The Sentinel

by Konvitz, Jeffrey;

  Michael tried to imagine what had happened.

  The door opened and Detective Gatz stepped inside. He shut it and leaned against the wall.

  Michael flinched uncomfortable.

  “A rather sorry-looking sight,” commented the cop. “Even worse than when she took all those pills.” He looked at Michael severely. “Remember that? The loving wife committed suicide by slicing her wrists; then, soon after, the mistress tried to drown her guilt with pills. Messy stuff.”

  “Can’t we be alone?” asked Michael, scowling.

  The detective shook his head. “I suddenly became curious. You don’t mind if I listen and perhaps offer some expert medical advice.”

  “There’s nothing to listen to,” said Jennifer contemptuously. “She can’t speak, yet.”

  Gatz shrugged. If that was the case, that was the case. But he’d remain just to make sure.

  Patients like this were more likely to speak to someone with whom they were familiar. It was a fact. And there was nothing he liked more in the entire world than facts.

  “You know,” said Gatz, “Miss Parker looks a little like your former wife. Yes, Parker really reminds me of her. Fortunately, there’s a difference. Miss Parker didn’t die, when she tried to kill herself. And she isn’t going to die now.” He looked at Michael. “Did Karen Farmer commit suicide? Some said yes. Nice neat letter saying goodbye to everyone. It was rather sad. I said no. Everything told me different. It was no suicide.”

  “Are you through?” Michael asked, restraining his fury.

  “You don’t like my story?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I’m warning you, Mr. Detective. The past is dead and buried, and if you try to resurrect it, I’ll see to it that you get thrown off the force.”

  “How violent,” said the cop. He pulled the cigar from his mouth, studied the chewed end, and returned it to its spot between his teeth. He’d said enough; he could only push Farmer so far, because Farmer was right. He could pull strings and could get him booted in the ass. He’d done it before. If he was going to sniff back into the Karen Farmer suicide, he’d have to do it through the present investigation. And do it very quietly.

  The door opened once again and the nurse re-entered.

  “Five minutes are up and Dr. Bleifer is strict with his rules. Miss Parker needs as much rest as possible.”

  “Where can I find the doctor?”

  “He should be in the hospital in fifteen minutes.”

  “We can continue our little chat, while you wait for him,” said the detective.

  “Must we?” asked Jennifer, already annoyed with Gatz’s persistence.

  The man smiled stolidly.

  The nurse walked to the bed and felt Allison’s head. Then she measured Allison’s blood pressure and took Allison’s pulse, while Michael and Gatz exchanged antagonistic glances.

  “Let me take you all to the waiting room,” declared the nurse. “When the doctor arrives, I’ll ask him to come down.”

  The nurse lifted a chart off the end of the bed and recorded the readings. After replacing it, she walked to the door and motioned the visitors outside. Michael and Jennifer were the first two out. Gatz stopped a moment to look at Allison, shook his head, then followed the nurse as she moved down the corridor.

  As they turned the corner into the main hall, a sound crept through the door of Room 211.

  Nearly inaudible, it was the sound of someone weeping.

  Twenty minutes later, Michael and Jennifer exited the main elevator with Gatz on their heels. They walked past the reception desk and into the outer hall of the hospital.

  “Remember, don’t leave town without letting me know.”

  Michael didn’t bother to turn. Instead, he locked his arm through Jennifer’s and stepped outside.

  Gatz ambled to the entrance, leaned against the glass doors, and watched them walk to First Avenue and hail a cab. He removed the cigar from his mouth for the thousandth time that day. He studied the little stub and the chewed-up end. It had had enough. He’d worked hard; he deserved a new one. He tossed the butt into the bushes near the No Littering sign, dug into his coat pocket, and removed a new six-inch Panatela. Carefully, he peeled the cellophane and then, with the precision of a diamond cutter, examined the tobacco wrapping, approved its form, and enjoyed its scent.

  Placing the cigar in his mouth, he turned and re-entered the hospital.

  14

  The night of horror remained imprinted in her mind. Over and over she relived the tense moments on the staircase, the confrontation with her father and the lunging knife that continuously pierced his rotted flesh and was discolored from the trickle of blood. Again and again she challenged her recollections, doubting, hoping, yet in the end acknowledging what she knew had happened. It was a traumatic exercise to face a reality which was unreal, to force one’s thoughts to the unthinkable. And in the end exhaust oneself for a totally inconclusive conclusion that could only breed more terror.

  She lay propped in Michael’s bed, covered to the waist by a quilt. The table to her right was cluttered with an assortment of vials containing a variety of medicines to which she’d been subjected. Most were only half filled. Around her neck hung the crucifix, clenched in her right fist. The stereo played softly in the background.

  Michael entered with a bed tray and forced an unconvincing smile. He tipped down the legs, laid it on her lap, and uncovered a bowl of steaming chicken broth, two pieces of buttered toast, and a little copper tea kettle.

