Side Effects (1984)

by Palmer, Michael

  “What were you doing there?” he asked.

  “Jared, please, don’t make me explain.” She took him by the arm, led him to the hall closet, and began helping him on with his coat. “Meet me in ten minutes,” she whispered in his ear. “The little variety store on the corner of Charles and Mount Vernon. I have something important for you, for Kate actually.”

  The study door opened just as she was letting Jared out. Winfield Samuels stood, arms folded tightly across his chest, and watched him go.

  Even dressed down, in pants and a plain wool overcoat, Jocelyn Trent turned heads. Jared stood by the variety store and watched several drivers slow as they passed where she was waiting to cross Charles Street. He left the shelter of the recessed doorway and met her at the corner. Their relationship, while cordial, had never approached a friendship in any sense. His father had taken some pains to keep the interaction between them superficial, and neither had ever been inclined to push matters further.

  “Thank you for meeting me like this,” she said, guiding him back to the shadow of the doorway. “I don’t have much time, so I’ll say what I have to say and go.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Jared, I’m leaving your father. I intend to tell him this afternoon.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know how much he cares for you.”

  “Does he? I think you know as well as I do that caring isn’t one of Win Samuels’s strong suits. It’s too bad, too, because strange as it might sound, I think I might actually love him.”

  “Then why—”

  “Please, Jared. I really don’t have much time, and what I’m doing is very hard for me. Just know that I have my reasons—for leaving him and for giving you this.” She handed him a sealed envelope. “Kate’s a wonderful woman. She doesn’t deserve the treatment he’s giving her. I’ve been completely loyal to your father. That is until now. I know how hard it is to stand up to him. Lord knows I’ve wanted to enough. I think you did the right thing back there.”

  “Jocelyn, do you know if my father is lying or not? It’s very important.”

  She smiled. “I’m aware of how important it is. I was listening at the door, remember? The answer is that I don’t know, at least not for sure. There’s a phone number in that envelope, Jared. Go someplace quiet and dial it. If my suspicions about that number are correct, you should be able to decide for yourself which of the two, Kate or your father, is telling the truth.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “What is this number? Where did you get it?”

  “Please, I don’t want to say any more because there’s a small chance I might be wrong. Let’s just leave it that the number is one your father has called from time to time since I’ve known him. I handle all of the household bills, including the phone bill, so I know. A year or two ago I accidentally overheard part of a conversation he was having. Some of what I heard disturbed me, so I noted down the exact time of the call. That’s how I learned this number. I don’t want to say any more. Okay?”

  “Okay, but—”

  “I wish you well, Jared. Both of you. The things I overheard Kate say last night have really helped me make some decisions I should have made a long time ago. I hope that what I’ve done will help her.” She took his hand, squeezed it for a moment, and was gone.

  Jared watched her hurry up Mt. Vernon Street; then he tore open the plain envelope. The phone number, printed on a three-by-five card, was in the 213 area. Los Angeles.

  He drove to his office, trying to imagine what the number might be. Once at his desk, he sat for nearly a minute staring at the card before he finally dialed.

  A woman, clearly awakened by the call, answered on the third ring. “Hello?” she said.

  Jared struggled for a breath and pressed the receiver so tightly against his ear that it hurt.

  “Hello?” the woman said again. “Is anybody there?”

  Even after so many years he knew. “Lisa?” He could barely say the word.

  “Yes. Who is this? Who is this, please?”

  Slowly, Jared set the receiver back in its cradle.

  14

  Friday 21 December

  It was pressure pain from the pipe more than cold that tugged Kate free of a sleep that was deeper than sleep. In the twilight moment before she was fully conscious, she imagined herself buried alive, the victim of some twisted, vicious kidnapper. In just a few hours she would suffocate or freeze to death. Jared had that little time to raise her ransom, and the only one he could turn to, she knew, was his father. The sound of Win Samuels’s laughter echoed in her tomb, growing louder and louder until with a scream she came fully awake.

