“There’s… complications. He didn’t do anything to Gerry. Do you know Chris well?”
“I met him briefly. It was enough. When I was told Gerry was murdered I immediately thought he did it.”
That inkling pulled its shirt over its head and did a victory run through my head.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Roeben, but Chris never mentioned you or your husband when I spoke to him. What happened that you would think he would kill his wife?”
“I’m not surprised he didn’t tell you how we met. He shouldn’t be too proud of what he said and did.”
Trying to imagine Chris Davis doing anything to leave this impression on Mrs Roeben did my head in. I needed it spelt out for me.
“Please, start at the beginning,” I said to her. “Anything you know might help me get this mess sorted out.”
Mrs Roeben shifted on her chair. “First, Long said you claimed to be a psychic. Is that true?”
I knew she wasn’t doubting what Dr Jones had told her. This woman could get a job with any intelligence agency in the world on the merit of the single phone interview I’d witnessed her conduct. Her question was wholly pointed at me. Was I or wasn’t I a psychic?
“I’m psychic,” I said in what I hoped was my firmest, most confident manner. Anything less and she would probably grab my ear and rush me out of the building, all the while telling me it wasn’t nice to tell lies.
Mrs Roeben studied me for a long time. I returned her regard with all the honesty I’d been preaching about lately. At last, she sighed and looked away.
“Psychic,” she whispered. “Have you discovered anything the police haven’t?”
Seems I’d passed her test. “I can’t tell you that. It’s an ongoing investigation.” Okay, I’ll admit to a little bit of smugness in that comment. It was nice for once to be holding more cards than someone else.
“If I tell you about Chris Davis, will you promise to do one thing for me?”
“Sure.” It was out before I could think otherwise.
“My husband will not be able to tell you anything,” she said, hands clutched so tightly together in her lap her fingernails made little dints in her flesh and I swallowed every wise-arse thought I’d had about this woman. She was hurting. She hid it well but like Erin, she had the grim chore of sitting back and watching someone she loved go through something horrific.
“He’s in a stupor,” she continued. “The doctors tell me his brain functions are all fine. It’s just that he doesn’t respond to stimulus.”
“I’m sorry. It must be hard on you.”
“Once I’ve told you what happened with Chris, will you go to my husband and see if you can reach him?”
For once, my mouth waited patiently for my brain to tell it what to do. Because my brain was stunned into immobility, all my mouth could do was hang open.
This was the last thing I’d been expecting, but when you go about sprouting how you’re psychic, I guess this shouldn’t have been such a shock. A, because being a ‘psychic’ I should have seen it coming, and B, because this, I suppose, is what people think psychics do. Personally, I was never that keen on the label myself. It was convenient for folk like Courey who needed to put people in a box in order to deal with them, but in general, I didn’t think of myself as an actual psychic. Yet, here I was. Best policy and all that stuff.
“Ma’am, I don’t know what I would be able to do for your husband,” I said. “I will certainly try, though.”
“That’s all I can ask. Now, to Chris. I liked Gerry.”
I suppose I looked a bit sceptical, because Mrs Roeben nodded firmly.
“I did. It’s not hard to see how she could alienate people, though. She was very smart, but clever as well. I’ve come across a lot of supposedly smart people in my life, most through my husband’s work, and I can tell you this, Mr Hawkins. There is a big difference between being able to remember things so you appear smart and actually being able to apply that knowledge and use it. Gerry was one of the latter. Her mind never stopped working and she was never satisfied with what anyone else could tell her. She had to go back to basics and work it out for herself. When Karl met her I could tell that she was like him. He was simply that excited to find someone he could understand and who could understand him. They became very, very close.”
“Can you define close?”
Mrs Roeben chuckled, though it was a dry, brittle thing. “They weren’t having an affair. Though to outsiders, it could seem that way. They spent more hours together in a day than they did apart and when Karl came home, all he could do was talk about her in awe. As soon as he’d eaten and slept he’d be off again to see her and continue what they were doing.”
“You must be very understanding of your husband to put up with that sort of devotion to another woman.”
“Oh, it wasn’t devotion to Gerry. Far from it. It was devotion to the work they were doing. She had started this project and when she met Karl, she showed it to him and he too became obsessed with it.”
“Still, this other woman had taken your husband away from you. How could you like a person who did that, for whatever reason?”
Sighing, Mrs Roeben relaxed her hands. “Because it made Karl happy. He loved nothing more than being challenged. Even I don’t rate that high on his priorities. Oh, I’m up there in the top three, but I’ve long since known my place.”
“Mrs Roeben,” I murmured, thinking of Chris’ sad loneliness.
“It’s okay,” she assured me, though I caught a hint of ‘but’ in there. “I have my own work, my hobbies and my friends. And I love Karl. Or perhaps I love taking care of him.” She pulled herself together with admirable guts and continued, “So that’s why I liked Gerry. And the few times she stopped long enough to actually talk to me, I liked her as a person as well. She told me about Chris, how they were separated and how she didn’t know what she’d done wrong to make him leave. Everything she said about him led me to believe he was like me, understanding of our spouses’ nature and accepting of it. Which is why I was so shocked when Chris showed up one day, in a terrible temper, accusing Karl of having an affair with Gerry.”