  “Where is Jennifer?” Allison asked. She grasped a tablespoon and began to sip the broth.

  “In the bathroom.”

  “Performing unmentionable acts,” she added coldly without the suggestion of humor one would have expected with such an observation.

  He sat down, picked the automatic channel changer off the night table, and tossed it nervously in the air.

  The door opened and Jennifer came in. “Hello again,” she said, as she walked across the room and stood at the foot of the bed. “I just spoke to the agency, told them no bookings, and asked them to send out the checks they owe you.”

  “Thank you,” Allison replied. “Of course, you could have called from in here, but then you couldn’t have said what you said.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Forget it.”

  “You have regards from everyone.”

  Allison nibbled at the toast. “Thank them for me,” she murmured indifferently. The last thing on her mind was her career and all those people who’d clogged her life to the point of suffocation…or, at least, that’s how it seemed to her now.

  Michael and Jennifer exchanged worried glances. He placed the channel changer back on the table.

  Allison continued to sip the chicken broth. “Can I have some water?” she asked.

  Michael poured a glass. “Take two of these with it,” he said, while removing two cylindrical pills from one of the vials.

  Allison extended an unsteady hand, grasped the glass, removed her right hand from the crucifix, and took the pills, which she tossed into her mouth with distaste. More pills. It seemed that she’d eaten every pill on the face of the earth in the last week. But they kept on coming. She frowned, as these two slid down her throat.

  She grabbed the crucifix gain.

  “I think you’re getting some of your color back,” said Jennifer.

  “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but you do know what the word bullshit means.”

  Jennifer glanced at Michael. “A day or two rest and you’ll be as good as new.”

  “Sure. No doubt about it.” Her statement was reassuring; the tone and underlying conviction were not.

  Michael stood. “Take my seat.”

&nbs
p; “No,” said Jennifer. “I have to get home.”

  He leaned back against the dresser, observing the tense silence that began to oppress the room. “We can all go up to the mountains,” he finally said, “this weekend.”

  “That would be nice,” said Allison coldly.

  Michael rubbed his chin, thinking. “Bear Mountain. We’ll get a cabin for the day, cook something special, and mix a batch of rum grog.” He smiled expectantly. Allison stared blankly.

  Jennifer stammered, “I’ll be back in the morning. Would you like me to bring you something?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure now?”

  “Yes.”

  Jennifer smiled uncertainly and turned to Michael. “Where’d you put my coat?”

  “In the hall closet.”

  “And the books?”

  “In the closet, too.”

  She looked at Allison once more. “Get some rest and don’t sit up worrying. Everything will be fine.”

  Allison smiled meekly.

  “I’ll walk you out, Jennifer,” Michael volunteered. He followed her toward the living room. As he reached the foyer, he looked back at the bedroom door, which he’d just closed. His expression hardened and he grabbed Jennifer by the arm. “She might break down completely,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  He reached into the foyer closet, removed Jennifer’s coat and art books, and laid them in her outstretched hands. “The doctors have raised that as a possibility.”

  “She’s very hostile.”

  “Depressed is the better word. And frightened.” He paused, then added, “The combination is debilitating.”

  “What can we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you need me…”

  “I know where to find you.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. They exchanged smiles. “Thanks,” he said.

  He closed the door softly behind her and glanced quickly back to the bedroom. It was quiet; the entire apartment lay still. He dug nervously in his shirt pocket and removed a small black telephone book. He opened the pages, surreptitiously walked to the wall phone near the table…the phone that had no extension in the bedroom…and quietly dialed. He listened attentively to the ringing of the distant phone. It rang twelve times. The automatic service answered. No one was there. He hung up disgustedly and returned to the bedroom.

  The dinner tray lay on the carpet next to the bed. The stereo continued to play softly; the effect was soothing and sleep-inducing, precisely the mood with which he wanted to surround her. The quieter she was, and the more sleep she got, the better.

  He lifted the tray from the rug and laid it on top of the dresser directly behind him. Then he sat down in the leather armchair. Leaning back, he stared sympathetically at her closed eyes and noted, after watching the steady rise and fall of her chest, that she was breathing more easily than she’d been breathing the past three days, when it seemed at times that her lungs would explode like overstretched balloons.

  She opened her eyes.

  They studied each other judiciously.

  “You think I’m going crazy,” she said after a long silence.

  “I haven’t said that!”

  “You haven’t had to!”

  Again there was silence.

  “At times, for all of your painstaking reserve and neutrality, you’re very easy to read,” she said.

  “Am I?”

  She nodded.

  He sat back in the armchair, massaging his temples, his eyes racing over the walls from picture to picture. Abstracts. Crashing lines and forms. Colors. Jumbled. “Allison,” he said. He stopped to think out the rest of his statement.

  “Yes,” she prompted.

  “All right, I’ll admit I think the pressure of your father’s death has caused you to conjure up an incredible fantasy.”

  “That means you think I’m crazy.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Then what does it mean?”

