Blinded

by Stephen White

  “On.”

  “Turn them off. The TV, too. Shhhh. Quiet now.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “The door’s locked, right? The chain, too?”

  “Yes. Help me, Sam. Help me.”

  “Do you hear sirens yet?”

  “No, no!”

  Carmen’s eyes told me she was puzzled, the kind of puzzled usually reserved for those times when you think you just heard your cat ask you for a beer.

  “Shhhh,” I told Gibbs. “Quiet voice. What floor are you on?”

  “Um, uh. Third. Third story.”

  “Third story. Get on the floor, okay? On the far side of the bed, away from the door. Can you do that?” As soon as I told her to get on the floor, I remembered that she was on her cell phone and wished I’d sent her into the bathroom.

  “Yes, yes. Help me.”

  “Sirens yet?”

  “Uh, no. No.”

  The commercial section of Vail is a few blocks wide, a few dozen blocks long. That’s it. A cruiser in a hurry could get from one end to the other in seconds. Where were they?

  “You’re on the floor, right, Gibbs?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re doing good.”

  “Come help me.”

  “I’m in Indiana, Gibbs.”

  “I know. Come help me.”

  “Someone will be there any second.”

  I heard pounding. Gibbs said, “He’s here, Sam. He’s here. Oh no, oh no.”

  “Someone’s there?” I mimed the act of knocking so that Carmen would know what Gibbs was saying. “It might be the police, Gibbs. Stay still. If you know it’s him, run for the bathroom.”

  More pounding.

  This time Carmen mimed the act of knocking. Then, inexplicably, she pointed down toward the floor.

  For a long moment I was confused by Carmen’s charade and then, suddenly, I got it.

  Holy shit.

  I lowered the phone from my ear, and my pulse rocketed as though my heart had a turbocharger on it.

  I moved the phone back to my face and said, “Gibbs? Stay quiet until you’re sure who it is. Don’t open the door. Shhhh.”

  With the pad of my thumb firmly over the phone’s microphone, I leaned over to Holly’s oldest sister and whispered, “Get the kids and get out of the house. Now! Front door, everybody. Got a cell?”

  She nodded.

  “Call nine-one-one when you get outside. Tell them cops are in the basement and guns are drawn.”

  I looked at Artie.

  His mouth was open. His brain wasn’t.

  He was staring at the big gun that was filling my hand.

  “Artie?” I said, careful not to raise the hand with the pistol. “Put the knife down on the counter and follow your sister-in-law. Go on, get out of here.”

  Artie followed my directions robotically. I raised the phone back to my face.

  “Gibbs, are you there?” I asked.

  Nothing.

  Shit.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  ALAN

  Maybe it was something she saw in my eyes, maybe it was something else entirely, but Lauren didn’t even flinch when I told her I had to go back out on Thanksgiving night to see someone. She caressed my neck for a moment, kissed me in the lingering manner that more often than not constitutes an invitation, pulled away only an inch, and said, “Be careful. Please.” Both dogs stayed by her side as I headed out the door.

  Since my errand required that I pick something up at my office, I parked the car there before I strolled the short distance over to Pearl Street. I didn’t take my usual pedestrian route, which would have led a block or more northeast in the direction of the Mall, but instead ambled westward toward the sleepy part of Pearl, the part that’s on the side of Ninth nearest the mountains. The wind was gusting from Wyoming that evening, the collar on my coat was up, and my hands were stuffed in my pockets to thwart the chill.

  I walked slowly, trying to find a reason not to do what I was about to do. Whatever that reason might have been, though, I wasn’t able to walk slowly enough to find it.

  My destination was a cluster of condos on the north side of Pearl that had been designed to mimic a grouping of Victorian row houses. Wedding cake trim, different on every home, was painted in colors that had aged to a palate that resembled the range of hues of an Easter basket. Lights from the waning moments of holiday celebrations brightened windows in about half of the units that I could see from the sidewalk on the far side of Pearl. From the way the numbers were running, I figured I would find the town house I was looking for at the west end of the front row.

  The lights in that unit were on.

  Each week, when Lauren injects a long needle full of interferon into her thigh to protect herself from a double-cross from her own immune system, she uncaps the needle and plunges it straight into her thigh. “Every second of delay makes it harder to do,” she says. “No delay.”

  So I didn’t delay at the door. I didn’t want this to be any harder to do than it felt like it was already. I took my left hand out of my pocket, extended a finger, and touched the doorbell.

  He came to the door quickly, within seconds. I could see the shadow of his eyeball as it darkened the peephole. He didn’t open the door quickly, though. He stood behind the closed door and watched me, and watched me, and watched me through the tiny lens embedded in the door.

  I checked my wristwatch after a while and began timing our little standoff. In other circumstances, with another person, I might have chosen a strategy other than dawdling, perhaps peppering the doorbell with repeated pushes, or maybe calling out, “Come on, open the door.”

  But not then. Not with him. With him I stood back a step and allowed him to see me clearly. Every couple of minutes I pulled my hands from my pockets and turned completely around so that he could be confident that I wasn’t hiding anything behind my back.

