Sibs

by F. Paul Wilson

  The three of them left together, but it was Kara who fell so hard for Rob. It was Kara and Rob from then on. At least until Kara ended it.

  She gazed out at the street where people hurried through the stark cold sunshine. Through the fog of condensation on the window they were motley blurs, actors on a tv with a bad tube. Kara was glad she couldn't see their everyday faces as they scurried by, going about their lives as if nothing terrible had happened. For Christ sake, Kelly was dead! Didn't they know? Didn't they care?

  God, how she hated this city. And all the people in it, too.

  One of them had killed her sister.

  "Who did it?"

  "We don't know."

  "Not even a suspect?"

  "Not a one."

  "Great detective work!" Kara said and instantly regretted it. "Sorry. That was a cheap shot. But you must know something."

  Rob nodded. "We know that somewhere around one A.M. she left the Oak Bar with two men in their mid-thirties. We have descriptions of both and a good set of prints off one of the glasses in the room—you have no idea how many sets of prints you can find in a hotel room—but no ID as yet. We don't think they were registered in the Plaza. Shortly after two A.M. she came through a twelfth floor window."

  Kara closed her eyes and shuddered.

  "Was she conscious?"

  "Witnesses say they heard her scream."

  "Oh, God."

  The coffee turned rancid in her mouth. Again she felt her stomach heave, but she forced it down. There was something else she had to know. She couldn't bring herself to look at Rob as she asked it.

  "Was she… was she raped?"

  There was a long pause. Finally she opened her eyes and looked at him. His face was tight.

  "You're not going to like it."

  "Tell me!" she said, the rage within her tearing at the surface of her control, screaming to break through and strike at someone. Anyone. "Tell me!"

  "There was evidence of semen in both the vaginal vault and oral cavity," Rob said. His voice was robot-like, as if he had gone on autopilot and was reading from a report. "DNA analysis indicated two different men as sources. There was no sign of forced penetration. Kelly appeared to be a willing participant."

  Kara's anger suddenly turned to ice. She could barely speak.

  "I don't believe it. A couple of guys drag her up to their room, rape and sodomize her, then throw her out a window and you have the nerve to say that she enjoyed it? I should have known! Is this what being a cop in this city has done to you?"

  Rob stared into his coffee in silence. When she was through, he spoke in a low voice.

  "It was Kelly's room."

  "What?"

  "Kelly rented it."

  "Rob, what are you saying?"

  He continued to stare into his coffee.

  "I'm saying that Kelly Wade, your sister, took that room herself. She signed in as 'Ingrid' Wade."

  "No. There has to be a mistake."

  "No mistake. She's been a regular at the Plaza for the past few months. Paid cash every time. She was known to quite a few of the staff as a good tipper, and, um, a real swinger. She'd rent a room, pick up a guy in the bar—sometimes two guys—and take them upstairs."

  "No!"

  "And we found a vial of coke in her purse."

  Suddenly numb, Kara slumped back in the chair.

  Over Christmas she had sensed that something was bothering Kelly when she was out at the farm. She'd thought her sister was still in a funk over her break-up with that Tom creep the previous year. Kara had never dreamed it was anything like this. One night stands. Cocaine. She hadn't noticed any signs of drug abuse. But out in the heart of Amish country, who knew those signs?

  An awful thought struck her. Was her habit bad enough to…

  "She… she was a prostitute?"

  "I don't think so. The M.E. said there was no sign of a heavy coke habit. And as far as we can tell, she didn't charge for her favors. One of the bartenders at the Plaza had spoken to a few of her, um, dates after they'd been up in her room. They said they couldn't believe they'd gotten what they'd, um, gotten for free."

  Kara stared at him.

  "This is true, Rob? Really true?" She fought to keep a growing sob from choking off her voice. "It can't be! You're not talking about my sister, Rob! We're twins. We spent every day of our lives together. I knew her! You knew her! This can't be Kelly you're talking about! There's got to be a mistake!"

  Sadly, he shook his head.

  "I wish there were. Midtown North is just a block from the Plaza. When I came in the next morning and saw the name Wade on the report, I took the case. On a whim. I never dreamed it would be Kelly. When I saw the body I… I thought it was you. And the more digging I did, the more bizarre it became. I mean, I haven't seen Kelly since you and I—since you left town. That's ten years, but you're right, this kind of lifestyle doesn't fit with my memory of her. Not one bit."

  "She was a nurse, for God's sake!" Kara said. "She worked at St. Vincent's! Whenever she'd visit the farm she'd tell me horror stories about all the drug addicts and the VD and AIDS. She saw all that stuff first hand! I can't believe she'd become a… a swinger!" The very word left such a foul taste in her mouth that she wanted to spit. "Tell me there's a chance you're wrong, Rob."

