I TRIED the door. The knob turned, and the door opened a crack, then held fast. I pressed my shoulder into it, pulled back, and rammed it. I pulled back and rammed it again. Pulled back a third time—and thought better of it. I was going to break my shoulder before I broke the hasp. It already felt as if I’d hit myself with a sledgehammer.
I rubbed my shoulder and cast about for something to pry the opening. I pushed the tarp from the pile of furniture I’d fallen against. There was Channing’s leather chair, loaded not with a dead body but with a pile of books topped by a crocheted afghan and a piece of scarlet and gold silk.
I picked up the shimmering cloth. I remembered—it was a scarf Channing had brought back with her from Thailand. She’d worn it around her shoulders on the evening she gave me the bad news, that she’d met someone while she was away, she was going to get married. I rubbed the stiff silk. The sharp citrus scent made my eyes prickle.
I heard Jess’s rapid breathing. She was staring at me, wild-eyed, her nostrils flaring. She went over and tried the door. “We’re trapped,” she said. “How are we going to get out of here?”
I pushed the other drop cloth off the top of the desk. There was a phone, a cord coiled neatly around it. I tracked along the baseboard until I found a phone jack. I plugged the phone into the wall and picked up the receiver. Nothing.
“Kaput,” I said.
Jess’s voice rose. “Someone’s got to get us out.” She threw herself against the door and banged with both fists against the solid oak. “Help!” she screamed. “We’re trapped in here!”
She turned around and pressed her back against the door. Her eyes darted around the room. “I have a problem,” she gasped, her hand to her throat. “Being locked in. Knowing I can’t get out … .” Her breath was coming in quick pants. Her face was starting to flush.
“You’re hyperventilating,” I told her. I scooped the books off the leather chair. “Sit.” I took her hand and helped her over to the chair. “Easy does it.”
“I know, I know,” she gasped again. “It’s not like it’s the middle of the night.” She gripped the chair arms.
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Don’t talk. Breathe.”
“There’s all kinds of people around, right?”
“Right, right, plenty of people,” I said.
“Do you …”
I shushed her. “Don’t talk. Breathe.”
She put her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed.
“Take it easy.” Her color was returning to normal. “That’s right, nice and easy. Inhale. Exhale.”
Jess leaned back in the chair, put her hands in her lap, and took a deep inhale.
“That’s good. Did you see who was out in the hall?”
Jess licked her lips. “Only Dr. Smythe-Gooding. She went back and forth a couple of times,” Jess said. “Do you think she heard what I said? About her being incompetent? I shouldn’t have been talking so loud. I wasn’t thinking.”
Of course, Daphne must have heard. But why lock us in?
I was about ready to try hollering out the window when there was a knock. “Peter, you in there?” It was Annie.
Jess threw herself against the door. “We’re trapped in here!” she cried.
“Annie?” I called. “Boy am I glad to hear your voice. How’d you find us?”
“Gloria. When you didn’t come back …”
Thank God for Gloria. “Can you get us out of here?”
There was a pause. “Sure. Looks trivial.” She jiggled the padlock. “Need some tools, though. Hang on, I’ve got them out in the car.”
“Hurry back!” I said.
“Who’s that?” Jess asked.
“A friend of mine who can get us out of here.”
“Soon, I hope,” Jess said.
“She’s probably parked up by the Neuropsychiatric Unit.” I could picture the distance—down three flights of stairs, about a quarter mile uphill and back down, up three flights. I leaned against the wall, slid down to a squat, and settled in to wait. Jess seemed calm, now that she knew we were going to be sprung.
“Where’s that necklace you were wearing?” I asked.
She touched her fingers to her neck. “My necklace?”
“Yours?”
“I gave it to Olivia,” Jess whispered.
“Do you want to tell me about the necklace?”
Her face turned pinched. “It was Channing’s. It belonged to her mother.”
“Channing gave it to you?”
“It was in her study. When I took the diary …” She sobbed. “I was only borrowing it. But I never had a chance to put it back.”
