Wallflower j-3

by William Bayer

  "It happens every night around this time," Janek said. "I start feeling chilled and then afraid."

  "Of the dream?" He nodded. "I can give you a pill," Monika said. "It will help you sleep and probably stop you from dreaming.

  But I don't recommend it." "Why not?"

  "I think it's good for you to dream, Frank. Even if the dream is bad. If you can dream it through, the power of the dream will weaken, and then you'll be released."

  Janek thought about that awhile. When he spoke again, his voice was hushed and steady.

  "I can't see all the details. I see the redness over everything.

  The glow like a kind of rust. And I see the picture, so big, looming there: the handsome face; the glossy red curls; the sparkling eyes; the cruel, sensual mouth. And then I see this slim, little, bald woman charging at me like a fiend. She sticks me. I feel the pain. The room begins to spin. And then I see other things, objects, but I'm whirling so fast I can't tell you what they are. I want to see them clearly, Monika. I think that's why I dream about them. to see them again, hoping this time they'll register. Because they're important. I know they are. " He sat back, shrugged. "

  I have no idea why That night, when the nightmare came and he began to shake, he felt her arms wrap his chest. The nightmare passed. He got up, shuffled to the bathroom, poured himself a glass of water, and drank it off. Back in bed, in her arms again, her breasts warm points against his back, he felt better, less haunted, not so cold.

  "I've got an idea," he whispered to her in the morning.

  "What?"

  "It's nice here. I like it. But I want us to go back to New York."

  "We just arrived, Frank."

  "I know. But there's something I want to do. The photos Aaron showed me weren't enough. I should have insisted on seeing the room again for myself. What do you say we fly up there this morning, spend twenty-four hours, then fly back? I know it'll be expensive, but I'll pay for the tickets. I think seeing the room in daylight will help."

  She shook her head. "I don't think so, Frank. I don't think that will help you at all."

  "Look, I'm not a child. Whate'ver's there-I can take it. "

  She smiled. "Of course, you can. But there isn't anything there. You'll be wasting your time."

  "But-"

  "Please, listen to me. Right now you're recovering from two major physical wounds and a great deal of psychic stress. In a few brief seconds, perhaps the most intense of your life, many things converged on yousound, sights, revelations. You saw things. You were attacked. You defended yourself, hit back at your attacker. Your mind suffered overload. Time and space were foreshortened and condensed. Some memories were etched, and others, perhaps the most important, were lost in the trauma of shooting that woman and being stabbed. No wonder you keep reliving those moments. The key to your nightmare, to your chills and tears, lies someplace within. Not in the actual room, as you might see it in daylight if we flew back to New York today, but in the room as you experienced it that night, the room as it seemed to you then. I told you that if you can re-create the vision that haunts you, it won't disturb you anymore. I believe that's true. It will become just another memory. The bad dream will… disappear."

  He rolled onto his back. "Fine," he said. "Now how am I going to do all that?" "After breakfast I'll drive down to the village. I'm going to buy you paper and a set of crayons." "Oh, Monika, please… m serious, Frank. I want you to draw." "Draw what?"

  "The sea. The house. The garden. Whatever you like. Draw me if you want, or I'll bring a mirror out to the terrace and you can try to draw yourself And if other images happen to come to you, then you'll draw them, too. You see, to draw a thing is to master it. I believe soon you'll be able to see those objects you cannot remember now. When you see them, you must try to are only partial. Draw them draw them even if the images and you'll control them. And then the dream will lose its power."

  Aaron had brought photographs of Beverly's bedroom to the hospital. they had pored over them together. Everything was as he remembered it… almost. Leo Titus lay dead on the floor at the foot of the bed.

  Diana Proctor lay dead where she'd fallen after Janek's bullets had blasted her back. The light in the room was dim and red, and the painting was in the niche. But the portrait seemed smaller in the photos, less intense, the manner of its display less compelling to the eye. Everything looked the same, yet the cumulative effect was different. It was as if Janek's mind had played a trick on him, distorting the actual scene, which in the police photos appeared relatively normal, into something threatening and gro tesque.

