Monument to the Dead (22 page)

Marty left for the city before I did, since she still had to
change clothes—no way was she going to miss my big interview. Before I went out the
door to my car, I took a look around at my home, most of which I could see from where
I was standing. It was so small. If it was the extent of my personal universe, it
was kind of sad. But I had a feeling that would be changing.

In the city, I parked in the lot across from the Society and walked the few blocks
over to Jefferson Hospital. Without knocking I walked into James’s room and shut the
door behind me.

He was half sitting, trying to read a battered paperback that some pitying soul must
have handed him, with a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose. I found it both
sweet and funny that he had never revealed to me that he needed glasses. He must have
had them in his pocket all along. Still pale, but he looked better—so much better.
He looked up when I entered and did what was nearly a double take, as far as his aching
head permitted. “Nell? Why so dressed up?”

“You’ve seen me cleaned up before.”

“Of course I have. I guess I expected you to look, I don’t know, a bit more casual.”

I approached the bed. “May I?”

“Sit? Of course.” He scooted over a bit, but not without wincing, I noted.

“It won’t hurt you?”

“I’ll survive. Sit, please.”

I sat. “The reason for the fancy duds is that Marty has set up an interview with a
reporter from the
Inquirer
, and a couple of others. I thought it was important to get my side of the story out
before the press twists it beyond recognition. I doubt that I’ll be able to keep you
out of it, but I’ll make sure your boss knows what’s happening. But the focus of this
piece is the Society and its take-charge leader—me.”

“I don’t need the publicity, but I can see that it’s a good strategy for you.”

“We’ll see.” I wondered if I would need to define our relationship for the population
of the greater Philadelphia area. Was there a code word for “significant relationship?”
I guess I was going to wing it. “How are you feeling?”

“Stiff. Some bruises that I didn’t notice before. My arm hurts, but not half as much
as my head. The last nurse promised me I could walk to the bathroom later today, if
I was a good boy.”

“Sounds promising. When will they turn you loose?”

“Tomorrow morning, it looks like. They want to be very, very sure that my head will
not fall off.”

A sense of humor was a good sign, wasn’t it? “I’m coming home with you,” I said in
a tone that I hoped brooked no argument.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t be alone for the next couple of days. I’ll stay at your place.” His
eyes searched my face, and I held his gaze. “James, I want to do this,” I said softly.
“Please.”

He finally nodded, and his mouth twitched. “I won’t promise it will be pretty. I’ve
already discovered I’m a lousy patient.”

“You never knew that?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never been a patient in a hospital before. No childhood crises,
no broken bones, no bullets. Obviously it was just a matter of time, although the
Bowie knife thing kind of surprised me. That should up my reputation at the Agency.”
He studied my face again. “You’re sure?”

“I am.”

We kind of smiled stupidly at each other for a few moments, until James asked, “Is
there more?”

“Kind of. Nothing awful,” I rushed to add, “but Marty took me home last night and
pointed out some basic truths. They weren’t nice to hear, but she was right. What
it comes down to is that I’ve been coasting along, getting by on ’good enough’ but
not really trying.”

I plunged on. “I’ve been deluding myself about my relationships—about us. What I thought
was being cool and in control was mainly a way to protect myself. If I didn’t invest
myself fully in a relationship, it wouldn’t hurt as much when it didn’t work out.
I was expecting them to fail from the start, so of course they did.” I stopped and
swallowed; I was getting to the difficult part. “I don’t want that with you, James.
That became very clear at the Water Works. I didn’t want you to die until we’d figured
out what we have. I wasn’t going to let Nicholas or anyone else make that decision
for me. If this doesn’t work out, I want it to be because one of us says so, not because
we didn’t try.”

“I wondered when you’d figure it out,” James said, with a half smile.

“What, you were waiting for me to do the work? You might have given me a shove, you
know.”

“As far as I know—and I’ll admit I’m no expert—that’s not how it works. If I told
you what to do, you might have walked away. You have to want it as much as I do.”

“Oh,” I whispered. “I don’t deserve you.” I swallowed the large lump in my throat.
“Well, the old me doesn’t deserve you, but maybe the new me will.” I leaned over,
careful to avoid the bandages and miscellaneous attachments, and kissed him gently.
Then I pulled back an inch or two and we smiled at each other.

At which moment, a nurse bustled in and didn’t look the least embarrassed by our behavior.
“Sorry, gotta take the vitals, you know.”

“You go right ahead,” I said, standing up and glancing at my watch. “I’ve got to get
back to the Society. You think I should call your boss and give him a heads-up about
the article?”