“You gave it to Olivia?”
“Yes.”
“How did you explain …”
“I lied. I told her Charming had let me borrow it and I hadn’t had a chance to give it back. I said I was her mother’s friend.”
“Special friend?” I asked.
“Special friend,” she echoed.
“Was that a lie, too?”
Jess didn’t answer. She reached for Channing’s red silk scarf and held it up to her face.
I stood and stared out the window. After a few minutes, Annie appeared, running down the hill toward the building. “Here she comes,” I said.
“Thank God,” Jess said quietly.
A few minutes later, there was a tap at the door. “I’m back,” Annie called.
Jess sprang up and pressed her body against the door. “You’re going to get us out of here?”
“I’m working on it,” Annie said.
There was silence. Then the sound of metal on metal. “Shit,” she said. More scraping. It felt like being at the dentist, wishing that he’d stop gouging away at a particularly sensitive spot, feeling the seconds tick, waiting to be liberated from the chair.
“Goddamnit … .” Annie said. There was a minute of silence. Then, “Here goes,” followed by a few scrapes, a grunt, and the sound of wood splintering.
The door pulled open. Annie was standing there holding a crowbar. An assortment of metal picks were scattered at her feet.
Jess fled into the hall.
“Am I glad to see you,” I said. I eyed the crowbar, the hasp now wrenched out of shape. I touched the woodwork, which was split where the screws had been ripped away. “I guess when finesse doesn’t work, there’s something to be said for brute force.”
“My sentiments, precisely,” Annie replied. “How’d you get locked in?”
“I think it was Daphne Smythe-Gooding,” I said.
“It’s my fault,” Jess said. “I was blabbing away about how Dr.
Smythe-Gooding wasn’t—” Her mouth snapped shut, and she glanced anxiously toward Daphne’s office.
In a few strides, I was there. The door was open, but the room was empty. There was a pall of cigarette smell. What I remembered as orderly piles of paper on her desk had turned into drifts, and an Acu-Med mug served as a paperweight. The African violet on the windowsill was now beyond help. The pot of water she’d brought back from the bathroom stood forgotten in the seat of a chair.
Alongside the window, a square on the wall seemed to glow whiter than the wall around it. There was a picture hook in the middle of the space. Daphne had taken down the photograph of her husband. Below was a dark, wide bookcase with glass doors. One of the shelves held about two dozen journals, each with a number hand-lettered on the spine. Years.
I pulled one of the doors to the bookcase open. I was about to reach for a journal when I hesitated. Annie and Jess were out in the hall. I went out to them. “Just give me a minute,” I said, and shut the door. I’d run out of ways to rationalize looking through other people’s personal property. At least I could do it without implicating everyone else.
I took out the last journal. I flipped through. The pages were dated, each one in a dense, neat hand. I turned to the days surrounding Channing’s death. The day after Channing’s party, the entry began:
My own special child. Brilliant. Beautiful. Now she turns on me, like a viper. Like her own daughter turned on her. Like her own mother, her game. Shame. Suicide. Shame. Suicide.
Robert and I. We will do it together.
Quickly I scanned the pages that followed, the days leading up to Jensen’s death. They were filled with the pain of loss. Daphne wrote her memories of Channing, her protégé. The words brilliant,
insightful, honest, scrupulous, peppered the pages as she turned Channing into a saint. Then:
It’s begun. Her papers are missing. I can only imagine what they are up to.
There was a knock at the door. “Peter?” It was Annie.
“Give me a minute more,” I said.
I pulled out the book from the previous year. Robert had died in early August. There I found what I was looking for.
Saturday
I am home. I sit alongside, Listening to the shallow breathing. The sour smell of urine and decay seems to cling to the wallpaper, to the drapes. I can’t bear to look. So much substance-personality, brilliance, strength, wasted away. His face stretched thin across the skull, a membrane crisscrossed with blue veins. Eyes recede.