  And still, there were things missing from the photos, those strange and inappropriate objects which haunted his dreams. Where were they?

  The room had been searched, and nothing out of the ordinary had been found. When Aaron asked,Janek to describe the objects, he shook his head, for he could not.

  "I just know they were there," he said.

  The dream was always the same: a cavernous bedroom; reddish light; a huge oil 'painting of a woman; strange, not clearly seen objects arranged symmetrically before the portrait. He looked to his left:

  A body was curled on the floor. He looked to his fight: A blackclothed virago with shaven skull rushed at him out of the gloom. At the very instant in his dream when he felt the ice pick slice into his flesh and hit his bone, he was possessed by the feeling that he had entered into something more than a stranger's bedroom, that he had entered into a secret chamber inside a madwoman's mind.

  When he awoke from the dream, his thought was always the same: It was Beverly Archer's madness, not Diana Proctor's, that had been displayed.

  He had other visitors over his two weeks in the hospital and his week of recuperation in his apartment. Laura and Stanton, attentive and concerned, arrived with two magnificent bouquets. Later Stanton came alone to tell him in a bitter whisper that he was glad Janek had killed the girl.

  "A trial would have been awful, Frank. All that stuff about Jess-we don't even like to think about it." Stanton paused. "You gave us closure. We'll always be grateful for that. If you ever need anything, any kind of help, I want you to think of us and call."

  After Stanton left, Janek had a feeling that he probably wouldn't be seeing much of the Dorances anymore. The three of them had shared Jess, but now that she was gone, there was nothing to bring them together again except the all-too-painful memory of her promise.

  Sullivan also paid him a visit. He brought no flowers but was respectful and solicitous. If he was envious of Janek's resolution of his case, he succeeded in conceal ing it.

  When Janek asked if anyone on his team harbored doubts that Diana Proctor had been the HF killer, Sullivan gazed at him mystified.

  "Gee, Frank, why do you ask that?"

  "No particular reason," Janek said.

  "You think we're the kind of people who'd resist a case solution because an outsider got to it first? I'm offended. Whatever you may think of us, I promise you we're not that small."

  Janek let it go. Sullivan, like any good FBI man, was interested in forensic evidence, not psychological speculation. But then Janek became aware that Sullivan was not visiting him merely to wish him well.

  He had his own agenda, which, after the pleasantries, he wasted no time bringing up.

  "I was talking last night to Grey Scopetta, my film director friend."

  "Yeah, I remember you mentioning him," Janek said. "We both feel there could be a terrific miniseries here. What we're hoping is you'll give us a release so we can pitch the idea to a network."

  Janek smiled graciously. "You don't need a release from me, Harry.

  Just don't use my name, okay?" "But we have to use your name, Frank.

  You'll be the star." Sullivan stood and began to pace the little room., 'Think of it. Two miniseries! You'll be the most famous detective in the country!"

  "I've tasted fame, Harry, and as they say, it's vastly overrated.

  "You're not serious." Sullivan paused. "Are
you, Frank?"

  Janek nodded. "I don't want to be portrayed in any more movies. But that shouldn't stop you guys. The case is in the public record. We all know police work isn't about stars; it's about teamwork. As team leader you can rightfully think of yourself as the leading man,"

  As Sullivan shook his head, Janek noticed something desperate in his eyes. "What's the matter?"

  The inspector sat, then twisted in his seat. "Tell you the truth, now that it's wrapped up, HF, or Wallflower I uess we should call it now, isn't all that dramatic from a story point of view. As Grey says, who cares about some nutty, bald girl who killed people because she was hung up on her shrink? But he feels there could be a very strong story if we structured the whole thing around you. Put you right in the center of it. Your character arc could make it work."

  "Character arc?"

  "You know what I mean."

  "No," said Janek, "I don't think I do."

