“Oh, yes,” she said tightly.
“Good. Put on the robe and I’ll go start your water and throw in some…lilac or rose?”
“Rose.”
“That’s what I would have picked. We still think alike, don’t we, Marlene? That’s nice. It’s nice to have a friend,” she said, her smile softening. For a moment she had a faraway look in her eyes. “Oh,” she said, jumping when she came out of her daze. “Look at me dilly-dallying here while you’re waiting so patiently. I’m such a scatterbrain sometimes.” She laughed and went out to the bathroom. Stacey reached across the bed and took the bathrobe into her hands. She was beginning to feel sluggish, either with digestion, or because Gerald had laced the food with sedatives.
She had stepped off the bed and started to put the robe on when something caught her attention. Looking to the doorway, she saw an impassive Gerald standing there watching her. She closed the garment around herself quickly and he moved on.
Oh God, David, she thought. Hurry, hurry.
Irene returned, a bunch of keys in hand. She unfastened the chain from the bedpost. Stacey waited for her to free her ankle as well, but she made no further moves.
“I can’t take a bath with a chain on.”
“I’ll take that off in the bathroom,” she said, smiling.
What kind of madness is this? Stacey thought. She’s intelligent; she thinks; she realizes most of what she is doing, and yet she’s not in tune with reality. Her state made her a more frightening and formidable foe because she was unpredictable.
Irene lifted the loosened end of the chain and held it just the way Shirley had held the end of the leash that collared Tami. Stacey embraced herself and looked toward the hallway. What could she do but go on? She felt like someone who had wandered onto a stage of insanity and was now lost in the drama. Every time she headed for an exit, something else blocked the way. All she could do was carry on, recite the lines, and follow the directions until the final curtain.
Let it come soon, she prayed. Let it come soon.
She walked out of the bedroom, the chain dragging behind her on the floor. She turned into the bathroom where the tub frothed with water and the scent of roses permeated the air. Irene moved ahead of her and turned off the faucets. She carried the nightgown and put it on the closed toilet seat.
“Lift your foot now,” she said. Stacey put her foot up on the toilet seat and Irene unlocked the lock and took off the chain. “Okay, honey,” she said. “Go on in.”
Stacey looked at the water and then looked back at the doorway. Maybe she could rush out and down the stairs and out the door. Maybe she could get to the road and flag down a car before Gerald or Irene caught her.
As if he could hear her thoughts, Gerald appeared in the bathroom doorway.
“Gerald,” Irene said. “Please, we need some privacy.”
“Just checking to see if everything’s all right,” he said.
“Why of course it is. Why shouldn’t it be?” Irene said. “We’re using roses. Can you smell it?”
“Uh-huh.” He looked at Stacey a moment and then moved on. But she wasn’t sure just how far down the hallway he had gone.
“I’ll close the door,” Irene said, “so Gerald can’t disturb us. Go on, get in. I’ll just sit here and keep you company like I used to.” She closed the door and turned back.
Stacey took off the robe and stepped into the tub. She lowered herself into the warm water and submerged her body in the bubbles. For a few moments, for a few insane moments, she closed her eyes and actually enjoyed the scent of roses and the warm feeling.
What’s happening to me? she wondered. What the hell is happening to me? She could barely keep her heavy eyelids open.
Gerald went to his bedroom and waited. He didn’t want to go downstairs until the woman was safely secured back in her room. He’d been lacing her food and liquids with capsule granules from the sedatives their family doctor had prescribed for Irene’s nerves after Arthur’s death, but only enough to put her lightly asleep, or slow her down a bit. He knew that Irene could get carried away with things and forget where she was and what she was doing. He sat at the foot of their bed and stared through the doorway at the bathroom, imagining the woman in the tub, the sweet-smelling water frothing around her. He envisioned the warm water making her flesh pink. He would have liked to have been the one washing her down, handling her as he would a child.
