Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 34

The weight of sleep was a burden that lay so heavily over Caroline that she could feel it beginning to crush not only her mind, but her body as well. Merely to breathe sapped so much energy away that each breath felt like it might be her last and her heart felt as if it could barely beat, with spaces so long between each throbbing pulse that she began to fear the next one would never come at all.

Her mind was as slow as her body; her brain barely able to find words for the abstractions that drifted through her mind. Even when the words came, they were single scraps of sentences, not connected together into anything coherent.

… dead…

… neighbors…

… Tony…

… death…

… Laurie…

… draining… pumping… sucking… feeding…

Get up.

The simple fact that the two words were strung together into a single sentence brought a vague focus to her mind, and a tiny fraction of the crushing weight lifted from her spirit. Slowly, her mind began to process the simple command, to begin the sequence of actions that would carry it out.

She opened her eyes. Not in my own bed. Not in my own room.

She closed her eyes again to try to process the information her eyes had just sent her brain. An image began to form in her mind, an image of the tiny bedroom she and Brad had shared in the apartment on West 76th Street.

But that wasn’t right — there was a dim memory of another bedroom, a large bedroom with a crystal chandelier— Suddenly the memory snapped into focus. It was Tony’s bedroom… her husband Tony — the man she’d married after Brad.

Brad…

A terrible feeling of loneliness came over her, an aching in her heart that made tears well in her eyes. Where was Brad? That’s who she loved. Then why had she married Tony?

Who was Tony?

… dead…

Get up.

… dead…

Laurie!

Get up!

Once again she tried to galvanize herself into some kind of coherent action, to make her body respond to the commands in her mind. Opening her eyes, she peered at the walls around her. They were covered with wallpaper — pale green, with some kind of pattern. Bamboo?

She wasn’t sure.

But where was it?

A hotel? Why would she be in a hotel? Why wasn’t she at home?

She tried to sit up.

Tried, and failed. It was as if the weight was bearing down even harder on her, pressing her to the bed. She took another breath, this time trying to suck air deep into her lungs, to regain her strength by filling herself with oxygen. The effort nearly exhausted her, and the pain in her chest — a constriction that felt as if bands were wrapped around her — grew worse. Gasping against the constriction, she tried to catch her breath, then turned her head to look at the clock on the night table.

No clock. No table. Not my bed… not my room… where am I?

Now she tried to sit up again, this time using her arms to lift herself.

Once again she failed. Her arms — lying at her sides — were immobile.

Paralyzed! The word seared her brain, and a great wave of panic — a towering fear such as she’d never felt before — rose up in her, wiping every other thought from her mind, threatening to crash over her and destroy not only her courage, but her very sanity.

“Noooo!” The word erupted from her throat as a prolonged howl, but the sound itself turned the panic back, and as her fear receded, her mind began to work again. The single words drifting through her mind began to coalesce into full thoughts, fragments of memory into recognizable images. But what she was remembering had to be a nightmare — it couldn’t possibly be true!

A door opened, and a moment later a face — a woman’s face, surmounted by the kind of old-fashioned nurse’s cap Caroline remembered from childhood — loomed above her. The woman’s eyes were a liquid brown, and her lips were pursed with concern. Caroline felt the nurse’s fingers on her wrist, and saw her gazing at her watch as she counted Caroline’s pulse. The nurse nodded in satisfaction as she released Caroline’s wrist. “How are we feeling? Better?”

Caroline searched for the right words, but couldn’t find them. What was ‘better’? Better than what? Was she sick? She didn’t remember being sick. All she remembered was the dream — the terrible dream where she’d seen Laurie and the neighbors and Tony—

“Wh-what…?” she heard herself stammer. “Wh-where…” But that wasn’t what she’d wanted to say. She wanted to know what had happened and where she was, only the words hadn’t formed in her mouth the way they had in her mind.

The nurse seemed to understand though. “We’re in the hospital,” she said. “We had a little—” She hesitated a second, then smiled sympathetically. “We’re just exhausted, dear. We’ll be fine in a few days, though — just you wait and see.”

A hospital? What kind of a hospital? “C-can’t—” Caroline began, struggling once more to sit up, but failing yet again.