  "The way you change as the case develops. You go in one sort of guy and come out another."

  Janek was quiet. He didn't like the sound of that. It was too close to the truth. The notion of having his soul exposed to millions of people filled him with a special kind of dread.

  Sullivan was still pitching. "Try this. Cynical worldweary NYPD detective gets personally involved when his goddaughter's murdered.

  Grief-stricken, he goes after the killer with a vengeance, cuts through all the bureaucratic horseshit, finds the murderess, and shoots her dead. I mean, that's a real story, one a network will buy."

  Janek looked at Sullivan sharply. "For me it wasn't a story, Harry.

  It was a murder case just like all the others. "

  "Yeah, sure, I know you say that. But-"

  "Forget it."

  Sullivan lowered his head. When he spoke again, his tone was meek.

  "I hope you'll reconsider, Frank. Maybe later, when you're feeling your old self again Janek waited until Sullivan raised his head and then met his eyes straight on. "Don't hope for that, Harry. It's not going to happen."

  At first when he looked at the crayons Monika bought him, thirty pristine pastel crayons neatly organized by color in an elegant compartmentalized wooden box, he felt loath to touch them lest he violate their perfect order. But after he sat down on the chaise, propped the large spiral-bound pad of paper against his knees, and ran his fingers across the surface of a sheet, it seemed to cry out for color. His first sketches were tentative and sloppy. But still there was a satisfaction in using his hands to try to reproduce the purity of the terrace view. And the longer he drew, the more he enjoyed it. It was a technique worthy of being mastered. He thought of the combination of intensity and patience exhibited by his father when he sat at his bench working on broken accordions in the little repair shop he'd operated on Carrnine Street. Perhaps, he thought, if I imitate the way Dad used to squint at the exposed insides of old accordions, I'll manage to get the swing of it.

  Monika, careful not to disturb him, busied herself inside the house, preparing food she'd bought in town. Then she went out to swim and jog along the beach. When she returned two hours later, he showed her his latest sketch of the view. The sea and sky, divided horizontally by the horizon, were a simple study in blues. She liked it, and so did he.

  "I'm pleased," she said. "You're enjoying yourself."

  "Yeah, I am," he admitted.

  She kissed his shoulder and went back inside the house. At midday she brought out a tray of tortillas, guacamole, and beer. they ate and laughed, then retired to their bedroom to make love and then to nap.

  At three, well oiled with sunscreen, he returned to the terrace for another round of drawing. But this time, instead of portraying the view, he tried to sketch his dream.

  He tore off several sheets before he was satisfied with the general design. When he finally felt he'd gotten it right, he began to fill it in.

  "It really does look like a nightmare," Monika said when she came out onto the terrace with her book.

  Janek stopped drawing. "I don't have the hand for this."

  "No one expects you to draw like an artist, Frank. Just try to make it schematic."

  "This is pretty much it," he said. He pointed to a small table set before the portrait. "I think the objects were here." "Well, that's something, isn't it?" "What do you mean?"

  "You never mentioned a table before."

  Janek nodded. She was right; he hadn't mentioned it because be hadn't remembered it.

  "Well, they had to be set out on something, didn't they?"

  Monika smiled. "Keep drawing, Frank. Sooner or later you'll work it out."

  By the end of the afternoon he had not resolved the objects in terms of their shapes, but he had positioned them, indicated by X's, in a straight line on the table.

  He showed the sketch to Monika. She studied it. "The arrangement's strange," she said. "Maybe that's important."

  "What do you mean?"

  She shook her head. "The way everything is lined UP, the table, the painting, the niche. It's hieratic, almost like the aspe of a church. The table could be the altar. And the objects-" He leaned toward her. "Yes?"

  "They're equally spaced, symmetrically set out. Almost like relics.

  Or offerings

  "Offerings to the portrait?"

  She thought about that. "Perhaps. But I think it goes deeper.

