Quieter than Sleep

by Joanne Dobson

  I lowered my voice. “What suspicious vehicle?” Each word came visible out of my mouth, a white puff of articulate breath in the frigid air.

  “About a half hour ago a car came by and slowed down as it passed the house. The officer didn’t think anything of it. Ya know, maybe a rabbit ran in front of it, or something. But then, about five minutes later, it came back from the other direction and slowed to a crawl. You know anyone with a brown Plymouth Duster, rusty, with a bad muffler, maybe ten, twelve years old?”

  I tried to visualize such a car, but with no success. “No. Can’t you trace the license plate number?”

  “The officer didn’t get the number.” Piotrowski’s lips were thin with censure. “It seems he’d gone into the woods around the side of the house for—something. When the car came back he heard it—its muffler was really shot—but only got it in his sights as it picked up speed and roared off.”

  The chill I felt was only partially from the frigid air. In any case, I thought it was time to get in out of the cold. I stamped my feet. Even in the heavy boots my toes were beginning to feel numb.

  “We’ve got to talk, Lieutenant. Can you come in?”

  “What about the girls?” Gotcha!, I thought: “girls.” But somehow I didn’t feel like pointing out his linguistic lapse.

  “We’ll go in the kitchen and shut the door. They won’t hear us.”

  I unlocked the front door and opened it as quietly as I could, which isn’t easy in this old house with its creaky hinges and door frames and floors. As we tiptoed toward the kitchen Amanda called out sleepily, “Mom? Is that you?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay. I’m just going to get some cocoa to warm me up. Go back to sleep.”

  “Okay. See ya in the morning. Happy New Year.”

  We made it into the kitchen and shut the door. Piotrowski took off his jacket, the new blue one, and sat at the refinished oak table. He was wearing jeans and a pewter gray cable-knit sweater. The sweater looked new, too.

  “Do you want some cocoa?”

  “Yeah, thanks. That’d be real nice.”

  I unbuttoned my coat, shrugged it off, and threw it over the other chair as I turned to open the refrigerator.

  Piotrowski said, “Wow!”

  “Wow what?” I swiveled around with the container of milk in my hand to see him staring at me wide-eyed, with open admiration. Shit! I was still wearing the man-killer suit. What a drag.

  “You look gorgeous.” He seemed a little stunned.

  Gorgeous! It’s been decades since I’ve heard that word. Nobody says gorgeous anymore. The word died out with Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe. This man was a dinosaur.

  Piotrowski couldn’t know it, but the last thing I wanted to hear in my exhaustion and humiliation was anything about how I looked. My brief foray into sex appeal had brought me nothing but pain. “I do not look gorgeous, Piotrowski! My hair is falling down, my makeup’s all gone, I’m wearing huge, clunky boots, and I’ve spilled gravy all over me. Get real.”

  “Sorry if you don’t like it, but I can’t help what I think. If you don’t want men to think you’re gorgeous, you shouldn’t dress gorgeous.”

  That did it. I launched a direct attack.

  “Okay, Piotrowski. So you think I’m gorgeous and you suddenly seem to find me fairly distracting, as well. But we’ve got serious things to talk about here. Can’t we just pretend I’m wearing jeans and a sweatshirt as usual? Can you function if we do that?”

  My tone must have been even sharper than I intended, because Piotrowski’s face immediately became stolid and official. “What serious things do we need to talk about, Doctor?”

  I turned back to the stove to make the hot drink, getting down the Hershey’s cocoa and the sugar, measuring them into the pan. This was the most personal Piotrowski had ever gotten with me. I noted that and tucked it away in a far corner of my mind to think about later. It hadn’t been bad working with him this past couple of days. He was smart, an independent thinker, and totally free from pretension: qualities I often find lacking in my academic colleagues. I liked this man, felt at home with him, and didn’t want to offend him. And now, like a klutz, I had hurt his feelings.

  “Sorry.” I was genuinely contrite as I moved back toward the table with the steaming cups. “I’ve had a really shitty evening, plus I ruined my good suit, and then you frightened me with the stuff about the car. But I shouldn’t take it out on you. I’m a jerk, okay? Forgive me?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled, just a little. “You do look very nice, though, even with your hair falling down. And no makeup.”

