by Noel Hynd
“Come on, Dad,” he grumbled aloud. “Leave me alone. Good cops are hard to come by.”
No one answered. A touch of incipient madness. Talking to himself on a public basketball court in the dying light of a summer evening.
Sullenly, he set down the water bottle and walked back to the foul line. Where was George Osaro?
“Stupid little fake priest! Insincere little Jap.”
The thought came to him involuntarily, as so many seemed to over the last few days. Immediately, he was ashamed of himself. George was his friend. And Tim Brooks hated few aspects of human misbehavior quite as much as he hated bigotry.
“Stupid little fake priest! Insincere little Jap.”
The sentence repeated within his mind again like an acid flash.
This time he practically had to physically reject it.
Then Tim realized. It was that involuntary inner voice that seemed to spring from nowhere yapping at him again.
“Go away,” he said aloud.
It did.
It was as if a little imp, whispering in his ear, had been dispatched. But Brooks could almost hear a little patter of demonic laughter as the imp departed.
Back to the foul line. There Timothy Brooks reigned. He authored another string of consecutive foul shots. This time he hit fifteen consecutively before one kissed the rim, skipped to the backboard, rebounded onto the rim again and then fell away.
Fifteen straight. His personal record on this court was forty-one. In game competition in high school he once had twenty-two. In college, he’d sunk nineteen. In the second round of the National Invitational Tournament one year again Villanova, he had been twelve for twelve.
He started again. This time he was at nine when he heard the readily recognizable sound of Osaro’s white Voyager and its cranky, grumbling engine.
The van rolled to a halt in the parking lot. Aiming for his eleventh in a row, Brooks heard the Voyager’s door slam shut. Retrieving the ball, Brooks saw his friend step out from the van and start toward the court.
Osaro held up a hand. Brooks smiled and waved back. Then he took another shot and missed.
“Ah. You’re in terrific form,” Osaro said, reaching the court.
Osaro knew better than anyone how well Brooks could shoot fouls. It was a hallmark of their friendship that Osaro would never acknowledge a successful skein of shots. But he would be all over his friend when the detective missed.
“Shut up,” said Brooks. “I was fine till you arrived.”
“Sure thing. A likely story.”
“You put any new dents in that piece of junk you’re driving since I saw you last?”
“Up yours, cop. You shoot any unarmed children since I saw you last?”
“Yeah, two. But they deserved it.”
“They usually do,” Osaro said.
Underhanded, Brooks tossed the ball to Osaro as hard as he could. Osaro made a clean catch of the ball—two arms cradled against his chest—and would not acknowledge that the force of Brooks’ throw might have knocked the wind out of him had he not been looking.
Brooks grinned. So did Osaro. Osaro took a shot from twenty feet out on the left side. It rebounded off the backboard and went through the hoop.
“Lucky,” said Brooks.
“I’m ready,” said Osaro.
“You sure?”
“You saw that hoop. I’m ready, man.”
“You got first ball in-bounds,” Brooks said, settling in and taking his mind off Annette Carlson and 17 Cort Street for the first time that day. “Play,” he said.
They played until dark. For a while, some teenagers played another game on the adjoining court.
Playing with unusual intensity, the policeman demolished the pastor 50-32, then 50-38.
“Holy crap!” muttered George Osaro as they walked back to their cars in the lot. “What’s eating you today?”
Brooks shrugged. “I just needed some exercise,” he lied. “Nothing’s bothering me at all.”
Osaro let Brooks’ response hang in the air for almost a full minute. He said nothing further until the two of them were almost to their cars.
“Liar,” Osaro finally said. “You’re involved with either a woman or a case. Or both. Think I’m an idiot?”
“George…”
Osaro laughed. “I told you, Timmy,” he said. “I got this gift. I see things that you don’t. I feel things that you don’t. I’ve got an altogether superior intellect. And sometimes I can read your feeble mind.”
“George, you couldn’t read the back of a box of cereal.”
Osaro laughed again.
“Don’t ever doubt me for a second,” Osaro continued. “Nostradamus predicted that Asian people would eventually triumph in the world. Are you forgetting that?”
“Nostradamus said ‘Chinese.’”
“Don’t get picky! Details, details.”
They reached their cars.
“Think I don’t know you’re falling in love, Timmy?” Osaro murmured to close the evening. “I warned you. I read your thoughts. I can tell.”
Brooks slid into his Wrangler and drove off without a response.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Early the next morning, Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of July, Tim Brooks picked up Annette at her house and drove her to the airport. She would take a forty-minute flight to Boston. She would take the ferry across Boston Bay, then a taxi to the doctor’s office. There she would keep her appointment with Gary Rossling, M.D.
Brooks returned to 17 Cort Street. He parked his car on the street before the quiet house. He used the extra house key that she kept under a rock in the garden.
The rear door opened and Brooks entered the house.
In the midmorning, 17 Cort Street was very quiet. Very still.
Peaceful as a tomb.
Somewhere in the distance, Brooks heard the sound of two children talking. He glanced at the window that overlooked the front lawn. A boy and a girl were passing the house on bicycles. Several minutes went by. He looked through the downstairs.