The fantasy excited him and his breath quickened. He pressed the palms of his hands together. Maybe later tonight, maybe when Irene was asleep and all was quiet, he would go into the woman’s room and…and what? What was wrong with him? Why was he thinking these things now?
He looked up when Irene’s voice grew louder. They were finished in there. He was sure of it. He went to the bathroom door and knocked.
“You ready in there?” he asked.
“Almost, Gerald,” she called. To Stacey she said with a conspiratorial smile, “That Gerald. He’s always so prompt.”
“Please,” Stacey said.
He heard some whispering. “What’s going on? I’m coming in,” he said, opening the door quickly. But he stopped just after entering. Stacey, dressed in the sheer nightgown, stood back against the bathroom wall. She embraced herself, covering her breasts with her arms. She looked exhausted. Irene held the chain toward her. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s being stubborn about the chain,” Irene said, her voice rising as if she were singing.
Gerald started toward her.
“No, no. I’m not being stubborn. I just said I promised I wouldn’t run away, only leave the chain off. Please,” she said slowly.
“Put it on,” Gerald commanded.
“We’ve got to do as Gerald says, Marlene. Now let’s not be contrary, not after we were having such a good time and you had such a good bath.”
Stacey closed her eyes and reluctantly offered her right ankle. Irene fastened the chain around it, clicking the lock fast. After it was in place, she handed Stacey the bathrobe. Gerald watched her put it on.
“Now isn’t this better?” Irene said. “I bet you’re tired now. Come on. You go back to bed and I’ll bring up some tea. I know: I’ll bring some of the albums, too, and you can go through them until you’re tired. Would you like that?”
“Yes,” Stacey said weakly. Irene took the other end of the chain and Stacey started out of the bathroom. Gerald backed up to let them pass. He followed them back to Stacey’s bedroom and watched Irene fasten the chain to the bed.
“Everything’s all right now, Gerald,” Irene said. “You can go back to whatever you were doing.”
He stared for a moment. Stacey stood by the side of the bed. She hadn’t taken off the robe yet.
“You’d better go down and check on those kids before long,” he said.
“I will, Gerald. Don’t you think I know enough to do that? Really. He can be such an ogre sometimes,” she said to Stacey, who didn’t reply. Irene pulled the blanket back and Stacey slipped out of the robe and into the bed as quickly as she could. Satisfied, Gerald left the room.
He went downstairs quickly and listened at the basement doorway. He heard Shirley dictating orders to the little girl. He thought she sounded more like him than like Irene, but that didn’t bring a smile to his face. Instead, it saddened him.
He looked toward the back of the house and then listened for any sounds from upstairs. Confident that all was well, he stalked to the back of the house and went out through the back door. He decided it was time to turn his attention to the man.
Somewhere along the road to Mountaindale Chicky Ross noticed that the rattle in the exhaust pipe was growing steadily worse. He had a sudden desire to pull over and call his damned brother-in-law to make him come to his station this evening and repair the car on the spot, but he quelled the urge. He’d only screw up something else, the detective realized.
Anyway, I’m on the trail of a burglary suspect, he reminded himself. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t had any d
inner. Maybe this doctor-imposed diet wouldn’t be so hard to follow after all—all he had to do each night would be to close in on a suspect, bring him in for a few hours of questioning, get a confession, and head for the scene of the crime. In this case, that was a bungalow colony. Then he’d crawl under a casino and dig up his stash of stolen goods and return to the station to complete the paperwork. I’ll never have time to eat again.
But Ross felt too tired to laugh. There was something else weighing on his mind: It was the Oberman case. Right now it was annoying him that the man hadn’t had the decency to call and leave word about his progress, one way or another. For all Chicky knew, the wife had been located. He might very well have informed the state police, but it was downright inconsiderate not to call the local police. I wasn’t exactly indifferent to his plight, Chicky thought. Maybe skeptical, but not indifferent.