  “Okay. Okay. Enough!” I sipped at the hot drink. Glamor can be very inconvenient, I decided. It can really get in the way.

  “Piotrowski …” After a long sip I put the cup back on the table. “Something weird is going on here. I’d forgotten about it, but this thing about the car reminds me: I’ve been getting anonymous phone calls.”

  “You have?” he broke in. “Why didn’t you mention it before?” He was looking at me intently.

  “Well, as I said, I didn’t make the connection. Besides, it’s probably some student prankster—maybe someone to whom I gave a bad grade.”

  “Maybe so. But—maybe not. Your number’s listed, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Hmm. So it could be anyone. Is there any pattern to these calls? Do they come at any particular time of the day? Does the caller use obscene language?”

  “They come at all different times, and the caller doesn’t use any language. He just listens silently for a minute, and hangs up.”

  “Hmm. I don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I. And now this car. Piotrowski, I’m scared. Not for myself, but for the girls.” He grinned, just a little—”girls.” Now I’d slipped. “You know, when I’m working at the research libraries I’m going to have to be gone overnight. And Amanda has no car right now. We’re miles from anywhere. If someone wanted to get at them, they’d be sitting ducks.”

  “And if you were here?”

  “I don’t know. I’d think of something.”

  “Right!” His tone was sarcastic. “Did your Ph.D. work include training in self-defense?” He said pee. aitch. dee., deliberately sounding like a rube.

  “Well, yes, in a way it did.” I grinned ruefully, thinking about my dissertation defense. “But only verbal. Not in the ways you’re thinking about.”

  “I’m concerned about the girls, too.” He got up to rinse his cup out at the sink. When he was done, he looked back at me. “And I’m also concerned about you. Is there someplace you can take them away from here until this is cleared up?”

  I thought about it. My mother’s house was out of the question, and had been for years. My sisters’ too. We didn’t really talk anymore. My friendships didn’t run so deep that I knew anyone I could impose three people on for an indefinite length of time. Only Tony …

  “Well …” I thought about the complications. “Amanda was going to spend a week with an—an old friend in Manhattan. There’s no reason she couldn’t go now and take Sophia with her. He’d understand and—they’d be safe there.”

  Piotrowski had found a dish towel and was drying his mug with elaborate care. “Would that—old friend—possibly be Captain Anthony Gorman of the New York State Police?”

  My mouth fell open with astonishment—and something akin to rage. “Goddammit, Piotrowski! You’ve been investigating me!”

  “Of course I have.” He placed the mug neatly on its proper shelf and sat back down at the table, comfortably in charge once again. “What do you think? I’ve been investigating everyone. That’s my job.”

  “Damn you.” I felt tears come to my eyes. Suddenly I’d had just about as much as I could handle. My life wasn’t my own anymore, between the damn killer and the damn cops. I brushed the tears away with the heel of my hand.

  Then there was a tentative knock on the kitchen door. “Mom?” Amanda queried. “Mom? Do you have a man in there?”


  I looked at Piotrowski and grinned. He snorted with laughter. I tried not to smile as I wiped my eyes with a paper napkin and opened the door.

  “Yes. Yes, I do, honey. But it’s all right, dear; we’re in the kitchen, not the bedroom.”

  She stood sleepily in the doorway, dressed in yellow sweatpants, an oversize faded purple sweatshirt, and mismatched wool socks, one red, one brown. She hadn’t worn pajamas in years. Her hair spiked out in a number of directions. Sophia must still have been asleep; Amanda was alone.

  “Mom.” Her lips were tight with disapproval, my sarcasm having gone right past her. “It’s almost two-thirty.” As if I were some wayward adolescent sneaking a boyfriend into the house after hours.

  “Amanda, this is Lieutenant Piotrowski of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He’s here on business.”

  She looked at the plate of sour cream cake. Yeah. Right.