Then he heard a distant thump somewhere upstairs.
He thought nothing about it. Frequently crows or sea gulls landed on the roof and clawed at the shingles. Then he heard the same sound again. A second time he dismissed it. Then when it happened a third time, he went to investigate. He walked to the base of the stairs. The sound came from on high in the house. Timothy’s first instinct was to walk upstairs, all the way to the attic if necessary. Then he entertained a better idea.
He walked to the back door. He would throw something at whatever bird was on the roof. More direct. And secretly, more fun.
He walked outside. Squinting in the sunlight, he looked up to the roof.
“Oh, really?” he thought.
There was nothing there. For a moment, he was puzzled. So they flew away when they heard the back door open! The little feathered rats!
He grinned. Well, too bad. He would have enjoyed heaving a stone at something today. Not that he could hit the ocean from the end of a pier in his current mood. He went back into the house.
Another thump. A heavier one this time.
“So what is that?” he wondered.
He was irritated now. Something made him think of his boyhood back in Ohio. His mean-spirited uncle Marty used to prowl a barn with a twenty-two-caliber rifle, blowing away field mice. Not a bad idea. Timothy Brooks was a lifelong hawk on the subject of household pests. What use did they serve, anyway?
Two more thumps from above. Loud ones.
He walked up the front stairs. The noises, intermittent as they were, grew even louder as he drew closer. But they weren’t on the second floor. He passed the bedroom door and continued to search. For that matter, he decided as he heard the sound again, they were too close to be on the roof. And they weren’t the sounds of branches brushing against the outer walls of the house. He could tell that, too.
The noises were… within the house. In the attic.
Brooks
moved through the second floor. He stepped carefully to the landing below the back staircase that rose to the attic. A tiny wave of anxiety overtook him.
Squirrels? He wondered. A raccoon? A bird that somehow had crept under the eaves?
“Sure, cop!” a voice whispered somewhere within Brooks’ psyche. “Come and get me!”
Brooks recalled that there was only one window to the attic and Annette had carefully placed a screen upon it. The screen, he knew, was still in place. He had just seen it when he was outside.
“So what’s up there?” he said aloud.
“I am, you cowardly fool! Wreaking havoc!”
Then Brooks realized. That second voice within him, the involuntary one, was addressing him again, seeking a dialogue. Why? Maybe he should listen this time. Maybe it would tell him something.
The voice came back. “I’ll tell you something when I’m good and ready, scum!” it said.
Brooks’ anxiety turned to something heavier. His instincts told him not to fool with whatever was on the other side of the attic door. Then he collected his thoughts rationally. He gave himself a good mental lecture.
“Scared?” The alien voice mocked him. Then it vanished.
“Not scared,” Brooks said aloud. “I’m coming up there. I’m coming after you.”
“You don’t dare!”
Tim Brooks stood at the base of the stairs, gazing upward, summoning his courage. But as he stared at the door at the top of the steps, he felt his heart start to flutter. Above him, stark and mysterious, firm and unyielding, the attic door remained tightly shut. Ominously.
“Okay! Where does Annette keep the key, anyway?” he wondered. “Probably on her key chain which is probably with her in Boston. A lot of good it’s doing me there!” he concluded. “Better tell her to leave it here in the future.
More thumps from the attic. Then a few taps. Then there was a loud bang. With the flashlight in his hand, Timothy took a step up the final stairs in the house. Just one step. Then another. Then a third. He stopped short.
Then he recoiled. There was movement on the other side of the door. It sounded like a human. Or maybe a large animal. Claws or talons against the wood of the attic floor.
“Impossible! I’m not ready to believe this!” he thought. The attic was locked from the outside. What could possibly be in there?
But then there was another loud bang in the attic, so sharp that it jolted Brooks. And this bang was as if something hard and wooden had been hurled against the wall, then fallen to the floorboards and rolled.
Yes. Definitely, it had rolled! It sounded like a croquet ball rolling on a wooden floor.
Brooks whispered, “What in God’s name… ?”
Brooks felt himself tuning against this confrontation. But he again summoned up his nerve.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Get out of there!”
A human voice—his own voice—echoed through the silence of the upper floor and the attic. It sounded almost as if it belonged to someone else. Listening carefully, Brooks thought he heard a very distant laughter. But it could have been from the street. Or it might not have been.
Tim held still. Whatever was in the attic, a squirrel, a raccoon, a cat, or a… Whatever it was, it had been silenced. Scared off by a human voice! Or at least stilled by one!
He drew a breath and summoned up more nerve.
There were six more steps to the top landing and to the attic door. Brooks reckoned that he would climb them, knock hard on the door, shake the doorknob as if he were coming in and scare off whatever was in there for good!
That’s what he reckoned. But he never took another step forward.
He was lifting his foot to climb further when he encountered a blast of cold air.
Not just cold. Frigid. Icy. As if someone had opened a freezer door. The air enveloped him and seemed to enclose him.
He looked all around. There was nowhere for a draft to come from. And anyway, the blast seemed to have come from the attic and the attic door remained closed.
Physically, at least, it was closed.
