Sibs F Paul Wilson

by Sibs (lit)

  Thank God! he thought as he stepped in to relieve his aching bladder. Never should have had that third coffee.

  The room behind the left hand door was lined with file cabinets. And it was windowless. He flipped on the light and pulled on the handle of the nearest drawer. It wouldn't budge. Same with all the others. Every cabinet was locked.

  Ed spent a few moments cursing Dr. Gates with every four-, ten-, and twelve-letter word he knew. He'd never imagined he might run into locked files inside a locked office.

  As he turned to make his way back to the consultation room, he noticed that the third door was standing ajar. He pushed it open and shone his flashbeam inside.

  Another windowless room, only empty. But the walls… they were covered with fabric. Thick fabric. The floors and ceilings too. He stepped inside and checked the inner surface of the door. That was covered too. He touched it. Soft. Then he realized where he was.

  In a padded cell.

  February 21

  12:05 A.M.

  Kara hung up the phone. She was grateful that Rob cared enough to call and check on her, but was uncomfortable with the implication that she needed someone to watch over her. Or was she being too analytical?

  She lay back in bed and waited for the Halcion to work.

  No dreams tonight. Please, no dreams.

  She wasn't up to any sex tonight, real or imagined. Peace, that was all she wanted. And a reasonably normal life, one in which she would feel safe sleeping in the same house as her daughter.

  Actually, she was spending more time than usual with Jill these past five days. And Jill, with the adaptability of a nine year old, had been quite content to go to parks and places like the Museum of Natural History when her mother was around, and watch the VCR when she wasn't. Today Kara had tried to watch a Disney movie with Jill. But it was Freaky Friday, the one in which Jodie Foster switches bodies with her mother. It struck Kara as too much like that damn crazy note. She'd had to leave the room.

  And her book… her book was going nowhere while the deadline kept creeping up. She didn't want to blow this. She was counting on that second payment on the advance. But more than that, she believed in her book, knew it would be an important contribution to the women's movement. If only she could get back to work on it.

  Tomorrow… she'd force herself to work on it tomorrow…

  Right now she felt sleep creeping over her. She blanked her mind and welcomed it.

  ▼

  Rob sat in his car, smoking and sipping Dunkin' Donuts coffee as he watched Gates' townhouse. He was waiting for the lights to go out so he could call it a night.

  Rob had been asking around about Gates. Nobody knew too much about him. Seemed to be a real homebody. Took vacations from his practice but never left town. No social life that anyone knew of. His world seemed to consist of his home and his office, and occasionally a trip to the hospital. Gates could walk to all three: a few blocks downtown on Seventh Avenue and he was at his office. A few blocks further down and he was at St. Vincent's on Eleventh Street in the village. That was his world. Family dead, no friends, no close ties to the medical community. The guy lived in a vacuum.

  Actually, he lived in a Victorian townhouse. Rob knew the type well: four floors and a basement. Once upon a time, before the recent regentrification of Chelsea, he had lived in one of these townhouses, two blocks down on Nineteenth. He had been a rookie then and had been rooming with Tony Morano, a friend from the Academy. But they had shared one of seven apartments in a subdivided building just like Gates'. Two apartments per floor and one in the basement.

  Gates had a whole townhouse to himself. That took bucks. Big bucks.

  Rob flipped the cigarette butt out the window.

  Come on, Lazlo Gati. Lock up your castle and go to bed.

  Just then the front door opened and Gates came down the steps. He started toward Seventh Avenue, just as he had last night. He was heading back to his office.

  Muttering under his breath, Rob started his car and prepared to follow.

  ▼

  Ed flipped the light switch in the padded cell. A fluorescent tube flickered to life behind a metal grille in the ceiling. There was no furniture, just the door, four walls, floor and ceiling, all padded.

  It was the damnedest thing. Whoever heard of a padded cell in a psychiatrist's office? What for? In case someone went berserk during a session? Ed smiled. Maybe it was for after they got the doc's bill.

  Seriously, though, what kind of people did this Dr. Gates treat that he needed a padded cell?

  And who cared, anyway? This wasn't helping him help Kara.

  As Ed turned to go, he noticed a row of buttons on the inside of the door. He recognized it immediately as an electronic combination lock. Six push-button numbers, and a "Lock" button.

  It struck him as odd that there would be a "Lock" button on the inside. He could see providing a way to let yourself out should you get locked in accidentally, but why would you want to lock yourself in here? Weirder and weirder.

  But again, this wasn't what he had come here for. He turned off the light and returned to the consultation room, making sure to leave the door closed behind him, just as he had found it.

  It was time to get out of here.

  He entered the waiting area and closed the consultation room door behind him. As he started toward the outer door, the glowing blip on the computer screen caught his eye.

  I wonder…

  He slipped behind the desk and looked at the screen. One word glowed in the upper left next to the blinking cursor.

  READY?

  Ed typed in YES and hit the Return key.

  The screen beeped and replied with: CODE?

  Oh, sure. Didn't that figure. Everything else was locked up tight, so why shouldn't Gates have access codes for his computer files.

  For the hell of it, Ed typed in GATES and hit Return. He was rewarded with:

  INELIGIBLE COMMAND

  CODE?

