Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 28

Caroline found her step slowing as she and Ryan emerged from the park and turned northward until she finally came to a complete stop as they approached 70th Street. Across the street, The Rockwell stood just as it always had, its turrets and cupolas silhouetted against the sky, its tall windows gazing like sightless eyes into the park across the street. Yet something looked different.

Somehow, the building looked — what? Lighter? Cleaner? Caroline ran through half a dozen words in her mind, but none of them seemed quite right. She frowned, studying the stone of the building’s façade. Was some of the grime that had built up over the decades gone? But that wasn’t possible — only the lowest level of the building could be cleaned without scaffolding being erected, and the buildup of grime that covered the building seemed just as dark on the ground floor as on the floors above.

The windows, perhaps? Had they been washed? But she didn’t remember them being dirty, at least not in their apartment.

“Mom?” Ryan asked, tugging at her arm. “What are you looking at?”

Caroline hesitated, then shook her head — she was imagining things. Either that, or it was just a trick of the light. The building couldn’t look any different now than it ever had — no work was being done on it. “Nothing,” she said, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. Yet, as a break in traffic appeared and she stepped off the curb to hurry across the street, she suddenly remembered the strange sensation she’d had earlier that morning, when she and Ryan had passed through the lobby on their way out of the building.

She’d had the same strange feeling that things looked different, that the furniture wasn’t as shabby and everything was somehow brighter. But of course it hadn’t been different — it had just been a trick of the light, But as she pulled open the heavy front door and stepped into the lobby, it happened again.

The mural on the ceiling seemed to have brightened, and the shadowy forest glen it depicted looked sunnier, as if the sky above the forest had cleared. That was impossible, of course: it was nothing more than a painted image; the only way to change it would be to repaint it.

Or turn up the lights? She scanned the sconces on the walls, but the light emanating from them seemed no brighter than ever, though their brass gleamed as if it had just been polished that morning.

Her gaze shifted to the furniture. That, at least, hadn’t changed: the sofa and chairs around the fireplace looked the same as they had this morning.

Which was probably the same as they had looked yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.

Suddenly Ryan was tugging at her arm again, and when she looked down he was tilting his head toward the doorman’s booth. Her eyes followed the tilt of his head, and she thought she saw Rodney look away just as her eyes would have met his. “Rodney?” she asked. “Is there something wrong?”

Did he hesitate just a fraction of a second before shaking his head? “No, ma’am. Everything’s fine.” Now his eyes shifted to Ryan. “Just fine. Glad to see you and the boy back.” He turned his attention back to the newspaper that was spread out on his desk, but as Caroline started toward the elevator with Ryan staying close at her side, she suddenly felt as if he was watching them again. Turning around suddenly, she thought she caught a flicker of movement as he shifted his gaze back to the newspaper. “What is it, Rodney?” she asked.

He looked up at her, his thick brow lifting slightly. “Ma’am?”

“You were watching us, Rodney.”

“Beg pardon?” the doorman said, his expression so blank that Caroline wondered if maybe she’d only imagined that she’d caught him looking away too quickly.

She hesitated, then shrugged. “Nothing,” she said. “I guess I was wrong.” But as she pressed the elevator button and they waited for the cage to come down from the upper floors, she watched the doorman out of the corner of her eye.

His head was tilted down, his eyes on his newspaper.

The elevator clanked to a stop, and Caroline pulled the door open, Ryan scurrying through the gap as soon as it was wide enough. She stepped in after her son, slid the door closed, and pressed the button for the fifth floor. The elevator jerked, then started upward, but just before they disappeared from his view, Rodney looked up, and nodded to her.

Then, as Caroline disappeared from his view, Rodney’s gaze shifted and his eyes fixed on Ryan. A smile came over his lips, a smile so cold it made Ryan shiver as if he’d been struck by the blast of a winter wind.

“How come he does that?” Ryan said as they got off the elevator and she fished in her bag for the key to the apartment. “How come he stares at me like that?”

“I’m not sure he was staring at you,” Caroline said as she found the key and fit it into the lock. But she wasn’t sure Rodney hadn’t been staring at Ryan, either. And for now, she wasn’t sure it mattered. She twisted the key, pushed the door open, and stepped inside. Then, even though the apartment had the feel of being unoccupied, she called out anyway.

“Tony? Tony, are you here?”

When there was no answer, she closed the door behind her, and glanced at the clock. Only a little after eleven.

Tony had said he wouldn’t be home until after lunch, and she still had an hour until noon.

Her eyes fixed on the door to her husband’s study, but out of the corner of her eye she could see Ryan watching her.

“You’re going to go in there, aren’t you?” Ryan asked.

“I–I’m not sure,” Caroline replied, not wanting to lie to her son, but not quite willing to tell him what she was planning, either. “Tell you what — why don’t you go up to your room?”

