Into the Dark Read online

  “You like math?”

  “Most certainly,” said Murad. “Where else in this earthly life is everything clicking so beautifully into place?”

  sixteen

  “GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL.”

  Despite everything, Ingrid felt some excitement when the conductor spoke those words, excitement to be all by herself in the Big Apple. She walked off the train with the other passengers, upstairs to the main concourse, huge and magnificent—the ceiling, all green and gold with stars, so high above. A realization struck Ingrid at that moment, unrelated to the mess her family was in or to Grampy’s case: She would live in this city one day.

  Someone bumped into her, almost knocking her down. Ingrid took her eyes off the ceiling. Everyone else’s eyes were boring straight ahead, and they were all moving so fast. Lesson one on how to be a New Yorker. Ingrid spotted an elegant old lady carrying a tiny, pointy-faced dog and followed her onto the street.

  Cold outside, with steam rising from vents here and there. The hard-edged shadow of a tall building angled down, dividing everything neatly into sun and shadow. The elegant old lady stepped into the sunny part, raised her hand, and called, “Taxi!”

  A yellow taxi swerved over to the curb. The lady got in. She said, “Tiffany’s, driver.” The door closed and the taxi drove off, the dog gazing out the window looking snobby. Lesson two.

  Ingrid stepped into the sunlight, raised her hand, and called, “Taxi!”

  She barely got the word out before one screeched to a halt beside her. She was going to make a great old lady; although a dog like that was out of the question, no matter how elegant she ended up being.

  “New York City Mercy Hospital, driver,” she said, getting in.

  Uh-oh. It was fun saying driver like that, as though she practically lived in taxis, but there was no sign that this driver had actually heard her. He was talking on a cell phone—wedged between shoulder and chin—in a foreign language, at the same time thumbing buttons on a handheld device. With the heel of his other hand he spun the wheel, sped into traffic so fast Ingrid felt g-forces, like an astronaut. He wheeled around a corner, then another, made a screaming stop followed by another lurching takeoff, honked several times, and almost hit a bike rider, two women with huge shopping bags, and a bus. Ingrid fumbled with her seat belt. It didn’t work.

  “Driver?” she said. “Sir?”

  No answer. More sitting in traffic. More lurching. Then all at once a river appeared on the right, a wide river, sparkling in the sunshine. The East River? She almost asked the driver, but then he’d know what a rube she was and maybe take advantage by driving miles and miles out of the way. That had happened to the Rubinos on Thanksgiving a couple of years before, when they’d gone past Yankee Stadium three times on their way to Radio City Music Hall. Instead, Ingrid checked the map on the back of the parking stub. It showed a highway running parallel to the river—FDR Drive. She looked around for a road sign, saw a little green one coming up, but before it was close enough to read, the taxi ducked into a tunnel. The driver raised his voice above the tunnel noise, suddenly said, “Okay, dude,” before relapsing into the foreign language. Then they popped out of the tunnel, back into bright light, and another little green sign flashed by: FDR Drive. Yes!

  A few minutes later the driver parked in front of a tall brick building on a quiet street. Over the door Ingrid read: NEW YORK CITY MERCY HOSPITAL, MAIN ENTRANCE. She paid, adding a one-dollar tip—anything less being pretty stingy, but anything more being reckless, especially seeing how she somehow had only $32.55 left—and got out.

  The main entrance had a big revolving door, but not the kind you had to push: It moved as soon as it knew you were in there; nothing like that in Echo Falls. Ingrid went through and into the lobby. There were lots of people going back and forth, an information desk, and a bank of elevators at the back. Ingrid moved toward the information desk, but slowly. What was the next step? She didn’t know; not that she hadn’t tried to think it out that far, just that she hadn’t come up with anything.

  A man in a blue uniform sat behind the desk. She approached him, toying with, Hi, I need to know the exact times my grandfather was here or See this parking stub? Can you tell me if—

  The man at the desk turned to her. Ingrid had an instinctive reaction to his face: trouble. She swerved away, headed toward the back wall, pretended to examine the directory that hung there, listing the doctors. Then, all at once, her mind, so slow sometimes, so blind to the obvious, went back to Grampy’s farm, the day he’d taught her how to chop wood. After, they’d gone inside for a hot drink. The phone had been ringing. Ingrid had answered. What then? A man calling for Grampy.

