Sibs F Paul Wilson

by Sibs (lit)

  Rob handed her the xerox of the note.

  "Doesn't that look like a man's handwriting?"

  She nodded. "I guess so."

  He snapped his fingers. "I ought to submit this for handwriting analysis. That could be real interesting. But for the moment, we're going to see how the esteemed Dr. Gates reacts to this."

  Kara was watching him closely.

  "You're really looking forward to that, aren't you?"

  Rob grinned, unable to suppress the gleeful anticipation rising through him.

  "Are you kidding?" he said. "I can hardly wait."

  ▼

  1:57 P.M.

  "Ask the doctor to squeeze us in between appointments," Rob told the receptionist.

  Her tone was dubious. "I'll see what I can do."

  Rob gave her his best and strongest tough cop stare. "Do. It's a police matter. Very important." They sat in the waiting room with one other person, an attractive woman of about twenty-five. Rob watched her read a magazine and nibble steadily at her already well-chewed fingernails. When the current appointment exited the consultation room, Rob nudged Kara and rose to his feet. He headed for the inner room door without waiting for the receptionist's okay. "Just a minute, sir—" she began.

  Rob ignored her. He didn't want to give Gates time to set himself up. He wanted to catch him off guard and keep him that way. Maybe the doctor would let something slip.

  "Dr. Gates," he said, marching up to the desk and looking down at him, "we have a new development in the Kelly Wade case. I need to question you about it."

  "I resent this intrusion, Detective Harris," he said, appearing properly indignant. "Certainly this could have waited until after hours."

  "No, sir, it couldn't." He pulled the xeroxes from his pocket and unfolded them. He glanced at Kara standing uncertainly behind him. "Ms. Wade received this today. I need your input on it immediately."

  Rob handed the sheets to Gates and then seated himself in the chair closest to the desk where he could get a better angle on the doctor's face. He wanted to watch his expression as he read.

  Rob had arranged the sheets in a specific order. First the envelope face, then the check, then the front of the electric bill, then the reverse side.

  Gates' brow furrowed as he looked at the first page. It remained furrowed until he reached the fourth. Then his eyebrows shot up and he started as if someone had goosed him.

  "This is incredible!" he said glancing quickly at Rob and then back down.

  He glanced once at the first sheet, then went back to the fourth, shaking his head. Rob saw anger and outrage in Gates' expression, which he had expected, but he saw something else that surprised him: a sort of grudging admiration. There was even an instant when Rob could have sworn that a rueful smile had flitted across the doctor's face.

  Finally he put the papers down and leaned back in his chair.

  "Well!" he said. "This is quite interesting!"

  "Interesting?" Kara said. "Is that what you call it?"

  Rob had been concentrating so on Gates that he had forgotten about Kara. She was still standing behind him.

  "Yes. Although I suppose it was quite frightening for you."

  "You might say that."

  Kara settled into the other chair before the desk.

  "Have any idea who it is?" Rob said.

  "I know exactly who she is."

  "She?"

  "Yes. A paranoid schizophrenic. Delusions of being controlled by another are quite common among individuals with that diagnosis."

  "But this patient doesn't say anything about herself being controlled by you. She wrote to Kara, and she mentions Kelly."

  "Yes. But she believes I control her, as well. It's not uncommon for the paranoid schiz to see their therapist as a powerful individual with mystical powers to control people, especially themselves. After all, the purpose of my interaction with them is to help them change their behavior through therapy and medication. It's not a big step to interpret that as robbing them of control of their lives. That way they can blame me for their bizarre behavior. It's quite common, really."

  It sounded plausible to Rob, but it wasn't getting him where he wanted to go.

  "What's her name?" Rob asked.

  "You have chutzpah, Detective Harris," Gates said with a condescending smile. "I will give you that."

  "Does that mean you refuse to identify her?"

  "It does. You knew I would before you asked."

  "I can get the courts involved in this."

  "And I can suffer a memory lapse."

  An impasse.

  "I will find her, Dr. Gates. I know she must have regular access to you."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "She knows about Kelly, she has Kara's address, and she used your personal mail to send her message."

  He smiled that irritating smile again.

  "In that case, detective, I suggest you put my receptionist at the top of your list."

  "She already is."

  They stared at each other until Kara broke in.

  "May I change the subject for just a moment?"

  ▼

  Kara knew they didn't have much time and there was something she simply had to ask Dr. Gates.

  "Someone said they saw me in the Waldorf late last night."

  Dr. Gates offered her a bland expression.

  "And?"

  "I didn't go there—at least as far as I remember."

  "Did this person say it was you, or someone who merely looked like you?"

  "Looked just like me and wearing a red leather miniskirt. This afternoon I found a red leather miniskirt hidden where Kelly—or Ingrid—used to hide her sleazy outfits."

  "You told me you have been hiding the apartment key every night. This morning—was it still in the place where you had hidden it last night?"

  "Exactly."

  Dr. Gates leaned back and began twirling his key ring.

  "Let us consider this logically, Miss Wade. If there is only one key to the apartment and it hadn't been used, then you could not have been in the Waldorf last night. It was someone who looked like you."