“Let me do it. He owes me, so now’s the best time to cash in on that. You go and give
one hell of an interview.”

I smiled. “I plan to. And let me know if you come up with a good nickname for me,
if I’m going to be Philadelphia’s new protector of the arts. ‘History-Woman’ doesn’t
have much of a ring to it. Will you be my sidekick? Because I think we make a good
team.”

“We do.”

I was walking back toward the Society when my cell
phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number. I answered anyway and was mildly shocked
to hear Agent Cooper’s voice.

“I understand from Agent Morrison that you are planning to speak to the press today?”

“Yes, I am.” I thought about adding something defensive and then stopped myself. He
had called me. What did he want?

“I’ll assume I can’t dissuade you, but may I ask you to be discreet?”

“You mean, not make the FBI look like a bunch of idiots for missing this? I wouldn’t
do that. I will tell the press that this case was solved through the joint efforts
of Agent Morrison and myself. I don’t need to go into details—like the fact that your
office refused to get involved until the last minute. My main goal is to cast the
Society in the most positive light possible. Do you have a problem with that?”

I thought I heard him sigh. “Thank you. I appreciate your tact. I was wondering if
you’d like to be present when we interview Nicholas Naylor?”

Would I! I controlled the excitement in my voice when I said, “When will this take
place?”

“Momentarily. He’s still in the hospital at Penn but he’s been medically cleared for
this interview.”

I thought quickly. Marty had set up the
Inquirer
interview for four, and we couldn’t push it any later or we’d risk missing the deadline
for the Sunday edition. But it was important to me to hear what Nicholas had to say,
and I might even be able to help out with the right questions. Of course, maybe Agent
Cooper was hoping to delay me long enough to miss my own interview. But what the hell—I
could make it to Penn by cab, and then be back in time for the interview. “I’m on
my way.”

I hung up, then immediately hit Marty’s number. When she answered, I said quickly,
“Small change in plans. The FBI, apparently in exchange for not skewering them in
the press, has invited me to sit in when they interview Nicholas, any minute now.
I can leave there in time to get back for the interview at the Society.”

“You damn well better not leave me holding the bag. I’ll come pick you up. Good luck
with the FBI bigwigs. How’s James doing?”

“Surprisingly well, and he didn’t even argue with me about coming home with him.”

“Amazing—you’ve turned him to mush. Or maybe it’s the drugs. I might drop by the hospital
and say hello to him.”

“You do that. I’ve got to go. See you later!” I hung up, then picked up my pace toward
Broad Street, where I knew there would be taxis. A taxi would definitely be faster
than extracting my car and driving over, and now I had a ride back.

At the hospital, I had to jump through a few hoops to gain access to the floor where
Nicholas was being held. I was relieved when I emerged from the elevator and saw Agent
Cooper waiting for me.

“Ms. Pratt? Let me explain how this is going to work.” We began a slow stroll down
the hall while he talked. At the end of the hall there was a man standing outside
one of the doors. It was all too easy to identify him as an FBI agent, both by the
suit and by the way he snapped to attention when he saw Cooper. “We have not spoken
to Mr. Naylor at any length yet. We are assured that his wound is not life-threatening,
and that the pain relief he has received has not impaired his judgment. Since you
know him, you may be able to confirm his mental state.”

“Are you going to let me talk to him?”

Agent Cooper cleared his throat. “That would be, uh, highly unusual. I can’t allow
you to interview a suspect in the FBI’s custody, but I’ll confess that there are aspects
of this case that lie outside our expertise. For example, can you explain who this
Edwin Forrest is?”

I sighed. Poor Edwin. “How long do you have, and how much do you need to know?”

“Perhaps we could get a cup of coffee and you could give me an outline?”

“Fair enough.”

Agent Cooper signaled to another agent who was trying to blend into the woodwork and
failing, and asked him to find coffee for us. Then he escorted me to a small waiting
room on the same floor. “What do I need to know about this Forrest, and why is he
so important to Naylor?”

I launched into a brief history of Edwin Forrest, his Philadelphia origins, his role
in theater of the nineteenth century, and his will and the subsequent creation of
the trust. Agent Cooper didn’t interrupt but made notes on a small notebook. When
I reached the point at which I had entered this story, I said, “I hired Nicholas about
three months ago to replace an employee who died unexpectedly. Nicholas had been working
at Penn, and he came highly recommended. What I hadn’t realized then was that Penn
has an extensive collection of Forrest correspondence and memorabilia, as does the
Society. I understand now that Nicholas was mining our collections for evidence to
support his claim to whatever is left of the Forrest Trust’s assets.”

“Does he have any legitimate claim?”