  This is Doctor Pillman.

  A funny name for a doctor, that was why she’d remembered. Then she’d handed the phone to Grampy. He’d listened and said, “Wrong number.”

  Ingrid scanned the directory, found six P’s, listed not alphabetically but by floor, going up: Pradath, Pearl, Parsons, Phinney, Perez, Pillman. Dr. Eli Pillman, eleventh floor.

  Ingrid moved toward the elevators, casting a sideways glance at the man in the blue uniform. He was talking to a woman with a cane.

  Ding. An up arrow. Doors opened. Ingrid stepped into an empty elevator, pressed eleven, rode up. A sign above the buttons read: PLEASE RESPECT PATIENT CONFIDENTIALITY.

  Ding. Ingrid stepped out. A woman in scrubs went by, reading from a blue folder; she didn’t even look up. ELEVENTH FLOOR, read a sign on the wall: ONCOLOGY. Ingrid didn’t know what that meant. An arrow pointed left for the ward, OR, and radiology, right for doctors’ offices. Ingrid went right, down a long corridor. Dr. Pillman’s office was at the end. The door opened as Ingrid reached for the knob.

  An orderly came out, pushing a little old bald person in a wheelchair. On second look, not a little old person but a kid—a girl—of about her own age. She wore one of those double x Rollexxes on her wrist, red like Ingrid’s, and had a blue folder in her lap. The girl’s eyes met Ingrid’s. Ingrid tried to say hi but her throat closed up. The orderly pushed the wheelchair down the hall. Ingrid went into Dr. Pillman’s office.

  She was in a waiting room, not unlike the waiting room of Dr. Binkerman, her orthodontist in Echo Falls. In fact the blond-wood furniture looked identical, and so did the paintings on the wall—all of them about Venice: palaces, canals, gondolas. No one was waiting in Dr. Pillman’s waiting room. Behind the window of the reception area at the back, a woman with her hair in a bun and glasses halfway down her nose sat at a computer, her profile toward Ingrid. The walls of her room were lined with shelves of blue folders.

  Ingrid sat in one of the blond-wood chairs. She picked up a National Geographic with a volcano on the cover. A phone rang softly behind the glass. The woman answered. Ingrid couldn’t hear what she was saying, just saw how she shook her head no, a decisive head shake that meant no for sure.

  Ingrid gazed at a page of National Geographic, unseeing. She tried and tried to think of what to say to the woman behind the glass partition. Nothing she came up with—whether she started right off the top with the murder of Harris Thatcher or left it out completely, led to any response from the woman other than “Does your grandfather know you’re here?”

  And then what? A call to Grampy? A call home to Mom? Downward spiral, essence of.

  She heard a little squeak and glanced up. The receptionist’s window slid open a foot or two and the woman looked out at her. Uh-oh.

  “You must be Libby’s sister,” the woman said. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Uh,” said Ingrid.

  “She should be back soon,” the woman said. “These tests don’t take long.”

  Ingrid nodded, stared down at her National Geographic, open, she now saw, at a bright color photograph of a Latin American bride trying on her wedding gown. Then the side door of the reception room opened and the woman came out, walking quickly. She stopped right in front of Ingrid; a tall woman with sharp features. Ingrid got ready to mak
e a full confession.

  “I’m going to grab a quick sandwich,” the woman said. “Get you anything?”

  “No, thanks,” said Ingrid.

  The woman gazed down at her for a moment. “You do look alike,” she said. Then she turned and left the office, closing the door behind her.

  A quick sandwich: How quick? From where? And Libby, the girl in the wheelchair, would be back soon, back from some test. Ingrid felt sleazy, a brand-new feeling that disgusted her. She wanted to jump up, run out the door, get far, far away. But: Grampy was about to cut a deal for something he didn’t do, and the proof might be in one of those blue folders she could see through the receptionist’s window. Fix what can be fixed. At least try.

  The next thing Ingrid knew, she was on her feet. The air seemed to be buzzing, like a scary soundtrack. This was a time for speed, but for some reason she couldn’t have been slower—crossing the waiting room, opening the receptionist’s door, going inside, all of that like a sleepwalker.