  She was on her back. Her lips and cheeks were caked with dried and frozen blood. Dim light from the ends of the culvert barely defined the corroding metal, just a foot or so from her face. Lie still, she thought. Just don’t move. Sleep until Jared comes. Close your eyes again and sleep. The thoughts were so comforting, so reassuring, that she had to struggle to remember that they were no more than the cold, lying to her, paralyzing her from within. For a time, all she could think about was sleep, sleep and Zimmermann’s taunting warning that even if she survived, no one would believe her story. Sick, crazy, drugged up, that’s what they all believed. It was hopeless for her. Zimmermann said it, and he was right. Over and over again, in a voice as soothing as a warm tub, the cold spoke to her of hopelessness and sleep.

  Kate flexed her hands and her feet, struggling against the downy comfort of the lies and the inertia. Remain still and you will die. Surrender to the cold and you will never see Jared again; never get the chance to tell him how much his letter and his decision mean to you.

  She tried pushing herself along with her feet, but could not bend her knees enough to get leverage. She had to see him. She had to tell him that she, too, was ready to make choices. Aroused by the aching in her legs and the far deeper pain in her side, she twisted and wriggled onto her belly. She had been wrong to allow Willoughby to nominate her without trying harder to see things from Jared’s perspective. She had been wrong. Now she could only admit that and hope Jared believed it had been he, and not the devastating events, who had helped her see the true order of her priorities.

  She was less than halfway from the far end of the pipe. The fog seemed to have lifted. She could now make out the silhouettes of trees against the white sky. A few more feet and there was enough light to read the numbers on her watch. Eleven fifteen. She had been entombed for over an hour. Was Zimmermann still out there? Could he possibly have stayed around in the snow and the cold for over an hour?

  Driven by the need to see Jared again, to set matters straight, she worked herself arm over arm along the icy metal. A foot from the edge she stopped and listened. Beyond the soft wisp of her own breathing, there was nothing. Had an hour been long enough? Wouldn’t Zimmermann have left, concerned about having his car attract attention? Finally, she abandoned her attempts at reasoning through the situation. If he was out there, waiting, there was little she would be able to do. If he wasn’t, she would overcome whatever pain and cold she had to and make it home. There were amends to be made.

  With a muted cry of pain, she curled her fingers around the edge of the culvert and pulled.

  “We’re sorry, but we are unavailable to take your call right now. Please wait for the tone, leave your name, number, and the time, and Kate or Jared will get back to you as soon as possible.”

  “Kate, it’s just me again. Ignore the previous two messages. I’m not going to stay at the office, and I’m not going to speak with Reese. I’m coming home. Please don’t go anywhere. Thanks. I love you.”

  Something was wrong. In almost five years of marriage, Jared had never felt so intense a connection to his wife. With that heightened sensitivity and three unanswered calls home had come a foreboding that weighed on his chest like an anvil. The feeling was irrational he told himself over and again, groundless and foolish. She was at a neighbor’s or on a run. With his MG still in t
he office garage, where it had been all week, he had taken her Volvo; but still, there were plenty of places to which she could have walked.

  He left the city and crossed the Mystic River Bridge, the rational part of him struggling to keep the Volvo under seventy. She was fine. There was some perfectly logical explanation why she hadn’t answered his calls the past hour and a half. He just hadn’t hit on it. Certainly, his concentration and powers of reason were not all they could be. It had been one hell of a morning.

  The call to California, the sound of Lisa’s voice, had left him at once elated and sickened. His father had lied. He had lied about Lisa and possibly about Stonefield as well. Jared cringed at the thought of how close he had come to siding with the man. Silently, he gave thanks that he had made his decision, set down on paper his commitment to Kate, before he had learned the truth about his father. The man had been paying Lisa off all those years. That conclusion was as inescapable as it was disgusting. They were some pair, his ex-wife and Winfield. One totally vapid, one totally evil. Some goddamn pair.