  “I guess I’m going to have to tell her.” I turned to Piotrowski. I couldn’t quite believe it, but I was looking for permission.

  He nodded.

  I told Amanda about the suspicious car and its implications and suggested that she make her visit to Tony tomorrow, and take Sophia with her. “Try not to frighten Sophia, will you? Just tell her—oh, tell her something….”

  “I’ll tell her I’m bored out of my gourd here in the sticks, and I need a massive infusion of carbon monoxide and hot pretzels,” my daughter replied flippantly. Then her expression grew more serious. “How’s that? It’s not far from true, anyhow.”

  “I think that’ll do it, kid. I’ll call Tony in the morning.” I quailed inwardly. I hadn’t spoken to Tony in months. “Now why don’t you go back to bed while the lieutenant and I finish up here. I’ll be in soon.”

  “You’re coming too?” She meant to New York, not to bed.

  “We’ll see.” My reply was evasive. I didn’t feel up to arguing with her.

  But Piotrowski pounced on it when Amanda left. “So? Will you go to Manhattan?”

  “No.” I hoped my response wasn’t too forceful. “No, not me.” I noted him noting my vehemence. “And besides, I’ve got work to do here, remember? For you. Most of the archives I’m researching are in New England. I’m better off using this place as a base. Right?”

  He nodded, not quite convinced. He didn’t seem ready to leave. I made more cocoa and told him about Randy’s wife. Piotrowski hadn’t met Eve, but Sergeant Daniels had gone to New York to interview her. The woman was a nut case, according to Daniels, a real fruitcake. If this was who was educating our youth, Daniels had said, no wonder this country was in such deep—er, trouble.

  We talked about possible motives for a “scholarly” murderer. “The seven deadlies …” I said, elaborating on my conversation with Avery: “Anger, envy, greed …” Piotrowski liked the idea. He ruled out only gluttony and sloth as possible motives.

  “This perp,” he said, “kills on the spur of the moment, and reactively. Nothing is planned; no weapons brought in. At least not so far. I think that he—”

  “Or she—”

  “She? Maybe. Now your Miss Warzek, she couldn’a done it: too slight. You? Maybe. But you’da had to been real mad. Outta control. I somehow can’t picture that.”

  Gee, thanks. I tried to register nothing but control.

  The lieutenant went on to speculate that our killer might feel his (or her, I thought, somewhat perversely) career to be threatened in some way, or, even more dangerous, that some cherished idea was somehow placed in jeopardy by Randy’s research. If we were correct about the research being the motive. Which we might well not be.

  We finished the rest of the sour cream cake. I ate most of it as I listened to Piotrowski. I hadn’t much felt like eating my supper. Piotrowski limited himself to one thick slice.

  When his wristwatch beeped three A.M., Piotrowski rose and put his jacket on. I was almost sorry to see him go. The warmth and coziness of the kitchen, the lateness of the hour, and our shared concerns had served to create an illusion of intimacy, as if we were brought together by more than official business.

  At the door Piotrowski pulled out a card case, extracted a card, and wrote on the back. “This is my home number. Anything comes up that could be related to these homicides—and I mean anything—try me at the office first and then here. Night or day.” He reached out to shake hands. “Good night, Doctor.”

  “Why don’t you cut out that ‘Doctor’ business, Piotrowski? It’s really annoying. Just call me Karen.”

  His eyes glinted with something that to my exhausted brain momentarily resembled amusement.

  “I think it’d be for the best if I just keep calling you Doctor. You don’t mind, do ya.”

  “No, I don’t mind.” But I did.

  It wasn’t until he was gone and I was undressing for bed, dropping the purple silk suit in a wrinkled heap and donning my sweats, that I realized I didn’t have a clue as to what his first name was. He must have a first name, I thought, as I brushed my teeth, how come I don’t know what it is? I found the card he had given me; it said Lieutenant C. Piotrowski. “C“: Charles? Maybe. Christopher? He didn’t look like a Christopher. I thought hard; I couldn’t come up with any other “C” names for men except rather effete British ones. I was too tired to think any more; I just wanted to sleep.

