Nesha’s torso rose and fell beneath the water, rose and fell, his arms pulling him toward racing speed. He needed to shake himself free of any doubt. He needed to fashion himself into an unswerving weapon. A seed of pain began in his stomach, he recognized its presence. He couldn’t stop now but turned at the edge of the pool in the elegant prescribed way, gliding under water, and thrashed his butterfly stroke back through the lane as fast as he could.
For years he had floated on the surface of things, feinting to the left or the right whenever anything resembling emotional confrontation drifted too close. He had been more than willing to swim himself to fatigue by day and drug his mind before the TV at night, not asking any more from life than to be left alone. But now, what was he to do? Now, with the murderer looming before him and his mother’s eyes after decades of silence coming back to him in dreams, the way she turned her head that last time to find him, the dark bun unravelling in strands, her face twisted with terror, and her eyes pleading with him to run, run, never come back. His heart had pounded to his own footfalls as he raced through the woods confused, terrified. Dead branches cracked beneath him like gunshots — did they hear? Were they following him? After an eternity of running he came to a clearing in the forest that seemed familiar. Hadn’t it been summer when he’d been there last and a silky stream had trickled through a narrow gully? Last summer. A few months. A lifetime ago. He, his mother, and little Motele had trekked leisurely to a neighbouring village for some loaves of fresh challah. Now the stream had vanished and the gully was a thin line in the snow. Was this really the place he had been so carefree, so childlike? He found the birch tree where his mother had instructed him to carve all their names in Hebrew letters and then, beneath: Next year in Jerusalem. The ultimate Jewish rallying cry. He spat on it. None of his had ever made it to Jerusalem. His had become smoke rising from the ancient synagogue, the smoke thick with blood, the realization that every person who had ever loved him was gone forever. And now the murderer before him, living his life out as if he had been born in 1945 with no memory.
His guts rose in revolt against the steady diet of mash he’d been surviving on. His body thrashed through the water, in turmoil as the pain that took root in his stomach clawed at his arms and legs, knotted his calves, clutched his biceps, pulled the muscles down, down. Yet still he churned out the stroke, though a black noise thundered in his ears. He had encountered this wall of pain before and retreated from it. They said a champion had to push himself right into the pain. When he was young he thought he wasn’t good enough to risk it. When he got older, he thought it was too late but now he pushed himself into the wall of it, partly to try to obliterate the picture of the murderer before him, partly to prepare his unaccustomed body to its new presence.
chapter eleven
Rebecca drove to her new office after dark for the first time. Beverley Street, empty at that hour but for the parked cars, had taken on a different cast. The stillness, the Victorian calm of the houses, suddenly seemed like a predator waiting. She pulled into the parking lot behind the building and killed the ignition. There was an overhead lamp fixed to the brick wall, illuminating the asphalt. Streetlights ranged along Beverley and D’ Arcy in high arcs but in her rear-view mirror she saw only shadows stretched between the disparate pools of light.
Across D’ Arcy Street the old brick schoolhouse floated behind a deep mantle of shade thrown by the mature spruce trees in the yard. The school had gone through several incarnations in its long life. Now it was an alternative high school. She wondered how tall those spruce trees had been when David attended Hebrew school there some thirty years earlier. The vision of a young David playing catch in the yard had often comforted her when she looked out the examining room window upstairs. But now, from street level, night and the memory of Mrs. Kochinsky’s crumpled body transformed the corner into a bog.
She rifled through her purse in the dark until she found her keys. Only then did she step out of the car. She knew the fear, the uncertainty, would stay with her until she managed to chase it out one day, but at the moment she couldn’t see her way clear to it. She hurried toward the back door, throwing the shadowy bog behind her a cautious glance.
She unlocked it and searched for a light switch on the wall before venturing inside. It wasn’t there. Stepping tentatively into the dark hall, she felt her way along the door frame without success. Finally she reached across to the opposite wall and flicked on the switch. The emptiness of the hall she encountered daily was suddenly foreign to her.