  Ed tried again with LAWRENCE, LARRY, MD, NUTS and made a final stab with SHIT. Each was answered with the same message as the first. He was about to give up when he remembered that reference book in the library, the one used by all shrinks to code their diagnoses. The DSM-III-R. He racked his brain trying to remember the code for Multiple Personality Disorder. He'd read it so many times he could almost picture it in his mind. In fact, he could picture it. And the code number was 300.14. He punched that in.

  The screen beeped and a list of names popped up.

  Now we're cookin!

  He hit the Scroll button and searched for "Wade" as the list of names slid up the screen.

  ▼

  Rob pulled into the curb half a block down from the Kramer building and waited for Gates to catch up. The only way this sort of move could backfire was if Rob had guessed wrong and Gates was not going to his office.

  Nope. There he came. Striding along like he was out for his morning constitutional.

  Crap. Another long night.

  ▼

  Ed was flabbergasted. He hadn't actually counted, but a big part of Gates' practice was diagnosed as Multiple Personality Disorder. All were women, and most were in their twenties and thirties. The books Ed had reviewed had said the disorder was rare. If that was true, Dr. Gates had tapped into a rich vein of multiple personalities.

  But that wasn't all that had disturbed Ed. He had scrolled through Kara's file and then Kelly's. They'd been very similar. That was to be expected, he guessed, what with their being twins with the same disorder, but a number of paragraphs appeared word for word in both files. That bothered him. He picked a few other names at random from the list.

  They all had the same psychiatric history. Classic Multiple Personality Disorder. Their histories were described each time in almost the exact same wording. It was almost as if Dr. Gates were using a computer boilerplate method for his medical charts, the way Ed's legal department used computers to piece together the paragraphs of various contracts.

 
The more Ed read, the more he became convinced that the psychiatrist was doing just that.

  And then he heard the key slipping into the lock on the outer door and turning.

  Oh, Jesus!

  Ed slid from the chair and ducked behind the desk, so terrified that he was sure he was going to wet his pants. What was he going to—?

  The flashlight!

  He popped his head up, saw it, grabbed it, and dropped back down just as the lights went on. He crouched there, holding his breath and praying, promising God that he'd start going back to church every Sunday instead of just Christmas, Palm Sunday and Easter as he did now. He was in the middle of promising to receive communion every Sunday for the rest of his life, and trying to think of something else to promise, when whoever it was who had come in walked straight through the waiting area and into the consultation room, closing the door behind him.

  Ed gave him thirty seconds. He watched his Movado count them off one by one, then he rose to his feet and tiptoed to the door. He unlocked it, slipped out into the hall, and eased it closed behind him. He debated half a second about relocking it, then decided to hell with it. He headed for the stairs at a brisk walk. It was all he could do to keep from sprinting.

  ▼

  Rob was slipping into a doze when his beeper went off. "What the hell—?" He got out of the car and went to the booth on the corner. He called the precinct house and learned that Tommy Doyle was looking for him.

  "Been trying to reach you all night, Harris. You on a plant or somethin'?"

  "What is it, Tommy?" Rob said, yawning.

  "The print report you were waiting for on that electric bill came in. They made a match on the third set of prints."

  Rob was suddenly wide awake.

  "Anyone we know?"

  "No name, but it matched the partials they found in the hotel room on that Kelly Wade case you've been hauling around."

  Rob's insides tightened. He thought he had been blowing the threat in the letter out of proportion to keep Kelly's case open. But now there was a direct link to Kelly on the night she died. So maybe this wasn't from a harmless kook. Maybe there was real danger to Kara.

  "Thanks for finding me, Tom. I—damn!"

  Someone in coveralls had just come out of the Kramer building and had taken off down the street at a run. It hadn't been Gates—too short, hair too dark.

  Rob hung up and started after him, but he was already out of sight, up one of the side streets. He was tempted to follow, but that would leave Gates unattended. And Gates was the one he was really interested in.

  Rob returned to his car and settled back with his eyes fixed on the entrance to the Kramer building.

  ▼

  Ed ducked into the first alley he found and shucked his coverall. The February night air cut through his flannel shirt but he didn't care. He wanted to be rid of that thing.

  He hurried up to Sixth Avenue and looked for a bar. A place called Edwin's beckoned from across the street. He hurried over. It was dark and smoky and almost full. Perfect. He ordered a double Absolut on the rocks. They didn't carry Citron, so he told the bartender to squeeze a lime in it.

  Sweet Jesus, what a night!

  Who'd have thought that Gates—he assumed that had been Gates who'd come in—would return to his office after midnight?

  I could have been caught!

  But he hadn't been caught. In and out with no one the wiser. He'd done it. His own Mission Impossible.

  He sipped the drink and wondered what to do with what he had learned. But what had he learned?

  Why would a psychiatrist be manufacturing medical histories for his patients? It didn't make sense, and he didn't know what he could or should do about it. But one thing was for sure: He had to tell Kara. And soon.

  Why not now? She might be asleep, but he had to unburden himself. He had to share what he had done and learned with somebody else. He went to the pay phone and called her.