  "What about the miniskirt?"

  "Was it the same style as the ones you say Ingrid had hidden?"

  "Exactly. Same brand and everything."

  "Doesn't it seem rather unlikely that your other personality, Janine, would have exactly the same taste in what you term 'sleazy' clothing?" he leaned forward and stared at her. "Do you see where this is leading?"

  Obviously he wanted her to draw her own conclusion, and when she looked at it in this light, there was only one.

  "Well, it's possible the skirt got jammed up under the drawer when I cleaned out the space beneath it Monday night, but it doesn't seem likely."

  "Does any other explanation fit the facts as we know them?"

  "No."

  "Then we are left with an unfortunate coincidence and nothing more. Please do not allow yourself to be upset by something like this."

  Easy for you to say, she thought, yet she did feel some of the tension ease out of her. Not much, though.

  "What if Janine knows where I hide the key?"

  "Multiple personalities have no interaction. When one is in command, the others are experiencing a 'black-out,' just as you experienced over the weekend when Janine took control. I assure you, she does not know where you hide the key."

  Kara wasn't completely convinced, but she had to admit she felt better. Maybe she hadn't been at the Waldorf last night after all.

  Dr. Gates rose to his feet.

  "And now if the two of you will please take your leave, I can continue with my scheduled appointments.

  And as for this—" He held up the xeroxed sheets. "She will not bother you again."

  "How can you be so sure of that?" Rob asked.

  Dr. Gates' smile was almost sharklike.

  "Because I am going to have a long talk with her."

  ▼

  "He's lying," Rob said as soon as t
hey got on the elevator.

  Kara felt a sudden stab of fear. "About what? About me at the Waldorf?"

  "No-no," he said quickly. "Not that. About the note you got. That's not a woman's handwriting."

  "I didn't know you were an expert."

  "I'm not. But I know someone who is." When they got to the lobby of the medical arts building, Rob thumbed through a small address book and then made a call. As she watched him talk on the phone, she realized that there were two sides to Rob Harris. There was the young man she had known ten years ago—the gentle lover, the awful amateur chef, who still existed. Then there was the other side—the cop. She had seen that side today at the precinct house, a man who knew his job, who had confidence in his abilities, who had the respect of his colleagues. She'd met his partner, Augie, she'd watched him banter with the others and talk shop with them. He was more than comfortable in the detective squad room—he belonged there.

  She knew with a pang that there was no hope of his ever leaving there willingly.

  "Okay," he said, turning away from the phone. "Professor Jensen will see us now. He's a handwriting expert the Department uses from time to time. A Philosophy prof at NYU. Pretty weird duck, but handwriting's his hobby, and he's damned good at it."

  New York University's Washington Square campus wasn't far from Dr. Gates' office. Rob drove her past the huge stone arch that marked the square. The lower seven or eight feet of its two supports were darkened with overlapping scrawls of graffiti. It made her think of a giant with dirty feet. Parking was no problem with Rob's Vehicle Identification card. He led her into a modern looking glass and brick building filled with students hanging around between classes. Black seemed to be the 'in' color—clothing, eye make-up, fingernail polish, even hair when it wasn't green or orange. Most of the kids seemed to have invested a lot of time and effort into distorting whatever natural attractiveness they might have possessed.

  Professor Jensen's office was on the fifth floor. Younger than Kara had expected, he was maybe forty, very thin, balding in front with long dark hair trailing over the collar of his shirt.

  "Ah, yes," he said when Rob walked through the door. "Detective Harris. I remember you now. What have you got for me?"

  Kara noticed how he was rubbing his hands together in anticipation. He was really into this handwriting thing.

  "Nothing too detailed. Just want to know if the author of this is male or female."

  "Ah! A debatable determination. Some authorities say you can't tell."

  "No?"

  "But I can. Not a hundred percent, of course, but I've got an excellent record. Let's have a look, shall we?"

  Rob handed him the xeroxes. Professor Jensen took them to his cluttered desk.

  "You don't have the originals?"

  "Back at the precinct house. If you need them, I'll get them."

  "These should suffice for the moment."

  He pulled a magnifying glass from the top drawer, then bent over the sheets.

  "The writer is male, I'd say. Little doubt about it."

  Rob nudged Kara with his elbow and gave her a self-satisfied I-told-you-so look.

  Professor Jensen was staring at the xerox of the envelope.

  "Deucedly strange way of sending a letter, wouldn't you say?"

  Kara was trying to remember when she had last heard someone say 'deucedly' when Rob reached over and picked out the xerox of the check.

  "Any chance they were written by the same guy?"

  Jensen brought the magnifying glass into play again. Bewildered, Kara turned to Rob. He held a finger to his lips. Trust me.

  "Hard to say," Jensen said. "If I had a longer sample of the second hand…"

  Suddenly Kara remembered something and fumbled in her shoulder bag, praying she hadn't lost it. Here it was.

  "Will this do? It's a prescription."

  Jensen took it and laid it out on the desk in line with the check, the note, and the envelope face. He leaned back, then hovered close, finally he crossed his arms in front of his chest and simply stared.

