Delusion

by G. H. Ephron

  Just then, Chip rolled by. He parked in front of us.

  “Shit,” I said. Why hadn’t it hit me before now? Any idiot seeing us would realize that Annie and I had spent the night together. And Chip wasn’t any idiot. “You okay with this?” I asked too late, reaching for Annie’s hand.

  Chip got out and walked back, his hand shading his eyes from the Jeep’s headlights. “Annie?” He knew her car.

  “If I wasn’t okay with it, I’d have made you call a cab,” Annie said. She rolled down her window. She smiled at Chip and shrugged. “Peter’s car is at the garage.”

  I got out. Chip looked from the Jeep to me and back again. He grinned. I could read his thought: Well, it’s about time.

  “Since you’re here anyway, Annie, mind hanging around? Just long enough to see what’s what,” he said. “Frankly, I’m not sure what the story is, but I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Annie got out.

  Gravel crunched as we walked up the driveway and through a pair of open security gates. When we cleared the trees and emerged from the shadows, a low modern home sprawled before us. It had layers of a flat roof, narrow ribbon windows facing the driveway, walls of steel and stucco that stretched out on land surrounded by trees and bushes. There was a two-car garage connected on one side. Every light in the place seemed to be on.

  Chip rang the bell. We waited. A breeze rustled the leaves. Not a sound from inside the house. Chip rang again and knocked.

  “Maybe he’s changed his mind,” Chip said. Just then, the peephole in the door went from light to dark. Someone had been looking out at us.

  “Nick, it’s me, Chip,” Chip called out.

  The door opened a crack, a chain fastened across the opening. “Who are these people?” rasped a man’s low voice.

  “I told you I’d be over with a colleague, someone I work with.”

  “I see two people,” the voice said. The door slammed shut.

  Annie and I exchanged looks. I didn’t need this. I’d have been just as happy to hang a U-turn and head back to Somerville.

  Chip leaned on the bell. He shouted, “Nick, you asshole! We’re here to help you. These are the people I work with all the time. I trust them. You can trust them too.”

  “I’m not letting them in,” came from behind the door.

  “Open up, you idiot!” Chip hollered, exasperated.

  The door pulled open again, this time with the chain unhooked. Nick Babikian stood peering out at us, still not inviting us in. He was about average height, a wiry build. He had on a white polo shirt and jeans. Dark eyes gleamed from beneath the navy blue brim of a Red Sox cap.

  “I asked you to come. I don’t know who these people are and—”

  “Mr. Babikian,” I said, cutting him off, “I’m Dr. Peter Zak. I’m a psychologist. I’ve known Chip for ages, as I gather have you. I work with him and Annie Squires, here, all the time. For the life of me, I don’t know why, but he must care about you because he dragged us out in the middle of the night.”

  His eyes were in shadow. I couldn’t see his expression to tell if this was making any impact on him. I went on. “We’re here to help. We won’t say or do anything you don’t want us to.”

  Nick opened his mouth, closed it. Started to turn, hesitated. He was like a wind-up toy that was running down. He looked at Chip.

  “You can trust them. Really, you can,” Chip said.

  Nick slumped, his chin sinking into his chest, and let the door swing open. He followed us into a large open living area, dragging his feet like a sleepwalker. The place had a hard-edged, antiseptic feel to it—white marble floor, white walls, chrome and black leather chairs, and chrome and glass tables.

  I stopped and did a 360. The walls were hung with masks. There was a gaudy lacquered Mardi Gras mask—a laughing white face with features outlined in black, red plumes on top. Beside it leered a primitive, distorted human face with one eye partly closed and a wrinkled forehead carved in wood. Nearby, a brilliantly painted red devil mask with white horns and a green tongue grinned. The masks were sensuous and grotesque at the same time.

  There were several masks made from bird feathers. On one, an obsidian-black bird skull and beak formed the nose; glossy black and iridescent feathers shaped the upper part of a face. It reminded me of one of my Rorschach cards.

  I scanned the room again. Regardless of their expressions, the masks seemed emotionless. And despite the empty eye sockets, I had the suffocating sense that I was being watched.