The nurse laid a hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “It’s all right, dear. We just got a little excited during the night, and we wouldn’t want to fall out of bed, would we?”

Excited? Fall out of bed? What was the nurse talking about? But even as she put the question together, the answer came to her.

Tied down!

She was tied to the bed like the patients in a mental hospital!

But that was wrong — she wasn’t crazy! She wasn’t even sick! She’d just had a terrible nightmare. She’d seen Tony and what he and the neighbors were doing to Laurie and—

An image exploded in her mind, an image of Tony coming at her, with Dr. Humphries on one side of him and Max Albion on the other. And she’d attacked him, slashed at his face. His skin had ripped away, and underneath she’d seen—

The memory of the stench of death suddenly filled her nostrils once more as the suppurating rot of Tony’s flesh rose before her eyes. She felt herself gag, then her mouth filled with the foul taste of bile.

“It’s all right, dear,” the nurse said as Caroline’s stomach contracted violently and vomit spewed forth from her mouth. “It’s just the drugs — sometimes they do that. But you’ll be fine in a day or two — you’ll see.”

As Caroline’s stomach heaved once again, and her eyes filled with tears, and a choking sob of fear, confusion, and frustration constricted her throat, the nurse began cleaning the vomit away with a wet cloth, then changed the soiled case on the pillow beneath Caroline’s head.

But even after she was gone, and Caroline was once again alone in the room with the bamboo-patterned green wallpaper, the sour smell of her own vomit still filled her nostrils, and the nausea in her stomach wouldn’t subside.

But it wasn’t the drugs that had caused it.

It was the memories.

The memories of what she’d seen last night.

The memories that weren’t of nightmares at all.

All of it — every bit of it — had really happened.

And now they’d locked her up, and she had no idea where she was, and no idea of how to get out.

And Tony Fleming had her children.

Out! She had to get out, to get back to her children, to save them! Her terror dissolving into rage, Caroline struggled against the bonds once more, but it did no good.

She was held fast, unable to help herself, let alone Ryan and Laurie.

Neither his fear nor determination had been quite enough to keep Ryan awake through the long hours of the night, but they’d kept him away from sleep long enough so that when he finally woke up he knew instinctively that it was late in the morning. But even as he started to scramble out of bed his memory cleared, and the terror of last night came flooding back. The chill that began as he remembered what he’d heard through the closet in his stepfather’s study culminated in a shudder as his mother’s scream echoed once more in his head. The memory made his eyes sting with tears and nearly sent him back to the security of his bed, but then he heard his father’s voice once more: ’Crying won’t help… get up… keep on playing the game.’

With the memory of his father silently urging him on, Ryan pulled on his clothes and went to his bedroom door. But before he reached for the knob, he stood gazing at it for several long seconds, questions — questions for which he had no answers — flicking through his mind. What had made his mother scream last night? And why hadn’t she wakened him this morning? Even though he couldn’t go to school, she wouldn’t have just let him sleep in. What if his mother wasn’t even there? What if Tony had locked the door last night, and he couldn’t get out of his room? What if…?

But there were too many what ifs, and finally he reached for the doorknob, closed his fingers on it, and twisted.

Not locked.

He pulled the door open and stepped out into the hall.

Silence.

He moved to the head of the stairs, instinctively treading so lightly that he made no sound at all. He paused to listen, but there was nothing to hear except the ticking of the hall clock downstairs, mournfully noting each passing second. Ryan started down the stairs, the sound of the clock growing louder with every step he took. When he came to the last step he paused again, but now the clock seemed so loud he was sure it would drown out anything else. But then the aroma of frying bacon filled his nose, and in an instant his fear eased. Everything was all right! His mother was making breakfast, and in a minute he’d be sitting at the kitchen table drinking his orange juice, and everything would be the way it was supposed to be. “Mo—” he began, but the word died on his lips before he could even complete its single syllable.

It wasn’t his mother frying bacon at all.

It was Tony.

“Where’s my mom?” he demanded, his voice as truculent as the glare he fixed on his stepfather.