  He stammered. “It means exactly what I said.”

  “I see.” She didn’t.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Breathing sharply, he stood up and paced across the room, shut off the stereo, turned, and began. “Let’s look at what we know about that night. You were tense and disturbed, having had another of your recurrent nightmares. You’d fainted the day before and had just found out that no one was living in the building.”

  “But…”

  “Let me finish! You got all kinds of brave and decided to go upstairs and find out who was making the noises you’d heard. You grabbed a knife. You were scared shitless. Then you stepped on a cat.”

  “Jezebel.”

  “A cat! You walked into a room in a situation that would have frightened anyone to death and then you confronted your…” He stopped and shook his head. This entire thing was ridiculous. Her father?

  “Go on.”

  “Okay. Your father was there with two women. Naked.” He walked to the window and looked out at the rooftops.

  “Well?”

  “It’s getting dark earlier.”

  “That happens during the winter.”

  He looked down at the cars crawling along the street, their braking lights erupting in spasms of red. He listened. The clamor of the street was trapped below, except for an occasional honk that pierced the room.

  He spun toward Allison. “Let me ask you a question.”

  “All right.”

  “What made you frigid?”

  Angered, she challenged, “What has that to do with anything?”

  He interrupted. “Why did you leave home?”

  She held the crucifix tighter.

  “Why’d you see your father and two naked women in the brownstone?”

  She winced.

  “Why’d you try to kill yourself after Karen’s death?” He paused, then asked, “Do you want me to tell you?”

  She remained silent.

  “I can, because I know.”

  “I wanted to become a model.”

  “That made you frigid?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Let’s cut the bullshit. This is me you’re talking to, Allison.”

  “I know, Michael. How could I possibly mistake you for anyone else?”

  “Supposedly, you love me.”

  “I do.”

  “Then you should have told me a long time ago. There was no reason not to, since you told me everything else.”

  She lowered her eyes. “You’ve tried this ploy before.”

  “But this time I know.”

  “How?”

  “That’s my business. There are ways to find out anything if you want to badly enough and are willing to pay the price.”

  The room fell silent, he leaning against the window, she lying against the pillows, her arms draped over the bed.

  “What do you know?” she asked, resigned to the fact that he did.

  “Everything,” he said softly. He opened the top dresser drawer and removed a manila portfolio from which he pulled several documents. “Psychiatrists’ reports and police transcripts. Several other papers. All very enlightening.” He held one up to the light. “This for example. Just the pertinent information. Psychiatrist’s transcript dated March 12, 1966. Dr. Risenstadt:

  ‘Father gave me the crucifix on my tenth birthday. At dinner. It was beautiful. I put it on at the table. I never took it off.’

  “Another dated April 9, 1966,” he then said, continuing.

  ‘I had always thought Mother and Father were happy. I was wrong. They became very cold toward one another. And the arguments were incessant. He would come
home drunk and beat her up. She’d claim he was with other women. He’d scream like a madman, calling her a puritanical Catholic. I would run down the back staircase and hide in an alcove. One day, he found me and beat me up. I had blood all over. I was very religious. He wasn’t. Yet, he insisted on my constant devotion to the church. It didn’t make much sense. I was confused.’

  “Another dated October 16, 1966,”

  ‘I hated him. I was terrified whenever he came near me. My own father. He killed my puppy. He kicked him in the stomach and Bugle died.’

  “Should I continue?” he asked.

  She nodded indifferently.

  “Police transcript, 1966. No specific date. You know what this is?”

  She nodded again.

  He read:

  ‘Mother and I had gone for the weekend to a lakeside resort about thirty miles from town. We were to stay over and return Monday, but I suffered a bad sunburn and decided to come home a day early. I took the bus from Lake Junction to the post office and walked the rest of the way up the hill. It was ten in the evening. I entered the house, climbed the stairs to the second floor, turned to walk toward my room, then stopped. Laughter was coming from my parents’ bedroom. No one should have been in the house. Father was out of town on business. I walked to the partially opened door, swung it back, and looked inside. Father lay naked in the bed with two naked women. They were all drunk. The larger of the two was sucking his testicles, while the other woman fondled the larger woman’s breasts. I vomited. Father spun off the bed…frightened and hysterical…and began to beat me about the head. I lifted my hands to defend myself, but he wrapped his hands around my throat, then grasped the chain of the crucifix, wound it tightly around my neck and squeezed. I gasped for air. He jerked me down to the floor and pulled the chain tighter and tighter, causing my skin to bleed. I have a scar there. I kicked him in the groin. He stopped. I tried to catch my breath, but I vomited again. Then I looked at the broken chain in my hand and the crucifix dangling from one end. I watched him panting wildly, clutching himself. I was crying. I threw the chain and hit him on the chin. The chain and cross fell to the floor. I never wore it again. I never stepped inside a church or attended a service again. Mother sealed the bedroom. I left home. For New York.’