“I want—” Ryan began, but Caroline cut him off more sharply than she’d really intended.

“I said go to your room!”

His eyes turning suddenly stormy, Ryan scurried up the stairs, but when he got to the top he suddenly turned back. “I hope Tony catches you!” he shouted. “Then maybe you’ll believe me!” He vanished from the top of the stairs, and a moment later Caroline heard his door slam shut. Now, alone in the hall, Caroline faced the locked door to the study. Up until this very moment, she had been certain of what she was going to do. But now that the moment had come, and she had a ring of keys in her bag that she was certain would unlock not only the study, but everything inside as well, she found herself hesitating.

Did she really want to do it?

Did she really want to know what was locked away in his desk?

But she knew the answer to that question even as she asked it — if she didn’t search the desk, didn’t find out what it was he’d locked away in its drawers, all her questions would fester inside her until they destroyed not only her sanity, but her marriage as well. Her mind made up, she pulled the key ring she’d taken from the shop and began hunting for the one that would open the study door.

She found it on the third try. The bolt of the lock clicked open, and she twisted the knob, then pushed the door open. She stood at the threshold for a moment, gazing into the shadowed room. A sense of foreboding came over her, a strange feeling of dread that reached deep inside her. It’s only a photograph album, she told herself. It can’t possibly hurt me. Yet even as she tried to reassure herself, the urge to back away from the room — to close and lock the door and walk away from whatever might be concealed in the desk — nearly overwhelmed her. Her fingers tightened on the doorknob as if to test her own strength, and then she pushed the door closed and snapped on the chandelier.

Though the bright light that poured forth from the ornate crystal fixture washed the deep shadows from the corners of the room, it did nothing to assuage the feeling of dark apprehension that had gripped Caroline as her eyes fixed on her husband’s desk.

It’s just a desk, she told herself. There’s probably nothing in it at all.

She moved toward it, approaching it slowly as if it were some kind of animal poised to attack her, then perching nervously on the edge of the worn leather chair whose upholstery looked almost as ancient as the desk itself.

She tested the drawers, one by one.

All of them were still locked.

Just do it, she told herself. Just get it over with.

Taking a deep breath, she began testing the keys, inserting them one by one into the lock of the desk’s wide center drawer.

One by one, the keys failed to open the lock.

And then, on the thirteenth try, the lock gave way. It’s a coincidence, Caroline told herself. There’s nothing significant about the number at all. That’s just superstition.

She slid the drawer open.

And there it was — a photograph album so thick it barely fit in the drawer at all, that matched Ryan’s description of the one he’d said was on the shelf under the lamp table. Struggling to keep her hands from trembling, she lifted the album out of the drawer, set it on the top of the desk, and opened it.

And found herself staring at a picture of Tony.

The picture looked like an old-fashioned sepia-toned image, and it depicted Tony — looking perhaps ten years younger than he did now — wearing a high-collared shirt and a snugly fitting four-button suit. His hair was parted in the middle in the fashion of the late 1800s but except for the hair and the clothes, the face was Tony’s: the same sharp planes, the curve of the eyebrows, the flare of the nostrils, and the bow of the upper lip — all of it was Tony. Caroline’s first instinct was that the picture must have been taken at some amusement park — perhaps Disney World, or even Knott’s Berry Farm, where there were plenty of shops that put people into antique-looking clothes and settings. But as she looked at the picture more closely, she saw the cracks in its surface, and the yellowing of the edges of the thick paper it was printed on. But if it was as old as it looked, how could it possibly be Tony? Her brows knitting with puzzlement, she returned her attention to the image itself.

The man who looked enough like her husband to be his twin was standing across the street from a construction site, and though the background was slightly out of focus, Caroline could make out the scaffolding that had been erected in front of the structure to support the builders.

Switching on the desk lamp, she leaned closer. And then, even before the truth dawned on her conscious mind, she felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach. The building in the picture — the building that was not yet completed — was The Rockwell. Her heart pounding, Caroline stared at the picture, telling herself it had to be wrong — it had to be some kind of mistake. Yet there it was — the lower floors of the building clearly visible, even behind the scaffolding. There was the huge double front door, and the three steps leading up to it. The windows of the second and third floors were exactly as they had looked a few minutes ago when she’d stood across the street gazing at them with the strange feeling that something about the building had changed.

Now she was staring at it before it had even been completed, and a man who appeared to be her husband was standing across the street from it, on almost the exact spot she had been standing earlier.

But the man in the picture couldn’t be Tony — the building had been constructed in the late 1870s, even before The Dakota, a couple of blocks further up.

