V 15 - Below the Threshold

by Allen L Wold (UC) (epub)

  “Dr. Page, what can I possibly tell you?”

  “Did Miss Velasquez have a meeting with you Sunday evening?”

  “Yes, she did, we talked about redecorating this office and the public offices out front.”

  “Did she seem at all upset at the time? Was she frightened? Was there anything in her behavior that might make you think she would run off?”

  “No, nothing like that at all. She was excited about the job, had some very good ideas. We spent the evening working up an initial plan, and she was to get back in touch

  with me about detailed suggestions. When did she disappear?”

  “Some time after six yesterday evening. As far as I can tell, you were the last person, other than myself, to have spoken with her, and certainly the last person to have seen her. ”

  “I wish I could help you, Dr. Page, but I don’t think I can. You think she may have been kidnapped?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “Have you talked to the police?”

  Jack sighed. “I have. They don’t seem to take it very seriously. That’s why I’ve started looking into it myself.” “This is terrible. Emily had such good ideas, too. But I really don’t see what I can tell you. You spoke to her long after I did.”

  “That’s true, but 1 know this job was very important to her, perhaps the only thing that would have sidetracked her from meeting me last night.”

  “You think she might have come here?”

  “Did she?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Just a moment.” She swiveled around so she could touch a button on her intercom. “Ron,” she said, “can you come in here a moment, please?”

  After a moment a tall man in a uniform-like blazer came in. He was in his forties, with the build of a slim athlete gone soft. He was bald, with a thick mustache, and carried a pistol in a holster under his right arm.

  “Dr. Page,” Carpentier said, “this is Ron Torino, my chief of security.” She quickly summarized for Torino what Jack had told her. “Dr. Page,” she concluded, “wants to know if Miss Velasquez came here yesterday evening any time after six rm.”

  “Well, now, I couldn’t say,” Torino answered, paying no attention to Jack at all.

  “Did the guard on duty Sunday night notice anything peculiar when they let her out of the building?” Carpentier went on.

  “That would have been Brian Sorensen,” Torino said. “He was on duty last night too, but he’s had an accident and is in the hospital.”

  “What happened?” Carpenteir asked.

  “I don’t know for sure. Simmons found him early yesterday evening, lying unconscious in the lobby downstairs. Sorensen had been on duty less than an hour, and had failed to key a security box on his rounds. Simmons tracked him from the last box and found him at the foot of the stairs by the elevators.”

  “When was that, exactly?” Jack asked.

  Torino gave him a long silent stare, scratching the skin under his left ear, then turned back to Carpentier. “He was found just before seven p.m.,” he said, taking out a notebook. “Six fifty, to be exact. He’d keyed the last box at six forty.” He put the notebook away.

  “That’s between the time Ms. Velasquez called me,” Jack said, “and the time she was supposed to meet me.” “And what does that mean?” Torino said, turning to face him.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said, “maybe nothing.”

  “Well, now, I’ve just gotten word from the hospital that Sorensen will be all right, he’s had a concussion. I was just going to go over there and talk to him about the accident. I’ll ask him about Ms. Velasquez.”

  “Could I come with you?” Jack asked. “I’d like to ask him myself, just in case he noticed something Sunday night.”

  Torino straightened the skirts of his impeccable blazer and glanced at Carpentier. She nodded permission.

  “If you want to,” Torino said.

  “I’ll drive,” Jack offered.

  File Five: Tuesday Midday

  Jack drove a silent Torino east on Howard to the jog at US 18, then out Wall Street, where the porno parlors and adult bookstores advertised openly. Mercy Hospital was just outside the residential high-rise area in a neighborhood otherwise given over to single-family dwellings.

  Torino took charge at the registration desk, and soon had them up on the fourth floor nursing station. There they ran into trouble. The head nurse wouldn’t let them in to talk with Sorensen.

  “Well, now,” Torino said, “I just got a call saying that I could.”