As she walked briskly along the corridor and up the stairs to her office, she wondered why this couldn’t have waited till morning. But she knew why. It wasn’t just giving the file to Wanless. She wanted to look something up for herself. That voice from the past. She wanted to know why it was important.
She fitted the key into her door and opened it. Suddenly she stopped. A muffled sound reached her from the downstairs hall. She told herself to get a grip. Maybe it was just an echo of her opening the office door in the empty building.
She found Mrs. Kochinsky’s file in the cabinet and sat down near Iris’ desk. Reading through her notes on the woman’s visit last week, Rebecca tried to piece together scraps of information like a jigsaw. According to Mrs. Kochinsky, a few days before the visit she had received a startling phone call from a distant cousin. Startling, it seemed to Rebecca (she could only guess since the woman’s explanations were often non-linear and hard to follow) because the cousin had till then communicated only through widely spaced letters over the years. They had met only once, growing up in different parts of Poland. He survived the war, a young teenager at the time, and moved to the States. All this Rebecca gleaned from the most obscure of references in her notes.
She could see from her scribbled notes yesterday that there had been some confusion about why Mrs. Kochinsky had come downtown to shop instead of staying on Eglinton Avenue where she felt safe. What had she said? My cousin from U.S. coming. He ask me to shop so I looking around. Something like that. But there had been a sense of urgency about the shopping Rebecca couldn’t reconstruct or perhaps didn’t understand to begin with. All she knew was that Mrs. Kochinsky had been shopping when she’d been badly frightened. The man who was going to kill her, she had said. But why was he going to kill her? It had always been so obvious to Mrs. Kochinsky. The people who were after her didn’t need reasons. This gap in the logic had led Rebecca to her diagnosis of paranoia. Not once, but often. And yet the woman was dead.
Rebecca closed her eyes and conjured up Mrs. Kochinsky sitting across from her. The Greta Garbo face mouthed the words but no sound came forth. Her grey-brown hair trembled with effort. Rebecca watched the mouth, willing it to speak, but it was no use. Suddenly the old woman’s head turned dolefully toward the door and Rebecca opened her eyes. She had definitely heard something downstairs.
Treading softly to the office door, she turned the knob without a sound. The light was still on in the hall downstairs. She listened with the door open a crack. All at once a shadow materialized on the lighted wall. Her nerves shot to the surface. Keep calm, she thought. It must be Dr. Arons coming back for something. She held her breath and watched. The shadow crept closer. Why would Dr. Arons aim at stealth? She would just saunter in and go to her office door. The shadow grew larger on the wall, then stopped. It was waiting, listening. Suddenly the shadow moved and the light in the hall went out. It wasn’t Dr. Arons.
Then came a stick and beat the dog
That bit the cat that ate the goat
That Father bought for two zuzim.
One little goat, one little goat.
chapter twelve
Rebecca quickly switched off the lights in the office and closed the door, locking it. Turning to face the darkness, she felt a damp chill spread under her arms. A paltry grey light filtered in through the window of the waiting-room. She could try to climb out of it. Problem was the ceilings were rather high in those old buildings, the distance to the gro
und neck-breaking. And the window faced D’ Arcy; beneath it a cement walkway stretched between the back parking lot and the front door. If all else failed.
In three quick steps she crossed the floor to the phone on Iris’ desk. For the second time that night she dialed 911.
“I need help,” she whispered. “Someone’s broken into the building. Please hurry.” She murmured the address into the phone.
Within arm’s length stood the cabinet of medical supplies. She opened the drawer. Feel around for it. Find it. In the dark she flicked on the pocket flashlight she used to look down throats. Shining it in the drawer, she searched. A weapon. She needed a weapon. Okay, better than nothing: a disposable scalpel. She picked it up and poked off the protective cover, dropping it in her jacket pocket.
