by J. M. Barlog
“Anxiety transference?”
“You’re fighting the sedative. Mr. Chips was only reacting to your overt fear. Trust me, he had no idea why he was growling. Just a reaction to your hallucination.”
“It wasn’t an hallucination.”
Moments later Jenny fell silently asleep.
Sy retreated to the door and turned back for one final check to assure himself she was really asleep, then switched off the light and left Jenny alone.
“Well?” Warren asked anxiously after Sy closed the bedroom door. His cigarette quivered in his fingers. He clung to the ashtray in his other hand as if it were all that were keeping him above water.
“I’ve given her something to sleep.”
“Fine, but what about her hallucinations? She’s a wreck. I found her curled in the corner of the bedroom whimpering and crying. She trembled so badly, I... What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know. Could be side effects of the drugs. It could be...more serious brain damage than originally thought.”
“What if it doesn’t go away? What am I supposed to do for this? She’s getting worse. She’s convinced that she’s being tormented by a ghost of herself.”
“I think for the present, Warren, we should explore the rational possibilities. The drugs will eventually fade away, though there could be an occasional flashback. But, if the brain is irreparably damaged, rigorous therapy is our only recourse.”
****
Jenny pulled herself out of a shallow sleep to the dull morning light falling in through her window. The gray sky outside threatened rain. She was combing her hair in bed when Warren arrived with breakfast.
“You look very beautiful this morning, Jenny. Sleep well?”
“Very well,” she said with a glint in her eye.
Jenny seemed different this morning. She devoured her breakfast with determination and more than her usual vigor. Her facial gestures telegraphed that her mind was churning over something.
“Warren, I know what I saw. Rosenstein is wrong.”
Her words were anything but confused or distraught. Jenny spoke them coolly and with rational control.
“Jenny, please, can we take this thing one step at a time? Rosenstein wants to see you in a few days. We can talk to him about it then.”
“I’m telling you, Warren, Mr. Chips saw it, too. Even though it terrified him, he was attempting to protect me from it.”
“Jenny, would you be okay here with Carla from down the road?”
“Why?”
“I have a meeting. It’s been postponed twice and if I reschedule again I’ll lose the client for good.”
“But...”
“Jenny, I’ve tried. I have to meet with him today. It won’t take long, I promise.”
“Can’t you meet with him here? Can’t he come here to see you? Tell him you’re taking care of your wife.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea under the circumstances.”
“Okay. Then I’ll be fine.”
“Carla offered to come over and stay with you. I could take you to her place. Get you out of here.”
There was an ominous tone to Warren’s here.
“You didn’t?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I just asked if she would keep you company. It’s a very important meeting. I can’t put it off.”
“I can’t, Warren. I can’t let her see me this way. How long will you be gone?”
“Until early afternoon. Maybe two at the latest. Jenny, you have to get over the scarring. You can’t hide forever.”
“Okay, fine. I think that will be all right. But could you reconnect the telephone for me? I’d like to make some calls.”
“You up to it?”
“Warren, I’m better. I’d just like to talk to Kate and begin getting back into the flow.”
“That’s great, honey.”
Warren left, replaced by Carla and Randy, her four-year-old terror. Jenny, however, wishing to avoid the unwanted superficial chitchat and having to deal with the little monster, asked that her door be closed so she might make a few business-related calls and grab a nap.
Carla offered to sit with her. But Jenny refused. Since Carla was ten years older and a housewife with no ambition, they had nothing in common. She said she’d be right down stairs, if Jenny needed anything. And she emphatically promised to keep Randy away from Mr. Chips, who decided to make himself scarce since the little terror’s arrival.
As soon as the bedroom door closed, Jenny pulled the telephone to her lap. She knew what she had seen—it was no hallucination. She knew Chips had experienced it along with her. That vision was real and physical, and most importantly, had been standing right there in her room.
After two hours and at least forty telephone calls, Jenny had come up empty. What she needed was someone familiar with this type of situation. A paranormal investigator. She knew they existed; she’d seen enough of those Fox Network television specials to know that much.
Her tenacity, however, did not go unrewarded. It had gained her the telephone numbers of two organizations involved with paranormal phenomena. Neither expressed any serious interest in her story. But that could have been because her stutter made her come across more like a crackpot than a sane and rational person.
However, one kind old gentleman by the name of Carlisle Schuller, who headed up a branch of the Center for the Scientific Investigation of the Paranormal in Santa Fe, New Mexico, offered Jenny the name of a young man working under a grant at New York State University in Albany. Her claim had at last fallen upon one sympathetic pair of ears.
Jenny’s first call to Dwight Mackenzie ended up on an answering machine with a warbled announcement. The voice offered nothing more than confirmation of the number, then requested a detailed message and promised someone would return the call.
Yeah right.
Jenny doled out her brief message that was well-rehearsed to eliminate all but a trace of her stutter. She found if she concentrated on each word before she allowed it to exit her throat, she could deliver a few sentences without the stutter stomping out her attempt.
Hope sprouted inside her. Jenny napped with telephone under hand, waiting for that promised return call.