When he came to the turn-off that would lead him to David’s hotel, he took it. Chicky drove up to the front entrance of the plush resort hotel, but before the car hop could get up from his seat, Chicky raised his hand to indicate that he wasn’t going to be long. The front of the hotel and the lobby were quiet because the guests had all gone to the nightclub to see the show. He went right to the front desk.
“Ring Mr. Oberman’s room, please,” he asked the receptionist. She looked up the room number and quickly dialed it. Chicky waited by the phone on the counter, but she didn’t signal him to pick up the receiver.
“No answer. Maybe he’s at the show.”
“Do you know who he is?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Get me the maître d’ in the nightclub,” he said. After she rang him he picked up the receiver. “This is Detective Ross, Fallsburg Police,” he said. “Did you seat a Mr. and Mrs. Oberman tonight?” The man on the other end of the line said no right away. “Are you sure?” The maître d’ assured him he was. “Thank you,” he said and hung up.
He looked about and then went to the pay phone just off the lobby. He called the state police barracks and asked for Captain Stark because he knew him well and because the captain would save him time. Fortunately, Stark was on duty.
“Following up on a case you guys were given…the Oberman affair? Wife and daughter missing?”
“Oh yeah, sure.”
“Anything?”
“I don’t think so, but let me check.” After a few moments, Stark was back on. “No, nothing yet. You have something?”
“The husband went off looking for her today, but as far as I can tell, he didn’t call to contact me and he hasn’t returned.”
“What’s Krammer say?”
“He says leave it to you guys,” Chicky said.
Stark laughed. “I’ve heard that before. I’ll make sure we leave word for you if we get anything on it.”
“Thanks.” After he hung up, he went back out to the lobby. Something was wrong; the whole thing felt wrong, but he didn’t know to whom he should talk. All he could do was wait until the morning.
It didn’t occur to him until he was back in his car that tomorrow was his day off. Oh well, he thought, if it was his day off, Krammer couldn’t chastise him for taking an interest in this case and conducting a personal investigation to satisfy his curiosity. After I get this damned radio and the damned exhaust pipe fixed, he told himself. And then, being more honest with himself, he admitted that the repairs could take a second seat to the David Oberman case.
“I can’t help it,” he told the invisible critic beside him, “it’s the damned policeman in me. And anyway, you can’t blame me for having a brother-in-law who’s a rotten mechanic.”
He finally got a laugh out of himself and drove on to pick up tonight’s prize, a certain wayward handyman.
7
David awoke at the bottom of the old, dry well. Actually, what finally woke him was the tremendous pain in his right ankle. It felt as if someone was cutting off his foot with a sharp knife. As he surfaced further into consciousness, the pangs grew sharper. His ankle burned with agony and that agony began to travel up his leg into his hip.
He moaned and turned his body. When he did, he felt the scrapes and bruises on his arms, shoulders, and legs. The left side of his forehead ached and his neck and chin burned where the chain had been wrapped around him. What the hell had happened to him?
It took him a while to realize where he was. The earth under him smelled fresh, but an oddly contrasting acrid odor mixed with it to make him flinch. The darkness around him cloaked him in impenetrable black. He reached out and felt the stones under his fingertips, piled in circles several feet high. The ground beneath him was damp, and because fresh earth had been dumped recently, the ground had cushioned his fall. Still, he didn’t fully understand where he was until he looked straight up and saw the stars. After a moment he was able to visualize the circular opening and he understood he was at the bottom of a well.
Now he remembered picking up the doll, feeling the chain around his neck, and seeing the woman’s face in the window. He could imagine the rest: obviously, after he had lost consciousness, the man had thrown or dropped him down this well. Even though he felt his sense of perspective was off, he estimated that it was at least twenty to twenty-five feet to the top. Christ, he thought, I’m lucky to be alive after such a fall.
He struggled into a more comfortable sitting position and then reached about to find a sufficient indentation in the well wall for him to insert his fingers and pull himself to his feet. The moment he did so, he winced. He realized he couldn’t put the slightest amount of pressure on his right foot. He might as well have had his right leg amputated for all the good it would do him now.
