by G. H. Ephron
“They can tell that?” I said.
“Apparently they can.”
I stared at the footprint, at the pattern. I remembered the green rubber shoes with whitish treads standing outside Teitlebaum’s office door. The recently turned soil. The bushes waiting to be planted.
Was it just a coincidence? Kwan said Teitlebaum testified in the Ely murder case in Rhode Island. There were a lot of similarities between the Ely and Babikian murders. A controlling husband, acquiescent wife. A gruesome death scene. Mutilation. The husband’s odd behavior after the murder. And a psychiatrist with a connection to both cases.
“What are you thinking that you’re not telling me?” Annie asked.
“Lots of people have boots like these, right?”
“That’s the problem. They were practically the uniform when I was in high school. They got passed from sibling to sibling, like ice skates only unisex. Even my mom had a pair. These are big. Probably a man’s.”
“Nick?”
“Doesn’t own a pair.”
“When I went to see Dr. Teitlebaum, there was a pair of duck boots outside the door to his office. And I just found out that Teitlebaum testified at the Ely murder trial down in Rhode Island.”
“Shit. Why didn’t I know that?” Annie asked. “That’s the kind of thing I’m supposed to know. Damn.” Annie thought for a moment more. “You’ve got to tell the police right away. They’ll send someone over there to get the shoes, see if the treads match. Test for traces of blood.”
I fished Boley’s business card out of my wallet. And I’d been so sure I wasn’t going to trip over any evidence. I called and left a message. Boley called back a few minutes later, and I told him about the shoes. He sounded annoyed.
15
As I headed home, I recalled my meeting with Teitlebaum. From the beginning, I’d felt uneasy, that his relationship with Lisa Babikian had been too intense, too personal. Teitlebaum skated easily from disclosing information about the couples therapy, where he had permission, to disclosing information he’d gleaned from treating Lisa alone, where he didn’t. Now, Teitlebaum had a pair of duck boots that might match bloody footprints found at the scene, and he’d played a role in a similar murder case.
I wondered if the police had already been to Teitlebaum’s. Had the footprints matched? Had there been blood mixed with the not-from-Weston dirt? Would he be arrested for the murder of Lisa Babikian?
I turned onto my street feeling exhausted, looking forward to a hot shower and bed. I promised myself that the next morning, I’d walk over to the public library and look up news reports on the Ely case. Who had Teitlebaum testified for in the case?
I was jolted from my thoughts by emergency lights flashing at the end of the block, near my house. My tires peeled rubber when I downshifted and accelerated. I told myself it was probably another car accident. They happened all the time because the street was so narrow and had cars parked up and down both sides. By the time I got close enough to see that one of the cop cars was in my driveway, my heart was racing and my stomach had gone queasy with dread. Please, not a special-delivery package that I was too late to intercept.
I double-parked in the street, jumped out, and ran up the walk. My mother was out on the porch in her bathrobe, flapping her arms at a pair of uniforms. Pulsing in time to the police lights was a whappa-whappa-whappa sound. Took me a moment before I realized what it was—our newly installed alarm.
“There’s my son,” she told one of the officers. The gauzy scarf she had around her head, knotted over the forehead, was coming off. She looked completely frazzled. “He knows the whatever-it-is to make this—you should excuse the expression—goddamned thing stop!”
I gaped. I had never in my life heard my mother use that word.
The door to my house was open. I hurried in, punched in the code, and the alarm went silent.
“New alarm?” said one of the officers, a craggy-looking fellow who looked as if he had an easy smile.
“Just had it installed,” I said.
“Sometimes they need to be adjusted. A blowing curtain can set it off.”
“I don’t have curtains.”
“We can go in and check again,” he said. “Went in before and didn’t find anything.”
“Nah,” I said.
“Peter,” my mother said sharply, giving me a gimlet eye.
“Sure. Please. That would be great if you’d have another look around.”