12
Rick buttoned another button on his coat to stave off a cold November wind that seemed insistent on wreaking havoc with his hair. He stood alongside his captain, Jason Rawlings; the two waited at the end of an expansive and deserted parking lot.
Horace Dugan approached with clipboard in hand and the kind of smile a ten-year-old uses to arouse parental suspicion. He shivered, underdressed for the weather in a light blue police windbreaker and no hat to protect his head.
“Gotta do this before the rain,” Dugan said, glancing up at a crowded slate sky that seemed to be hovering over them.
“This better be damn good,” Rawlings scowled.
“Camera’s rolling?” Dugan asked back over his shoulder to a man at a video set up on a tripod.
“Rolling,” came back.
“What’s this about?” Rawlings asked Rick.
“Beats me. Dugan just said to be here.”
Dugan, a slight man unhappy to have entered his fifties, waved a knuckled hand in a circle over his head. His pale lips offered a smile to Rawlings and Walker once more. But he released one of those ‘this better work’ sighs as he watched the maroon Taurus accelerate.
“Just watch.”
The three tracked the Taurus as it accelerated past them twenty feet distant in the middle of the lot.
“Notice the blacktop is free of water and ice,” Dugan narrated as a way of recording that fact and lending credibility to that which was about to take place.
“I hope you’re taking your best shot, Dugan,” Rawlings scowled with that Show-me expression laid out across his face. Even the hot coffee he held failed to put a thaw in his icy mood.
No one spoke. The car wound its way at thirty-five miles an hour through a snaking course o
f fluorescent pylons. When the vehicle finished the course it made a wide turn and rolled to a stop in front of the three men.
“Ta-da!” Dugan said.
“This is what we’re freezing our asses off for?” Rick said.
Rick and Rawlings exchanged a look of disbelief. Even Rick had become irritated by the mystery surrounding Dugan’s insistent demonstration.
“Now, you’ve seen the car take the turns at thirty-five miles per hour. Simple enough. Everything is perfectly normal,” Dugan said to Rick and the captain as he continued to shiver.
Rick shot Dugan an uncertain glare.
“Yeah fine. Can we get this thing to the point?” Rawlings snarled.
Dugan always used theatrics. This was his time under the bright lights, and he wasn’t going to let anyone leave the theater until his performance was over. He even made sure he got it on tape.
But as melodramatic as Dugan was, he was also rarely wrong, and everyone in the department knew it. When Dugan put his passion into something, you could be sure there was more than mere speculation involved.
“Pop the hood,” Dugan commanded the helmeted driver behind the wheel.
“Funny thing about this particular design. I personally think the engineers didn’t fully understand the effects of weight distribution on front wheel drive.”
“Can we keep this thing moving?” Rick pressed.
Dugan proceeded to point out to Rick and Rawlings with both words and hand gestures exactly how the front stabilizer strut is mounted to the frame. In particular, he identified a single fulcrum bolt securing the strut to the top mount.
“Gentleman, watch and take notes.” Dugan’s words carried a ring of confidence with them.
Rawlings remained unimpressed.
Dugan held up his hammer like a magician’s wand.
“Voila!”
He tapped the bolt. At contact, the hexagonal nut securing the steel rod to the mounting frame flew out from beneath the hood, hitting Rawlings in the shoulder.
“Sorry, Cap. That’s it, gentlemen,” Dugan announced proudly. “Now watch.”
Rick and Rawlings exchanged one of those Dugan-has-finally-flipped looks.
With the hood locked down, Dugan circled his finger overhead and sent the driver back onto the course.
“You’ll notice right off,” Dugan said over the engine acceleration, “that there are no adverse handling effects, and as you can see, the car performs initially just as it did before. The driver is completely unaware of the change in the vehicle’s structural integrity.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I get sick from this you’re gonna pay, Dugan,” Rawlings muttered.
After a 180 degree turn, the Taurus sped up to its designated thirty-five and entered the lane of pylons. At the first hard right turn, the vehicle spun into a doughnut. Inside, the driver whirled the wheel, trying to regain control. The Taurus swerved side to side, taking out every pylon that had been set up. The car traveled more than thirty feet before the driver’s expert braking and wheel control could return the vehicle to a safe and sane position.
“You see, Rick, Cap, once the strut mounting disconnects from the frame, the car becomes uncontrollable. Any turn at a speed greater than twenty brings about the result you’ve just witnessed.”
“So, you’re saying what?” Rick asked.
“I’m saying you’re going the wrong way with the Garrett investigation. I’m saying someone tampered with the woman’s car that night.”
“Wait a minute,” Rawlings cut in.
“You’re trying to sell us on that?” Rick imposed.
Dugan removed a length of threaded steel in a plastic bag. He tossed it to Walker then planted his hands at his hips.
“Bingo. I’m saying someone sheared the bolt on the Garrett car. Whoever did it knew the car would go out of control.”
“This is pretty wild,” Rick said. Then his expression changed. He examined the metal in his hand. There was evidence of saw marks on the end of the shaft.