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse said, “Mr. Sorensen is not well enough, and besides it’s not visiting hours.”

  Torino scratched the skin under his left ear. “Sorensen was on duty last night when he had his accident, and I have to know whether or not anybody came into the building while he was unconscious.”

  “If he was unconscious,” the nurse said, “then he couldn’t tell you.”

  “Suppose you let me ask him,” Torino said, adjusting his blazer.

  “If you’ll come back at eight o’clock this evening, we’ll see if he can have visitors then.”

  “I am not a visitor,” Torino said, his voice rising slightly. “I am chief of security for WCTY-TV and the whole Delmark Building, and Sorensen was injured in the line of duty. I—”

  “Mr. Sorensen slipped and fell,” the nurse interrupted. “I know that. But I have to find out who else was in the lobby at that time.”

  “I’m sorry. You cannot go in now.”

  “Jesus! Then why in the hell did somebody call and tell me that I could?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, and will you please keep your voice down.”

  Torino took out his notebook, flipped through the pages, then put it away. “In that case,” he said, “I’d like to speak with Dr. Jobs.”

  “Very well,” the nurse said. She turned on the microphone by her desk and spoke into it. “Dr. Jobs, Dr. Jobs, you have a visitor at Station 4B.” Then she sat back and stared at Torino defiantly.

  A few moments later a slightly stocky woman in her late forties, wearing a typical white hospital coat over a dark skirt, came to the nurse’s station. Her white on blue name-tag identified her as Dr. Betty Jobs.

  “These gentlemen,” the nurse said, “insist on seeing Mr. Sorensen.”

  Dr. Jobs looked at Jack and Ron Torino. “I’m sorry,” she said, “Mr. Sorensen is not in a condition to talk with anyone.”

  “I’m Ron Torino, and I received a call less than fifteen minutes ago to the effect that he was.”

  “Mr. Torino. I appologize. Mr. Sorensen is in fact conscious, but he is very confused. You should not have been told to come here at this time. In fact, it would be best if you could wait until tomorrow.”

  “We may not have that much time,” Jack said, stepping forward. “Mr. Sorensen may know something about the disappearance of a patient of mine, and if he does, the sooner we find out about it the better.”

  “And you are . . . ?”

  “Doctor Jack Page. I’m a clinical psychologist. My patient may have been in the building when Mr. Sorensen had his accident. It is important that we find out.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Page, but you should know that a concussion victim has very poor memory of events immediately prior to the trauma. Even if he saw your patient, 1 don’t think he could tell you anything.”

  “Now look,” Torino said, “we don’t want to put him on the rack, just talk to him for a minute or two. There’s a possible kidnapping involved here, illegal entry, who knows what, and we need to know whether to call in the police. If we can’t talk to Sorensen, we’ll have to come back with an officer. ”

  “Well, Mr. Torino,” Dr. Jobs said, folding her arms, “since you put it that way. But. You will keep it brief. Mrs. Charker,” she said to the head nurse, “have a nurse take these men to Mr. Sorensen’s room, and stay with them until they’ve finished.”

  Sorensen, a big and blond man in his late twenties, with a handsome if craggy face, w
as the only patient in the double room. He looked up as Jack and Torino, with the nurse beside them, came over to his bed.

  “How you doing, Brian?” Torino asked.

  “Kind of fuzzy,” Sorensen said, looking at Jack with vague curiosity.

  “How’s your head?”

  “Doesn’t hurt. But I’m still not thinking too clearly.” “Dr. Jobs says you’re going to be all right. Want to tell me what happened?”

  Sorensen shook his head slowly, and gazed off at the blank wall. “I don’t really remember,” he said. “I had just keyed in at the mezannine station, and was coming down the stairs by the central elevators. I don’t know whether I stepped on something, or missed a step, or what. I remember seeing my right foot way up in the air in front of me, and I knew I was falling, but that’s it. Not what happened before, not hitting my head, just that one image. Bizarre.”

