An Old Friend of the Family d-3

by Fred Saberhagen

  Now here was where they were to stop. Certainly no doorman here, in fact not even a break in the row of dull vehicles parked along the frozen curb. Near the end of the block a fireplug-space at least was open, and Kate halted just ahead of it and started to back in.

  A car just behind them turned into the same space headfirst, jounced to a halt there just as Kate also hit her brakes. At the moment both vehicles had a tirehold on the precious space, but neither could occupy it.

  She turned to Enoch helplessly. There was an abstracted expression on his face; he opened his door and got out. His head vanished from Kate’s view, but from the attitude of his body it was plain that he was facing back into the glare of their challenger’s headlights. Cold air swirled in through the open door to paw Kate’s legs. An engine gunned behind them; the other car was backing away. Enoch slid in beside her again and closed the door, the look on his face unchanged.

  Kate parked the car—must have parked it, though the next thing she was aware of was walking along the cracked and narrow sidewalk beside Enoch, whose arm encircled her but brought no warmth. The footing was treacherous, half uneven pavement, half blackened ice in old refrozen mounds, all under a powdering of new snow. When had she ever felt cold so intense before?

  They passed beneath an ancient neon sign humming to itself and sizzling with unplanned flashes. A man went by them, his face as hard and his clothes as grimy as the street itself. Suddenly there were two wooden steps, a narrow door that yielded to Enoch’s shoulder, and now at least the wind was gone.

  The cold kept pace, though, as they walked up stairs, bare wood creaking underfoot beneath the gritty crunching of a layer of grime. It would be terrible to have to face a night like this alone, but she would not, no, she would not. She clung hard now to Enoch’s arm.

  He used a key, then brought her through a door into a room of utter cold, a wretchedly furnished room, dark but for pale streetlight coming in through an undraped window. Kate saw smeared glass, one broken pane with rags stuffed into it.

  “You’ll have to hold me,” she whispered, shivering violently. “I’m here and I can’t help myself, you know. At least hold me so I won’t be so cold.”

  He laughed. When he spoke now she could hear him plainly. “Oh, I’ll hold you, okay. You’ll get to like it here. Think of it as home, maybe, even. Wise little rich-bitch.” He had closed the door and was standing right in front of her. “You think you know just what is gonna happen now. But you don’t know at all, at all.”

  Then he seemed to descend upon her like a great slow wave from the black lake.

  TWO

  In the rather more than thirty years since Clarissa Southerland had come to live in Glenlake, this was almost the first time that anyone on the village police force had spoken to her in line of duty. And it occurred to her to wonder now, somewhat belatedly no doubt, whether this aloofness from the cops was after all not a continent-wide American peculiarity, but simply the result of living in a wealthy suburb. In England as a girl and young woman she had chatted with the constables routinely; but England, of course, was different.

  Detective Franzen, a balding, sad-looking young man, was listening to Clarissa’s account of Kate’s last phone call home with every appearance of totally absorbed, sympathetic attention. His behavior was not at all like that of the New York detectives, years ago, that time the jewels were taken at the hotel. Meanwhile Kate’s mother Lenore, was standing behind Franzen and worriedly eyeing her mother-in-law as if Clarissa were some undependable child who might not perform creditably for the nice policeman. Behind Lenore was the closed door to the study, and behind that in turn was Andrew, busy talking on the phone to his office, where people were sure to be working even on Saturday, working on something vital that demanded some of Andrew’s attention, even on the day of a missing daughter.

  “Now, Mrs. Southerland, do you remember there being any unusual background noises on the phone? Sometimes there’s a typewriter, or . . .”

  “Not at parties, there isn’t very often.” Suddenly Clarissa began to lose confidence in Franzen, nice manners or not. It made her feel fidgety, and she wished she had taken a rocking chair, instead of this plush one, which was too soft.

  “Oh, you did hear partying noises then?”

  “Yes, I believe I mentioned that before.” Hadn’t she? She couldn’t confirm from Lenore’s or Franzen’s expressions now whether she had or not. “People laughing, way in the background. Ice, tinkling in a glass? No, I couldn’t swear to that.”

  “And all she said about her location was that she was downtown?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone call anyone by name?”

  Clarissa took thought. Sometimes one gained impressions of things not exactly by hearing them, and later it was hard to sort out what one had actually heard and what one had not. “Not that I recall.”

  Franzen, poker-faced, seated on a straight chair opposite, studied his notebook. “Well. You all tell me that this staying out without letting someone know is not something that Kate’s ever done—”

  “It certainly isn’t,” put in Lenore.

  “—and here it is well after noon. So, I think we’d better take it seriously enough to check it out. The Chicago police, and so on.” Franzen stood up, just as the door to the study opened. Andrew, balding too, but athletic and aggressive in his mid-forties, came out to join the conversation.

  “What progress have we made?” Andrew demanded with brisk intensity. Here was a man switching his attention from one crisis to another, and someone had better have ready a satisfactory, concise briefing for him if they wanted his advice and help on the problem of locating his daughter, because some new emergency regarding business was surely going to come up soon and keep him from spending a lot of time on this one.