“You see how half of the metal is broken clean off, but the other half has jagged saw marks.”
“You confirmed that?” Rawlings shot in, now suddenly intensely interested.
“Cap, you think I’d risk your wrath bringing you out here if I weren’t sure,” Dugan said.
“You’re saying the Garrett woman was set up to die in that accident?” Rick asked.
“Take that car, shear the top off the mounting bolt, and put it on a winding downhill road, and you’ve got a guaranteed crash. When the brakes are applied, which is the driver’s instinctive response, the car goes spinning out of control. Our driver’s an expert, and as you can see, it took at least five car lengths before he brought that ton of steel back under control.”
Rick looked at Rawlings, who shifted his gaze off the metal and now stared at the vehicle and the sprawled pylons.
“I’m telling you, Ricky, my boy, someone wanted the Garrett woman to die in that crash.” Dugan handed Rick the hammer and another plastic bag with the threaded remains of a bolt like the one used in the demonstration.
“Did you get all of it?” Dugan asked over his shoulder.
The cameraman signaled his thumbs-up.
Dugan signaled the driver to wrap up the demonstration and the three started back toward the building.
“Dugan, how the hell did you come up with this anyway?” Rawlings asked.
“The right side of the vehicle sustained all the major damage. So why would the left strut have separated so cleanly from the mounting? When I inspected it closer, I saw the cut marks.”
“How would someone possibly have known about the condition you’ve just shown us?” Rawlings asked.
“Your average Joe wouldn’t. But a sharp mechanic knows that the fulcrum for all the weight is on the two front struts. A collapsed strut shifts the center of gravity and voila! You’re out of control. No, you don’t have to be a physicist to figure out that this is a better way to kill someone than the old method of cutting the brake line. But it’s relatively impossible to bring on a collapsed strut at will, so the next best thing is to allow it to break out of its mounting.”
“How confident are you in this?” Rick asked.
“My reputation’s on it. You just saw what happened out there. If the Garrett woman panicked when the car went into a spin, she’d never recover in time. You want my professional opinion after thirty years of investigating car crashes? You got one slick killer out there. But he failed the first time. By all rights, the Garrett woman should never have survived. And from what I understand, she nearly didn’t. If I were you, Walker, I’d be worried that the joker is going to try again. But this time, what’s her name, Jenny, isn’t likely to be so lucky.”
“Are we going to be able to make an attempted murder charge stick?” Rawlings asked.
“Everything here, along with my written report, is going to the DA. I think you can take this into court if you can build a case behind motive and opportunity.”
Rawlings narrowed his eyes as he watched the vehicle inch its way back toward them. Then he, himself, examined the threads encased in plastic.
“And you recovered this from the Garrett car?”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m convinced, Rick. Bring me motive and opportunity, and we’ll put the bastard away.”
Rick’s smile melted away the cold that had gone all the way to his bones.
****
A ten-thirty phone call brought a perplexed Warren out of the den. He stood in the doorway to the bedroom, scratching at the hairs on his neck.
“Jenny, it’s for you.” He sounded surprised. “A Dwight Mackenzie.”
Jenny reached faster than she should have and winced from a slight pain while she snatched up the receiver.
“Hello.”
“Hi. Dwight Mackenzie returning your call.”
“Is this the Dwight Mackenzie that investigates paranormal phenomena?”
An unusually long pause filled the line
.
Upon hearing that, Warren took up the chair in the bedroom and fumbled with cleaning his glasses.
“Yes.”
Jenny took a deep breath, and concentrated on her rehearsed lines; praying she could control her stutter and avoid frightening Dwight off. She began her explanation in as detailed a fashion as possible.
When she finished, Dwight asked a few clumsy questions that seemed to indicate less than total enthusiasm about what Jenny had just related to him. But at the same time, neither did he say he had no interest in her story either. And best of all, he hadn’t hung up on her.
“Then you will help me?”
“Ms. Garrett, it’s not a situation where I can help you. I investigate what I deem to be occurrences that lack a critical foundation in modern science. Events unexplainable under the laws of physics or nature. I’m not a ghostbuster. I don’t scare away ghosts.”
“I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. I would just like someone to...”
“Ms. Garrett, would you be willing to meet with me at the university? I would be willing to at least go through a detailed interview before deciding whether I should move forward with a formal paranormal investigation.”
“Paranormal mumbo jumbo,” Warren said under his breath. He searched his pocket for his cigarettes, but when he realized they were back in his den, he stuffed his hands inside his pockets.
“Thank you, yes. Can I come there tomorrow?”
Warren offered a stoic nod of agreement.
“Tomorrow would be fine,” Jenny repeated for Warren’s benefit.
“I’ll be in my office between one and four. Come to the Psychology Department located in Wilford Hall. My office is located on the lower level in the west wing, room 128.”
“The shit just wants money,” Warren mumbled as he left the bedroom.
13
Rick waited in the anteroom to Rawlings’s office with a stack of files in hand. He felt completely unprepared for what he was about to do.
“Looks like it’s ass-reaming time again,” Detective Ed Perkins said in a low tone as he passed Rick.