  Then there was Stacy. As he weaved along past Route l’s abysmal stretch of fast-food huts, factory outlets, budget motels, garish restaurants, and raunchy nightclubs, Jared ached with thoughts of her. What did she believe had become of her father? Would there ever be a way he could reenter her life without destroying whatever respect she had for her mother, possibly thereby destroying the girl herself? Kate would have a sense of what was right to do. Together they could decide. Damn, but he had come close, so close, to blowing it all.

  The house was deserted. Kate’s running gear was gone, and so was Roscoe. It had been several hours since his first call—far too long. He checked the area around the house and yard. Nothing. There were but two choices: wait some more or call the police. The heavy sense of apprehension, so ill-defined while he was in Boston, seemed more acute. There was no sense in waiting.

  As he walked to the phone in the kitchen, he glanced out the front window. Three neighborhood children, all around eight, were trudging up the driveway pulling a sled. On the sled was a cardboard carton. The path to the front door, only as wide as a shovel, was too narrow for the sled. Two youngsters stayed behind, kneeling by the box, while the third ran up the walk. Jared met her at the door.

  “Mr. Samuels, it’s Roscoe,” she panted. “We found him in the snow.”

  Jared, a dreadful emptiness in his gut, raced past the girl to the sled. Roscoe, packed in blankets, looked up and made a weak attempt to rise. His tail wagged free of the cover and slapped excitedly against the cardboard.

  “His leg is broke,” one of the other children, a boy, said simply.

  Jared held the dog down and pulled back the blanket. Roscoe’s right leg was fractured, the bone protruding from a gash just above the knee. “Come kids,” he said, scooping up the box. “Come inside, please, and we’ll take care of Rosc. Do you think you can take me to where you found him?”

  “Yes, I know,” the little girl said. “We have teacher’s conference today, so no school. We were sledding down the hill to the bridge, and there he was, just lying in the snow. My mom gave us the blankets and the box.”

  “It looks like he’s been hit by a car,” Jared said. “Kids, this is important. Did any of you see Kate—you know, my wife?” The children shook their heads. He reached down and stroked the dog’s forehead. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth where his teeth had torn through. “Well, let’s get some help for Roscoe; then we’ll go back to the spot where you found him.” He felt consumed by feelings of panic and dread, and struggled to keep a note of calm in his voice. Frightened, confused children would be no asset to him—or to Kate.

  Minutes later three of them, Jared and two of the youngsters, were in the car. The third had been left behind to keep the dog still and await the arrival of the veterinarian.

  “Okay, kids,” Jared said, “you said you were sledding near a bridge. The stone bridge over the little stream?” Both nodded enthusiastically. “Good. I know just where that is.”

  The short drive over the narrow, snowy road seemed endless. Finally, Jared parked the Volvo at the top of the hill and then half ran, half slid to the indentation in the snow where the children assured him they had found Roscoe. He had thought to take his parka but had not changed his slacks or loafers, and the trek from the spot into the surrounding woods was both awkward and cold. The snow around him was, save for his own footprints, smooth and unbroken. After a scanning search, he made his way back to the road and started down the hill. At his request, the children followed, one on each side of the road, checking to be sure he had not missed anything.

  At the stone bridge, he stopped. There was evidence of some sort of collision at the base of the wall. A piece of granite had been sheared off, and a gouge, perhaps two feet long, extended along the wall from that point. He searched the roadway and then looked over the wall. The snow on one side of the shallow brook seemed disrupted. In the very center of the area, he saw a flash of bright yellow, partially buried in the snow.

  Ordering the children to remain where they were, he raced down the steep embankment to the water. It was Kate’s cap, quite deliberately, it seemed, wedged into the snow. Then, only a few feet from the cap, he saw a swatch of another color. It was blood, almost certainly, dried blood smeared across a small stretch of packed snow. There had been some kind of struggle. The marks around him made that clear. Had Kate been dragged off somewhere? He looked for signs of that, but instead noticed footprints paralleling the stream just beyond the bridge. Slipping in and out of the water, he ran to the spot. There were, he was certain, two sets. He looked overhead. The children, following his progress, had crossed the road and were peering down at him from atop the wall. The girl, he knew, lived just past the end of the road, half a mile, perhaps a bit more, away.

