I came to the back of the old Victorian, peered out a pair of double doors and perceived a screened-in back porch and the ghost of a stoop beyond. Maybe some fresh air would help induce sleep in me, a little stargazing as I gathered my wool.
The air was indeed fresh but tainted slightly from Donna’s cigarette smoke.
I made some clatter so I wouldn’t scare her and sat down beside her on the stoop. “Still up?”
She blew smoke, nodded. “You too, or is that your ghost?”
I tucked my hands under my arms with a forced shudder. “Please, not tonight!”
Donna was wearing a light shawl around her shoulders. “I’ve got another one inside…”
“Nah. I’m okay,” I assured her, breathing deep of fine salt air carried from distantly muffled breakwater.
“Katie still at it?”
“Oh, yeah. Maybe all night. Katie is what we in the profession call…” I trailed off.
“Dedicated?”
“I was going to say ‘anal,’ but okay.”
Donna chuckled, held up the cigarette to me.
“Thanks, no.”
“Byron’s gone to bed.” She giggled the cigarette. “Don’t tell him, huh?”
“Lips are sealed!” I smiled, scooted closer. “Though I might accept a bribe…”
Donna grinned, puffed blue smoke at grayish sky, jerked her head toward it. “The night sky used to be perfectly black, they say, before the Navy arrived, and you could see all the stars.”
I watched her profile. “You’re lucky. You’ve got a great husband, two incredible kids, and you love it here.”
Her expression altered a millimeter and she opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it.
“Don’t you?”
She stubbed out the butt on the concrete stoop and instantly tapped out another. “I don’t know. Maybe. Once.”
Stupid!
“I’m sorry, Donna. But the worst is over, I promise, and we’re going to solve this thing.”
She said nothing for a time, just watched the sky; a navy plane blipped its engine prior to landing on the North Island. “Want to know what I think?”
“Yes.”
“I think some things are never over and some things can’t ever be solved.”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“We’re broke, you know. Did Byron tell you?”
It was one of those questions you can’t answer either way without getting into trouble. I sighed. “I think…even if he did tell me, Byron wouldn’t want you to know it.”
She puffed and smiled, turning admiring eyes to me. “Very good, very diplomatic. And you’ve have nice eyes too. She ever tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
I thought about it.
“Never mind, just misery looking for company.”
“Are you so miserable?”
She shrugged delicate shoulders under the shawl. “Not too, I guess, for a woman who hasn’t slept with her husband in over six months.”
And she turned and smiled at me. “You find me attractive, don’t you, Elliot?”
“I find you two of the most attractive people I’ve ever met! Please don’t ruin my fantasies and tell me the sex isn’t good.”
“Elliot, my friend, non-existent is neither good nor bad, it’s non-existent. And it isn’t Byron’s fault, not really. I know he loves me, as he knows I love him. But Byron defines himself by his work; I guess a lot of men do. And when Byron’s work is nothing, Byron is nothing. Impotent. Not entirely figuratively.” She looked at me quickly. “I’m sorry. We haven’t known each other long enough for me to be talking like this.”
“No, don’t ever think that, Donna.”
She shrugged, gazing at the glowing tip of her cigarette contemplatively. “Women, on the other hand, define themselves by family, by their children.”
I looked away. “Not every woman,” I said quietly, thinking of Rita.
“Are you kidding? Are you talking about Katie? Hey, buster, you don’t know how lucky you are. Being dedicated to your work isn’t the same as being consumed by it. Katie’s got mother written all over her face. Surely you’ve seen it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You two will have kids, all right. Just remember, like all things they come with a price. Children are God’s great gift. But…they own you…”
I turned back, saw tears forming.
“You’re lucky too, Donna. Nathaniel came back. Everything’s fine now.”
She leaned into me with a maternal smile, eyes shining, as she patted me on the back. “You know, Elliot, that’s what I would have thought! But it didn’t turn out that way. Not for me…”
I waited until she was ready.
“Shall I tell you what really happened? What really happened is that my baby disappeared—for how long no one is still sure—and the police came and searched. Byron was away on business. They searched the house and searched the grounds and searched the house again…and low and behold he miraculously turned up back in his crib. Right where he started from!”
She wiped at her eye.
“Right. So—“
“So?” She took a big drag and blew smoke out vengefully. “So put yourself in the officer’s place, Elliot. And tell me what you’d think. No, don’t bother, let me. You think the whole thing was one big very tasteless joke. But only for an instant! Because you’d see the tears in the mother’s eyes and the look on her drawn face and you’d realize, no, she isn’t screwing with us, she’s just insane! Nuts!”
I became aware that my mouth was hanging open. “They accused you of—“
“Not with their words, no. But their eyes…their eyes! They looked properly relieved and bid me a polite goodnight and went their way again. But the look in every last one of their eyes! Anyone ever looked at you like you were crazy, Elliot? Probably not. Well, let me tell you, there’s only one thing worse than when an entire squadron of policemen look at you that way and then hang around a few minutes, not sure if they should really go; then when they finally do, you can still feel their eyes on you as they drive off. Only one thing worse--when your husband comes home and looks at you with those same eyes.”
