You must.
“Let me see you, touch you. I know you’re here.”
She waited.
Nothing.
“Leave the basement?” she wondered aloud.
Go!
There was an urgency in the voice this time.
“Leave the basement? Leave the house? Leave New York?” Again, she spoke aloud. Again, all she felt in return was a movement of the air.
Or was it a cruel trick of her imagination?
“Matt…in the subway, I saw you. I know Joe was there, too, and he pulled me out. But at the beginning…it was your face. Your voice.”
Go. Go!
“All right!”
She started to roll up her maps, and that was when she heard the sobbing.
13
The place really was a rat hole. Joe wondered if there was an agency in the city that looked into situations like this. Probably. It would mean a lot of red tape, he was certain. Still, it was worth checking into, he decided.
Space was at a premium in New York, that was a given. But he knew there were laws to protect tenants against these kinds of situations. But since most of the inhabitants were either in the country illegally or made their living in a doubtful manner, he doubted their complaints drew much response, if they even dared to make them.
Still, Heidi Arundsen was a good hostess. She had a studio with a tiny kitchen, separated by a counter from the main room, and a screen that separated the main room from the little bedroom area she had created. She kept the place spotlessly clean, but that couldn’t help the leakage marks on the ceiling and walls, or hide the fact that the plaster was peeling and that some of the wires weren’t properly installed.
“I’m sorry,” Heidi said as they entered. “I’m really sorry.”
“You keep a lovely home,” he told her. “Under the worst circumstances.”
“Well…thanks. Can I get you anything? I keep everything in the fridge. No bug eggs in my stuff.”
“No, honestly, I’m just fine.”
Didi had joined them. She strode across the room. “Here are the boxes with Betty’s things. The cops looked for a diary and didn’t find one,” she said.
“There’s not much there, but I kept it all anyway. Just in case,” Heidi said.
Her words seemed to linger on the air. Just in case. None of them believed Betty was ever coming back.
“Mind if I just dig in?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” Heidi said. “I’ll go make some coffee.”
Joe heard the women turn on a little television in the kitchen and talk softly to each other while he dug into the boxes. He didn’t know what he expected to find. The first box was clothing. Washed, smelling pleasantly of fabric softener, neatly folded. Betty must have been tiny. She had skirts that would have served as a handkerchief for him.
He opened the second box and found pictures. Betty, looking young and innocent, hopeful, a brilliant smile on her face as she cradled a baby. People who might have been her parents. There was a picture of several women, Betty among them, playing softball in Central Park. There was a picture of a beautiful greyhound; on it, Betty had written, Someday! There were more pictures of Betty with friends in front of the sagging old tenement, at the zoo.
Then he found a picture that arrested his attention. It was of Betty and Genevieve O’Brien—and there was a man with them. He was turned away from the camera, but his stance spoke of assurance, and he was wearing a suit that looked to have been expensively tailored.
“Heidi?” he called.
“Yeah?” she asked, hurrying over to where he was, Didi on her heels.
“Who is that?”
“That’s Betty. And Genevieve. I thought you were hired to find her?”
“No, the man. Who’s the man with them?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Didi?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “Hey!” she said, her attention caught by the television. “Hey, Joe, your girlfriend is on the news.”
He set the box down quickly and strode into the kitchen to join them. The mayor himself was on, sternly warning people to be careful in the subway.
Ken Dryer was at his side. He went on to announce that it was Leslie MacIntyre, the archaeologist who’d been in the news recently, who had fallen and been pulled up just ahead of a speeding train. She had been taken to the hospital, but she was all right. There was a shot of Leslie, grimy and a bit tousled, smiling up at him as he walked beside the stretcher as the paramedics carried her up from the subway.
The anchorwoman went on to mention that in addition to her archaeological career, Leslie MacIntyre had been of help to the police on occasion.
“The girl must have special instincts,” the co-anchor said, shaking his head. “Think ghosts are coming out of the walls to give her a hand?”
“We’ll have to have her on the show,” the anchorwoman said, then turned to face a different camera. “In late-breaking news from the Middle East…”
“Is she psychic?” Heidi asked.