  “Crystal,” he called out, “is your mommy still home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you two make it back home to her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please do that, then. Tell her Kate is lost and may be hurt. Ask if she can drive out here and help look for her. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And Crystal, you all did a fine job bringing Roscoe in the way you did. Hurry on home, now.”

  Jared stayed where he was until the crunch of the children’s boots had completely vanished. Then he closed his eyes and listened within the silence for a sound, any kind of sign. He heard nothing. Increasingly aware of the cold in his feet and legs, he stepped in the deep tracks, fearing the worst, and expecting, with each stride, to have his fears become reality. A hundred yards from the bridge, the tracks turned sharply to the left and vanished into the stream.

  “Kate?” He called her name once and then again. His voice was instantly swallowed by the forest and the snow. “Kate, it’s me. It’s Jared.” There was a heaviness, a fastness, to the place and a silence that was hypnotic. As he trudged along the side of the stream looking for renewed signs, he felt the silence deepen.

  Then suddenly, he knew. He felt it as surely as he felt the cold. Kate was somewhere nearby. She was nearby, and she was still. He called to her every few feet, as he ducked under a huge fallen tree and followed the stream bed in a sharp bend to the left. Then he stopped. There was something different about this place. Far to his right, embedded in the steep slope that he guessed led up to the road, was a drainage pipe. At the base of the pipe were footprints.

  “Kate?” He closed his eyes and almost immediately felt a strange sense of detachment. She was not far, and she was alive. He felt it clearly. It was as if their lives, their energies, were joined by a thin, silken strand of awareness.

  “Jared?” It was a word, but not a word; a sound, but not a sound. His eyes still closed, he exhaled slowly and then listened. “Jared, help me.” Her voice, it seemed, was more within him than without. He worked his way along the embankment, calling her name. Then he shouted it several times into the long, empty culvert. Finally, hoping for a b
etter vantage point, he hauled himself up to the road.

  She was there, face down, a third of the way down the slope on the far side, still clawing, though feebly, at the snow. Jared leapt over the edge, sliding and tumbling down to her. Gently, he turned her onto his lap. Her hair was matted and frozen, her face spattered with blood. Her warm-up suit, shredded in spots, was stiffened with ice. Her eyes were closed.

  “Katey, it’s me,” he said. “I’ve got you. You’re going to be all right.”

  He worked her hair free from where it had frozen to her face. Her breathing was shallow, each expiration accompanied by a soft whimper of pain.

  “Honey, can you hear me?”

  Her eyes opened and then slowly focused on his face. “Oh, Jared … please … Roscoe …”

  He kissed her. “He’s hurt, but he’s okay. Dr. Finnerty’s coming to get him. What about you? Have you broken anything?”

  “Ribs,” she managed in a voice that was half groan, half cough. “Lung … may … be … punctured.”

  “Jesus. Kate, I’m going to lift you up. I’ll try not to hurt you, but we’ve got to get up to the road.”

  With strength enhanced by the urgency of the moment, he had no trouble lifting her. Negotiating the steep, icy slope, however, was another matter. Footing was treacherous, and every two or three baby steps upward, he was forced to set her down in order to regain purchase. Inches at a time, they moved ahead. When he finally heaved over the top of the slope onto the roadside, Jared fell to his knees, clutching her to his chest and gasping for air.

  Helplessly, he sat there, warming her face with his breath and watching the minute but steady rise and fall of her chest. Then through the silence surrounding their breathing, he heard the soft hum of an approaching car. Moments later, a beige station wagon rounded the bend ahead of them. In the front seat were a woman and two very excited children.

  “Way to go, Crystal,” Jared whispered. He put his lips by Kate’s ear. “Help is here, honey. Just hang in there. Help is here.”