I try to read but I am nodding off. So I write instead, listening, rocked by the quiet inhale, exhale. Then for a few moments, nothing. My heart stops. Is it over? A snort, a weak cough. And I am angry at the relief that floods me. What am I without you? And yet, that’s what must be.
He stirs. Eyelids flutter. Holes of darkness stare back at me. This person who cannot walk, can barely sit, still can struggle upwards on stick-thin arms, head wobbling on a slender stalk.
He stares at me. The voice I once loved and now can barely hear. Taunting me for being weak. I know, we agreed. I will, I tell him. Soon. Still his look scorns me.
I touch his hand, trying not to apply even a small amount of pressure for fear of bruising, of tearing. Eyes close. Is that a
grimace of pain or the edge of a smile? Then, the spirit goes under again.
It must be now. Last night, I dismissed the night nurse. Cancelled the day shift. Why do I sit here, doing nothing? Why do I still wait, counting breaths, writing instead of taking action, hoping God will do what I promised? It is up to me now.
I open the drawer alongside the bed. There lies the gun. A gift, “borrowed” from a disapproving friend. Cold and hard, how neatly it fits the hand. A single sqeeze and it’s done, God willing.
Or perhaps the feather pillow. I see myself, pressing gently. But no, gentle will never do. How long will it take and can I last? Last.
Pills? How easy to wash them down. Neat and tidy. I take a pill myself. I wait. I cannot stand the waiting. I take another.
Sunday
Thank God, it is over. Now, what am I?
Of course, this was what everyone knew without asking. Robert Smythe-Gooding had died before he was ready. Not the slow wasting away of cancer. But not by his own hand either, as many suspected. Daphne had killed him.
It was starting to come clear—why I kept seeing a tangle, no matter how I examined what was going on: Assisted suicide. Unreported death. Channing’s murder. Stolen diary pages. Jensen’s murder. Research tampering.
Tease apart the pieces. It was like one of my psychological tests. Put together the things that go together. Then name the groups. I came up with two: murder and character assassination.
Two crimes. Different criminals? Of course. And if I didn’t hurry, there would be another killing.
I picked up the phone and called Destler’s office. I prayed that Virginia would still be there. When she answered, I barked, “Is he there?”
“Hello, Peter. Sorry, no he’s not. He seems to be very much in demand this afternoon.”
“Was Dr. Smythe-Gooding looking for him?”
“As a matter of fact …”
I cut her off with, “Did you tell her where he is?” I knew I was being rude, but Virginia was a very forgiving soul.
“Of course.”
“And where is that?”
“Well, let’s see, he was at a meeting that should have ended at five-thirty. Then he usually goes over and …”
Much as I like Virginia, if she’d been in the room with me I’d have strangled her then and there. I interrupted the stream of consciousness. “Where do you think he is right now. Please, it’s quite important.”
“Oh, my. He’s probably over at Albert House. He took the plans for the renovation with him, and he was going to check up—”
“Is there any way to reach him?”
“I could beep him. But there aren’t phones over there—”
“I’ll find him,” I said, and hung up.
I burst out into the hall. Annie had packed away her tools and was carrying the crowbar. “We’ve got to get over to Albert House. Destler’s over there, and Daphne’s gone looking for him.”
“I’m coming with you,” Jess announced, as Annie and I started for the stairway.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said.
“Please? I’ve screwed everything up. Trusting Dr. Jensen. Shooting my mouth off here.”
We hurried down the stairs, past the spot where Jensen had fallen to his death. A piece of plywood had been fastened across the broken spindles. Jess struggled to keep up. Her high heels and straight skirt weren’t designed for speed. She was still carrying Channing’s scarf.
“It could be dangerous,” I said.
“There has to be a way I can make up for the mess I’ve made,” Jess insisted.
We were outside now, on the steps of the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit. “We should get security to meet us over at Albert House,” I said.
Jess said, “I’ll do it. I’ll get them and meet you there.” She hurried back inside.