So it had to be Tony’s grandfather — or even his great-grandfather. But was it possible Tony’s family had lived in the building since the day it had been built? She began turning the pages of the album, and with every page she turned, her mystification deepened. Tony appeared in half a dozen pictures, alone in some, with groups of people in others. In two of them he was with a woman whose resemblance to Melanie Shackleforth was so startling that Caroline could perfectly understand Ryan’s confusion. She kept turning pages, and a quarter of the way through the album everything suddenly changed.

Now the women were wearing the kind of short skirts popular in the 1920s; the men styles of the same era. There was a page filled with pictures that looked like they might have been taken in an apartment in The Rockwell: the room in the pictures had the high ceilings, tall windows, and ornate moldings of her own apartment, though the furnishings were far different. Most of it was Art Deco with a few pieces of nouveaux thrown in as accents. Some kind of party seemed to be going on, and two children of about the same ages as Ryan and Laurie appeared to be the center of attention. But in one of the pictures, it wasn’t the people that attracted Caroline’s attention at all — it was the large chandelier hanging from the ceiling of the living room.

A chandelier she was almost certain still hung in Virginia Estherbrook’s apartment.

Sure enough, a few pages later she found pictures taken in the sixties, in the exact same room, only now it was furnished with the same furniture that was still in Virgie’s apartment, and there was the actress herself, leaning over the back of a sofa, her arms draped around the shoulders of two children.

Again, the children appeared to be the same age as her own.

She turned more pages, and came to what looked like another children’s party. This time there were twin boys, a girl who was perhaps a year or so older than the boys and another girl, somewhat younger, whom Caroline was almost certain was Rebecca Mayhew, though she looked younger — and a lot healthier — than she had when Caroline had seen her last week.

The rest of the pages were empty, but Caroline went through them anyway, searching to make sure she’d missed nothing. Then she went back to the beginning and went through the album again. This time it wasn’t just the images that looked so much like Tony and Melanie Shackleforth who caught her attention, but others as well. A couple of the men might have been younger versions of Dr. Humphries, and another bore a strong resemblance to George Burton. In the pictures from the Deco-era birthday party, there was a couple who might have been Alicia and Max Albion, except that the woman who looked like Alicia appeared to be in her seventies, and the man at least a decade older.

Was it possible that all of the apartments in The Rockwell had been handed down from one generation to another? But even that didn’t make sense — it certainly was possible that Max Albion might look like his father, but what about Alicia?

Unless her parents had lived in the building as well.

Was that it? Was that why all the neighbors were so friendly with each other? Could they really have all been childhood friends, growing up in the same building, living out their lives in the same apartments their parents and grandparents had lived in? Then it came to her — there was a way to find out; a very simple way. There was an office that held the history of every piece of real estate in the city — Brad had gone there half a dozen times on one piece of business or another. The Register’s Office — that was it!

Putting the album away, she closed the center drawer of the desk and relocked it. Then she moved on to the three drawers on the right. In the top one she found a large checkbook, and on an impulse she opened it and glanced through the stubs. Only a few checks had been written, most to something called The Biddle Institute.

She put the checkbook back, relocked the drawer, and moved on to the next one, where she found half a dozen packets of photographs from a shop on Broadway. Picking one up, she pulled out a stack of two dozen pictures. The top one was of a group of kids and she recognized one of the cages at the Central Park Zoo in the background. The next one was of the same group of kids, but in front of another cage. Flipping quickly through the rest of the stack she found nothing but more pictures of the same group of kids, sometimes in groups of half a dozen or more, at other times only twosomes or threesomes. None of the pictures looked posed; indeed, the children in them didn’t even look as if they knew they were being photographed.

She flipped a few of them over, but there was nothing on the back that would either tell her who the children were, or when the pictures had been taken. As she flipped through the last half-dozen shots, one of the girls began to appear more and more often, a girl with long blonde hair framing a heart-shaped face, dominated by large blue eyes that twinkled with mischief.

In the last picture in the stack, the blonde was with three other girls, but her face had been surrounded with a thick black circle such as a laundry marker might make.

As if she’d been selected.

But selected for what?

Unbidden, the memory of her waking up a few nights ago with Laurie’s scream still ringing in her ears and finding Tony gone from the bedroom came flooding back, along with the terrible thought that had come into her mind when Laurie had told her about the dream.

The dream in which people had been in her room, touching her.

No! she told herself. It’s something else! It has to be! She tried to put the thought out of her mind, but it clung to her consciousness like a burr to a thin sock, embedding itself deeper and deeper even as she put the photographs back in their envelope and returned them to the drawer.

Part of her — a tiny part — wanted to close the drawer, lock it, and walk away. But even as she listened to that whispering voice, she was reaching for the next envelope, taking out the pictures, and flipping through them.

More children.

Different children.

Yet as she flipped through the pictures then went on to the next envelope, she began to see a certain common thread running through them.

The children were all the same age — ten to twelve years old.

