The Deadhouse Read Online Free PDF Page A

her
play—called
Sex
—in 1926. She was reading from West's
autobiography, describing the condition of the prison cell in the
Tombs, and how the confused, diseased women were herded inside like
animals."
    "A bleeding heart, under all that flesh, you're gonna tell me."
    I ran my finger across the spines of a row of books, checking the
titles and noting that most in that section were treatises about
nineteenth- and twentieth-century government in New York City, which
was her specialty. "She ended by describing how the jail system was run
by greedy and stupid civil servants, worse than the prisoners. She
looked over the heads of her students and quoted West right to me.
'Humanity had parked its ideals outside.'"
    "Staged just for you?"
    "I was there to make her understand how important it was to
prosecute Ivan, and she wanted me to know that she wasn't about to see
him stuck in a jail cell. The typical ambivalence of a survivor of
domestic abuse."
    Chapman lifted the dust ruffle to look under the bed and continued
to poke around the room.
    "Doesn't sound like scholarship to me. Sounds like two-bit,
second-class theatrics. Same kind she went for with those Jersey
jerk-off prosecutors yesterday."
    "She was capable of both. I'll give you some of her published
articles to read. You'll like her writings about the Civil War period
and the Draft Riots." Mike knew more about military history than anyone
I had ever met and read extensively on the subject.
    "Save 1863 for another day and transport yourself back to the
twenty-first century."
    Mike was impatient with my diversion, with good reason, and I turned
away from the bookshelves and moved on to the desk. "The computer?"
    "Leave it alone. Jimmy Boyle's coming to pick it up tomorrow."
    Boyle headed our cybercop squad and was a genius at retrieving files
and information that literally, to my view, were lost in space.
    The rest of the desktop was a maze of spiral notepads, computer
disks, phone messages dated three and four months earlier, which
detectives would scour in the days to come, and small framed
photographs. I recognized a young Lola in her cap and gown, at what
must have been her graduation from Barnard, and then a Dakota family
shot of more current vintage, taken in front of her sister Lily's home
in Summit.
    There was a black knit cardigan sweater over the back of the desk
chair. "Any idea what she was wearing today?" I asked.
    Mike called to George, but he hadn't seen the body either, so Mike
added that question to the list he had started in the memo pad he kept
inside his blazer. "They'll have it inventoried at the ME's office in
the morning. Then I've got to check with the sister to see if the
clothes she had on when she died are the same ones she left Jersey
with."
    I used my forefinger to pull at the pocket on the chest of the
sweater. "Hey, Mike, want to take out this piece of paper?"
    I didn't want to be responsible for touching anything that might
raise an issue of chain of custody. For all intents and purposes, I
wasn't there tonight. He slid his gloved fingers in and came up with a
folded page from a telephone pad printed with the words king's college at the top,
and beneath that, the single handwritten notation, in bold print:
    THE DEADHOUSE
    Below the words was a list of four numbers: 14 46 63 85.
    Mike read the words aloud. "Mean anything to you? A person? A place?"
    I shook my head.
    "Probably what the other tenants will start calling this building,"
George said.
    "Is that her writing?"
    I had seen enough of her correspondence to recognize it at once.
"Yes. Any date on it?"
    "Nah. I'll voucher the note and the clothing. When we go to Jersey,
remember to ask the sister if she can tell us whether Lola had this
sweater there with her yesterday."
    I opened the closet door and we poked around the contents. An
ordinary mix of skirts and slacks, dresses and blouses, sizes
consistent with Lola's large chest and slim hips.
    "What do you know about a boyfriend?" George