"Absolutely not. She'd made a promise to her sister that she wasn't going to break. But she was tormented by the fact that Amelia was determined to track her down. There was no way to put the cat back in the bag. I guess one of the other writers on the magazine staff finally gave the child Emily's phone number."

"Take us to Saturday afternoon before the murder," Mercer said, "when Emily called you with her-what did you say- premonition?"

Kroon wiped his brow. "I was at work, like I told you. The store was busy and I'm afraid I didn't take her as seriously as-well-as it turned out I should have."

"You couldn't have known what would happen to her," I said.

"Emily had been at home all morning, sleeping late, I'm sure. She went out for the papers and some groceries, and when she got back there had been a series of calls. Three, I think she said. All of them hang-ups."

I looked at Mercer, who had studied the outgoing and incoming activity on Emily Upshaw's phone records. He nodded his head and mouthed the words "pay phone."

"Emily couldn't imagine who had called, but she was concerned that it had something to do with Amelia's attempts to find her. Every time we had met during the week, she'd been soliciting my help with what to do about telling her sister."

"And your advice?"

He shrugged. "Be honest with her. There was nothing to hide anymore."

"The hang-up caller, did he or she phone back?"

"Yes. That's what prompted Emily's panicked call to me. It was that doctor-you know, the one with the Asian name who was found dead last week."

"Dr. Ichiko?" I asked.

"Exactly."

"Did Emily know him?"

"No," he said. "She told me that she'd never met him."

Mercer walked over to Kroon. "But you just told us her phone is unlisted."

He sniffled and answered, "Emily's name was in the file the doctor had kept on Monty, when Ichiko had treated him back in his college days. Apparently, Monty had talked about her in session, as the woman he lived with, the person he confided in when he had the flashbacks that he had killed someone. The doctor had an NYU alumni directory. Emily's number is printed in that."

"What did he want?"

"First he spooked her by just expressing relief that she was alive-that she hadn't been murdered long ago. Ichiko asked whether she had seen the newspapers, the headlines about the skeleton in the building basement. Emily had just come home with the papers-the Times and the tabloids. He told her to look at the Post follow-up story, that he was convinced he knew whose bones had been discovered. And certain that the killer was Emily's old boyfriend, the one she called Monty."

"What did Emily do?" I asked.

"Ichiko wanted her to tell him where Monty was, what had become of him. She swore she didn't know, that she hadn't seen him in over twenty years. He pressed Emily hard-he really scared the daylights out of her."

"How?"

"He told her that once the skeleton was identified, Emily wouldn't be safe in New York. That she had to help him figure out what had become of Monty or they'd both wind up dead. Dr. Ichiko wasn't wrong, was he?"

"And you, what did Emily want from you?" Mercer asked.

"Money. Money to get out of town. And advice about where to go."

"What did you tell her?"

"That she couldn't run because she didn't know where in the world this man Monty had gone."

"Hadn't she thought of that before?" I asked.

"Often," Kroon said. "She often wondered what had become of him. How do you support yourself if you're a poet, Detective Wallace? Nobody can make a living that way today."

"The pages you opened from Emily's computer, Teddy, what was that about?" Mercer asked.

He bowed his head. "That was such a stupid thing to do."

Heartless, I wanted to add.

"What was so important to you that you opened computer files before you even called nine-one-one?"

Kroon walked to his desk drawer and returned to the sofa, sitting next to me and handing me a thin manila folder. "You can look. I mean, when I found her body, I assumed she'd been killed by the Silk Stocking Rapist. That it was just a rotten piece of bad timing and bad luck. I-I guess I just wanted to be a hero."

"It never occurred to you that the killer was Monty?"

"Call it denial, Detective. I had read about the rapist back in the neighborhood, stabbing a woman. I-I guess I didn't think things were moving so fast, since the doctor had only called Emily that very day. I didn't think Monty was anywhere around yet, so I thought I could find information about Monty that I could turn over to Dr. Ichiko, that would help the police solve the old case."

I opened the file that Kroon had printed out the night of Emily's murder and shuffled through the papers to see whether anything struck me as relevant or useful to our investigation. I hadn't had the chance yet to study the police forensics report on the computer.

Teddy may have claimed a close friendship with Emily, but for some unfathomable reason he had purloined some very personal writings. There were pages of meditations on the emotional upheaval she had undergone because of Amelia's contact, and intimate recollections that the dead woman had written about her parents and sisters.

Then came a lengthy manuscript, titled "Poetic Injustice," which listed both Emily Upshaw and Noah Tormey as its authors. It appeared to be the academic treatise on Poe's flirtation with plagiarism that she had researched and written for the young professor- the one that had scotched his ambitions at the Raven Society.

Next came a paragraph of single-spaced prose. I lifted the page from my lap to read it.

Kroon saw what it was. "See? I thought I could give this to Dr. Ichiko, to show that Monty-whoever he was-had confessed to Emily."

I read the lines:

I determined to wall it up in the cellar, as the monks of the Middle Ages are recorded to have walled up their victims. For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed, and… I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole thing up as before so that no eye could detect anything suspicious… by means of a crowbar I easily dislodged the bricks and, having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it up in that position, while with a little trouble I re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood.

"Stick to gourmet cooking, Teddy. That's vintage Poe. 'The Black Cat.' Another burial behind brick walls," I said.

He looked crestfallen, as though he had actually found a clue of significance.

The last pages included the draft letter that Emily was working on to send her sister Sally, telling her about Amelia's discovery.

"Is this your handwriting?" I asked, pointing to the edits and corrections that had been made in pen along the margins.

Kroon said yes without looking up.

"Why did you write Noah Tormey's name at the top of the page?"

"I wanted to be sure I'd remember it. I'd heard his name from Emily for the first time, just a few days earlier."

"But why?" I asked. "What were you going to do with this letter, with this information?"

"Well, nothing. I-uh-I just felt I knew the truth and ought to keep a record of it, for Amelia's sake."

"And then you brushed her off at the door when she arrived this morning?" Mercer asked.

I read the page again while Mercer questioned Kroon. The changes he had made to the draft made no sense to me. It was no longer intended to be a letter to Sally Brandon.

"Where did you send the girl?"

"Nowhere in particular. I couldn't deal with her is all."

"Did you give her Tormey's name?" Mercer asked. "Was that your plan?"

"No, not yet. I didn't think she was ready for that. I didn't know what to do with her. She wanted information about Emily's life, about who would be able to help her. I-I told her about the detective who had befriended her mother-"