  Six minutes and ten seconds passed before he finally relented to some internal pressure I probably couldn’t fathom and opened the door. When the time came, he didn’t open it just a crack. He flung it wide open as though that had been his plan all along.

  His physical appearance was a bit of a shock to me. He was wearing gray cotton sweats on top of a nylon running suit, had dark glasses over his eyes, and had a bandanna tied over his mouth and chin like he was Jesse James preparing to knock over a bank.

  “Hello, Craig,” I said. “I think I have something of yours. Can we talk?”

  “You’re the one,” he said. “You’re the one.”

  Craig didn’t invite me inside, which didn’t surprise me. I sat on the steps leading up to his town house while we talked. The whole time he stood a few feet from me with his back to the front door. He was more wary of me than he was during our office visits, but I’d anticipated that he might be. The therapy session that Sharon Lewis had busted in on and aborted late the previous afternoon was certain to take a considerable toll on someone like Craig, especially in the trust-your-therapist department.

  Within minutes of sitting down on Craig’s porch I reached a clinical decision about what I needed to do, but I didn’t decide exactly how to go about doing it until another fifteen minutes passed. When I explained my thinking to him, Craig was so agreeable with my plan that I guessed he’d arrived at some version of it himself long before I’d arrived at his door. I’d hoped he would be cooperative, but I was prepared to do it the hard way if I had to.

  His anesthesiologist parents lived in a lavish house they’d recently built a few blocks away on Third Street. To their credit, they both rushed to their son’s home within minutes when I phoned and told them what I had in mind.

  Craig chose to take an ambulance to the psychiatric hospital across town, not to ride over with his parents. Although I didn’t understand his reasons, I supported his decision. Reluctantly, his parents did, too. When I phoned for the ambulance, I requested that a police patrol car come by, as well. I hadn’t placed a person on a seventy-two-hour mental h
ealth hold for a while, and I had to ask the patrol officer for remedial instruction on how to go about it. Despite the fact that Craig was agreeable to being admitted to the hospital, I didn’t want him changing his mind and discharging himself before he was stabilized by the combination of medicine and a safe, controlled environment.

  I didn’t accompany the Adamson family to the hospital. As the ambulance drove off, I turned my collar back up, stuffed my hands back into my pockets, and commenced the short stroll back to my office. I had a few calls to make to assure medical backup for Craig’s admission and to get initial orders to the nurses on the unit.

  I’d see Craig again the next day as an inpatient. I thought I knew where the psychotherapy session with him would begin. Craig had already admitted calling me that night about Adrienne’s fake malpractice case. He’d denied, however, that the listening equipment that had been planted in my office belonged to him.

  That troubled me. That’s where I thought we’d start.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SAM

  Carmen and I could have lost some important seconds by engaging in a how-could-I-be-so-stupid contest, but we mutually decided not to bother. We both knew it would have ended up a draw.

  If the Malone home was a good example of the breed, whatever elegance and purity of design the Craftsman-era architects had built into the floor plans of their bungalows did not extend into basement layout. Holly’s basement was a dark, confusing warren of tiny rooms with low ceilings. The aroma in the cellar was of moist concrete, standing water, and air freshener. I thought it was the same flowers-in-a-can Glade that Sherry liked to make such a show of spraying after I used the bathroom.

  On our way down to the basement I was a few risers above Carmen. The stairs didn’t squeak as we descended. Not a peep, which I thought was evidence of rather impressive construction.

  Rooms opened up onto each side of the postage-stamp-size landing at the bottom of the stairs. We paused at the landing, our bodies touching at our hips. The phone was still at my ear. Once again I whispered, “Gibbs?”

  Nothing came back into the earpiece. I shook my head at Carmen. She nodded and tilted her head to the left, so that’s the direction we headed first.

  She was still walking point.

  Cellar noises? Nothing I didn’t expect. Furnace sighs, plumbing burps, old-house creaks. But no more pounding. Above us the scampering of feet as children and parents rushed from the house had stopped.

  The first room to our left was a furnace room with an alcove that had a workbench built in under a window well.

  In the dark basement my eyes found shapes but no details. As I followed Carmen toward the door that would take us to the next surprise space in the maze, my foot brushed something on the floor that I hadn’t seen. Carmen heard the noise I made. She stopped.

  I crouched down and felt along the cold concrete surface with my hand.

  I lifted a woman’s shoe. A clog. Not really a clog; Sherry used another name for shoes like it, but I couldn’t remember what. Why? I really didn’t care.

  Had Holly been wearing clogs in the kitchen that morning? I should have remembered, but the picture in my head of Holly preparing the turkey didn’t go all the way down to the floor.

  Carmen leaned over to touch the shoe. Feeling what it was, she took it from me and set it aside. With her head close enough that I could feel her breath on my cheek, she said, “Let’s go.”

  The next room was small and seemed to be full of stuff. Holly probably called it her storage room. But I could tell from the haphazard pattern of shadows that it was the place she stashed the junk she didn’t know what else to do with. Storage is one thing. Sticking stuff in a room is another thing entirely. There’s a big difference. Sherry did storage. I stuck stuff in rooms.

