"How are you feeling, Professor?" Mike asked.

The twitch was less pronounced than earlier. "I've never been so frightened in my life. Why was that person shooting at you?"

"You got that wrong, pal. Why was he shooting at you? That's what we'd like to know. You got any problems you want to tell us about?"

The medic was monitoring Tormey's vital signs. "How about you take it easy on the guy's blood pressure, Chapman?"

Tormey whispered the word no.

"This little ceremony, did anyone know about it besides your students?"

"It was in the college paper, of course. I think the Bronx Historical Society writes up all the events, too. I simply can't imagine-"

"Think about it, Professor. You'll have a couple of days in your hospital bed to concentrate on nothing else but today's riflery exhibition. Your old friend Emily Upshaw was killed. Stabbed to death in a particularly vicious attack, right in her own home."

Tormey cringed and closed his eyes.

"That probably has something to do with the skeleton that was found in a basement in a Greenwich Village tenement last week. In fact, inside Mr. Poe's house."

The twitch was back in full force and his eyes were shut tight.

"Dr. Ichiko finds the only waterfall in the city of New York to throw himself over-or get pushed into-and crushes his skull in so many pieces you could play Chinese checkers with the chips. And you, you're somebody's idea of a bull's-eye."

Tormey opened his eyes and looked for me. "Miss Cooper, will there be protection for me while I'm in the hospital? I mean, you don't suppose this was just some drive-by shooting from the highway?"

"The shots didn't come from a car, Professor. Detectives will analyze the scene, but there's little doubt someone was positioned in place, waiting for you to appear. And yes, the NYPD will have someone with you the entire time you're in the hospital."

His eyes shifted in Mike's direction. "Not-?"

"Not him." It seemed to be Tormey's worst fear. Wounded, bedridden, and attached to an IV tube with Chapman at his side, relentlessly asking questions.

"I haven't given any thought to Emily Upshaw in years, Miss Cooper. Do you really believe this could have something to do with her?" Tormey asked.

Mike sensed that the professor wasn't comfortable talking to him and turned his back, pretending to busy himself making notes about the day's events.

"It's hard to think otherwise," I said.

"The incident with the bail? It's coming back to me a bit," Tormey said.

Funny how a good scare can improve the memory of almost every witness.

"Emily was working as my research assistant that semester. She was desperate for money-not that I realized at the time how much of it was going to support her drug habit. Two or three times she actually wrote articles for me, ones that were published under my name. I needed those credits for the tenure process."

"Okay."

"When she was arrested, she called me because I owed her money. Several hundred dollars, if I'm not mistaken. I don't imagine there was anyone else she could have called who'd give her money."

Tormey's mind was drifting in another direction. He turned his head to the other side, but before he did I thought I saw tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

"I'll be looking at Emily's college records tomorrow," I said, a bluff that I hoped to make good on before too long. "What class did she take with you?"

He seemed unable or unwilling to speak.

"Professor Tormey?"

"Emily wasn't in any of my classes. You'll see that in her transcript."

"But she did research for you?"

His head moved slowly up and down.

"How did she find you? How did you two get together?"

"Before…" he said, choking on the words that followed.

"Before college?" I asked.

Tormey's words were muffled but I held my head close to his mouth and made them out. "I'm the reason Emily came to New York to go to college. I don't know what her family has told you about her background, Miss Cooper. I was her faculty interviewer the week she came to the city to visit NYU at the start of her senior year of high school. She was alone here-and, well-we spent some time together."

The story Emily's sister had told us took on a new significance as Tormey finished his explanation. "I'm the guy who got her pregnant."

I knew the triage process would begin the moment we hit the entrance to the ambulance bay at Presbyterian. A medical team would be waiting for us, Tormey would be evaluated for surgery, and if they put him under with anesthesia, we'd be lucky if we could get back at him within the next forty-eight hours.

"There's no time for bullshit now, Professor. I need more honest answers or I can't protect you from whatever's going on."

"But I thought Emily's attack was a random one-a man who followed her in off the street."

"Maybe it is that. I happen not to think so. Too many things are going on that seem to be related. The child you fathered with Emily, have you ever tried to have any contact with her?"

Tormey looked directly at me. "The baby died, Miss Cooper. She was stillborn."

"That's what Emily told you?"

"Yes. And that's what her mother told me, in the one or two conversations we had together. I felt responsible for the fact that her family disowned Emily. Then how ironic it was that she lost the baby after all."

The truth about the child and the fact that she had been raised by Emily's sister could wait a day or two.

"But your relationship with Emily, that continued?"

"Sexually? No, not after she came back to New York and started at the college. She had visions of setting up house together, of me replacing the family she thought she had lost. Getting her pregnant had been a pretty sobering experience for both of us- well, that's a particularly bad expression for me to use. I was a few years older than she, and by the time that year had passed, I was involved with someone else. Someone more appropriate. The woman I married, actually."

The medic signaled me to get out of his way as we turned onto 168th Street.

"We're almost there, Professor. Those names Detective Chapman was asking you about? You know he didn't finish."

Tormey sighed.

"Did you ever meet Monty?"

"Who?" he asked. He seemed weary from the pain and apprehension.

"A guy Emily lived with before she was arrested. Someone who may have done something that frightened her."

"It doesn't sound familiar."

"This ceremony about Edgar Allan Poe today, what's your interest in him?"

Tormey smiled and closed his eyes. "I told you earlier, I think the man was a genius."

"And Emily, did she agree?"

"I don't know what she thought, Miss Cooper. She worked on projects for me. She did what I asked her to do."

The ambulance lurched as the driver stopped short and backed it into a bay. The men who were standing by to receive Noah Tormey lifted the gurney out of the rear and placed it on a set of metal wheels, rushing it into the doors that opened automatically as they approached.

"Hey, loo, you got nothing better to do than make house calls?" Mike asked. Raymond Peterson, the lieutenant of the homicide squad, was standing with a nurse at the ER entrance. He held out a hand and helped me step down.

"I was on my way in when I got the call. Thought I'd stop by and check the damage. You all right, Alex?"

"No worse than falling off a bicycle. May I wash up inside?" I asked the nurse.

"I'll have someone look you both over right away. You just need to go sign in at the desk. They'll give each of you an examination cubicle and-"

"I really don't need to waste anyone's time. I've just skinned my hands a bit."