“I’m not a lawyer so I can’t say, but he claims he’s descended from a woman who was
Forrest’s, uh, love child”—that sounded so much better than bastard—“and who was mentioned
in his will. In any case, he believes he has a claim and in his mind that justified
his actions.”

“Which were?”

“According to what he told me when we were at the Water Works, seeking out members
of the Forrest Trust and asking them to support his claim. And when they turned him
down, he killed them, hoping that their replacements might be more agreeable.”

“I see. How did the conflict at the Water Works come about?”

“Nicholas and I went there on Society business, to speak to one of the administrators
about an unrelated project I had asked him to do some research for. I called James
to tell him that Nicholas was at the Water Works with me.”

Cooper nodded once. “Thank you. In sum, you’re telling me that Naylor is obsessed
with this supposed connection to Forrest, whether it’s true or not, and I take it
that there is a substantial financial reward if he can prove it. Correct?”

“Yes,” I said, “and the trustees he killed were standing in his way, or so he thought.”

“I am not a profiler, but I’d guess that he’s suffering from some kind of delusional
disorder, and he believes that he has the right to do whatever it takes to achieve
his goals. The trustees who turned him down were no more than inconveniences, in his
eyes.”

“May I talk to him?” I asked again.

“I suppose you’ve earned that right. I’ll give you a few minutes with him, off the
record, and then we’ll proceed with the official interview, which will, of course,
be recorded. You may observe that if you choose. And I’d like to ask if we may call
on you for clarification of any points that come up, such as the Forrest information.”

“I will be happy to do that.” I hesitated a moment, but figured I’d never have a better
chance to satisfy my curiosity. “Why didn’t you pursue this investigation sooner?
You could have saved a couple of lives.”

“I regret that. When Agent Morrison brought the matter to my attention, I thought
the evidence was thin to nonexistent, and I couldn’t afford to allocate any of our
resources to it. It was a poor decision on my part, in hindsight. In no way does this
reflect poorly on Agent Morrison’s abilities, if that’s your concern. I’m willing
to put that in his record. He’s a good agent, and a good man.”

And that was probably the best we could hope for from the FBI. “I agree. Can I see
Nicholas now?”

“Of course.” He led the way back down the hall and I followed. I wasn’t sure what
I was hoping for, or why I’d even asked. Maybe I wanted closure. Maybe I wanted one
last look at Nicholas, to see if there was any outward evidence of the evil inside
him. He could have killed me, and he had nearly succeeded with James.

Outside the door, Agent Cooper stopped and gestured me toward the room. I took a deep
breath and walked in.

Nicholas was seated in a hospital bed, its top half slanted up. Even though his leg
was swathed with bandages, there was a handcuff attached to one of his wrists and
to the side rail of the bed. He looked surprised to see me. “Nell? What are you doing
here?”

“I’ve been filling in the FBI about Edwin Forrest. And you.”

“Oh. Of course. I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t mean to hurt that agent, but
I was startled, and I guess I overreacted. Is he all right?”

“He will be.” I perched on a chair. “Nicholas, why was this so important to you? Is
it the money?”

He looked at me with no expression. “The money was part of it. But there was a matter
of honor. Elizabeth Welsh bore an illegitimate child, at a time when that meant something.
She may well have loved Edwin Forrest, and she may have been content with what little
he chose to give her. But the man had a monstrous ego. He wanted to be remembered,
and that’s why he funded the Edwin Forrest Home rather than leaving his estate to
his only child. I was trying to right that wrong. And I think I put together a good
case. I was ready to go to the courts, and I think I would have won. And then I learned
that the trustees wanted to dissolve the trust, and I knew I had to act quickly.”

“Nicholas, you murdered six people,” I whispered.

His expression didn’t change. I looked at the moderately handsome, demonstrably intelligent
man in front of me. He should have had a rich life ahead of him. Instead, out of a
warped sense of entitlement, he had killed several innocent people. Worse, he didn’t
see anything wrong with that. There was no way he could ever explain that to me. I
stood up again. “Good-bye, Nicholas.” I turned and walked out, and he didn’t call
out after me.

“I’m done here,” I told Agent Cooper.

“Give James my best wishes,” he called out after my retreating back. I kept going.

I called Marty on my way down the elevator. She said she was already circling the
block and she would meet me at the main entrance.

“That was fast. How’d it go?” she asked, as she pulled out of the hospital driveway.

“As well as I could hope, I guess. I talked to Nicholas.”

“Really? And?”

“He makes me sad. All that ability and potential, wasted because of an obsession.
And he still doesn’t understand why what he did was wrong. There’s something missing
inside him.”