“Jesus.”
“Wait, you haven’t even heard about the neighbors, the news people! Your own mother! There’s a word for that look they give you, Elliot. It’s ‘unfit’! The judge and the people in the courtroom have exactly that same look!”
“Oh, God. Donna, you didn’t—“
“No. Only in my dreams. Every night. Every week. For a month. And here’s the clincher, Elliot: that look, that nasty, hideous look on the jurors’ faces? Here’s the really funny part! After a month of sleepless nights seeing that, over and over, even in the daytime, you look at yourself in the mirror one morning and begin to wonder if maybe they aren’t right…maybe you really are a bad mother, a woman unfit to raise children! Because, I mean, kids don’t just vanish, do they? They don’t just disappear! Right?”
The tears were running now.
I took her shoulders firmly in my hands, turned her to me. “Yes,” I said, “they do. Every day. And only the luckiest of the lucky come back.”
Donna’s mouth trembled involuntarily, her slim throat convulsing. Her expression was heartbreaking. “Think carefully, Elliot” she whispered, “think carefully before you have kids…”
I pulled her close, held here there on the cool stoop. Held her for maybe a full minute while she cried silent, un-sobbing tears. Kissed her temple, rubbed her back. “Don’t, Donna…don’t…”
“Elliot—?”
I craned around and found Katie standing beside before the double porch doors, her face in shadow.
“Is everything all right?”
Donna pushed away, smoothed my shirt front with one hand, and rubbed a final time at her cheek with the other. “Everything’s fine.” She tried on a wobbly smile. “Except it’s way past my bedtime.”
&nbs
p; She pushed up, snubbing out her cigarette, and smiled again, quickly passing Katie on the way to the doors.
I gave the stars a final sigh, pulled myself up wearily and came to my partner.
Katie was looking lingeringly after Donna’s departing form. Finally she turned to me. “Is everything all right?”
I looked up at the big dark house. The jutting gables, the spiking turrets, like spears stabbing the stars. “How could everything not be right in such a warmly hospitable domicile? What’s going on?”
She watched me a quiet moment, then bent her neck at the screened porch.
“Something inside. Something you need to see…”
* * *
I sat there half-dozing beside Katie at the console, trying to keep my eyes focused on the monitor.
Katie had the empty nursery on the screen and was clicking her nails across the keyboard, adjusting the crawl of numbers and dates superimposed near the bottom.
When the spinning numbers reached 11:52 she pressed a key and froze the image. “Watch now. Carefully.” She depressed the key and the tape began to roll.
I forced my eyes wide, tried to concentrate.
Katie clicked on the Stop button on the video display.
Turned to me. “See anything?”
I nodded sluggishly. “The nursery. Empty.”
She clicked the Rewind arrow, then stopped it again. “Only it isn’t.” She clicked the Start arrow.
I watched.
She stopped the picture again. “See anything that time?”
“Sorry. Look, I’m really tired…”
She hit the rewind. “S’okay, it took me over thirty passes to spot it. I’m slowing it down this time, watch carefully…”
I watched.
Something blinked by. “Hold it.”
Katie smiled. Backed up the tape one frame at a time.
“There!”
She froze the picture. The room was still empty of crew and furniture but now there was a pale blur of motion beside the big mantle. “What is it?”
Katie tapped a key once. The image disappeared.
“What was that?”
She tapped the key again, moved ahead one frame. The image was back. Small and pale and just emerging more clearly from under the mantle’s shadows.
Nathaniel.
I leaned closer to the screen. “Jesus…”
“Look at the timer at screen’s bottom.”
11:59.
“Just seconds before the clock chimed midnight. And the date…”
“Last night. It must have been when he trundled onto the set, spoiled the shot.”
She nodded. “Look at his arm. Above his head, like he’s waving to someone.”
I felt the chill inside, remembered what Nathaniel had told me when I was putting him to bed. “Animal People.”
Katie turned to me. “What--?”
“He told me before he fell asleep last night. He wasn’t waving, Katie…he was holding someone’s hand.”
When she didn’t respond I jerked to her. Her face was pale, cheeks sunken. “You okay?”
She swallowed thickly, nodded at the screen. “See anything else?”
I looked back and saw only the empty room, the white blur of Nathaniel’s Dr. Denton’s. “Just Nathaniel.”
Katie nodded. “Me too. The first eight times. Look above his head. The mantle. The clock.”
I leaned squinted. “It says midnight exactly.”
“Watch carefully now, the clock.” She adjusted buttons, tapped keys, brought the bigger scene into brighter resolution as it began zooming in on the antique clock.
Katie froze the screen. Brightened it another notch.
My breath caught. The clock face.
Something was reflected in it. A man’s face. Or something like a man. Scowling.
