Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

that man in the delicatessen. You absolutely must tell me."

  "Dead."

  Suddenly, because he was kneeling beside her chair and was close to her,

  Pablo realized her breathing was extremely shallow. He took her hand

  and was startled by how cold it was. He pressed two fingers to her

  wrist, feeling for her pulse. Weak. Very weak. Frantic, he put his

  fingertips to her throat and located a slow and weak heartbeat.

  To avoid answering his questions, she seemed to be withdrawing into a

  sleep far deeper than her hypnotic trance, perhaps into a coma, into an

  oblivion where she could not hear his demanding voice. He had never

  encountered a reaction like this before, had never even read of such a

  thing. Was it possible for Ginger to will herself dead merely to escape

  his questions? Memory blocks erected around traumatic experiences were

  not uncommon; his reading in psychology journals sometimes turned up

  accounts of these psychological barricades to recollection, but they

  were barriers that could be dismantled without killing the subject.

  Surely no experience could be so horrendous that a person would rather

  die than remember it. Yet even as Pablo pressed his fingers to her

  throat, the throbbing of her pulse grew fainter and more irregular.

  "Ginger, listen," he said urgently. "You don't have to answer me. No

  more questions. You can come back. I won't insist on answers."

  She seemed suspended on a terrible brink, teetering.

  "Ginger, listen to me! No more questions. I'm finished asking

  questions. I swear it." After a long and frightening hesitation, he

  detected a slight improvement in her pulse rate. "I'm no longer

  interested in the black gloves or anything else, Ginger. I just want to

  bring you back to the present and out of your trance. Do you hear me?

  Please hear me. Please. I've finished questioning you."

  Her pulse stuttered shockingly, but then it throbbed more steadily.

  Respiration improved, too. As he talked to her in that reassuring

  manner, she quickly got better. Color returned to her lovely face.

  In less than a minute, he returned her to December 24 and woke her.

  She blinked. "It didn't work, huh? You couldn't put me under."

  "You were under," he said shakily. "Too far under."

  She said, "Pablo, you're trembling. Why're you trembling?

  What's wrong? What happened?"

  This time, she went to the kitchen and poured the brandy.

  Later, at the door of Pablo's apartment, as Ginger was leaving to meet

  the taxi that Pablo had summoned for her, she said, "I still can't think

  what it could be. Nothing so terrible has ever happened to me,

  certainly nothing so bad I'd rather die than reveal it."

  "There's something very traumatic in your past," Pablo said. "An

  incident involving a man wearing black gloves, a man with what you said

  was a 'dark glass face." Perhaps a motorcyclist like the one that

  panicked you on State Street. It's an incident you've buried very deep

  ... and which you seem determined to keep buried at any cost. I really

  think you should tell Dr. Gudhausen what happened here today and let

  him proceed from there."

  "Gudhausen is too traditional, too slow. I want your help."

  "I won't risk putting you in a trance and questioning you again."

  "Unless your research turns up a similar case."

  "Not much chance of that. I've done a lot of reading in psychology and

  hypnosis for fifty years, and I've never heard of anything like it."

  "But you're going to research it, aren't you? You promised."

  "I'll see what I can find," he said.

  "And if you discover that someone developed a workable technique for

  getting through a memory block like this, you'll use it on me."

  Ginger was mystified, but she was also considerably less distraught than

  she had been when she first arrived at Pablo Jackson's apartment. At

  least they had gotten somewhere,

  even if they did not yet know where. They had found the problem, some

  mysterious traumatic experience in the past, and though they had not

  learned a single detail of it, they knew it was back there, a dark shape

  waiting to be explored. In time they would find a way to throw a light

  on it, and when it was revealed, she would know the cause of her fugues.

  "Tell Dr. Gudhausen," Pablo said again.

  "I'm pinning all my hopes on you."

  "You're damn stubborn," the old magician said, shaking his head.

  "No. Just persistent."

  'Willful."

  "Just determined."

  "Acharnge!"

  "When I get back to Baywatch I'll look up that word, and if it's an

  insult, you'll be sorry when I come back on Thursday," she teased.

  "Not Thursday," he said. "The research is going to take time. I'm not

  going to hypnotize you again unless I can find a record of a similar

  case and can follow someone else's procedures, knowing they succeeded."

  "Okay, but if you don't call by Friday or Saturday, I'll probably come

  back and bust my way in. Remember, you're my best hope."

  "I am your best hope ... only for want of anything better."

  "You underrate yourself, Pablo Jackson." She kissed him on the cheek.

  "I'll be waiting for your call."

  "Au revoir.

  "Shalom."