  There were hundreds of blue folders, maybe thousands. The shelves lined the entire back wall, floor to ceiling, and parts of both side walls. How would she ever—

  Whoa. What were those? Letter stickers here and there on the edges of the shelves, A to Z. H was along the back wall, second shelf from the bottom. Ingrid grabbed a file, read the name tag: Heller. She pawed through. Henley, Hersheiser, Hester, Hibbs, Hill. She pulled it out. Alice.

  But the next one was Hill, Aylmer. She opened the folder. Grampy’s file was thinner than most of them, just five or six pages inside. Ingrid scanned them; now, when slowing down was important, she was going much too fast, didn’t understand a thing. She forced herself to put on the brakes, go back, even mouth some of the words. There were lots she didn’t understand—like unresectable, metastasis, palliative—but lots she did. Like dates, for example. Dr. Pillman had signed a form admitting Grampy to New York City Mercy Hospital at 11:57 A.M. on Tuesday, February 11, three minutes before the beginning of the three-hour period when Mr. Thatcher was murdered. He’d spent four nights on the eleventh-floor ward—there were notes in the chart for every one, signed by various doctors and nurses—and then Dr. Pillman had discharged him at 9:30 A.M., Saturday, February 15. Grampy was innocent and could prove it, even prove it easily. That was a fact, beyond all possible doubt.

  Also beyond all possible doubt: He had cancer—and not just cancer, but inoperable cancer. Ingrid formed and re-formed that word inoperable in her mind, hoping she could make it mean something else.

  And one more thing: bottom of the last page—it was shaking in her hand—a note signed Eli Pillman, MD: The patient has repeatedly and adamantly forbidden any and all contact by Mercy staff with his family, friends, or associates. An offer to confer with a Mercy psychologist or clergyperson was refused in unqualified terms. Patient also referred to the certainty of legal action if his wishes were not “obeyed to the letter.”

  Ingrid closed the folder, slid it back into place on the shelf next to Hill, Alice. The buzzing had grown louder in her ears, was becoming unbearable. She hurried from the receptionist’s office, crossed the waiting room, slung on her backpack, her movements all jerky now. Then: out the door, down the hall to the elevators, trying not to run.

  Ding. Going down. Ingrid got in the elevator. The doors started to close. Across the hall the doors of another elevator opened. Dr. Pillman’s receptionist stepped out, coffee cup in hand. She saw Ingrid. The expression on her face began to change.

  seventeen

  DATA. NOW SHE had lots, but what good did it do?

  Ingrid sat beside a window on the northbound train, an empty seat between her and the nearest passenger, a man typing nonstop on his laptop. The sun, popping up from time to time over trees or between buildings, was slowly sinking in the sky, growing fatter and more orange. She checked the time on her red Rollexx, a watch she’d always see differently now: 3:35. The kids would be on the buses, or already home.

  Data. One: Grampy was innocent. Two: He had cancer. Three: He didn’t want anyone to know.

  But Ingrid, no respecter of patient confidentiality, did know. So now what? Tell Chief Strade? How could she? That would be betraying Grampy. And in a crazy way she could never explain, betraying Grampy somehow got all mixed up with not respecting Libby, betraying her too. She’d ended up spying on both of them. Ingrid shivered. The man with the laptop glanced over. She stared straight ahead.

  Crime is common, Holmes told Watson in “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches.” Logic is rare. Ingrid had puzzled over that more than once, still wasn’t sure what Holmes was driving at. Watson hadn’t been sure either, as she recalled, getting kind of fed up with Holmes in that scene. How could logic help her now?

  Grampy was innocent. He had an alibi he wouldn’t use. She couldn’t betray his wish, and at the same time also couldn’t allow him to go to jail. But someone should go to jail, all right, because Mr. Thatcher was dead, the most important fact of—

  Whoa. Ingrid sat up straight. Mr. Thatcher was dead. Someone—not Grampy—had killed him. Therefore, finding out the identity of that someone let Grampy off the hook without revealing his secret. Logic, pure and simple, maybe the rarest type. But so slow in coming, Griddie. Why? Was it because she’d been spending all her mental energy on the alibi, worried deep down that it didn’t exist, leaving open the possibility of Grampy’s guilt? Ingrid didn’t know; it no longer mattered, anyway. Her task was clear, a task to be done on her own, of course, since the law had already made up its mind. On her own and fast: With that plea deal deadline, time was running out. Ingrid glanced out the window, saw countryside she recognized. She picked her backpack off the floor and slung it on, not wanting to lose a second.