A white van from the alarm company pulled up and double-parked behind me. A guy in blue jeans and a T-shirt rolled out of it and trotted up the walk. “Everything under control?”
“Probably a false alarm,” I said.
“Such a noise,” my mother said. “I’m inside, minding my own business, and it starts. You think I could remember that code with that noise going on? I couldn’t remember my own name.”
“Was my door open?” I asked.
“It was”—Mom glanced at my front door—“closed.” She felt in the pocket of her robe and came out with a key ring. “I used my key.”
“The door was locked and you unlocked it?” I asked gently.
She closed her eyes and thought about that. “Locked, unlocked, who knows?” she admitted. “I got distracted. While I’m trying to get it open, my phone starts ringing.”
“That was probably us,” the guy from the alarm company said. “Standard practice. An alarm comes in, we call the homeowner. No answer, we call the backup number you gave us, usually a neighbor. That was probably you.”
The cops reappeared in the doorway. “Looks all clear,” the second cop said, a freckle-faced kid who reminded me of Opie from the old TV show. When had cops gotten so young?
The guy from the alarm company asked, “You got a dog?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Any pets at all?”
I shook my head.
“No rodent issues at the present?”
Delicately put. “Not at the present.”
“Windows closed or open?”
“Closed?” I looked at the police officers. Officer Opie nodded.
The alarm company guy scratched his head.
“Maybe there was a break-in?” I suggested.
My mother’s hand gripped my arm.
“If there was, he hightailed it.” The cop even talked like Opie.
“Probably just the alarm system’s set too sensitive,” the guy from the alarm company said. “We’ll adjust it.”
After they’d all left, I gave my mother a hug. We went over the code again together—her code was the same as mine.
“Maybe I should have it tattooed on my wrist,” she quipped. It was a grim joke. “This is the kind of thing that makes me feel old. Old and incompetent.” I tried to hug her again but she pushed me away. “But not pitiful.”
My mother went back to her side of the house, and I went to mine. The police had left the lights on in every room. I was relieved that they hadn’t found anything, but I wanted to check for myself.
I went up to Kate’s studio first. Everything seemed as I’d left it. I turned off the lights and came down to the second floor. I checked my study, the bathroom, my bedroom. I checked in the closets and even pulled the covers off the bed while trying to stay at a respectful distance. No horse heads.
Then I checked the basement. No signs of anything unusual. I brought a bottle of everyday red up to the kitchen. The adrenaline rush that had pumped me up had ebbed. I wanted to go from hyperaware to numb.
I foraged around in the drawer where I keep my corkscrew. It wasn’t there. I checked the counter. Not there either. I started opening drawers. I found it where I keep my silverware.
I opened the bottle and poured myself a glass of wine. I leaned against the counter, swirling the wine in the glass. There were crumbs on the counter. I tried to remember when I’d last had crackers or cookies out on the counter, and couldn’t. Maybe it had just been a while since I’d wiped it down.
I picked up the morning
paper, turned to the sports section, and went into the living room. I settled into my morris chair, leaned back, and almost spilled my wine. I sat bolt upright, dropping the paper to the floor. The chair back was set reclining farther than I ever keep it.
What was it Nick had said? Bypassing that system—piece of cake. He was right about one thing. If I had video surveillance cameras in place, now I’d know if someone had broken in.
I opened my briefcase and found the test protocol I’d been using with Nick. There in the corner was written Argus Security and a phone number. I called and left a message asking for someone to call me first thing the next morning.
Then I went through the house again, meticulously inspecting every nook and cranny, every closet from top to bottom. I pulled the blinds in every window and turned on the outside lights. That night, I barely slept.
The next morning, I went through the house again and opened all the blinds. I checked in on Mother. She looked as tired as I felt. “Don’t forget, you can always beep me if you need me,” I told her.
“Fine. More numbers,” she complained.
I would have accepted her offer of French toast, but the man from the new security company had arrived.