  Carmen’s eyes must have adjusted to the dark better than mine. She found a path through the stuff, and we were across that room and through another door in seconds.

  The next room we entered was a bathroom. A window well provided enough light that I realized that “bathroom” was a generous description for the space. It was a tiny concrete room with inelegant plumbing and a couple of fixtures that existed in the time warp between modern and antique. Despite the shadows I could see streaks of rust on the porcelain surfaces of both the sink and the toilet.

  Carmen reached behind her and held out her hand to stop my progress. Her fingers found me just below my belt.

  It certainly stopped my progress.

  Through the open door in front of Carmen I could see a square shape emerging from the darkness.

  A washing machine. Maybe a dryer.

  Here we go,I thought.Here we go.

  I retraced all my steps to the landing at the foot of the stairs and opened the door that Carmen and I hadn’t taken the first time. The room I entered was the largest room in the basement and was furnished with somebody else’s things. A night-light spread a shadowy brilliance across its lowest reaches. From the looks of the bases of the pieces, I guessed that these were Holly’s grandmother’s things. Every one-sofa, chest, chair, table-was ornate, heavy, grandmothery.

  Four long strides, and I was across the room and standing at the door that I was almost certain led into the laundry room. Carmen was waiting at the other door on the far side of the basement.

  My role was straightforward. I was to keep anyone from exiting through this door until I went in on Carmen’s signal. That was the plan.

  From then on we would improvise. And hopefully try not to shoot each other in the process.

  The phone call with Gibbs was over. I’d stuffed the cell back in my pocket.

  My handgun was ready.

  I was wondering precisely what the signal was going to be when I heard Carmen yell, “Police! Freeze!” and figured that was probably it.

  I pulled open the door and stepped inside the laundry room in a flash, though it turned out there was little cause for hurry.

  SIXTY-NINE

  ALAN

  It was a night of front porches.

  Diane and I have an ancient oak swing on the porch of our building, and from half a block away I could see that it was moving to and fro in a tight arc. A solitary person sat smack in the middle of the seat.

  I was guessing it was a homeless man. I pulled five bucks from my wallet, remembered what day it was, and replaced the five with a twenty. I held the bill folded in my hand. In my Thanksgiving fantasy the man would use the money to sit at a nice table in a nice restaurant and treat himself to a bountiful plate of turkey and stuffing.

  The porch was in shadows. From the end of the driveway I couldn’t make out the age or gender of the visitor.

  Nor did I recognize the voice when he said, “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight. You should be home with your family. I know I wish I was.”

  I stopped walking. “Excuse me. Who are you? Do I know you?”

  The swing stopped moving, and the man stood. He was still in the shadows, but I could tell that he wasn’t tall. “I brought you something. An explanation.” He waved some paper at me. An envelope, maybe. “I thought it might help save somebody. I was just going to stuff it through the mail slot when I saw your car. Felt the engine; it was warm. I thought I’d take a chance that you’d be coming back.”

  “I still don’t know who you are.” I hadn’t moved. I remained right where I’d been on the narrow driveway. Ten yards of drought-starved lawn and a border of unhappy euonymus separated me from the stranger on the porch.

  He moved forward inch by inch, and with each inch the light from the streetlamps seemed to crawl up his body like water rising in a flood.

  As the light moved up from his shoulders and began to paint his face, I said, “Oh my God.”

  “Hi,” Sterling Storey said. “What a week it’s been, huh?”

  What did I think?

  I thought,Catch me.

  SEVENTY

  At first, Holly didn’t even notice the woman with the covered dish. The chaos associat
ed with the arrival of her oldest sister’s family for Thanksgiving dinner was demanding all of her attention. The woman with the dark hair and the perfect skin and the casserole waited patiently through a procession of hugs and kisses, waited until no one remained on the porch but the two of them.

  “Holly?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Remember your friend from church? From the basilica?”

  Holly hesitated.Could she mean…?

  “He said to mention the organ.”

  She could.“Uh, yes. I remember.”

  “He’s around the corner. Right this minute. He’d like to see you again.”

  She stammered, “I have guests.”

  “He knows. He wants to see you while they’re here. In your house. He thinks it will be fun. Especially fun.”

  Holly took the woman’s elbow and guided her a little farther from the door.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” Holly emphasized “you.”

  “I want to watch. That’s what I want.”

  “Watch?”

  “At Notre Dame I was the woman in the purple suit. Remember me?”

  Holly remembered. “My family… what-“

  “Move them into the living room for a picture. Everybody. He and I will come in the back, go down into the basement. We’ll know when, because you’ll turn off the kitchen lights.”

  “And then… what?”

  “Before dinner you excuse yourself, say you’re going to take a bath. He’ll be waiting downstairs. Me too.”

  At that moment Holly felt an explosion of anticipation. She felt it as she might feel the wind, or an ocean wave. It washed over her, covered her completely, engulfed her.

  “Take this,” the woman said, handing over the casserole.

  “What is it?”

  “Some music. Some directions. Put it on, and turn it on as soon as you get to the basement. I should go. Someone may be watching us.”