Behind Iris’ desk, she stood listening to herself breathe, the scalpel in the palm of her hand. Footsteps began to climb the stairs. Her heart thumped against her ribcage. Someone was going to kill her. He had killed Mrs. Kochinsky and now he was going to kill her. But why?
He was climbing slowly. Waiting on every step. Closer and closer, each step louder. Finally he stopped: he had reached the landing. She gripped the scalpel in her fist, not daring to breathe. She watched the door intently, then focused on the knob. Her pulse pounded. She shone the pocket flashlight on the knob with her left hand. It began to turn, then it stopped. Her heart lurched in her throat. Again it turned until it could go no further in the lock. Several more times the knob turned quietly, discreetly. Her legs began to throb, shake. She had to keep her mind clear, not panic. Maybe he would give up when he realized it was locked. Maybe he would go away. Maybe pigs would fly.
Suddenly she heard him trying to manoeuvre the lock with something. A file, possibly. After a moment he tried it again, only this time he made no attempt at silence. The knob flashed back and forth, back and forth with a loud banging sound. He didn’t care if she heard anymore. The ruse was up. He was going to get through that door one way or another.
She stepped backwards away from the door, her mind aflame. How long would it take him to get through the door, how many minutes did she have left to live?
She ran through the hall toward the farthest examining room. Even at the back of the building the noise was agonizing. He seemed to be throwing himself at the door. She pictured Mrs. Kochinsky in her last moments, panicked, brutalized. Why didn’t anyone hear? Where were those cops? She eyed the window of the tiny room, wondering if she would break her neck as easily on asphalt as on cement. Suddenly without warning, the noise stopped.
She closed her eyes to hear better. The only sound was her pulse throbbing in her ears. No, wait. Something else. A siren. She heard a siren wailing in the distance. He must’ve heard it too. She waited a moment to be sure, then began to creep down the hall back toward the waiting-room.
She wavered near the window of the waiting area. The ragged light that filtered in from D’ Arcy Street lay ghastly on the tweedy sofas and pale walls. She stood there numb and mesmerized. She didn’t know how long before a loud pounding sounded downstairs at the front door.
“Open up! Police!”
Thank God. Yet she held her breath, listening. Could he still be there, waiting by the door? He’d be a fool to stay. But how did she know what he was. Maybe he was a fool and lay in wait on the other side of her door in the darkness of the hall.
“Police!” yelled the man at the front entrance. A fainter yet steady thumping issued from the back. They had the place surrounded.
But what if he killed her before the cops could get in? What difference to her if they caught him later? No, she reasoned, this makes no sense. He’s gone and it’s only your own fear that’s keeping you inside.
She unlocked the office door. Waited. No one jumped in. She creaked the door open.
“Police! Open up!” cried the voice outside. Fists pounded on wood. “If you don’t open the door, we’ll break it down.”
Without stepping out of the office, Rebecca craned her neck on both sides of the narrow hall. No one.
“I’m coming!” she yelled and ran down the stairs.
A strapping young uniform stood on her doorstep pointing a flashlight waist high. His expression was unaccountably wary.
“Thank God! I’m so glad to see you,” she said, acutely aware of her heart still lurching in her chest.
Suddenly the flashlight blazed in her eyes. “Put down the weapon, ma’am,” said the policeman.
“What?”
She could see his eyes moving from her face to her hand. Then she remembered the scalpel. She had never let go of it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling the handle suddenly hard in her palm. “I’m a doctor. I thought I’d have to protect myself. I’ll just....” Embarrassed, she felt in her jacket for the cover, made a show of replacing it on the scalpel, then dropped it into her pocket. “When I realized someone was in the building, it was the only weapon I could find.”
“He still here?”
“I don’t think so. He was frightened off by the siren. Just a minute ago.”
“I’ll take a look around inside,” he said. “My partner’s at the back.”