  Avery’s face floated behind my closed eyes as I drifted off, but I didn’t dream about him at all. At least not that night.

  Eighteen

  TONY WAS ASTONISHED when he heard my voice. “Karen?” he said, with a rising inflection, an unguarded response from this habitually unflappable man. Then, in an immediately controlled manner, “What’s up?”

  Like Piotrowski, Tony is a skilled listener—an unusual trait in a man. He listened intently while I gave him a full report. After asking a few questions he fell silent for a moment or two before he spoke. “Karen, I want you to come to the city, too.”

  “I can’t do that. I’ve got work to do. And besides, what about—you know …”

  “I’ll explain to her. She’ll understand.” “Sure she will. Darling, my old lover is coming to town. Of course you’ll understand if she stays with me. She just needs a little protection. I assume you had in mind that I’d stay at your place; I don’t know where else I’d go.”

  “It’s a big apartment.” His voice was curt. “You could have your own room.”

  “Not a good idea, Tony. You know that. Not a good idea at all.”

  “No, maybe not. I’ll think of something, though. At least have lunch with me when you bring Amanda and this other girl. We can talk about it then.”

  I had planned to put Amanda and Sophia on the bus in Springfield. I really hadn’t thought about driving into the city. Amanda knew her way around Manhattan. Even in as sleazy an environment as Port Authority, with the hustlers and homeless all around, they’d be fine. Amanda could handle anyone who tried to hassle them.

  But the thought of sitting across the table from Tony again, just once more, of having him concerned again, if only for a little while, about what was happening to me, seemed irresistible. Self-destructive, but irresistible. Particularly now, when I felt so betrayed by my own desires. Impulsively I agreed to drive in with the girls the next day, and to have lunch with him. I knew immediately that I would regret it, but pride prevented me from changing my mind. I didn’t want Tony to think I attached too much importance to seeing him again. And besides, I didn’t. I was over him. I was fine.

  I had called Tony fairly early, wanting to make sure I caught him before he went out. Also, I wanted to talk to him before Amanda and Sophia woke up. Neither of them needed to know just how worried I was. As I hung up the phone, Sophia came into the kitchen, gave me one of her wan, tentative smiles, got out the box of Müeslix, the container of two-percent milk and a bowl, and sat down at the table.

  She’d been with us for over a week now and her manner was ever so slightly more animated. She was eating something at every meal. I no longer watched each s
poonful carefully to make sure it went in her mouth. From skeletal she had advanced to merely emaciated. Skinny would be the next step up. When you looked at her now you saw the facial structure before you saw the face, the skin pulled tight over the fine bones. Then you noticed those pained eyes in their still-bruised sockets. Then her face became a face.

  She poured about half a cup of cereal into the bowl and dampened it with milk. Without being asked I brought her a glass of orange juice, thinking she might drink it just to be polite. She sipped at the juice but didn’t touch the cereal. Sitting there in a pair of Star Wars pajamas with Princess Leia on the top, she looked like the twelve-year-old Amanda had been when I’d bought them for her. She picked up her spoon and held it in her right hand, looking at it quizzically, as if it were an unfamiliar tool with whose function she was not acquainted. Then she put it in the bowl, released it, and dropped her hand back into her lap. I sighed.

  “Karen …”

  “Yes?” I felt heartened: At least she was initiating a conversation.

  “Karen, my father called last night.”

  My stomach constricted. For a moment I wished I’d mentioned the encounters with Warzek to Piotrowski. Then I reminded myself I hadn’t wanted to make a bad family situation any worse. That was still the case.

  “I answered the phone because Amanda was in the shower.” Sophia hesitated. It seemed to be important that I understand she hadn’t been overstepping the line in answering the phone. I nodded, Yes, go on. Nonverbal communication often worked best with her, as it might with a half-tamed fawn.

  “He wanted to come get me and take me home. He ordered me to come home. When I said no he got really angry. He’s not used to anyone saying no to him.” Her eyes were very still. “At least no one ever says no to him at home. Maybe everywhere else, but not at home. If he could have hit me he would have, I know. And …”