I had no reason to think Mrs Roeben would be lying to me. Until now, I hadn’t thought Chris had a reason to, either, but one of them clearly was. “When did this happen?”
“The day Karl had his episode. Chris found us at the university campus and he attacked Karl. Punched him right in the face and accused him of sleeping with Gerry.”
“Was Gerry there?”
“No. She was at the rooms she and Karl were working out of. I rang her later and told her about it, before Karl’s episode. She was furious with Chris and said she’d talk to him. I guessed they’d argued and that’s why Chris killed her.”
In a few short sentences I suddenly had more information than I’d got in the previous few days. It was starting to look like the pieces were falling into place.
“Can you tell me about this place your husband and Gerry were working?”
“It’s office space in a building in Hamilton. I never went there so I don’t know much more than that.”
“Was it in Karl’s name? No one could find records of Gerry renting space anywhere.”
Mrs Roeben pursed her lips. “If it was in Karl’s name he didn’t tell me, and we weren’t paying the rent, that’s for sure.”
“I believe Gerry would have definitely been paying the rent.” She had the money to spare and putting it in Karl’s name had probably been a deliberate move to cover her tracks. “Do you have the address?”
“Right here.” She opened her purse and dug around for a moment, finally pulling out a battered business card. It was a generic card for an office block with a hand written phone number on the back. “They’re on the sixth floor.”
Tucking the card into a pocket, I felt a big surge of hope. Things were definitely moving forward.
“And Karl’s episode? Can I ask what happened then?”
“After Chris’ unwarra
nted attack, I took Karl to a doctor and got him cleaned up. Nothing broken, thankfully, but there was blood everywhere and a tooth was loosened. Then I took him home. All the time, he seemed a bit dazed and the doctor had said it was only to be expected.” She shivered a little bit. “But when we got home, it was like he woke up and got really scared. He didn’t know where he was or what had happened. The next thing I know, he’d got a knife from the kitchen and was trying to cut into himself.”
“Dr Jones said he had attacked you with a knife.”
She shook her head. “No. Just himself. Kept ranting that there was something inside him and he had to get it out.”
“Dear God.”
Mrs Roeben gave me a direct look. “No, Mr Hawkins. Not God. The Devil.”
Chapter 27
Perhaps taking his life into his own hands, Paul Angelshire, Karl Roeben’s doctor, refused Mrs Roeben’s request for me to see her husband. At least he resisted long enough to claim his own chance to check up on my credentials. Rather than interrogate some poor person I happened to cross paths with, the doc took the direct route of ushering me into his office and closing the door in Mrs Roeben’s face.
Angelshire was tall and lean in that ascetic, academic way that reminded me of all the older, commanding, mentor-wanna-be figures in my past. His glasses were round and wire rimmed, perched firmly on an eagle-beak nose and under his white coat his suit was dark blue and sharper than a wonder knife that could cut through a shoe.
“Did you win or lose?” he asked as he sat behind his desk and gestured for me to sit as well.
“Sorry?”
“You injuries. Does the other person look worse or better?”
I winced. “Better, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t win.”
He gave me a small smile then got down to business. “This is highly unusual. We don’t normally allow outside...” he glanced at me over his glasses, “specialists to see our patients.”
“I understand that, sir. But I did promise Mrs Roeben I would try to help her husband.”
A fleeting, knowing smile crossed his mouth. “Beatrice is not one to be trifled with, that’s for sure. But I have to ask, what do you think you can accomplish? Karl Roeben is in what we call a stupor. The patient shows no critical cognitive function and is unresponsive to external stimuli. From what we can gather, Karl isn’t predisposed to the state, so it is likely it was brought on by trauma.”
“The fight with Chris Davis,” I supplied.
“Though the response is hardly equal to the extent of the trauma. A punch to the face, even a powerful one, is rarely enough to cause such an extreme effect. No. There is something psychological underlying Karl’s state, encompassed in the reason why he was assaulted.”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
“How?”
This was it, Hawkins. Best policy or admit you were wrong.
I leaned forward in my chair. “I don’t know.” Best policy it was, then.
Angelshire considered me a for a moment, then nodded for me carry on.
“I don’t know how you feel about psychics as a medical professional, and truth to tell, I don’t know how I feel about it either. I’m not keen on the label psychic but it is convenient. I could tell you about some of the things I’ve done. I could even scrounge up a partial explanation of how I do it, but I can’t say exactly why I can do the things I can.”
Beats me why I said so much, why I was that honest, but there was something about Angelshire that my old shrink, Doc Campbell, didn’t possess. Perhaps it was the way he said things straight up or the way he’d been firm yet understanding with Mrs Roeben. Or maybe it was because the whole psychic thing was already out there in the open. Campbell had been a decent therapist for someone dealing with anger issues, but I’d kept the more eccentric problems to myself. So maybe it had nothing to do with the doctors. Maybe it was all me. Campbell might have been able to understand me better if I’d been honest with him.