  I’d already drawn a tentative conclusion from the obvious. Nick Babikian was paranoid. Masks were an odd decorating choice for a man who was suspicious and distrustful to begin with.

  Annie and Chip had followed Nick into the kitchen. I joined them. The three of us sat around a white kitchen table. There were dirty dishes on the table, the remains of a meal of scrambled eggs and toast. A late-late dinner or an early-early breakfast? My stomach rumbled and the smell of bacon made my mouth water. Annie and I hadn’t eaten. Nick picked up the two dirty plates.

  “Leave it,” Chip said. “Tell us what happened.”

  Nick didn’t answer. He stared down at his feet. The boat shoes were splattered with reddish-brown spots. I glanced over at Annie. She’d noticed the same thing.

  “Your mother,” Chip said. “Is your mother all right? Is she here?”

  “She was hungry,” Nick said. “I gave her breakfast.” He gestured at the dishes. “That’s how it is with Alzheimer’s.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I took her”—Nick’s eyes darted around the room, as if the words for where he’d taken her would appear in the air—“took her to Oakvale House.” I knew the place. It was an assisted-living facility. We’d actually passed it on the way here.

  “When?” Chip asked.

  “They didn’t want to admit her, but I had to leave her there.”

  “When?” Chip said, louder this time.

  “I just got back.”

  I could imagine the scene. Oakvale was a good retirement community, but it was in no way equipped to handle someone with Alzheimer’s. Besides, you couldn’t leave an elderly parent on the steps of a nursing home in the middle of the night, any more than you could leave a baby on the steps of a church.

  “There isn’t anyone here who can take care of her now,” Nick added.

  “What about your wife?” Chip asked. “Where’s Lisa?”

  “She’s …” Nick’s voice caught in his throat. “Oh, God, she’s dead. He killed her.”

  The three of us exhaled in unison.

  “What do you mean he killed her?” Chip asked, his voice going flinty.

  “I was working. I always work late. Down in the basement. When I came up, there was blood all over. Everywhere. My mother woke up. She came out and started screaming and screaming and screaming.”

  Chip stood. “Where’s Lisa? Are you sure she’s dead?”

  Nick gave a haggard stare. “Oh, she’s dead all right. She’s out there.” He pointed a shaking finger toward the back of the house.

  We followed him through the living room and into a family room. The room was chilly, its double doors thrown open to the back of the house. I barely registered the leather couch and chairs that softened the space, or the masks on these walls too. Alongside a wrought-iron-and-tile coffee table was an area of dried blood on the blond oak floor.

  A trail of red tracked across the room, ending at the doors to the outside. There were reddish footprints everywhere.

  “Keep back,” Annie said. “It’s a crime scene.”

  Heedless of her words, Nick Babikian drifted over to the outside door. He flipped a switch and the patio sprang to light. The lights in the pool came on. Nick groaned, as if someone had punched him in the gut. Even from where I stood, through a thin layer of mist that coated the pool I could see a woman floating facedown in the near end. Her long blond hair spread out around her in water tinged pink.

  I felt queasy, the coffee trying to m
ake its way back up my throat. I leaned against a leather chair and focused on breathing, in and out, trying to keep the floor under me and the maskladen walls from spinning.

  Annie hugged the wall, working her way around the trail of blood. She went out, up to the pool’s edge. The body rocked gently in the water, head bumping up against the blue tile at the edge. The bare back, buttocks, and legs were pale and perfect.

  Nick Babikian seemed mute with shock. What in God’s name had gone on here?

  Annie crouched, reached out, and touched the woman’s neck. Then she stood and shook her head at us. She came back in, returning as carefully as she’d left. She looked somber and shaken.

  “We should all go back into the kitchen,” she said. “Try not to muck things up for the investigators.”

  “Investigators?” Nick said, coming alive.

  “Nick, we’re going to have to call the police,” Chip said.

  “Police? No way. Not in my house.” Suddenly, he’d come wide awake.