The faces that were circled — perhaps five in the first four envelopes, tended to be similar. The three girls were blonde with blue eyes; the boys with brown eyes and dark hair.

Like Laurie and Ryan.

She tried to banish that thought as well, but now a knot of fear had formed in her stomach, and a sheen of cold sweat had broken out over her whole body. Once more she tried to put the rest of the envelopes away; once more she failed.

At last there was only one envelope left, and as she opened it, her hands trembled so badly that the pictures cascaded out onto the top of her husband’s desk. She gazed down at them, certain that her eyes must be playing tricks on her, that what she was seeing couldn’t be real.

The pictures that lay before her had been taken in the park, just like those in all the other envelopes.

But this time she knew exactly who the children were the moment she saw them: Ryan and Laurie.

Spread out on the desk were two dozen pictures she’d never seen before, and had no memory of them having been taken.

There were shots of Ryan on the baseball field, a couple as he stood with his bat poised, readying himself for a pitch; others of him playing short-stop, and left field and second base.

Two more from soccer practice.

Half a dozen more of him just sprawled out on one of the lawns with some of his friends.

The rest of the pictures were of Laurie. In one of them she was sitting on a park bench with Caroline herself, and in another she was jumping rope with some of her friends: Caroline recognized Amber Blaisdell and a couple of other girls from Eliot Academy.

Where had the pictures come from?

When had they—

And then her blood ran cold as she remembered that Laurie hadn’t played with a jump rope in nearly a year. And the last time she’d gone to the park to jump rope with Amber Blaisdell had been nearly a year ago.

Months before she’d even met Tony.

Suddenly her mind was whirling. It was a coincidence — it had to be. Tony had been taking pictures of lots of children in the park — dozens! Why wouldn’t he have caught Ryan and Laurie on film?

But why hadn’t he ever told her? Why hadn’t he shown her the pictures? A word flashed into her mind, an ugly word: pedophile. But as quickly as it came, she banished it, instantly grasping for another explanation — any other!

He’d forgotten about them — that was it! He’d taken so many pictures, he didn’t even remember he’d taken some of Ryan and Laurie. He—

Suddenly Caroline froze as she heard the sound of the doorknob turning, and a moment later one of the hinges creaked as the door was pushed open.

Caught! Caught with the keys still hanging from the desk drawer.

Caught with the drawer open, and its contents spread out on the desk. Then, out of the silence she heard a voice.

But not Tony’s voice — Ryan’s voice.

“He’s coming, Mom! I saw him coming down the street.”

Without saying a word, Caroline scooped the pictures up off the desk, put them back in their envelope, then shoved the envelope back into the second drawer with the rest of them. Locking the drawer, she followed Ryan out of the study, closed the door, then shoved the key into the lock and twisted it.

Nothing!

“See if the elevator’s coming up,” she told Ryan as she pulled the key out of the lock. Ryan darted to the front door and opened it a crack as she fitted a second key into the lock.

“It’s coming,” Ryan hissed.

The second key didn’t fit, and neither did the third, and suddenly Ryan shut the front door and leaned against it. “It’s here,” he said, his voice trembling. “Mom, he’s coming!” He disappeared, racing up the stairs with Chloe merrily chasing after him, and a second or two later she heard his door closing. Her hands trembling so badly she was afraid she’d drop the keys the way she had the photographs a few minutes ago, Caroline fumbled with the fourth key, finally fit it into the lock, and twisted it.

The lock snapped home, and Caroline jerked the key loose and was dropping the big ring into her shoulder bag and moving away from the study door when the front door opened and Tony stepped into the foyer. From upstairs, she could hear the muffled sound of Chloe’s barking.

Caroline’s eyes locked with her husband’s, and for a moment she thought she saw a flash of anger in them. But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, and a moment later when his eyes clouded with concern, she wasn’t certain she’d seen it at all.

“Darling, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Her skin was still damp with the cold sweat that had broken over her in the study, so she quickly shook her head. “I’m afraid I might be coming down with the same flu Laurie had,” she said. “That’s why I came home.”

“Then let’s get you to bed,” Tony said. “I knew you shouldn’t have tried to go to work today. I’m starting to think you should quit that job.” He was already guiding her up the stairs. “I’ll make you a cup of tea with honey and lemon, and then I’m calling Ted Humphries.”

Uncertain what she should do, Caroline let him steer her into their room, and began changing into her robe. Better to let him think she was sick, than have to explain why she’d come home from work so early.

Then, as she slid into bed, another thought occurred to her: when he’d left that morning, Tony had thought Melanie Shackleforth was going to be staying with Ryan. But when he’d come in just now, he hadn’t seemed the least bit surprised that Melanie wasn’t here, and she herself was.

So he’d known about the change of plans.

And he’d come home.

Why?

To see if she was all right?

Or to find out what she was doing?