Still numb, she watched him head down the hall towards the back door, his walkie-talkie, handcuffs, and holster all attached and protruding from the black leather belt girding his waist. He opened the rear door to let the other cop in.
“Anything?”
The other man shook his head. “All clear.”
The first uniform came back and tried Lila Arons’ door; it was locked. Rebecca took him upstairs to her office.
“Another minute he would’ve gotten through,” she said. “He would’ve killed me.”
The cop had her close the door between them to test the lock. It held fast.
“I can’t find anything here,” he said on the landing. “Both front and back doors were locked, no sign of forced entry. Same for the door to your office. Some scratches on the lock but could be just normal wear and tear.”
He watched her the way Wanless had watched her: professionally.
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“Nothing, ma’am, except the intruder didn’t leave any sign.”
“Someone was here,” she said. “I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Do you have some idea who it might be?”
She shook her head. “Someone killed one of my patients yesterday. I was just taking a look at her file when this happened. You can ask Detective Wanless. He’ll tell you. He’s at her house now. On Bathurst Street.”
“Detective Wanless. Is he Thirteen Division?”
She watched from the front door as the cop got into his cruiser and raised someone on his radio. When he returned to the building, his face was more human, easier to read.
“Detective Wanless asked me to take you to the station so you can make your statement.”
“What about the man who tried to kill me?”
His lips pursed and he looked away. “You know, we get lots of junkies breaking into doctors’ offices looking for drugs. Stoned out of their minds. But you know, ma’am, those guys are careless, usually leave something behind. Especially if they’re in a hurry.” The cop was having trouble making eye contact. She knew what that meant: embarrassment, disbelief. He looked like he wanted to believe her.
“Well, ma’am,” he said, looking behind her somewhere, “there’s really no evidence of any intruder, ma’am. Detective Wanless says you had a shock tonight.”
She watched the earnest policeman with horror. It was humiliating being patronized by someone so young.
“Ready to go, ma’am?”
“It’s all right, officer. I have my car.”
The policeman pondered her for a moment with reluctance, then tipped his hat and marched out to the squad car.
Rebecca walked along the hall toward the back door, carrying the manila envelope with Mrs. Kochinsky’s chart inside. She stood staring at the knob, turned it. Opening the
door, she leaned out and tried to turn the knob from the outside. It wouldn’t budge. From the outside, it was locked. Then how had the man gotten in? The young cop was right — there were no marks of forced entry. She stepped outside, letting the door close. Then she realized. It closed automatically. It took a minute, and most people didn’t wait. Is that what she had done earlier, gone upstairs without waiting, knowing the door would close automatically?
She stared down at the ground, suddenly astonished by the object illuminated in the glare of the overhead lamp. A branch from a spruce tree lay by the side of the steps. It hadn’t been there when she had arrived. She would’ve noticed it; it was quite large. Unlocking the door again, she picked up the branch and laid it on the threshold just inside the door. Then she let the door go. It caught.
She looked around with a quick nervous energy, her eye drawn to the darkness directly across the street. There, in front of the school, the spruce trees rose two stories, casting deep shadows. She squinted into the murk of the branches, willing a shape to appear. A breeze picked up, wafted past her and through the spruce needles, making them sway. She shivered and ran to her car.
chapter thirteen
Rebecca spotted the flashing red lights of the police cruisers like a mirage half a mile away as she drove up the hill of Bathurst Street. Though she had expected them, the actual image of disaster they represented produced a physical response in her gut. A vague sensation of hunger rose (had she eaten that day?) then dissolved in the roiling pit of her stomach. If Wanless thought he had finished with her, he was wrong. She had become convinced of one thing — Mrs. Kochinsky had not been murdered by a thief. The robbery was a sham.
She parked a block away from the commotion and slumped back into her seat, drained from the day: the emotion, the self-searching, the fear. People had gathered on the sidewalk in small groups, facing the house. A news photographer scanned the scene with a video camera.
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 7