  Suppose, instead of the portrait, there was something else in that niche, a sculpture or a painting of Christ on the cross. You wouldn't say the gold chalices on the altar were offerings to the painting. You'd say they were offerings to Jesus or God."

  Janek sat up. "That's it!" he said. "What I saw were offerings to the woman in the picture."

  "Who is she?"

  "Beverly told Aaron it was a portrait of her mother, who died a few years ago," He paused, then pointed to the table in the sketch. "I don't think there was a table here. I think I saw something else. Something like a table, but with a different shape beneath. I'll try and draw it."

  He turned over a page of his pad, then started feverishly to draw. She stood behind him as he tried out a shape, crossed it out, tried another and still another.

  "In the police photos there wasn't anything beneath the picture. Aaron thinks it took him about two minutes to reach me after he heard my shot.

  Beverly got to the bedroom just after I fell. If there was something there, she'd have had time to move it."

  He drew an oval, then drew a rectangle over it.

  "if she moved it, it couldn't have been very big," Monika said.

  "I think it was big. But maybe it was lighter than it looked.

  "Where could she have hidden it?"

  He shrugged, drew a bookcase, then redrew it so its bottom half stuck out. "It could have been portable, on wheels, or something like a card table that folds up." He drew an angry slash across the page.

  "Shit, I don't know! "

  Monika, behind him, massaged his shoulders. "Let it go for now, Frank. You've done enough today."

  "It's so maddening. I can almost see it. But not quite."

  "Of course, it's maddening. Like forgetting someone's name even when you can see his face." "Exactly!" "What do you do when that happens?" "Rack my brains till I come up with his name." "if that doesn't work?"

  "I forget about it awhile." "Then?"

  "It usually comes to me later when I'm thinking about something else or doing something strange like eating peas.

  "When you're consciously thinking about something else. Meantime, the subconscious part of your brain is processing the problem. You can let the same thing happen here, let your subconscious take over and do the work. Eventually the solution will come, probably sometime tonight."

  "Then what?"

  "Then on to the next problem. You see, the wonderful thing about drawing an encrypted dream is that it gives you a chance to break down a big fiddle into smaller and more manageable parts. What you want to do is get the table right, then go on to the objects."

>   He gazed at her. "Anyone ever tell you you're terrific?"

  "Oh, all the time," she said. "My patients are always telling me that."

  "You're kidding!"

  She smiled. "Shrinks are used to hearing endearments. But when I hear them from you, Frank, I know they're real."

  That night they ate dinner in the house, then drove down to the village to walk. A Mexican boy with gleaming teeth approached them on the street. He showed them a tray of handmade silver jewelry. When Monika showed interest in a pair of earrings, Janek bought them for her.

  The boy held out a cracked piece of mirror so she could look at herself as she put them on.

  Later they stopped outside a modest bar that fronted on the beach. There was a light breeze that made the palms sway and churned up the, smooth surface of the Gulf. Someone was playing a piano inside. "Looks like a decent saloon," Janek said.

  The place was half filled. The high season wouldn't begin until Christmas. Janek and Monika took a table between the bar and the pianist, a young black woman with a red scarf tied around her head. She was playing the kind of restful dinner music that doesn't require much attention.

  Janek grinned. "I'm glad we could have this week together." He paused. "Do you really have to fly home on Christmas?"

  "I wish I didn't," she said. "But I have patients wai ting and an early class the following day."

  He looked at her. "I usually spend my holidays alone."

  She leaned across the table and kissed him. "Not this year."

  When the waiter brought their margaritas, Monika asked him in Spanish about the pianist. The waiter said she was a gringo. "But a nice one," he added. Janek turned to look at the piano.

  "I wonder

  "What?"

  "That table I drew, the table that wasn't a table-I wonder if it could have been a piano." He took a sip from his drink. "I don't see how it could have been. A piano's much too big. Hard to hide a piano even if it's on wheels." He took another sip. "Still, it had that piano shape, like a little upright, you know, with the objects arranged on the top just below the bottom edge of the painting."