  “There was nobody with you?”

  “No, everything was as it should be.”

  The nurse interrupted at this point. “If that’s all you need to know,” she said to Torino, “we should go now.” “Just a moment,” Jack said. “Brian, I’m Jack Page. You know Emily Velasquez, don’t you?”

  “I know who she is, yes.”

  “Were you on duty Sunday night when Emily came to talk with Vanessa Carpentier?”

  “Not when she came, but I let her out of the building when she was through.”

  “That hardly bears on Mr. Sorensen’s accident,” the nurse said. “I really think you should go now.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sorensen said. “What’s the deal with Velasquez?”

  “She’s turned up missing,” Jack answered. “1 spoke with her early yesterday evening, and she failed to show up for an appointment with me for seven thirty that night. She hasn’t been seen since.”

  “Well, I saw her yesterday, just before my accident I think.”

  “You really must leave now,” the nurse insisted.

  “Just a minute,” Torino said. “This is exactly what we came here for. Go on, Brian, what do you remember?” “That’s just the trouble,” Sorensen said as the nurse, angry, strode out of the room. “Everything is all mixed up and fuzzy. 1 wasn’t paying attention, I was just coming down the stairs, but now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I saw Velasquez coming in the door at that time. You get a clear view of the door,” he explained to Jack, “all the way from the top of the stairs.”

  “This wasn’t Sunday night when you saw her come in?” Jack asked.

  “No, she was already there when I came on duty. Last night she seemed to be in a hurry. But that must have been just before I fell, because Simmons says he found me not quite all the way to the bottom of the stairs.”

  “You keyed in at the mezannine station at six forty,” Torino said, “and you were found at six fifty. ” He turned to Jack. “Those two stations are only six minutes apart,” he explained.

  “Simmons must have been awfully quick,” Jack said, “to have come after such a short delay.”

  “A two minute delay is all we need,” Torino said. “All right, Brian, this is what we want, go on.”

  “Well, let me think. I was coming down the stairs, I saw

  Velasquez coming in the door, and—” He closed his eyes with the effect to remember. “She came in, stopped, froze, as if something had frightened her. She just stopped and the door swung shut behind her.”

  “Was there anybody else in the lobby?” Jack asked. “Ye-es, yes there was, I don’t know his name, he was just coming from the elevators, somebody who had worked with Miss Carpentier a while ago, 1 forget just when, right now.”

  “All right, gentlemen,” Dr. Jobs said, coming into the room. “This has gone on long enough. When my nurse asks you to leave, you leave.”

  “Well, now,” Torino said, turning to her, “we’re just coming to the good part. Thirty seconds more won’t hurt Sorensen, and it may save somebody else’s life.”

  Dr. Jobs glared up at him, her arms folded across her chest. “Just thirty seconds then,” she said.

  “Who was the man?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know his name, and I must have slipped right about then, because my memory gets very vague. But wait, it must have been him, whoever it was, that frightened Velasquez, because he was the only other person in the lobby at the time, and she turned and ran back out the door, and the man started to chase after her—I think. Anyway, the next thing I remember was my foot in the air, and the next thing after that was talking to Simmons in the ambulance.”

  File Six: Tuesday Afternoon

  Jack dropped Torino off in front of the Delmark Building. “Thanks for your help,” he said. “If you can find out who that man was, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Torino told him, “but I can’t promise anything. If he checked in at reception, we’ll have his name, but if he had a pass, it will be harder.” “Miss Carpentier might know who he was.”

  “Well, now, Miss Carpentier is rather discreet, you might say. She doesn’t like people nosing into her business, especially if it has anything to do with her technical work. But I’ll do what I can.”

  Jack pulled away from the curb, and as it was nearly lunch time, drove through the Wendy’s on the comer of Easter and US 18, diagonally across from the building

  where Emily had her offices. Eating hurriedly, he pulled into her parking deck and took the elevator up to her offices.