  Outside, as she got into the cab, she remembered one of her father's

  favorite aphorisms, and, like a lead weight, it counteracted her new

  buoyancy: It's always brightest just before the dark.

  3.

  Chicago, Illinois

  Winton Tolk-the tall, jovial, black patrolman riding shotgun-got out of

  the police cruiser to buy three hamburgers and Cokes at a corner

  sandwich shop, leaving his partner, Paul Armes, behind the wheel, and

  Father Brendan Cronin in the back seat. Brendan glanced at the shop,

  but he could not see inside, for the big front windows were painted with

  festive holiday images: Santa, reindeer, wreaths, angels. A light snow

  had jus(begun to fall, and the weather forecast called for eight inches

  by midnight, which meant tomorrow would be a white Christmas.

  As Winton got out of the car, Brendan leaned forward and said to Paul

  Armes, "Yeah, well, nobody's knocking Going My Way, but what about It's

  a Wonderful Life? Now there was a terrific picture!"

  , 'Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed," Paul said.

  "What a cast." They had been talking about great Christmas films, and

  now Brendan was sure he had hit upon the best of the best. "Lionel

  Barrymore played the skinflint. Gloria Grahame was in that, too."

  "Thomas Mitchell," Paul Armes said as, outside, Winton reached the door

  of the sandwich shop. "Ward Bond. God, what a cast!" Winton had gone

  into the sandwich shop. "But you're forgetting another great one.

  Miracle on 34th Street."

  "That was terrific, sure, but I still think Capra's better-"

  It seemed that the gunshots and the startling cascade of shattering

  glass came at the same instant, with not a fraction of a second between.

  Even with the car doors shut, the heater fan making noise, and the

  police-band radio crackling and chirruping, the shots were loud enough

  to halt Brendan in midsentence. As the explosions blew away the

&
nbsp; Christmas peace of the Uptown street, the sandwich shop's painted window

  tableau dissolved, erupted in a glittering spray. New shots overlaid

  the echo of old reports, and the blasts were accompanied by a brittle

  and atonal music of glass smashing on the roof, hood, and trunk of the

  cruiser.

  "Oh, shit!" Paul Armes tore the dash-mounted riot gun free of its

  clasps, throwing open his door even as the glass was still raining.

  "Stay down," he shouted back at Brendan, and then he was out, crouching,

  moving around the car, and using it as a shield

  Stunned, Brendan looked through the window at his side, back toward the

  sandwich-shop entrance. Abruptly, that door was flung wide open, and

  two young men appeared, one black, one white. The black man wore a knit

  cap and a long navy peacoat-and carried a semiautomatic sawed-off shot

  gun. The white man, in a plaid hunting jacket, was armed with a

  revolver. They came out fast, half-crouched, and the black man swung

  the shotgun toward the patrol car. Brendan was looking directly into

  the muzzle. There was a flash, and he was sure he had been shot, but

  the rear passenger-side window in front of his face remained intact.

  Instead, the front window exploded inward, fragments of glass and lead

  pellets showering across the seat, rattling off the dashboard. The

  near-miss shocked Brendan out of his daze, and he rolled off his seat,

  to the floor, his heart hammering almost as loud as the gunfire.

  Winton Tolk had had the bad luck to walk unsuspecting into the middle of

  an armed robbery. He was probably dead.

  As Brendan pressed himself to the floor of the squad car, he heard Paul

  Armes shouting outside: "Drop it!"

  Two shots cracked. Not a shotgun. Revolver fire. But who pulled the

  trigger? Paul Armes or the guy in the plaid hunting jacket?

  Another shot. Someone screamed.

  But who had been hit? Armes or one of the robbers?

  Brendan wanted to look, but he did not dare show himself.

  Thanks to an arrangement Father Wycazik had made with the local precinct

  captain, Brendan had been riding as an observer with Winton and Paul for

  five days. In an ordinary suit, tie, and topcoat, he was supposed to be

  a lay consultant employed by the Church to study the need for Catholic

  charity outreach programs, a cover story which everyone seemed to

  accept. Winton's and Paul's beat was uptown, an area bordered by Foster

  Avenue on the North, Lake Shore Drive high-rises on the east, Irving

  Park Road on the south, and North Ashland Avenue on the west. It was

  Chicago's poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhood, home to blacks and

  Indians, but mostly to Appalachians and Hispanics. After five days with

  Winton and Paul, Brendan developed a strong liking for both men and a

  deep sympathy for all the honest souls who lived and worked in those

  decaying buildings and filthy streets-and who were prey to the packs of

  human jackals among them. He had learned to expect anything riding with

  these guys, but the sandwich-shop shootout was the worst incident yet.

  Another shotgun blast slammed into the car, rocking it.

