these years in a job
that belied his educational background and knowledge of literature. "That was
just a richly ironic coincidence. You know the story? You know 'Amontillado'?"
I was lugging another rock now, pretending to limp because I had twisted my
ankle. "The ultimate tale of revenge," I said. "Of course I know it. You mean
it was just chance that your construction work was in that particular
basement?"
"The landlord was always having work done there. That dump probably wasn't
fit for occupancy a century ago."
"And Aurora, she saw what you were doing?"
"She wasn't quite as sober as you are, Miss Cooper. Nor as well read. She
found it amusing that I was a day laborer. She liked to watch me work, as long
as she was high. I gave her the dope that afternoon and she obliged me by
shooting up, getting herself into a stupor, as I knew she would. By the time I
lifted her over my shoulder and stood her up behind the wall, she was almost
ready to come around. Can you imagine the look in her eyes when she realized
what I was about to do to her?"
At this very moment I was able to imagine it perfectly well.
"Betrayal. She earned every exquisite second of her miserable death. She was
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responsible for depriving me of everything I'd been promised from the time I
was four years old. The bitch had tried to extort money-a lot of money-from my
step-" Phelps stopped to correct himself. "From the man who raised me. She
screwed up the whole plan, and in doing that she condemned me to the gutter."
I was on my third small boulder, peering out into the black-green forest for
any sign of a rescuer.
"I'd spent my entire youth trying to please a man who never really wanted me
under his roof anyway. He'd taken me in when my mother died," Phelps said.
I had heard much of the story from Gino Guidi, but I figured it would anger
this strange man to let on that the detectives and I knew more about his
past-without knowing his identity-than he might have liked.
"It doesn't make any sense that he took you in if he didn't want you."
"I was too young to know. My mother was his housekeeper, and the woman who
took care of me after my mother's death also worked for him, on the kitchen
staff. She claimed he was keen to do it at the time. The rejection came much
later on, when I was eight or nine. When he finally got married the new bride
wanted her own children. Of course she didn't want the illegitimate kid of the
parlor maid anywhere in the mix."
"Who-who was the man?"
Phelps was watching me build my coffin, eyeing me as I ferried heavy rocks
from the hillside into the cave. He was leaning against the side of it,
shotgun tucked under his arm, a jacket zipped up to his chin and a scarf and
hat on his neck and head that seemed enviably warm.
"Phelps. Sinclair Phelps."
We'd been told that he'd been disinherited and disowned, that like Edgar Poe
he'd never been formally adopted by his benefactor. "His name? He gave you his
name?"
"I took his name, Miss Cooper. Not long after Aurora and I parted ways. I
didn't think I'd have the luxury of twenty-five years without anyone
discovering her body-well, her remains. I never thought I'd get away with it
so cleanly. I did, after all, confess to any number of people that I had
killed the poor girl," he said, grinning at me. "It's not my fault they didn't
take me seriously."
"So your real name?"
"That hardly matters, does it? You see, if anyone put Aurora's disappearance
together with the former NYU student who hallucinated about killing her,
they'd be out of luck if they tried to find him. He just ceased to exist. One [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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