As soon as he stepped off the elevator he could tell that she wasn’t there. Her door was closed and the room was dark. But he wasn’t about to give up. Not yet. He remembered her having said something about some laboratory results. Lou decided to see if he could find the right lab and maybe then Laurie. He took the elevator down one floor, unsure of where to find the appropriate lab. At the end of the fourth-floor hall he saw a light. Lou walked the length of the hall and peered in the open door.

“Excuse me,” he said to the youthful man in a white lab coat stooped over one of the room’s major pieces of heavy equipment.

Peter looked up.

“I’m looking for Laurie Montgomery,” Lou said.

“You and everyone else,” Peter said. “I don’t know where she is now, but half an hour ago she went down to the morgue to look at a body in the walk-in cooler.”

“Someone else been looking for her?” Lou asked.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “Two men I’d never seen before.”

“Thanks,” Lou said. He turned back toward the elevator and hustled down the hall. He didn’t like the sound of two strangers looking for Laurie, not after what she’d said about two alleged plainclothes policemen coming to her apartment.

Lou went straight to the morgue level. Exiting the elevator, he was surprised he still hadn’t seen a soul besides the guy in the lab. With growing concern, he hurried down the long hall to the walk-in cooler. Finding its door partially ajar only added to his unease.

With mounting dread he pulled the door the rest of the way open. What he saw was far worse than he could have imagined. Inside the cooler, bodies were strewn helter-skelter. Two gurneys were tipped on their sides. Several of the sheets covering the bodies had been pulled aside. Even after a few days’ experience in the autopsy room, he still didn’t have the stomach for this. And whatever had happened to Laurie, this body-strewn battleground was hardly an auspicious sign.

Lou spotted a purse among the wreckage. Pushing gurneys aside, he picked it up to check for ID. He snapped open the wallet. The first thing he saw was Laurie’s photo on her driver’s license.

As he rushed from the cooler, Lou’s concern turned to fear, especially if his current theory about all the gangland-style murders was correct. Frantically he looked for someone, anyone. There was always someone available at the morgue. Seeing the light in the main autopsy room, he ran down to it and pushed open the doors, but no one was there either.

Turning around, Lou dashed back to the security office to use the phone. Entering the room, he immediately saw the guard’s body on the floor. He knelt down and rolled the man over. The man’s unseeing eyes stared up at him. There was a bullet hole in his forehead. Lou checked for a pulse, but there wasn’t any. The man was dead.

Standing up, Lou snatched up the phone and dialed 911. As soon as an operator answered he identified himself as Lieutenant Lou Soldano and requested a homicide unit for the city morgue. He added that the victim was in the security office but that he would not be able to wait for the unit to arrive.

Slamming the phone down, Lou raced to the morgue loading dock and jumped into his car. Starting the engine, he backed up with a screech of his tires, leaving two lines of rubber on the morgue’s driveway. He had no other choice than to head directly for Paul Cerino’s. It was cards-on-the-table time. He slapped his emergency light on the car’s roof and arrived at Cerino’s Queens address after twenty-three minutes of hair-raising driving.

Racing up the front steps of the Cerino home, he reached into his shoulder holster and unsnapped the leather band securing his.38 Smith and Wesson Detective Special. He rang the bell impatiently. Judging by all the lights blazing, someone had to be home.

Lou knew that he was operating on a hunch that depended on his theory about the gangland slayings being correct. But at the moment it was all he had, and his intuition told him that time was of the utmost importance.

An overhead light came on above Lou’s head. Then he had the feeling that someone was looking at him through the peephole. Finally the door opened. Gloria was standing there dressed in one of her plain housedresses.

“Lou!” Gloria said pleasantly. “What brings you here?”

Lou shoved past her and into the house. “Where’s Paul?” he demanded. He looked into the living room, where Gregory and Steven were watching TV.

“What’s the matter?” Gloria asked.

“I have to talk with Paul. Where is he?”

“He’s not here,” Gloria said. “Is there something wrong?”

“Something’s very wrong,” Lou said. “Do you know where Paul is?”

“I’m not positive,” Gloria said. “But I heard him on the phone with Dr. Travino. I think he said something about going down to the company.”

“You mean at the pier?” Lou asked.

Gloria nodded. “Is he in danger?” Gloria asked. Lou’s distress was infectious.

Lou was already half out the door. Calling over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll take care of it.”

Back in his car, Lou started the engine and made a sweeping U-turn in the middle of the street. As he accelerated he caught sight of Gloria standing on her stoop, anxiously clutching her hands to her chest.

Laurie’s first sensation was nausea, but she didn’t vomit, although she retched. She woke up in stages, becoming progressively aware of movement and uncomfortable bumps and jostling. She also became aware of dizziness, as if she were spinning, and a terrible sense of air hunger, as if she were smothering.

Laurie tried to open her eyes, only to realize with a terrible shock that they were already open. Wherever she was, it was pitch black.

When she was more awake, Laurie tried to move, but when she did, her legs and arms immediately hit up against a wooden surface. Exploring with her hands, she quickly determined that she was in a box! A wave of frightful claustrophobia passed through her like a cold wind as she realized she’d been sealed into a Potter’s Field coffin! At the same time the memory of what happened at the medical examiner’s office flooded back with searing clarity: the chase; those two horrible men; the dead guard, the poor janitor murdered in cold blood. And then another horrid thought occurred to her: what if they were planning to bury her alive!

Gripped with terror, Laurie tried to draw up her knees, straining against the top of the coffin. Then she tried to kick, but it was all to no avail. Either something extremely heavy was on the lid or it had been nailed firmly down.

“Ahhhh,” Laurie cried as the coffin jarred severely. It was then that she realized she was in some sort of vehicle.

Laurie tried screaming but only succeeded in hurting her own ears. Next she tried pounding the underside of the lid with her fists, but it was difficult in the confined space.

Abruptly the jarring stopped. The vibration of the engine also stopped. Then there was the distant sound as if the doors of the vehicle had opened. Laurie felt the coffin move.

“Help!” Laurie cried. “I can’t breathe!”

She heard voices, but they weren’t speaking with her. In a wave of desperate panic, Laurie again tried to pound the underside of the lid as tears came. She couldn’t help herself. She’d never been so terrified in her life.

Laurie knew she was being carried for a time. She hated to think where they were taking her. Would they really bury her? Would she hear the dirt raining down on the lid?

With a final thump the coffin was put down. It hadn’t hit ground. It sounded like wood.

Laurie gasped for air between sobs as a cold sweat appeared on her forehead.

Lou wasn’t exactly sure where the American Fresh Fruit Company was, but he knew it was in the Green Point pier area. He’d been there once years before and was hoping it would come back to him.