Anthony Fleming looked up from the skillet, his gaze meeting Ryan’s. Ryan did his best not to look away, but as he stared into the man’s eyes a strange feeling started to come over him. This wasn’t like the staring contests he’d had with his friends, or even with his father, when both of them knew it was a game, and behind the intense stare you could see the laughter that would burst out when one of them — either of them — finally blinked.

This time all he saw was a terrible flatness, and a single word came into his mind.

Dead.

It was like a dog he and Jeff Wheeler had seen in the park last summer — the dog had been trying to cross the 79th Street Transverse when a cab had hit it. The dog had yelped with pain but the cab hadn’t even stopped and the dog had just lain there, getting hit by two more cars before there was a break in traffic and he and Jeff had been able to drag it off the road onto the grass. But it was already too late — the dog wasn’t breathing, and blood was running out of its mouth, and it wasn’t even twitching.

“Jeez, is he dead?” Jeff had breathed as they both stared at the animal. Its eyes were wide open, but there was a look in them that told Ryan the answer, and he’d silently nodded his head.

Now he saw that same look in his stepfather’s eyes. Flat and empty, like he couldn’t even see Ryan, it was a look so frightening that Ryan turned away, then sank onto his chair and reached for the glass of orange juice that was exactly where his mother always put it. He started to take a sip of the juice, but then changed his mind, certain he wouldn’t be able to swallow it. When he spoke again the truculence was gone from his voice, and his eyes remained fixed on the glass of juice.

“Where’s my mom?” he asked again. “And where’s Chloe and Laurie?”

Anthony Fleming put a plate of bacon and eggs in front of Ryan, then sat down across from him. “Laurie’s gone to school,” he said. He reached across the table as if to take Ryan’s hand, but Ryan pulled it away, dropping it into his lap. “And I’m afraid your mother got sicker last night.”

Liar! The word popped into Ryan’s mind so quickly that he almost blurted it out, catching it at the last instant before it could betray him. ‘… keep on playing the game…’ his father’s voice whispered. He looked up, forcing himself to peer once more at Tony Fleming’s eyes. “Sh-she’s going to be okay, isn’t she?” he asked, hoping his stammer didn’t sound as fake to Tony as it did to himself.

Tony nodded. “But she had to go to the hospital.”

Ryan kept his eyes on Fleming’s, searching for the truth, but could see nothing at all — just that strange emptiness. And there was something about his stepfather’s skin — it almost looked like there were scars on his cheeks. But they hadn’t been there yesterday. “Can I go see her?” he asked, his voice quavering.

“Not today,” Tony said just a little too quickly. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Ryan asked. “I thought all she had was the flu.”

Anthony’s eyes narrowed. “Flu can be very dangerous,” he said. Then he tilted his head toward the untouched plate of food in front of Ryan. “Eat your breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry,” Ryan countered. Then he repeated the question his stepfather hadn’t yet answered: “Where’s Chloe? She was in my room last night, but she wasn’t there this morning.”

Tony Fleming’s strange flat gaze fixed on Ryan. “I took her out this morning,” he said. “She ran away.”

Ryan’s jaw tightened. “She wouldn’t do that,” he countered.

His stepfather seemed not even to hear him. “Just eat your breakfast.”

“I don’t have to eat it,” Ryan flared. “Besides, how do I know it’s not—”

He caught himself just before ‘poisoned’ slipped out, but it was too late; he could tell from the way Tony was looking at him that his stepfather knew what he was going to say.

Anthony Fleming reached out and closed his fingers on Ryan’s upper arm. “Why do you think I would want to poison you, Ryan?” he asked, his voice soft, but carrying a note of menace that made Ryan want to draw away. But his stepfather’s grip was too tight, his fingers digging too deeply into Ryan’s flesh.

“I–I didn’t say that,” Ryan said, and this time his stammer was utterly genuine.

“But you thought it,” Tony insisted. “Why?” Now his eyes were boring into Ryan, and Ryan had the terrible feeling his stepfather could see right into his head. “Were you really asleep when I came in last night, Ryan?”

Ryan nodded too quickly, and this time his words escaped his lips before he could control them. “I didn’t see anything! Honest!”

“You’re not telling me the truth,” Anthony Fleming said, his voice as cold and flat as his eyes. “I don’t like that.”