  His expression was pained.

  "I wish I could, Kara, I really do. But there's too much corroboration. The Plaza people knew her. According to them, she was fast becoming a legend in the Oak Bar."

  "A legend," she said acidly. "My sister the legend. That's just great."

  Gradually, her shock and disbelief ebbed away, and Kara became aware of a growing anger at her twin. Kelly hadn't been a completely innocent victim of one of New York's myriad acts of violence. She had been an enabler. She had put herself in a situation that simply begged for trouble.

  Kara was furious. It was this city, this rotten lousy city that had done it to Kelly. She hadn't come here a swinger and a coke head, but she'd ended up one.

  This damn city… Kara had to get out of it all over again. And right now. If she had to spend much longer here, she'd start to scream.

  She glanced at her watch.

  "I've got to be going. Thanks for the coffee and for your help and your time."

  "No trouble. Where's your car?"

  "I took the train. I didn't trust myself to drive."

  "Good thinking. But even so, maybe you should stay over a night."

  She gave him a sidelong stare. Was he thinking…?

  "I don't mean anything like that," he said. "I just mean you don't look so hot. You're welcome to my place."

  "You still rooming with Tony?"

  "No. He's married. The rent got too high so I'm over on the East Side now. But seriously, I'll sleep on the couch. No problem."

  "Thanks, but I don't know when my mother's coming in and I left Jill with a neighbor so—"

  "Who's Jill?"

  Good God, why had she mentioned Jill? She'd never intended to. But somehow it had slipped out. Damn. Well, she couldn't take it back now. She had to tell him something.

  "My daughter."

  ▼

  Rob hoped he didn't look as shocked as he felt. "A daughter? You have a child?"

  Automatically, he reached for a cigarette, then remembered she'd asked him not to smoke. He really needed one now.

  "Yes. Jill Marie. A real little beauty."

  Kara's mood had lightened visibly with the change in subject. Her eyes were alight with love.

  Why should he be so stunned? He and Kara had had no contact in ten years. He had never married. Was that why some part of him assumed that Kara too had remained single?

  "Wait a sec. You signed in at the morgue as Kara Wade. That's your maiden name."

  "It's my married name, too."

  "You married a guy with the same last name?"

  "No, Rob," she said with exaggerated patience. "I simply kept my name when I got married. There's no law that says I've g
ot to take my husband's name."

  "Oh." He remembered how Kara had been into women's lib. Apparently that hadn't changed. "How old's your little girl?"

  "Hmmm?" Kara seemed to come back from faraway. "Jill? Oh, she's eight."

  Eight?

  "You didn't waste much time, did you!" he blurted, then wanted to kick himself. "Sorry."

  "That's okay." Kara smiled. "No, I guess I didn't. He was an old high school beau who'd been carrying the torch for me all the time I was away."

  "Imagine that."

  Rob remembered carrying the torch for Kara a long while himself, hoping she'd come back, or at least call. Hoping…

  "It's true," she said. "We just sort of picked up where we left off."

  Rob tried but couldn't keep the edge off his voice. "He's not a cop, I take it."

  "No. He was a safe, sane, staid insurance salesman."

  "Was?"

  "He was killed a year after we were married. His car got caught between a granite cliff and a jack-knifing tractor trailer on a snowy night on the Penn Turnpike out near Pittsburgh."

  "Jeez, I'm sorry."

  She was looking at him, a hint of wonder seeping into her expression.

  "You really are, aren't you?"

  "Of course. I mean, that's awful. How could I be anything else?"

  Her mouth worked. For a moment he thought she was going to cry, but she blinked her glistening eyes, swallowed, and seemed to get herself under control again.

  She said, "That was a perfect opening for a cheap shot. And you owe me one of those."

  Rob understood. One of her reasons for leaving him had been her fear of being a young widow.

  "Maybe," he said, "but a dead husband and father should be off limits, don't you think?"

  Kara nodded, swallowed again, and looked out the window, saying nothing.

  In the silence, Rob's thoughts tripped back to the time they had spent together here in the city a decade ago. Had it been that long since he was a rookie and Kara was a Kelly Girl? After a two-year drift through CCNY, he'd finally settled on a field that really interested him. Despite all his mother's pleas to find something else, he'd decided to go into the family business—police work. And when the Wade twins came to town, he found a woman he could really care for—Kara.