  Both Joyce Higgins and Marvin Dahlgren were there. Jack told them what he had learned from Sorensen, and they both agreed that the police should be told as well.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Jack said, “but I have a funny feeling that they’ll tell me they’re too busy.”

  “But if what Sorensen said is true,” Joyce said, “then it’s not just a missing person but a kidnapping.”

  “All right,” Jack said and called from the phone on Joyce’s desk. The officer he talked to said that someone would be around shortly to take a more complete statement.

  “You know who Carpentier is?” Jack asked Dahlgren as he put down the phone.

  “Something to do with WCTY.”

  “She’s the president. The job Emily was working on involves not only Carpentier’s personal office, but also the public offices and lobbies.”

  “God damn,” Dahlgren said, truly surprised. “I guess Emily was trying to pull off a coup. ” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and exchanged glances with an equally impressed Joyce. “God damn,” he said again, “how are we going to secure that contract with Emily missing?”

  “We probably just won’t get it,” Joyce said, “but what about poor Emily?”

  “The police are working on it,” Dahlgren said. He glanced sidelong at Jack. “Dr. Page is working on it. What do you suggest we do?” he asked Joyce.

  “I don’t know, Marvin, it just seems wrong somehow to worry about a job when Emily is being held by kidnappers.”

  “How do you think she’ll feel if we’ve let this contract slip out of our hands? If I could do something, I would, but

  in the meantime, we’ve got to keep Carpentier satisfied until Emily comes back.”

  “I think you’re right, Dahlgren,” Jack said. “In times of crisis, it’s best to continue with the rest of your life as normally as possible.”

  “You know,” Dahlgren said, turning back to him, “when you first came in here, I really thought you were out to steal our business. We’re not the only decorators in Freeport, and any of the other companies would love a chance at this job. I knew that much, even if Emily didn’t confide the details to me. So what should I do?”

  “Whatever you would do if Emily were in the hospital or on vacation.”

  “The trouble is, I don’t know what Emily had planned.” “We’ll go through her files,” Joyce said. “But shouldn’t the police have come by now?”

  “You’d think so,” Jack said. “I’d better call them again, I’ve got an appointment at two.”

>   The officer he had spoken to before answered the phone, and when Jack asked when someone was coming to take his statement, he was transferred to a Lieutenant LeGrange. Patiently, Jack went through the whole story again, and asked what was being done about Emily, and who would take the information he’d gotten from Sorensen.

  “I’m sorry about that,” LeGrange said, “but we’ve been having some trouble lately, and there just aren’t enough officers to go around. We’ll get on it just as soon as we can. ”

  “1 really think this is more than just a missing person, ” Jack insisted. “Everything points to a kidnapping.”

  “You can’t be sure of that. You’re not a police officer, you don’t know how to interpret witnesses. Besides, this Sorensen admits he was not in complete control of his faculties at the time, so we can’t take what he says too seriously just yet.”

  “How about the man in Miss Velasquez’s apartment, the fact that it was searched, the phone call to me?”

  “Ah, yes. Miss Velasquez is one of your patients, not what you’d call the most stable of people. As for the man, we don’t know there was anybody there, or that you didn’t call on the wrong apartment by mistake. You see, we really have very little to go on. Why would anybody want to kidnap her?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said, getting exasperated. “She didn’t want to talk to me about it on the phone.”

  “Well, you can see that there’s not much we can do. We are checking into the situation, and we’ll try to get in touch with you as soon as we learn anything. I suspect that she’s just run off.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Jack said.

  “It never does, but believe me, it happens all the time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other business to attend to.”

  “They really don’t sound very helpful, do they?” Joyce said as Jack hung up.

  “I’m getting the feeling,” Jack said, “that the harder I push, the less likely they are to do anything.”

  “It sounds,” Dahlgren said, “like they’re dragging their heels deliberately.”

  “More likely they’re just lazy,” Jack said. “This town may be corrupt, but I don’t see how that applies to a kidnapping. ”