“So, Nick Babikian recommended us,” said the good-looking man with graying temples and a ramrod-straight back that screamed retired military. He extended a hand. “Bill McCutcheon.”
Bill wore a white-knit collared shirt with lettering stitched over the chest, ARGUS SECURITY, and the image of a small peacock. Argus. It was a name I knew from when I’d been obsessed with Greek mythology in grade school. A giant with one hundred eyes, Argus had stood guard over Zeus’s mistress. This irritated Zeus’s wife, who killed Argus, then she took his hundred eyes and gave them to the peacock. It was the perfect logo for a security company.
“Peter Zak,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Nick’s one of our best customers.”
“Quite a setup he’s got,” I said. “Did you folks do the installation for him?”
“We helped.” Bill looked around, like he thought someone might have overheard. “A little. Mostly he just bought the parts from us. Did the setup himself. The guy knows what he’s doing as well as any pro.”
Of that I had no doubt. “I’ll tell him you gave him a vote of confidence.”
“Uh, thanks, but … do me a favor, would ya? Don’t mention I said anything. Likes his privacy. And like I said, he’s a good customer.”
“Sure. No problem.”
Bill checked out my new system and proclaimed it “adequate.” Suggested a few ways to beef it up. Then he told me about the video surveillance cameras they could install to monitor the front and back of the house.
“We can hook it right into your cable system. You’re watching TV, the doorbell rings, it interrupts with a picture of the person at the door. You don’t even have to turn your head away from the TV.” Apparently a major selling point for couch potatoes.
“Sounds wonderful, but I don’t think so,” I said.
“High-speed Internet? We can hook it up to your computer.”
“I’d really rather not.”
He looked crestfallen.
He wrote up an estimate for the surveillance cameras transmitting time-lapse images to their offices. I couldn’t help gasping when I saw the price. Bill reminded me it included the cameras, the wiring, a year of service, and archiving of old data to CD. They kept it for six months.
As I wrote out a check for the deposit, I wondered why I was doing this—following the advice of a delusional paranoid. I hoped I wasn’t fast becoming one myself.
No, I reassured myself. Someone who’s delusional is convinced of threats that don’t exist. The threats that haunted me were real. I had the broken pieces of Kate’s pot to prove it. I wasn’t paranoid, just cautious. I felt threatened and was protecting myself. Then it struck me. Wasn’t this just the kind of rationale someone with paranoid delusions would offer up?
I’d hoped to get to the library that morning to look up Teitlebaum and the Ely case. But by the time the Argus Security van had pulled away, I had just enough time to get to the Pearce for my morning appointments.
16
JEFF GRATZENBERG had offered to show me the game that had made Babikian his reputation as a game designer. He had time late the next afternoon.
After work, I stopped at home first. There were no police cars out in front of my house. No alarm going whappa-whappa. I stood on my porch and wondered whether I’d be able to see the security cameras once they were installed. Bill from Argus had promised, “You don’t know where to look, you won’t know they’re there.”
Why hadn’t it occurred to me that security surveillance was a two-way street? Sure, I could monitor visitors. But how easy would it be for someone to tune in on the stream of video images being transmitted to the folks at Argus Security? Could Ralston Bridges somehow monitor my comings and goings? Had I improved my safety, or had I handed another tool to my tormenter?
That’s when I realized, if Nick was as paranoid as he seemed to be from all the evaluations I’d done, then why would he trust me? And if he didn’t trust me, then why was he being so helpful about my home security system?
I tried to shake myself out of it. That was the problem with paranoia—it was like a serpent feeding on its own tail.
Gratzenberg was living with his mother on a street that dead-ended at the Mass Pike. The house was a bungalow, badly in need of some TLC. The white and turquoise paints were peeling, and one of the gutters hung loose at one end. Four-foot maple saplings grew up through the front hedge.
I rang the bell. Gratzenberg opened the door. His pale face glowed in the murky light of the hallway. He called over his shoulder. “It’s for me, Ma.”