“What you’ve just said describes a good portion of psychological disorders,” Angelshire said. “So contrary to what you were probably thinking, I can understand what you mean. When I was younger and more adventurous I worked with a parapsychology research group. I won’t say my time with the group changed my overall world view, but it did show me that sometimes there is no clear explanation. In Karl Roeben’s case, however, I am more inclined to believe in an underlying psychological condition.”
“You don’t agree with Mrs Roeben’s possession diagnosis?”
“Not at all. Do you know much about possession, Mr Hawkins?”
“Matt, please, and not much beyond what I learned from ‘The Exorcist’.”
Angelshire stood and went to a bookcase, scanning the titles while he spoke. “As far as it goes, the movie isn’t a bad representation of the phenomenon. Ah, here it is.” With consummate care, he removed a book and brought it back to the table. “A left over from the days we operated out of a Catholic convent.”
He opened the book and turned it to face me. There was a drawn picture of a woman in a nun’s habit contorted into a fantastic knot while a black clad priest stood over her holding a crucifix and reading from what I assumed to be a Bible.
“True cases of possession are very rare,” Angelshire said as he turned pages, showing more drawings of people levitating, their faces screwed up by either pain or anger. “There are many criteria that have to be met before the church will declare possession. Levitation, superhuman strength, fits, convulsions, contortions, knowledge of the future, speaking in languages previously unknown to the person and revulsion to holy objects. Before his stupor Karl didn’t exhibit any of these symptoms. Beatrice has only done what family members always do. She’s latched onto something that is defined and, in her mind, curable. Believing an external force is to blame is easier than admitting she might not know everything about her husband.”
I smiled tightly. “You sound like someone I was talking to the other day.” Mental note, don’t let Lila near Angelshire. She’d forget about me in a split second. “Thoughts of possession to the side, are you going to allow me a chance to see Karl?”
“I will, but I do insist that you refrain from anything overt.”
Wondering what his idea of ‘overt’ might be, I agreed and we went to see Karl.
He was a small man, as short as his wife and about half her width. The bed swamped him and though he was dark skinned, the white sheets and lighting left him with a faint yellow tinge. He sat propped up on several pillows, face blank, eyes dull and staring toward the window that had a spectacular view of the city.
Holding Angelshire’s hand in what had obviously become a familiar gesture over the past week, Mrs Roeben smiled at him. “Thank you for allowing me this one thing, Paul.”
Paul Angelshire looked down at her with a tolerant expression. “This one thing, along with all the other one things.” But he patted her hand and stepped back. “I’ll be at the nurse’s station if you require me, Beatrice.”
I waited until the doctor had reached the station before going into the room. Didn’t want to appear too eager to be about my disturbances and it gave Mrs Roeben a chance to go ahead and fuss at her unresponsive husband. She plumped his pillows, straightened the sheets and fixed his hands, draping them over his little pot belly. All the while she kept up a quick dialogue about what sort of day it was, what Aunt So and So had said the other day and how he had a special visitor and please be polite to him.
She had told me she loved taking care of him and I witnessed it now. Except it wasn’t all consuming research that kept him from responding to her care this time. It dug a little pit in my stomach to hear the hitch in her voice, to see the slight tremble in her hands.
The Devil. Karl said there’d been something else inside him and his wife firmly believed he’d been possessed, but that the devil had left him after Chris’ attack and taken her husband with it. While Angelshire was convinced it wasn’t the case, I wasn’t so sure. So far
demons weren’t conforming to the traditional religious idea, so it didn’t seem impossible possession wasn’t always about pea soup and Tourette Syndrome.
I went in and stood by the bed, opposite Mrs Roeben. She fell silent and looked at me with that same calm seriousness she’d had when we spoke. This lady had some serious strength and composure that couldn’t be dinted by a tank at ramming speed. I couldn’t help but admire her and hope desperately I didn’t piss her off.
“I’ll do my best,” I whispered and she nodded.
I took Karl’s left hand. It was cool and limp. His eyes were pointed at me but he looked right through me. There was a smudge of porridge on the corner of his mouth. It was a little unnerving.
With absolutely no idea about what to do, I decided to start with a trick I knew I could do.
There was a seat beside the bed which I pulled close and sat in so I could look Karl in the eyes without having to bend. His eyes were a rich brown so dark it was hard to distinguish between pupil and iris. The whites were bloodshot and there were dried tracks of tears glistening on his cheeks. Even as I watched, another drop of water welled, shimmered and rolled from the corner of his eye, down the side of his nose and onto his top lip. He never blinked.
I got scared. This… this was awful. It was so far beyond my experience it was entirely plausible I could do something very wrong.
Crap. Let’s face it. What more could I do? Something so horrible had happened to this man that instead of facing it, he was turned so completely inward the rest of the world just didn’t exist for him anymore. Something so horrible that even as he pushed it away as far as he could, he could still cry. That was already about as wrong as it could get.
So I stared into his eyes and concentrated. Unlike your average vampire, who can’t wait to throw its aura at you like knickers at a Tom Jones concert, humans tend to hoard their auras, keep them close and guard them jealously. It takes work to touch their aura and it took a lot of work to reach Karl Roeben’s.
Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei Page 24