  Kara and Kelly, identical in appearance, but so opposite in attitude. Kelly, the free spirit, open to everything, she took to Manhattan like she'd been made for it, as if all her life she'd been waiting to be set free in The City That Never Sleeps. Kara, the thinker, the muller, did fine until her run-in with the necklace snatcher in Central Park. After that she began to see danger lurking in every corner. She started calling Rob's police career a death wish. Their last months became an endless argument, one long tug of war with a fraying rope. She wanted him to quit, go back to school, get a degree of some sort, and move out to the suburbs—Jersey, Connecticut, Upstate, anyplace but here.

  He couldn't go. Rob the rookie loved the job, the excitement, the challenge, and loved the city. It was his city. He'd grown up here. He couldn't see what was so frightening about it.

  Finally there was nowhere to go but apart. The immovable object stayed in New York. The irresistible force moved back to rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, saying she didn't want to be a widow at twenty-five.

  Somewhere a dark god might be laughing at the irony of it all, but Rob found himself unable to squeeze out even a tiny drop of satisfaction.

  Even now, after all these years, he found he still cared.

  What a jerk he could be where she was concerned.

  "I'll drive you to the station," he said.

  ▼

  Rob drove her crosstown at a leisurely pace on Thirty-fourth, staying in lane instead of doing his customary bob and weave through the traffic. All around him on the street the cabs were playing their usual game of chicken with each other, while on the sidewalks the three-card monte players were set up and waiting for their daily quota of lunch-hour suckers. Rob badly wanted a cigarette.

  "What are you doing with yourself these days?" he said to break the silence as they crawled past Macy's.

  "Writing."

  "Really? Novels?"

  "Non-fiction. I do reviews, articles, criticism, that sort of thing."

  "Would I have seen any of it?"

  He couldn't remember seeing the Kara Wade byline anywhere.

  "Not unless you're a regular reader of some of the feminist publications."

  "Feminist? You write feminist stuff? I thought you said you wrote non-fiction?"

  "Ooookaaaay," she said with a small, rueful smile. "I should have seen that one coming."

  "So you're still into that stuff, though?"

  "It's not something you're 'into' and 'out of,' Rob" she said, and he realized by her tone this was one serious subject for her. "If you really believe in something, you stay with it."

  "Like being a cop?" he said.

  There was something different in the way she looked at him, something new in her eyes.

  "Yes. I guess so. I've never looked at being a cop as something a person could believe in, but I guess you can. But anyway, writing's what I do. I went to Franklin and Marshall when I got back home, went mostly at night, got a degree in Woman's Studies—"

  Rob bit back a remark. Woman's Studies! Christ!

  "—and began writing."

  "You can make a living writing feminist articles?"

  "No way. But the articles gave me enough credibility to land a contract for a book. And that's what I've been working on lately. In the meantime, I do clerical work at the local hospital—it's decent pay with an excellent benefits package, and it's mentally unchallenging enough to allow me to compose what I'll write when I get home at night. I still live on the farm. Jill and I get by just fine."

  He had a feeling she was holding something back but didn't press. This wasn't the time or the place.

  "And your mother…?"

  Rob remembered that Kara's father had died a few years before she came to New York; he had met Mrs. Wade once. A big, jovial woman who didn't look at all like her twins.

  "Mom got remarried shortly after Jill was born. She and Bert live in Florida now. I'm in the process of buying the farm from her. I'm paying her off a little at a time. Mom and Bert are flying up this afternoon for the…"

  She didn't finish the sentence. Suddenly her eyes were filling with tears. Rob didn't know what to do. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her, but at the moment he was driving a car. Penn Station was dead ahead. He swung around its south side, then turned into a restricted area under its belly. He pulled the car into the curb and turned toward her. He stroked her shoulder, wondering what to say.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not made for this kind of thing."

  "Who is? Nobody's made for losing a sister. A twin, no less."

  "I wish I could be stronger. I should be stronger."

  "You're pretty damn strong," Rob told her. "It took a lot of guts to come in here and go to the morgue alone to see her. A hell of a lot of guts."

  Suddenly her head was up and she was staring at him. Her face was blotchy, and streaked with tears, but her eyes were fierce, her teeth were clenched.

  "Find those bastards, Rob!"

  "I will, Kara." He had never seen her like this. "Take it easy, take it easy."

  "And when you find them, I want you to call me. Because I want to see them. I want to see what kind of scum did that to my sister!"

  "As soon as I know, you'll know. And we'll get them. Kelly's case won't get dropped. I've got a personal stake in this, too, you know. I promise we'll get them."

  "Okay," she said. "That's good enough for me. Can I have your number so I can call?"

  As he fished out a card for her, Rob didn't attempt to explain that finding the two men who'd been in the room with Kelly was a long way from convicting them of tossing her out the window, especially since the Forensics boys were saying there was no sign of a struggle. They were
pushing to call it a suicide, and Kara would not want to hear that.