  “Echo Falls,” said the conductor.

  Ingrid got off the train alone, walked across the tracks and through the station—so tiny, almost like a toy building after Grand Central—and onto the street. No one around. Getting dark now down in the Flats, maybe four or five miles from home, but Ingrid was pretty sure she knew the way. You went left, followed Station Street to Factory Road, took Factory Road up that steep hill with Le Zinc at the top, a dark little restaurant but Mom’s favorite in Echo Falls, in fact where she and Dad always went on their anni—

  All at once, Ingrid was crying, there on the station steps, a big round lamp over her head. What was wrong with her? This was no good. For one thing, she had no time, and for another, it turned out that there was someone around after all, because headlights flashed on across the street. And the car? Oh, no. An Echo Falls police cruiser, the one with CHIEF on the side. Ingrid froze. The cruiser made a quick U-turn and stopped right beside her. Chief Strade looked out his window.

  “Ingrid?” he said.

  She wiped her face on her sleeve, very quick.

  He got out of the car, stared down at her; so big. “You all right?” he said; and that voice, soft on top, deep and rumbly underneath.

  She nodded.

  “By yourself?” he said.

  She nodded again.

  “Just hanging around the station?” he said.

  Ingrid opened her mouth to say yes, a pretty ridiculous answer, but before she could get the word out, he had a follow-up question.

  “Or coming from somewhere?” he said.

  A tricky one. She gazed up at him, trying to read something in his eyes. All she saw was that overhead light, reflected twice.

  “Happened to be talking to Murad today,” the chief said. “You know Murad, drives for Town Taxi?”

  “Murad? Uh, I—”

  “A good man, Murad,” said the chief. “A good citizen. We often touch base, Murad and I.”

  Murad was some kind of police informer? “Oh,” said Ingrid.

  “Good citizen,” the chief said again, as though making a point with just those two words. “Naturally, he was concerned—this being a school day.”

  Murad’s talk about projects, American education, gold standard—was that all fake? Was everybody—
like Dad—just faking it, twenty-four seven? Could you take anything at face value?

  “Concerned about you, Ingrid,” said the chief. “And so am I.”

  “I’m fine,” Ingrid said.

  The chief shifted slightly. Now she could see his eyes. The message in them was You don’t look fine. “How about hopping in the car? I’ll drive you home.”

  “That’s all right,” said Ingrid.

  “You’re headed someplace else?”

  “No.”

  “Then hop in. It’s no trouble.”

  No way out of it, at least no way that came to her. She got in, sitting up front beside Chief Strade. He pulled away from the station. Just a few weeks ago Ingrid would have felt very safe driving along with the chief like this. And now? The opposite. How could it be otherwise? He was trying to put Grampy away.

  “Got a leftover candy cane or two in the glove compartment,” the chief said.

  “No, thanks.”

  “With the red stripes.”

  Ingrid shook her head.

  They drove in silence, along Station and up Factory Road, just as Ingrid had thought. Lights shone on the windows of Le Zinc, and there were lots of cars in the parking lot, one a silver TT like…like Dad’s. Yes, almost certainly Dad’s, although Ingrid couldn’t read the plate—and what was this? Parked right beside the TT: a green hatchback. Chief Strade turned a corner and Le Zinc dropped out of sight. Ingrid felt dizzy, maybe like she was about to be sick.

  “Feeling okay?” said the chief.

  “Fine,” said Ingrid.

  Her window slid down an inch or two. She breathed in the cold fresh air, breathed it in deeply, felt a little better.

  The chief cleared his throat. “What would you have done in my place?” he said.

  “About what?” said Ingrid, figuring he was going to start in on some justification for railroading Grampy.

  “About hearing that a thirteen-year-old kid you knew was down by the train station by herself on a school day,” he said.