Katie adjusted the resolution, sharpened it. I felt my skin crawl.
The face became quickly feral.
Smiling.
The face of a panther.
ELEVEN
“Turn it off,” I said sharply.
Katie gazed at the inhuman reflection in the clock’s face. “What do you think it is?”
“Maybe a flaw in the tape…some kind of double exposure?”
“I don’t know. Turn it off.”
“I mean, if your compare the position of the little boy’s hand with that of the reflection in the clock, it really does look like they’re holding hands. How can that be?”
“I don’t know!”
She turned to me in the swivel chair. “You’re scared…”
“Which is why,” I nodded rapidly, “I want you to turn that thing off!”
She hit a button. The screen went black.
I sat back in my chair for a moment to get my breath, then craned around and looked toward the second landing staircase. “And whatever you do, don’t mention this to the Sandersons!”
Katie shook her head, still looking a bit pale herself. “Yes, it would only upset them.”
“No, it would scare the living shit out of them, the same way it does us! And we’re supposed to be the professionals! Honestly now, Katie, you ever see anything like this bef—“
“No.”
I was becoming more and more awake. “It’s…hellish!”
“Elliot—“
“I don’t see how even a kid could remain calm after looking at that…that…”
“Elliot! You’re working yourself up. You won’t sleep a wink tonight.”
“I won’t sleep a wink all week! And broke or not, I’m leaving all the Sandersons’ lights on down here in the living room tonight!” My eyes jerked to her. “Where are you sleeping, by the way?”
Katie pushed back from the work station, cheeks puffed. She blew out breath, then turned ominously eyes on the staircase. “I don’t know. Professionally speaking, I should stay in the nursery…or at least the smoking study down the hall.”
I stood, grabbed her wrist, pulled her up after me. “Screw professionally! You’re sleeping with me tonight!”
“Elliot—“
“I’m not asking, Katie!”
I dragged her across the room to the divan and pushed her down on the cushions. She bounced once, not resisting.
“Elliot…sooner or later…“
“What!” I demanded irritably, unbuttoning my shirt with trembling fingers.
Katie looked back at the long flight of staircase, the darkness crouching up there. “…sooner or later one of us is going to have to spend the night in that room again…”
I yanked down my jeans. “Let’s make it later!”
“We don’t have later,” she said, and began pushing up again from the divan. “It has to be soon…before something happens to the child…”
I pushed her right back down again. “It doesn’t have to be tonight!”
Katie sighed, sat back, and began slowly unbuttoning her blouse.
Eyes still on the darkened staircase.
* * *
“Elliot--? Are you awake?”
“I am now.”
“I was just thinking. What are we going to do about the two balls?”
“They’re here for your pleasure, love.”
“I’m serious.”
I rolled toward her, arm slung over my forehead. “I don’t know. I suppose we have to get one of them back to the nursery to make things exactly as they were before.”
“I agree. And it has to be the bigger one, I think. That’s the one we know for sure fell on the nursery floor, I remember it distinctly. It may still even have a tiny smudge of blood on it somewhere.”
“If it is blood.”
“If.”
I thought about it. “Or we could just ask Byron outright how many balls he bought.”
“Elliot, you’re over-complicating this.”
“Okay. Who’s going to make the switch?”
She thought about it. “Me. I’m less noisy.”
“I take umbrage to that!”
> “Less clumsy as well.”
I sighed ruefully. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you should make the switch. Even given that penchant of yours…”
“What penchant?”
I was silent.
“Oh. I see. Never mind, let me guess. About being a ballbuster, maybe?”
“It never left my lips.”
“Say good-night, Elliot.”
“Good-night, Gracie.”
* * *
Nathaniel poked me in the eye.
I said, “Ow!” and squinted one-eyed up at him through sunlight. “Good morning.”
Nathaniel was wearing that smile of his that made you realize you couldn’t be angry if he’d poked out both your eyes. He turned the smile on Katie, who was curled between me and the back cushions of the divan. He smiled wider and pointed at her. “Pretty!”
I turned my aching neck and gummy vision to her. She was asleep. And looking, in faraway secret dreams, about as old as Nathaniel. “Yes. She is. Very pretty.”
Nathaniel poked me in the solar plexus. “Married!”
I said ‘Ow!’ again and told him we were not married.
He slugged me harder, with his fist this time. “Married!”
“Hey! What’re you, champion bantam weight of Coronado? That hurts! You understand what hurt means?”
But the towhead was oblivious, eyes on Katie’s pink cheek and her slightly parted, perfect mouth. “Pretty like mamma!”
I caught him before he tumbled backward off the divan and adjusted him next to me. “Maybe even prettier. Nathan? Hey! Quit checking out the chicks and look at me…”
He did.
“How did you sleep last night, big guy?”
He shrugged blue, onesie shoulders.
“Daddy’s snoring keep you up?’
NIGHT CHILLS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 12