A small woman in a dark house dress and carpet slippers came padding timidly from the back of the house. The sounds of a television game show were barely audible. “Jeffrey?” she said, her voice querulous. The house breathed out the smells of cooked cabbage and furniture polish.
“It’s just someone for me.”
She backed away.
“Come on in,” Gratzenberg said.
He led me into the kitchen, through a door, and down a flight of stairs to a paneled rec room. A fluorescent ceiling fixture lit the middle of the room with its wood-trimmed, brown plaid couch resting on a field of green indoor-outdoor carpeting. A lava lamp on the floor in a corner glowed, the orange gunk undulating, rising, and going over with a blup. Shallow horizontal windows ran along the edge of the ceiling. The place smelled of mildew and ripe sneakers.
“Sorry about this place,” he said. “It was this or the street. Get you a drink?”
He headed to a bar at the far end of the room, opened a half refrigerator, and leaned over into it. “Mountain Dew? Gatorade? Beer?” He stood. “Water?”
“Thanks. A beer would be great,” I said.
The bottle gave a little sigh when I twisted the top. It had been at least a decade since I’d had a Rolling Rock. Nothing subtle about it.
Gratzenberg’s long skinny arms stuck out of his tired black T-shirt. I read the words on it: SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB!
“It’s from the intro to a cheesy old Japanese computer game,” Gratzenberg said, noticing my confusion. “ZeroWing. A 2-D shooter?” I still wasn’t getting it. “The game was an outdated hack, even when it was released. Great soundtrack, though. Too bad they can’t make any money off all the T-shirts it spawned.” Jeff peered down at his chest. “Weird mangled mistranslations. I’ve got a whole bunch of ’em.”
He perched on a stool at the bar and set his beer down beside a computer flanked by huge speakers. “So you’re a forensic psychologist? Do you, like, testify in court?”
I fished a business card out of my pocket and gave it to him. “When someone’s accused of a serious crime, I’m often asked to come in and evaluate the person’s state of mind. Does he know the difference between right and wrong. Does she understand the consequences of
her actions? Is there something wrong with his brain? That kind of thing. And yes, I often testify as to my findings.”
“So you evaluated the Beak?”
“Nick Babikian?”
Jeff nodded. “But don’t ever call him that to his face. He’d go nuts.” Jeff turned over my card. “The Pearce Psychiatric Institute. I had a friend ended up there once. Drug rehab.”
“Yeah. We’ve got a pretty good program.”
He put the card on top of the bar. “So you want to see Running Scared? You have to remember, it came out about six years ago. At the time, no one had seen anything quite like it. Now there’s all kinds of clones, a multiplayer version, plus a million MODs.”
I hoped it didn’t matter that I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. I got on the other stool and wedged my leg up against the bar to stay facing forward. “I really appreciate you doing this,” I said.
“I just hope I can help get that bastard what he so richly deserves,” Jeff said. He jiggled the mouse and the screen came to life.
There was a graphic of the same face Nick had sketched for me. The Seer leered off the black screen in bold strokes of gray and white. Above the face pulsed the words RUNNING SCARED, with flames leaping from them.
Jeff turned on his speakers, and on came a deafening drumbeat and dissonant electronic music that sounded something like a metal bed scraping across a linoleum floor. The sounds reverberated through the bar counter.
Jeff had his long, thin fingers poised over the keyboard, like a pianist ready to launch into a Chopin piano concerto. He clicked the mouse, and the game fell silent as LOADING … appeared on the screen. Then some menus came up and he made a bunch of clicks. A knife with a curved blade appeared, spun around, and then stopped, pointed away from us. Then a hand grenade appeared.
“This is all you get to protect yourself to start,” he explained.
His fingers danced spiderlike on the keys as the knife flew through the air, slicing left, right, up, and down, and then around in a circle. Then the face of the Seer reappeared. “Welcome to Earth-2,” said a sonorous voice.