He would later remember thinking, “But spiritually, it’s wide open, isn’t it? As open and beckoning as a freshly dug grave!”
Gaping open. Beckoning.
Brooks suppressed a deeply sickened feeling as the cold air held him. Then—“Oh, God, protect me! What’s this? I do not believe this!”
It almost felt as if a force were pushing hard against him.
“Oh, dear God! Something horrible is here!”
Brooks was at a loss to describe or understand it. But he felt it. He suffered a fresh perception: Something deeply evil hovered just out of sight.
Then another idea slipped inside him from somewhere. It was something like the nightmare he had had at his home, the dark deathly one with the little demon chewing at his guts. Instinctively, he put a hand to his midsection to protect himself. He expected the nightmare to be fulfilled.
Then he suddenly had a very different feeling, almost as if he were being watched. But from where? By whom?
Brooks heard a voice. It was his own. Self-defensive. Almost involuntary.
“All right!” he shouted. “I’m going! I’m leaving!”
He stepped back, off balance. Almost as if he were being shoved. And he retreated quickly down the attic steps. He was almost screaming. He had the overwhelming sense that something was there beside him. Something invisible! Chasing him, physically repelling him down those steps. Something driving him away from the attic door.
He arrived at the base of the stairs and he kept going for several feet. The iciness was gone. He stood motionless, his heart pounding. Nothing pursued him anymore, but he kept backing away.
“Okay,” he said aloud. “I’m going. Okay? I’m going. See?” He felt like a fool. But he kept his promise. He went back downstairs.
He found a few bottles of beer in Annette’s refrigerator and opened one. Then he sat in the kitchen for several minutes, thinking and listening.
Eventually, he retreated outdoors into the bright sunlight. He felt safer. He looked at his watch. Only three hours until it would be time to head to Nantucket airport and fetch Annette.
Three hours.
His heart continued to fluttering. He kept looking up toward the attic, but from the outdoors he saw nothing.
Had this really happened? Had he imagined it?
And why had he backed off? Why hadn’t he stood up to whatever enemy was there?
“Cowardice?” Was that the word for it?
There was no way, he realized, that he could ever describe what had just happened to him. To someone who hadn’t experienced it, it was indescribable.
It was difficult enough, he realized, to play it back in detail to himself.
The question posed itself to him again. “Cowardice?”
Then that creepy internal voice came back.
“Yes, Timmy, it was cowardice. So typical of you! Your first look into the other side of life! And you fled from it!”
More laughter, from somewhere.
Brooks went back to his Jeep and fled the premises.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The offices of Gary Rossling, M.D., were on a tree-lined city street in Cambridge. Dr. Rossling, the psychiatrist, had a pair of graduate degrees from Harvard, tacked on top of an undergraduate sheepskin from the University of California at Berkeley. Now he was in a lucrative private practice, wrote influential articles for half of the best professional publications, and was affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.
He had a faculty position at Harvard, where he was already a full professor. This much Annette knew after arriving at the address of his private practice and spending five minutes in the waiting room. Yet when the door to his inner office finally opened, Dr. Rossling was not what Annette had expected.
Annette had anticipated a small intense man with a pinched, shrewd face. He’d be bearded perhaps, dark but graying, and inevitably with gla
sses. Instead, Rossling was a young man, probably no more than thirty-five. He was handsome and tall, his hair reddish blond. His name may have been Austrian but his face was Irish. There were no eyeglasses and his stature and bearing were more those of a college baseball coach than a university lecturer.
Annette’s most recent therapist in Los Angeles had faxed Dr. Rossling a copy of her medical history, including three pages pertaining to her hospitalization for depression in Connecticut. Rossling had read everything thoroughly before their meeting.
“Hello, hello,” he said when he met her, coming to his office door. He offered his hand. “I’m Dr. Rossling,” he said. “Come in. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. We should talk a little before any of the professional mumbo jumbo.”
From that opening, Annette had a feeling she was going to like him. For a moment her gaze settled upon his hands. They were large, handsome and strong. Like those of Oscar de la Hoya, the boxer, whom she had once met on a film set in Los Angeles. Powerful. Positive. Affirmative. At the fringe of her consciousness flashed a warning about disturbed women who become sexually involved with their psychotherapists.
Disturbed women? Her? Annette? Well, she had come to Dr. Rossling’s office on her own volition, hadn’t she? She tuned out the thought.
He eased into an hour session, asking casual, questions at the outset. Then he posed a lengthy series of questions relating to her background. The questions tended to be clinical in nature and also addressed the time when Annette had been taking drugs.
When the discussion ended, Dr. Rossling invited Annette into his “conference” room. It was actually his examining area. It was a comfortably furnished chamber, primarily in a gentle shade of green. The light was subdued. There was a couch. But more than anything else, the couch seemed to exist more to observe the conventions of a doctor’s office and confirm patients’ expectation.
Annette didn’t use it and was not invited to. She sat in a leather armchair across a short coffee table from Dr. Rossling. He sat in an identical chair across from her. A pad of yellow legal paper lay across his lap and in his left hand—she noticed immediately that he was left-handed—a sharp Ticonderoga pencil stood sentry.