  "Odd," he said, and stared some more. "My immediate impulse is to say that these are two different people. The downstrokes and loops are similar but not completely. And yet… there's a common factor here, a unifying influence. I can't tell you in concrete terms, but after you've analyzed enough handwriting, you get a subliminal feel for the gestalt of a sample. These two feel similar to me, and yet they're not."

  Rob said, "Could the man who wrote the check and the prescription have been trying to disguise his handwriting when he wrote the note and addressed the envelope?"

  "Possibly. But I get a feeling that it might have been the other way around."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Perhaps the author of the note was trying to imitate the handwriting of the man who wrote the check."

  ▼

  Kara slumped in the passenger seat of Rob's car as it idled at the curb. Professor's Jenkins' analysis had shaken her to the core.

  "Do you think Dr. Gates could have sent me that message? Why would he do such a thing?"

  "I don't know. Mind if I smoke?"

  "Yes. And if he didn't, why would he lie about whoever did? Why would he say it was a female when it was a male."

  "That might have been just to protect his patient. We both know what a fanatic he is about confidentiality."

  "Do you think Dr. Gates is as tightly wrapped as he should be?"

  Rob looked at her and shrugged.

  "I don't like the guy, but that's a gut thing. The people I talk to who should know give him high marks, especially when it comes to multiple personalities."

  "What if he's a multiple personality himself? What if his other self wrote me that note to warn me away from him?"

  Rob's eyes widened and his voice became hushed.

  "What if it was his Evil Twin?"

  "Not funny, Rob. I'm serious."

  "Sorry. It seems jut a little too far out."

  But an idea that was even farther out kept nagging at Kara's mind. It was so ridiculous and outrageous that she didn't want to mention it, but it was there and it was going to keep on nibbling away at her until she brought it out.

  "Try this for far out: What if Dr. Gates can take over your body while you sleep?"

  "And use it for his 'personal pleasures'?" Rob said with a slow smile. "Kara…"

  "I know how it must sound to you, but it's different on my end. You're not living under the threat of someone named Janine taking over your body and doing what she wants with it. When you've lost the absolute control you always assumed you had, crazy things start to sound plausible."

  "I need a cigarette," Rob said.

  He got out of the car and walked around the front to Kara's side where he squatted against the pole of the No Parking sign. As he lit up, he motioned Kara to roll her window down.

  "Those things will kill you," she said.

  "You make me nervous when you talk like that."

  "Just consider it. What if that note I got isn't completely out of left field? What if Dr. Gates entered my mind when he hypnotized me and he's been taking over whenever he wished? What if he was doing the same thing to Kelly? What if that warning is from one of his past victims?" She forced a laugh that came out sounding strangled. "What if I'm completely bonkers for even mentioning this?"

  Rob was staring at her.

  "Please don't laugh like that again," he said. "It's scary."

  "My life has become scary, Rob. Does all that I said sound as crazy and impossible to you as it should to me? Tell me it's absolutely impossible."

  "It's absolutely impossible."

  "Good. Then I'll sleep easier tonight." She coughed. "Can I roll the window up now? You're getting smoke in the car."

  Rob took a final drag and flipped the cigarette away.

  "Where do you want to go?" he said as he got behind the wheel.

  "Ellen's, if you don't mind."

  "What about tonight? You staying alone at Kelly's agai
n?"

  "Definitely."

  Kara loathed the idea of spending another night alone in that apartment, but until she was sure…

  "I'd offer to keep you company," Rob said, "but tonight's my turn to do a shift on a stakeout we're running on a murder suspect's apartment. But I'll come over first thing in the morning and see how you are."

  Kara watched his eyes as he spoke. Something wrong there. Was he avoiding her for some reason? Or was she getting as paranoid as the person who'd written her that note?

  Suddenly she felt very alone.

  ▼

  10:32 P.M.

  Ed had been calling Kara's apartment—actually, it was Kelly's apartment—every fifteen minutes since 6:30. It wasn't all that much trouble. He had no plans for the night and his phone had a last number auto redial function, so all he had to do was press one of the extra buttons and the phone did the rest.

  Ostensibly, his purpose would be to go over some of the legal documents he'd left with her this afternoon, but really all he wanted was to hear the sound of her voice, to make sure she was all right.

  Why is this so important to me?

  Ed wasn't sure he could answer that. All he knew was that since she'd opened that weird note in front of him today, and since he'd seen that lost, lonely, helpless, frightened look on her face when she found that miniskirt under the dresser, he'd been feeling more protective toward her with every passing hour.

  Somehow she had become his responsibility. Madness, he knew, but that was the way he felt. She needed someone to watch over her or she might, as that note had said, end up like her sister.

  On the sixteenth try, she picked up.

  He talked her a little small talk and could sense the tension in her. Poor kid. She was really spooked.

  "Is your detective friend coming over?"

  "No. He's on a stakeout."

  Damn! Ed had stayed away for fear of running into that cop again, and the guy was somewhere else for the night. Too bad. It was a little too late now to be popping over there.

  He talked her through the forms and had her sign and initial where she was supposed to. When it was all finished, he thought he'd give getting a late date with her the old college try.