He imagined that when he was dropped into the well, he must have landed on that ankle and sustained a compound fracture. He suffered all the scrapes and bruises during the fall as well, he decided. Now that he considered it, he wondered if he had done any more damage, damage he didn’t yet realize. He took a deep breath, anticipating a fractured rib, but there was no pain in that area; or perhaps the intensity of the pain from his ankle drowned out pain from any other sector.
He looked up through the opening and drew dizzy, so he lowered himself to the damp earth, a grimace on his face, and tried to catch his breath. He reached into his pants pocket for his handkerchief and pressed it against the sore spot on his forehead. He looked at it, confirmed that he was still bleeding, and pressed it again to his forehead until the bleeding stopped. After a few moments, he hoisted himself back into a standing position again and made an effort to pull himself up the wall, using only his left foot as a brace. He succeeded in lifting his body a good foot from the bottom before his foot slipped on a small ledge of protruding rock and he tumbled to the well floor again. Despite his effort to protect it from impact, he landed squarely on his right foot and the resulting stab of pain caused the blackness to engulf him once more. Unconscious he lay curled in a twisted ball at the other side of the well.
This was the way Gerald found him when he directed the beam of his flashlight down to the bottom of the well. The illumination washed over David’s back and revealed his twisted, still form. Gerald studied him for a moment. Satisfied, he turned off the flashlight and retreated from the edge of the well.
When David came to, he coughed and spit; there was the taste of earth on his lips. He pushed himself up and leaned back against the wall of the well. For a few moments he just sat there gulping in deep breaths until he felt the return of some strength. Then he looked up longingly at the well opening. Although it wasn’t that far away, at this moment it looked as far away as the moon. When he thought about it, he realized the well should be deeper than it was. Then he considered the fresh earth, and wondered if Gerald weren’t burying something at the bottom of the well. He turned away the gruesome thought. He had to focus his energies on one goal.
He leaned over and felt his ankle. His discovery made him shudder as though ice had been dropped down the back of his shirt. He could feel the broken bone pressing u
p against his skin. It caused a weakness in his stomach and he began to retch. He fought to bring it to a quick end, but it left him feeling even weaker than before.
He embraced himself tightly and shut his eyes as if he could shut away the reality. He wasn’t breathing as much as he was gasping now, but he knew that if he didn’t get a hold on himself and get a hold quickly, he could lose consciousness again and maybe die down here. The acrid odor was stifling.
Hope for recovery or rescue could come only after he fought back panic. He knew this and centered on it, using his practiced ability to concentrate. He talked to himself, speaking aloud as if another person sat across from him in this well.
“You’ve got to take stock of the situation. You’ve got to look for solutions. You can’t dwell on the pain. This is no time to feel sorry for yourself. Get your strength back; get yourself thinking clearly again. Come on, get on with it. Take two deep breaths. Hold the air in. Release it slowly. Forget the pain. You’ve got to live with the pain for a while. Straighten up. Let’s go, Oberman. Let’s go,” he chanted.
It seemed to work. He opened his eyes and considered his plight. It would be hard; it would be dangerous, but he had to work his way back up this well. It could be done; it must be done. There wasn’t any alternative. He had to push failure out of his mind.
His determination sprang from a bone-chilling realization: considering what had happened to him, Stacey and Tami had to be in some terrible trouble. He tried to keep them from his mind as he explored the walls of the well. He knew that if he dwelt on what might have happened to them or what might be happening to them now, he would grow weak and incapable of achieving anything.
He told himself that they were obviously locked up in that house, held against their will for whatever reason these mad people had concocted; but once he crawled out of here, he would easily get help; it would all be over soon. Relying on his methodical and logical mind, a mind that had gotten him this far in life, he put all his mental energy and attention on the initial step—finding a way to scale the well.
The Maddening Page 12