  Brendan curled fetally on the floor and tried to pray, but no words

  came. God was still lost to him, and he cowered in terrible solitude.

  Outside, Paul Armes shouted, "Give it up!"

  The gunman said, "Fuck you!"

  When he'd reported to Father Wycazik after a week at St. Joseph's,

  Brendan had been sent to another hospital, where he'd been given work on

  the terminal ward, a dreadful place with no children at all. There, as

  at St. Joseph's, Brendan quickly discovered the lesson that Stefan

  Wycazik expected him to learn. To most who were at the end of life,

  death was not to be feared but welcomed, a blessing for which they

  thanked God rather than cursed Him. And in dying, many who had never

  been believers became believers at last, and those who had fallen away

  from faith came back. There was frequently something noble and deeply

  moving in the suffering that accompanied a person's exit from this

  world, as if each shared, for a while, the mystical burden of the cross.

  Yet, that lesson learned, Brendan remained unable to believe. Now, the

  fierce beating of his heart hammered the words of the prayer to dust

  before he could speak them, and his mouth was as dry as powder.

  Outside, there was shouting, but he could not make sense of the words

  any more, maybe because the people shouting were incoherent and maybe

  because he was partially deaf from the gunfire.

  He did not yet fully understand the lesson that Father Wycazik had hoped

  he would learn from this Uptown portion of his unconventional therapy.

  And now as he listened to the chaos outside, he knew that the lesson,

  regardless of its nature, would be insufficient to convince him that God

  was as real as bullets. Death was a bloody, stinking, foul reality, and

  in the face of it, the promise of a reward in the afterlife was not the

  least persuasive.

  The shotgun discharged again, followed by the roar of the riot gun, then

  by shouting and the slap-slap-slap of running feet. It sounded like a

  war out there. Another blast from the riot gun. More shattering glass.

  Another scream, more horrible than the one that had rent the air before

  it. Yet another shot. Silence. Silence perfect and profound.

  The driver's door was jerked open.

  Brendan cried out in surprise and terror.

  "Stay down!" Paul Armes said from the front seat, keeping a low profile

  himself. "Two dead, but there might be other shitheads inside."

  "Where's Wintono" Brendan asked.

  Paul did not answer. Instead, he grabbed the radio microphone up front

  and called Central. "Officer down. Officer down!" Armes gave his

  position, the address of the sandwich shop, and requested backup.

  Lying on his side on the floor of the squad car, Brendan closed his eyes

  and saw, with heartbreaking clarity, the pictures that Winton Tolk

  carried in his wallet and that he proudly displayed when queried about

  his family-pictures of his wife, Raynella, and his three children.

  "Those rotten fucking bastards," Paul Armes said, his voice shaking.

  Brendan heard soft clicking and scraping sounds that puzzled him until

  he realized Armes was reloading. He said, "Winton's been shot?"

  "Bet on it," Armes said.

  "He might need help."

  "It's on the way."

  "But he may need help now," Brendan said.

  "Can't go in there. Might be another one. Two more. Who knows? We

  gotta wait for backup."

  "Winton might need a tourniquet . . . other first aid. He might be

  dead by the time help gets here."

  "Don't you think I know that?" Paul Armes said bitterly, furiously. He

  finished reloading and slid out of the car to take up a position from

  which he could watch the shop.

  The more Brendan thought about Winton Tolk sprawled on the floor in

  there, the angrier he became. If he had still believed in God, he might

  have quenched his anger in prayer. But now it fed on itself and grew

  into a hot rage. His heart pounded even harder than when the shotgun

  blasts wer
e crashing into the car inches from him. The injustice of

  Winton's fate-the unfairness, the wrongness-was like an acid eating at

  Brendan.

  He got out of the car and started across the sidewalk, through the

  falling snow, toward the entrance to the sandwich shop.

  "Stop! For God's sake, don't!"

  Brendan kept going, driven by his rage and by the thought that Winton

  Tolk might need immediate first aid to survive.

  A dead man in a plaid hunting jacket was lying on his back on the

  sidewalk. A round from Armes's revolver had taken him in the chest, a

  second round in the throat. There was a stink of loosed bowels. In the

  snow beside the corpse lay a handgun, perhaps the very one with which

  Winton Tolk had been shot.

  "Cronin!" Paul Armes yelled. "Get your ass back here, you idiot!"

  Moving past the broken windows, Brendan could see into the shop, which

  was surprisingly dark. The lights had been shot out or a switch thrown,

  and the gray daylight penetrated only a couple of feet inside. He could

  not see anyone, but that did not mean it was safe to enter.

  "Cronin!" Paul Armes shouted.

  Brendan went to the entrance, where he found the black man in the