  Her voice when she answered was cautious but alert.

  "It's me. Ed."

  "Ed?" She almost sounded as if she didn't know who he was.

  "Yes. Look, I know it's late, but I've just come across some really important things that I've got to tell you about."

  "Tonight? Now?"

  "Yes. Can I come over?"

  "I'm very tired, Ed. I don't think—"

  "It's about Dr. Gates."

  There was a long pause on the other end, then:

  "What about Dr. Gates?"

  "I've just learned something about him. I think there's something funny going on."

  "I'd very much like to hear about this, Ed. Where are you?"

  "In a dive on Sixth, but you don't want to come here."

  "Can I meet you someplace convenient for both of us?"

  Ed faced through a mental list of places that would be comfortable for Kara and wouldn't turn him away in his present state of dress.

  "How about the bar at the Warwick? It's on Fifty-fourth and Sixth, about halfway between us."

  "I'll meet you there in half an hour."

  "Great."

  Ed hung up and wondered why his previous elation seemed to have faded. If anything, it should have been boosted by the prospect of meeting Kara tonight. She'd certainly agreed readily enough after he said it had to do with Dr. Gates, but she'd sounded strange. Distant.

  Well, she'd said she was tired. It had to be that.

  He finished his drink and went out to the street to see if he could find a late cruising cab, otherwise it was going to be a long cold walk up to the Warwick.

  ▼

  Rob watched the entrance to the Kramer building and pondered the identity of the owner of the third set of prints on the electric bill. Whoever had left them had been in the Plaza with Kelly on the night she died. He was getting closer. A key to the mess was dancing somewhere beyond the edges of his consciousness, just past his reach.

  He also wondered who had come out of the building a while ago. That, too, gnawed at him. If only he'd been in his car at the time, he would have had a better look. All Rob could say now was that he'd carried a vague resemblance to that guy Ed who'd been hanging around Kara.

  Ed… there was a strange bird. Didn't seem to be a threat. Actually seemed to be helping with the legal details. Nice of him to bring over those estate papers for Kara on Thursday. Or maybe he had the hots for her.

  Rob jolted upright.

  Thursday! Ed had been with Kara when she got that letter! He could have touched it. He must have touched it! He'd read it!

  "Shit!"

  And Ed had known Kelly! So he could have been with her the night she died! He was the guy who could fill in all the blanks.

  Rob jumped out of the car and ran back to the phone. He called Kara's number. If she knew where Ed lived, or even had his home phone number, Rob could haul him in for questioning. Now!

  As Kara's phone began to ring, Rob glanced up at the Kramer building. Gates be damned! Let him doodle around up there till sunrise. He could wait. This was the first real lead on this case and he wasn't going to waste any time getting to it.

  Kara's phone kept on ringing. And ringing.

  Tiny pulses of apprehension scattered through him. He knew she was taking sleeping pills, but the phone was right next to the bed. And he knew she was there— he'd spoken to her around midnight.

  Something was wrong.

  He made a quick call to Doyle, told him to pull the personal effects bag on Kelly Wade and have it ready, then he ran for his car.

  ▼

  The Warwick bar was almost empty by the time Ed finished telling Kara of his evening's exploits. He searched her face for some sign of approval. It was slow coming, but finally a warm smile lit her features.

  "You did all that for me?"

  "Well, yes. I felt I owed it to you… and Kelly."

  "But what if you'd been caught?"

  "That's a risk I was willing to take. You've got to be ready to take a few risks or else life isn't worth much."
/>
  Ed drained his third double vodka. He was feeling pretty good. Damn good—about the night, about himself, about being here in this almost deserted bar with Kara.

  "What do you think I should do, Ed? I'm so confused."

  He looked at her. She was beautiful. In the dim light, despite the jeans and loose sweater she was wearing, she reminded him more of her sister than ever. But she was obviously tense. She sat across the tiny circular table, nervously twirling a key ring on her index finger. And she was asking him for advice. He tried to organize his vodka-muddled thoughts.

  "As I see it, you've got two choices. You can get out of the city and put as much distance as you can between this guy and yourself." For selfish reasons, Ed didn't like that idea. It meant he wouldn't get to see her anymore. "Or… you could take the bull by the horns and go to the State Board of Medical Examiners and demand a complete investigation of this man's record keeping and practice methods."

  She was staring at him with those big blue eyes. They were hypnotizing.

  "What do you think I should do?"

  "I think you've got the courage and integrity to take this to the State and protect others as well as yourself. That's what I think you should do."

  She put her hand on his and squeezed as the last call came from the bar.

  "Thanks for your confidence, but I'm still not sure. Is there someplace we can talk about this some more?"

  "There's my place." The words just popped out, but Ed was glad they did. "We can talk there as long as you want."

  "That sounds perfect. Let's go."

  With that she was up and heading toward the door. With an excited, anticipatory tingle in his groin, Ed dropped some money on the table and hurried after her.

  ▼

  Rob had stopped off at Midtown North, grabbed the effects bag from Doyle, and run out. As he raced east to First Avenue and then uptown, he shook Kelly's apartment keys free of the tangle within and had them ready when he slammed to a halt in front of her building.