  Chip went over to him and put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. He put his face close to Nick’s and spoke quietly and with intensity. “You called me because your wife was dead. You knew I was someone who could advise you. Well, here’s my advice. We have to call the police. And it’s better if you’re here while they’re here.”

  Nick’s face fell. He glanced out toward the pool. “Okay, okay,” he muttered. “I hate it, but okay.” He trudged back to the kitchen and we all followed. He sank into one of the chairs. “Go ahead. Call them.”

  There was a phone on the kitchen wall. Annie picked it up and dialed. She talked quietly, giving them the information they needed. Then she came over to me and slipped her hand into mine. I squeezed back, reminded of how I never again wanted to lose someone like I’d lost Kate, like I’d lost my friend Channing Temple.

  Nick was slumped at the table, staring into midair. He seemed almost in a trance. In the hours after Kate was killed, I’d been barely able to talk. I reminded myself that numbness was a normal reaction to a world gone crazy.

  I crouched alongside Nick, our faces level. I sought eye contact, but instead of windows in, I found only myself reflected back. At some level, I realized this was an opportunity I’d never had before. Within hours of a murder I was talking with someone likely to be accused of the crime, witnessing the scene firsthand. Usually I didn’t get brought in until shortly before trial. The police reports and statements I saw were months old, dry and lifeless on the printed page; crime-scene photographs were framed and focused by a police photographer who’d made conscious and unconscious choices about what to include and what to leave out.

  My first question: Was Nick anchored in the present? “Do you know where you are?” I asked him, knowing full well that the question sounded inane.

  “I’m in my own home, Doctor.” The shadow of a smile crossed his face. “It’s Saturday”—he glanced at his watch—“make that Sunday. And my wife …” His voice broke and his face twisted in anguish. “My wife is in the pool. She’s dead.” He struggled to regain control. “He killed her.”

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  Nick’s eyes had glazed over. He didn’t seem to hear the question.

  “Who’s he?” I asked, louder this time.

  Nick’s head jerked. “He?” His eyes darted one way, then the other, then narrowed. “He’s always here, watching.”

  “Is he here now?” I asked.

  “Here now?” Nick half rose, as if this possibility were just occurring to him. Nick looked at Chip, then Annie, then me. His hands gripped the edge of the table. “I don’t know.”

  A chill went up my spine. Fear and anxiety that potent could be contagious.

  Blue lights pulsed against the trees. Nick went over to the window and looked out. Tendons stood out like cords in his neck as watched the cars park. He gave me a quick, wary glance, then looked away.

  Chip stood, tugged his suit jacket. “I’d advise you to say nothing while the police are here,” he told Nick.

  Nick gave Chip a questioning look. “Won’t that make them think I did it?”

  “Don’t worry about what they think,” Chip said. “When they say, ‘Anything you say can and will be used against you,’ they mean it. Trust no one.”

  “Trust no one,” Nick repeated the words. “I don’t.”

  As I watched Nick sit down at the kitchen table and rest his head in his hands, I wondered. A man finds his wife murdered. He cooks breakfast, washes the pan before packing his mother up and driving her to a nursing home. Then he has the presence of mind to call a friend who happens to be a lawyer? Seemed like an odd arrangement of priorities.

  3

  ANNIE WENT out through the garage to greet the police. A few moments later, four uniformed officers and a pair of plainclothes cops were crowding into the kitchen. Chip talked to one of the guys in plain clothes who seemed to be taking charge. He was a large man, probably in his midthirties, thickset, his dark hair cut close to his head.

  Chip gestured toward the swimming pool. The officer lifted his head, looked out in that direction, and seemed to go white. He shuddered. His look hardened as his eyes came to rest on Nick. I found it somehow reassuring that even a detective, for whom violent death isn’t a novelty, could still be affected.

  Then the officer’s glance shifted to me. “What in the hell is going on here?” He glared at Chip. “As an attorney, you should know better …” he sputtered.

  “We had no idea this was a murder scene until we got here,” Chip explained. “We called you right away.”

  “Well, I sure as hell hope you kept your goddamn size elevens the hell out of …”

  “I’ve barely moved from this table,” I said.