“I am!” Ryan wailed, but even he could hear the lie in his voice.

Fleming pulled Ryan to his feet and steered him out of the kitchen, down the long hall, up the stairs, and back to his room. “I think you should stay here for awhile,” he said. “In fact, I think you should stay here until you learn to tell me the truth. I’ll be back at lunchtime. If you’re ready to talk to me, you can eat. If not…” Leaving the words hanging, he pulled the door closed, he took a key from his pocket, twisted it in the lock, and tried the door. Satisfied that it was locked, Anthony Fleming returned the key to his pocket.

Ryan waited until he heard his stepfather’s footsteps fade away before he went to the door and tested it, even though he knew it was locked. Then he went to the window, opened the latch, and raised it. Sticking his head out, he peered down at the sidewalk below, the dizziness he was feeling just looking down the six floors telling him he’d never succeed in creeping along the narrow ledge outside the window even if he could work up the nerve to try. But there had to be a way to escape from the room — there had to be!

He went to the big walk-in closet and peered up at the ceiling, but there was nothing — just the same cedar planks that lined the whole closet. He was just about to abandon the closet when he remembered last night, when he was in his stepfather’s study and had seen the open closet door.

And heard the voices that sounded like they were coming from inside the closet.

Or maybe from another room that was hidden behind the closet?

He went back into the closet. There was a built-in chest of drawers at one end; open shelves at the other. The back of the closet was bare except for the cedar paneling. But when he tapped on the paneling, it sounded hollow, like there was empty space on the other side of it instead of a solid wall.

He went over every inch of it, trying to find some kind of hidden latch, but there was none.

Next he pulled out every drawer in the built-in chest, searching behind them. Nothing.

Finally he turned to the shelves, but nothing on the wall that backed them, either. With nothing left to try, he climbed up the shelves, using them like a ladder, until he could reach the ceiling.

He pushed. At first nothing happened, but when he pushed harder, he felt something start to give. Lying down on the top shelf so he had better leverage, he tried once more. And this time there was a faint squealing sound as first one nail and then a second and third gave way. Praying that the sound wouldn’t get any louder, Ryan pushed harder, and more nails gave way. Then one end of the ceiling lifted in a single panel.

It wasn’t solid at all — it was a trapdoor! But a trapdoor that was completely invisible when it was closed, and had been nailed shut.

Nailed shut how long ago?

And who besides Ryan knew it was there?

And most important, where did it lead and what was it for?

Frank Oberholzer, with Maria Hernandez in tow only because their chief had insisted, glared dyspeptically at The Rockwell as he waited for a break in traffic. There wasn’t anything he liked about the building at all — not its ornate architecture, or its ill-lit lobby, or its death-trap of an elevator.

Not to mention the doorman, who crouched behind the counter of his booth like some kind of gargoyle guarding the gates of hell.

Why would anyone want to live in a building like that? And how did it happen that Caroline Evans Fleming was living in it?

Of course, it could just be coincidence, but Oberholzer had figured out a long time ago that with murder, coincidence didn’t happen very often. Unless you counted something like what had happened to Brad Evans — being at the wrong place at the wrong time — as coincidence, which up until this morning Oberholzer had been almost willing to concede. This morning, though, he’d gone back over the Brad Evans file, which hadn’t taken very long since it consisted mostly of notes about interviews that had gone nowhere. But the interviews weren’t what had interested him anyway. Instead it had been a nagging thought that had kept him awake until almost midnight last night, which was something that usually only the acid in his stomach could accomplish. This nagging thought, though, had nothing to do with acid at all, but with the way Brad Evans had died. So when he’d arrived at his office that morning, he’d looked at the M.E.’s report on Caroline Fleming’s first husband.

Broken neck. Approached from behind, left arm slipped around the neck, followed almost instantly by a hard push from the assailant’s right hand.

Or at least that was the supposition made by the M.E., which was pretty much the same supposition that had been made about Andrea Costanza.

Who was a good friend of Caroline Evans Fleming.

Who now lived in The Rockwell — the same building in which the last person to see Costanza alive lived. All that, together with the fact that neither he nor Hernandez had been able to turn up even a hint of a boyfriend for Costanza, was making Oberholzer willing to take another look not only at Dr. Theodore Humphries, but at whoever else lived in the building as well.

