"And your little punks-why did they attack Ellen this afternoon? What was that about?"

"Quite frankly, Miss Cooper, they had orders to go for you. I didn't know they'd be creative enough to impale someone on that gruesome plant, but they're good at being bad. I told them you'd be the woman asking all the questions-the ever-inquisitive Alexandra Cooper," Phelps said, shaking his head in my direction. "I understand you were uncharacteristically quiet today. They mistook that other lady for you."

The boulders were stacked waist-high now. My time was running short.

I stepped back out into the fresh air and looked in vain for any sign of human life. I stalled for a minute, reaching into my rear pants pocket and realizing for the first time that I hadn't left my gloves in the ski jacket back at Phelps's house. Something stung me sharply as I tried to withdraw my hand.

Stuck tightly to the fine knit of the woolen gloves were several leaves of the plant-the ferocious plant-that I had pulled from the wounds on Ellen's face. The long thorns pierced the tips of my fingers and I winced in pain.

I had pocketed the treacherous needles so they wouldn't accidentally injure anyone coming to Ellen's aid. Now they might be my only defense against Sinclair Phelps.

Holding the gloves in my hand, I picked up a smaller rock, one that I could carry with a single arm. Phelps was leaning against a large boulder and had placed the shotgun on top of it. He was toying with a piece of material that I assumed would be my gag and binds-ripping it into several lengths of cloth.

There would be no second chance for me. If I didn't make a clean strike, it would be my very own, very premature burial.

I approached the mouth of the cave and walked directly in front of Phelps. He started to say something to me and as I turned to look at him, I shifted the rock to my left arm. With a single thrust, I rammed the thorn-encrusted black gloves into his eye with my right hand, pushing as hard as I could.

Sinclair Phelps howled as the prickly needles embedded themselves in his eyelid. He doubled over, covering his face with his hands. I lifted the rock and brought it down as hard as I could, pleased with the sound it made as it cracked against bone. Blood trickled from his ear as he fell to the ground.

The two coydogs leaped to their feet and charged at me.

I grabbed the shotgun from the boulder, pointed its barrel straight overhead, and discharged several rounds into the quiet night.

The dogs whimpered and circled each other in distress, frightened by the blasts of the gun. Dozens more bats swooped out of the cave, dipping their wings and blackening the sky above us. I clutched the weapon in my hand and ran down the slope as fast as I was able to move.

"Ratiocination, my dear Coop. Edgar Poe would have delighted in your use of it."

Mike Chapman was leaning against a bookshelf in the basement of the snuff mill, surrounded by ravens of every shape and size.

My shotgun volleys had rallied several pairs of police officers in the direction from which I had come running. Two intercepted me on the roadway and took me into their patrol car. They brought me back to Zeldin's office, the place from which Mike and Mercer had been tracking the search mission.

"Once I saw Phelps outside the door of his cottage paying off one of the kids, it all started to come together. It was a gang of teenagers who had assaulted Aaron Kittredge when he tried to visit here almost ten years ago. Phelps must have feared, then, that he might be spotted. He didn't want to risk an accidental encounter with someone who could link him to his other life. It was kids who hit me over the head, and who tried to-to bury me." I paused to take a deep breath. "Who put me under the floorboards at Poe Cottage."

Mercer refilled my water glass. "And the same kids-Sinclair Phelps's roving band of bad boys-who mistook Ellen Gunsher for you in the conservatory."

"He could have lived out the rest of his life here, undisturbed, if no one had been able to connect him to Aurora Tait. Or to Emily Upshaw," Mike said, folding his paperwork in quarters and tucking the pages in his blazer pocket. "Or to his own miserable past."

"Did you guys find Zeldin?" I asked. "Do you think he knew anything about Phelps?"

"He's all fired up, Coop. We even got him out of the wheelchair tonight, pompous old stiff that he is. I think he was in the dark about Phelps. I mean, he knew that the little hoodlums did all the groundskeeper's dirty work, but I don't think he figured murder. When Ellen was attacked, he got himself out of there like a rocket, but he phoned Phelps to call off his boys. If Zeldin had known, he might have let Phelps into the Raven Society," Mike said.

I looked over at him to see whether he was joking. "You still think that's a prerequisite for membership?"

"I think Edgar himself would have liked it that way, don't you? I intend to find out."

The brick coffin had been inadvertently opened and everything Phelps thought had been entombed with Aurora Tait had begun to spill out.

"Where are you going?" I asked Mike, who had turned his back to me and was walking toward the door.

"Just lie there and mope as long as you want, kid. Let somebody else handle your big case for you. If you hadn't run off into the woods, you'd have heard the good news."

"What?"

"Hugo Maswana. The DNA's a match. Annika's family is going to stay with her another week so you can put together a lineup and arraign him on the indictment. Substitute his name for John Doe."

I tossed back my head and stared up at the ceiling. For almost five years I'd been trying to put that bastard out of business.

"That means the ambassador is waiving diplomatic immunity?" I asked Mercer.

"No such luck. It means you've got to get back in the ring and fight him, Coop. Then you got to get Noah Tormey to sit down with Amelia Brandon-his daughter. She took the bus back home, but she's entitled to some answers."

"So am I."

"What's stumping the normally know-it-all prosecutor?" Mike asked.

"When did Phelps have time to set up the attack on me at the cottage?"

"He must have heard Zeldin make the offer to call Gino Guidi's office to get us in. We sat in the coffee shop for almost an hour waiting for clearance. That gave him plenty of time to do it."

"But what were they going to do when they came-?"

"Idle thoughts. You don't want to go there," Mike said. "Anyway, it would have distracted us from any bad business at the gardens. It would have looked like a mugging in a tough neighborhood. Who knows where we would have found you."

He continued on his way to the door, waving a hand. "I'll give you a call, Mercer."

"We're not done," I said, standing and rattling a porcelain bust of the great poet as my elbow struck against the side table.

"Oh, yeah? I am. The Upshaw murder is solved. How does it go in Clue? It was Colonel Mustard, in the conservatory, with the knife. Case closed."

"The arrest, Mike. You've got to stay to get all the facts from me so you can take Phelps to his arraignment."

"Make yourselves comfortable. Stick around for the next meeting of the Raven Society." He pointed at Mercer. "Detective Wallace is taking the collar."

I looked from Mercer to Mike. "But it's a homicide. It's your case."

"Not this time."

"Why not?" I could see that I was losing him. He was tired and distracted, running his fingers through his thick, dark hair and resting his arm on the mantel over the fireplace.

"Police brutality."

"What are you talking about?"

"Phelps stands up-if he can-in front of the judge tomorrow morning. He'll be a full turban job, his shattered skull packaged in layers of bandage and gauze wrap."