Fever Dream

She came to a short, screeching halt in the closest parking space, threw open the door, and jumped out. She trotted across the lot and entered the covered walkway to the front doors. Immediately she saw a doctor standing to one side of the walkway, between the pools of light, holding a clipboard. A surgical mask was still in position on his face--he must have just come from the OR.

"Captain Hayward?" the doctor asked.

She veered toward him, alarmed at the thought he was waiting for her. "Yes, how is he?"

"He's going to be just fine," came the slightly muffled response. The doctor let the clipboard drop casually in one hand while he reached under his white coat with the other.

"Thank God--" she began, and then she saw the shotgun.

59

New York City

DR. JOHN FELDER MOUNTED THE BROAD STONE steps of the main branch of the New York Public Library. Behind him, the evening traffic on Fifth Avenue was a staccato chorus of horns and grinding diesels. He paused a moment between the large stone lions, Patience and Fortitude, to check his watch and rearrange the thin manila folder that was tucked beneath one arm. Then he made his way to the brass doors at the top of the stairs.

"I'm sorry, sir," said the guard standing before them. "The library is closed for the day."

Felder took out his city credentials and showed them to the man.

"Very good, sir," said the guard, stepping deferentially away from the doors.

"I put in a request for some research materials," Felder said. "I was told they were ready for examination."

"You can inquire in the General Research Division," the guard replied. "Room Three Fifteen."

"Thank you."

His shoes rang out against the floor as he walked through the vast and echoing entrance hall. It was almost eight in the evening and the cavernous space was deserted save for a second guard at a receiving station, who again examined his credentials and pointed the way up the sweeping staircase. Felder mounted the marble stairs slowly and thoughtfully. Arriving at the third floor, he walked down the corridor to the entrance of Room 315.

Room 315 did not do the space justice. Nearly two city blocks long, the Main Reading Room rose fifty feet to a rococo coffered ceiling busy with murals. Elegant chandeliers hung over seemingly endless rows of long oaken reading tables, still appointed with their original bronze lamps. Here and there, other researchers with after-hours access sat at the tables, poring over books or tapping quietly on laptops. While many books lined the walls, they were merely a drop in the library's bucket: in the subterranean levels beneath his feet, and the others below the green surface of adjoining Bryant Park, six million more volumes were stored.

But Felder had not come here to look at books. He had come for the library's equally vast collection of genealogical research materials.

He walked to the research assistance station that bisected the room, itself made of ornately carved wood, as large as a suburban house. After a brief whispered exchange, a library cart full of ledgers and folders was presented to him. He wheeled it to the nearest table, then took a seat and began placing the materials on the polished wooden surface. They were darkened and foxed with age but nevertheless impeccably clean. The various documents and sets of records had one thing in common: they dated from 1870 to 1880, and they documented the area of Manhattan in which Constance Greene claimed to have grown up.

Ever since the commitment proceedings, Felder had been thinking about the young woman's story. It was nonsense, of course--the ravings of someone who had completely lost touch with reality. A classic case of circumscribed delusion: psychotic disorder, unspecified.

And yet Constance Greene did not present like the typical person totally out of touch with reality. There was something about her that puzzled--no, intrigued--him.

I was indeed born on Water Street in the '70s--the 1870s. You will find all you need to know in the city archives on Centre Street, and more in the New York Public Library... I know, because I have seen the records myself.

Was this some clue she was offering them: some morsel of information that might clear up the mystery? Was it perhaps a cry for help? Only a careful examination of the records could provide an answer. He briefly wondered why he was doing this: his involvement in the case was over, and he was a very busy man with a successful private practice. And yet... he found himself damnably curious.

An hour later, Felder sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. Among the reams of yellowing documents was a Manhattan subcensus entry that indeed listed the family in question as dwelling at 16 Water Street.

Leaving the papers on the table, he rose and made his way down the stairs to the Genealogical Research Division on the first floor. His search of the Land Records and Military Service Records came up empty, and the 1880 US census showed nothing, but the 1870 census listed a Horace Greene as living in Putnam County, New York. An examination of Putnam County tax records from the years prior provided a few additional crumbs.

Felder walked slowly back upstairs and sat down at the table. Now he carefully opened the manila folder he had brought and arranged its meager contents--obtained from the Public Records Office--on its surface.

What, exactly, had he learned so far?

In 1870, Horace Greene had been a farmer in Carmel, New York. Wife, Chastity Greene; one daughter, Mary, aged eight.

In 1874, Horace Greene was living at 16 Water Street in Lower Manhattan, occupation stevedore. He now had three children: Mary, twelve; Joseph, three; Constance, one.

In 1878, New York City Department of Health death certificates had been issued for both Horace and Chastity Greene. Death in each case was listed as tuberculosis. This would have left the three children--now aged sixteen, seven, and five--orphans.

An 1878 police ledger listed Mary Greene as being charged with "streetwalking"--prostitution. Court records indicated she had testified that she had tried to find work as a laundress and seamstress, but that the pay had been insufficient to provide for herself and her siblings. Social welfare records from the same year listed Mary Greene as being confined to the Five Points Mission for an indefinite period. There were no other records; she seemed to have disappeared.

Another police ledger, from 1880, recorded one Castor McGillicutty as having beaten Joseph Greene, ten, to death upon catching the boy picking his pocket. Sentence: ten dollars and sixty days of hard labor in The Tombs, later commuted.

And that was it. The last--and indeed only--mention of a Constance Greene was the 1874 census.

Felder returned the documents to the folder and closed it with a sigh. It was a depressing enough story. It seemed clear that the woman calling herself Constance Greene had seized upon this particular family--and this lone bit of information--and made it the subject of her own delusional fantasies. But why? Of all the countless thousands, millions, of families in New York City--many with more extensive and colorful histories--why had she chosen this one? Could they have been her ancestors? But the records for the family seemed to end with this generation: there was nothing he could find to foster any belief that even a single member of the Greene family had survived beyond 1880.

Rising from his seat with another sigh, he went to the research desk and requested a few dozen local Manhattan newspapers from the late 1870s. He paged through them at random, glancing listlessly at the articles, notices, and advertisements. It was of course hopeless: he didn't know what he was looking for, exactly--in fact he didn't know why he was looking in the first place. What was it about Constance Greene and her condition that puzzled him so? It wasn't as if...