Now, with the building looming across the street, Oberholzer could feel the acid in his stomach starting to burn — the fact was, he didn’t much like talking to people who lived in buildings like this one; they always acted like their address should give them some kind of immunity from having to talk to anyone as lowly as a cop, detective or otherwise. Caroline Evans, on the other hand, hadn’t been like that at all. She’d always been more than helpful, spending hours telling him more about her husband than he’d really needed to know. But that was okay, too — she’d obviously needed to talk, and he’d always been a good listener. A good listener and a good observer. That was all being a detective was about, really: listening and watching until you either heard or saw what was going on. And this morning he was going to listen to Caroline Evans very, very carefully indeed, and watch just as suspiciously as he listened, because suddenly she seemed to be the common denominator of both killings.

Now all he had to do was fit it together.

He glanced at his watch — two minutes before nine, which meant that Caroline Fleming’s kids — Ryan and Laurie, which he’d remembered without any help from the file on their father — would have left for school and her husband would have gone to his office, assuming he had an office, which was an assumption the detective wasn’t ready to make. If Humphries worked out of a home office, there wasn’t any reason why this Fleming character couldn’t, too. “You ever been in this place before?” he asked Hernandez as a break in traffic appeared and he started across the street, ignoring the fact that the light was still red.

“Actually, yes,” Hernandez replied.

When she said nothing more, Oberholzer shot her a sour look. “So you gonna tell me about it, or what?”

“Nothing to tell. My mamma cleaned for Virginia Estherbrook for a while when I was a kid. She brought me along a couple times.”

“So?” Oberholzer prompted. “What did you think?”

“Creepy,” Hernandez replied. They were at the front door now, and suddenly Maria Hernandez chuckled. “Once a kid at school told me the doorman was a troll.”

Oberholzer pulled one of the heavy oak doors open for Hernandez, then followed her into the vestibule. As they pulled open the inner doors, Rodney looked up from the paper he had spread out in front of him on the counter. “I’m afraid Dr. Humphries isn’t in right now.”

“Not here for Humphries,” Oberholzer replied. “Which apartment do the Flemings live in?”

“I’m afraid I really can’t divulge—” the doorman began, but Oberholzer had already flipped his wallet open to expose his detective’s shield.

“I’m not asking you to divulge a damned thing,” he interrupted. “Just answer the question.”

Rodney looked as if he was on the verge of arguing further, but then seemed to think better of it. “5-A,” he said. “Fifth floor, overlooking the park.”

“Thank you,” Oberholzer said with exaggerated politeness. Then, as he and Hernandez headed for the elevator and Rodney reached for the telephone, he spoke again, not even bothering to turn back to face the doorman. “And don’t call ahead.”

Rodney waited until the elevator — and the two detectives — had disappeared upward before dialing Anthony Fleming’s number upstairs.

The elevator jerked to a stop, and Oberholzer pulled the door open. It stuck halfway, and he gave it a jerk. “You’d think they’d put in a new elevator, wouldn’t you?” he grumbled.

“There’s nothing new in this building,” Hernandez replied. “Everything looks exactly like it did when I was a kid. Even the doorman looks the same.” She shivered slightly. “He’s got a creepy look in his eyes.”

“He’s a doorman,” Oberholzer retorted. “They all have creepy eyes — it’s part of the job.” He jabbed at the button next to the door of 5-A, then jabbed it again when there was no immediate response. He was about to punch it a third time when the door opened and he found himself facing a tall, dark-haired man that he figured was maybe in his mid-forties. Oberholzer could tell from the look in the man’s eyes — a look that wasn’t quite hostile, but couldn’t be called welcoming, either — that the doorman had called ahead, which only made the acid in his stomach bubble a little higher. “Mr. Fleming?” he asked. When the man nodded, Oberholzer flashed his badge and introduced himself. “Actually, it’s your wife I’m here to see.”