  Annie said, “It’s okay, Al. As soon as we realized what had happened, we stayed in the kitchen.”

  “Yeah, well …” It was Annie’s assurances, not mine, that seemed to calm him down. She had the pedigree, an investigator from a family of cops, even if she usually worked for the defense. He turned to Nick. “Mr. Babikian.”

  Nick blinked up at him.

  “I’m Detective Albert Boley. I met you before. You had a theft at your office? A bomb threat?”

  Nick squinted up at him. He didn’t make a move to shake the hand offered. Boley pocketed it. “I don’t … yes, I do. I do remember you.”

  I’d expected Boley to say something more, but he just hung there watching, waiting, like he was looking for some kind of reaction from Nick. Finally he said, “I’m very sorry about your loss. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Nick opened his mouth, then shut it. Glanced at Chip. He mumbled, “My attorney has advised me not to say anything.”

  Boley sighed and shook his head. “Figures. If that’s the way you want it.” He drew himself up. “I need all of you to keep out of our way. Understood?” He turned to one of the officers who’d arrived with him. “Keep them in here. We’ll want statements from all of them. Schedule them to come down for prints.” Boley glared at us. “And no one’s to leave until I say so.” Then he stalked off.

  The officer wrote our names on his clipboard. After that the four of us sat around the kitchen table, waiting. The refrigerator hummed on, then turned off with a thunk. A cat-shaped wall clock wagged its tail and eyeballs back and forth, marking the seconds. It was nearly four and the sky hadn’t yet started to brighten.

  More police personnel arrived. We stayed put as investigators swarmed through the house and the backyard. It was painstaking the way they worked their way across every surface, collecting evidence in carefully labeled bags, collecting them and removing them from the house in batches. With police officers hovering over us, observing our every move, I wasn’t about to engage Nick in any further conversation.

  Feeling restless, I got up. I leaned against the counter. This was nothing like my own cluttered kitchen. Neatly stored dishes were visible through glass cabinet doors. The only signs of disarray were the dirty dishes on the table and the single
frying pan sitting in the drying rack alongside the sink, probably the one he’d used to cook the eggs.

  Other contrasts struck me. The granite countertops and the black tile floor were incongruous alongside blue and white gingham half curtains. On a little corner of the otherwise bare countertop were a half dozen blue-eyed, pink-cheeked ceramic angels frolicking around a cluster of canisters decorated with mushrooms and elves. On the massive, gleaming stainless steel refrigerator were several rows of small snapshots of fifty or sixty newborns, their crumpled faces oblivious to the camera. A name and date were written on each photo’s white border.

  Above this rogues’ gallery was a photo of Nick with a pretty blond woman, probably in her early thirties. They were dressed up, him in a tux, her in a long pale blue gown. She was looking at him, and he was looking away without expression. I stared at the woman who was now floating in her own swimming pool, dead, undoubtedly the same one who’d hung the blue gingham curtains and carefully placed each baby picture in its own magnetized frame.

  A doorway from the kitchen led to a laundry room. Clean wash was folded neatly on the dryer. There was a faint smell of detergent and bleach. A wall calendar hung on the door. The photograph for the month of May was a pair of cocker spaniel puppies, their fur bunched over their eyes, sitting in a field of daffodils.

  I went over to it. Notes were carefully written on each day, each week the same. Monday, laundry. Tuesday, grocery shopping. The only items that weren’t obviously chores were on Tuesdays at seven and Fridays at four. In the same careful hand was printed: DR. T. A biweekly doctor’s appointment?

  As the hours passed, Nick seemed to float in and out of consciousness. He could sit for an hour at the kitchen table, slumped over in his chair, his eyes nearly closed under the brim of his cap. Only his occasionally clenched fists gave a hint that, for some of the time at least, he was alert to the strangers upending his home.

  From the window, I watched the investigators working in the backyard. The perimeter had been marked off with crime-scene tape. Detective Boley was very much in charge. He seemed to be everywhere at once, directing efforts, acting as if the body floating in the pool didn’t exist.