Anthony Fleming pulled the door open wider. “I think you’d better come in,” he said, the neutrality of both his expression and his voice dissolving into worry. “We can talk in my study.” He led Oberholzer and Hernandez into the wood-paneled room, and the detective took in every stick of furniture with a single sweep of his eyes. Had anyone asked him a week later to describe it, he could have repeated not only the entire inventory, but diagramed its placement in the room as well. By the time Anthony Fleming had reached his desk, then leaned against its edge when neither Oberholzer nor Hernandez accepted his offer of chairs, Oberholzer’s focus had already shifted from the room to the man.

“I assume this must be about Andrea Costanza,” Fleming said, resting his hands on the desk at either side of his hips.

“Your wife was a friend of hers,” Oberholzer replied. “We’re talking to everyone she knew. Is your wife here?”

Fleming shook his head. “I’m afraid my wife has taken this very hard. Andrea was her best friend, and after—” He hesitated, then began again. “My wife’s first husband was killed in Central Park a little over a year ago. And now with her best friend being killed… ” His voice trailed off a second time, then he took a deep breath and spoke one more time. “I’m afraid I had to take her to a hospital last night. Ever since she watched them take Andrea’s body away, she’s been having a rough time of it. Bad dreams, and — it’s hard to describe it. Paranoia, I suppose. Yesterday she came home from work early, and when I got home she was nearly hysterical. Certain that people were watching her — that sort of thing. When I couldn’t get her calmed down—” He spread his hands helplessly, sighed, and shook his head. “I’m hoping she’ll be home in a few days.”

“Where is she?” Oberholzer asked, his pencil poised over his notepad.

“The Biddle Institute,” Fleming replied. “Up on West 82nd Street.”

“How well did you know Costanza?” Maria Hernandez asked.

“Hardly at all, actually,” Fleming replied. “We had dinner with her once, and she was at the wedding of course, but it was one of those woman things — she and my wife were friends from college, and they stuck together like glue. The other two are Beverly Amondson and Rochelle Newman.”

Oberholzer nodded. “And can you tell us where you both were last Friday evening?”

“Last Friday—?” Fleming began, but then grasped what Oberholzer was getting at. “Ah. The night Andrea was killed. Well, for the most part we were here. We had dinner with the kids, and then I had a board meeting.”

“A board meeting? At night?”

“The co-op board,” Fleming explained. “We meet once a month, mostly to argue over money.”

“And who else was at that meeting?” Oberholzer asked.

Fleming’s brows rose slightly, but then he began ticking them off on his fingers. “Well, let’s see. I was there, of course, and George Burton and Irene Delamond. And Ted Humphries.”

“Just five?” Maria Hernandez asked.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to get five people to agree on anything?”

“And the meeting lasted…?” Oberholzer left the question hanging.

“An hour and a half maybe. Certainly I was home by eleven. Now, if we’re about through, I’d like to go up and check on my son — he seems to have picked up a bug himself.”

“Okay,” Oberholzer said, closing his pad and slipping it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Do you have any problem with us visiting your wife at the hospital?”

“My wife is very sick,” Fleming replied. “If you could wait a few days—”

“I wish I could,” Oberholzer cut in. “But we’re investigating a murder, Mr. Fleming.”

For a moment Anthony Fleming appeared to be on the verge of arguing, but then seemed to think better of it. “Of course,” he said, leaving the desk to usher Oberholzer and Hernandez toward the door. “If there’s anything else, let me know.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Oberholzer assured him.

Neither he nor Hernandez spoke until they were downstairs and out of the building, and even then they waited until they were across the street and halfway down the next block. “Well?” Hernandez asked. “What do you think?”

“I think I go up to the Biddle Institute, while you go back to Costanza’s address book,” Oberholzer replied.

“I meant what did you think of him?”

Oberholzer shrugged. “Won’t know til I check out everything he said.”

“I didn’t like him,” Hernandez informed him, even though Oberholzer hadn’t asked. “Something about his eyes.”

“His eyes,” Oberholzer repeated darkly, rolling his own. “Okay, I’ll bite. What about his eyes?”

“They looked dead,” Hernandez said. “I mean really dead. Like a corpse.”

Which is why I’m a sergeant, and you’re not, Oberholzer thought silently, and by the time he got up to 82nd Street, he’d dismissed the idea from his mind.