  This, at least, was the impression his mother got of him at the moment. Clarissa, feeling a twinge of guilt because there were times when she just didn’t like her own son very much, grunted and hand-fought her way up out of the too-soft chair: the knees and hips were not too good today. Muttering a few words of farewell to Detective Franzen, she left the search for her granddaughter in the hands of those who were now in charge of running the world, and took herself off to the library, meaning to have a look at the lake through her favorite window.

  In the room lined with shelves of dark wood, with the door closed behind her, it was quiet, the murmur of concerned voices almost left behind. Beyond the double Thermopane a field of virgin snow, fallen mostly in the dark hours of the morning, sloped away to disappear over the top of a thirty-foot bluff some forty yards behind the house. Looking past that brink, Clarissa could see a mile or more south along the gently curving shoreline of Lake Michigan. There were trees, there were the houses of the wealthy. The beach was completely hidden beneath a frigid wilderness of ice-cakes, foot-thick slabs that had been broken by waves, washed in and upended in a crazy jumble, stretching for lifeless kilometers under the lifeless sun of afternoon. Beyond the icefields, dark open water reached victorious, almost calm now, to the horizon.

  A voice asked: “Granny?”

  In jeans and old shirt Judy leaned against the jamb of the re-opened library door. Three years younger than the missing Kate, somewhat darker of hair and eye, more strongly built, not quite as conventionally pretty—but quite possibly, their grandmother thought, fated to be the more beautiful of the two when both were full-grown women.

  Smiling involuntarily, Clarissa turned from the window. “What is it, dear?”

  The girl was solemn. “Is there any news yet?”

  “No. Except it seems that the police are going to start looking for her.”

  “Has anyone called Joe?”

  “I doubt that anyone has. And I think you’re right; it’s probably time that someone did.”

  Judy’s eyes, as they often did, seemed to be probing for the true thoughts of the person she was speaking to. “Do you want to, Gran? Or I will if you like.”

  Clariss
a hesitated, then answered with a nod. Calling Joe was best not left to Andrew or Lenore. “You have the touch, Judy. He’ll take bad news—or alarming news anyway—better coming from you than anyone else. If you don’t mind.” Helping was what this girl had to do when she was worried, as some people had to mope and others to cry. Blessed is the family, Clarissa thought, that has a Judy in it; and I don’t know of any other one than ours.

  Judy was gone, considerately closing the door behind her. But Clarissa had hardly turned toward the icefields again when it opened again. “Hey, Gran?” a deeper voice inquired.

  This was Johnny, the baby of the house. At sixteen he was a strong-jawed, slightly shorter version of his father, one notable difference being Johnny’s teen-length, light brown curls. “They’re all still busy in there, Gran. If anyone’s looking for me, I’m going over to Clark’s. He’s got that new computer kit.”

  “Don’t be late, Johnny. I’m sure your mother will want you back before dark today.”

  “Aw, Gran, c’mon. Kate’s all right.” No doubts at all were going to be tolerated on that point. “She’s a big girl. I mean, I know my sister can take care of herself out there.”

  “And you’re grown up too, or very nearly. Yes. But don’t be late?”

  She made it a question rather than a hopeless attempt at an order, and Johnny at least smiled and waved before he left, so maybe he would at least consider what his grandmother said. Then he was gone, and there was no longer anything to interfere with Clarissa’s looking out the window. It took her only a minute to discover that that was not what she wanted to do after all.

  It was good to get away from the tension in the family for a little while, to have time for her own thoughts. But why had she chosen the library? Had it been in the back of her mind to find something particular to read?

  Clarissa was staring up at the east end of the highest shelf on the south wall when with a minor inward shock she consciously remembered what was up there. Years, it had been, since she had even thought of that. She shook her head deliberately, and deliberately smiled at herself, and moved away. But her steps slowed as she neared the door, which Johnny had left open. Clarissa closed it slowly. She did not want to rejoin the others just yet, she wanted to stay here.

  She had been seated in an armchair for ten minutes, reading lamp on beside her, reading a John O’Hara novel, when she suddenly fully understood that she had stationed herself here on guard, on call. She was on sentry duty, a few paces from the east end of the high south shelves. This time she did not try to smile at all.

  THREE

  On regaining consciousness, Kate was no longer bothered by the cold, and at first she knew a trace of fear that hers were the sensations of death-by-freezing. But her fingers and toes were perfectly flexible and sensitive, her ears were not at all numb, and she was not shivering. Still cold in the room, certainly, but her body was coping with it now. A sort of second wind, evidently—or a second warmth might be a better way to put it.

  It was still night, though now she could see the room and its poor furnishings much more clearly than before. Maybe another electric sign had been turned on outside, or more likely her eyes had simply adjusted to the dark. She thought that not much time had passed, for she seemed still to be feeling the effects of what she had smoked, combined with the white wine. But now she was completely alone.

  She could remember Enoch’s face above hers in the dark, and his weight, pressing her down on the poor bed, where she still lay on her back, atop whatever bedclothes there might be. A forced intimacy, certainly, but not, as far as she could tell, a conventional rape. She was still fully dressed, lying there with her right arm thrown back above her head, and her left hand resting loosely on her middle.

  Kate sat up, easily, not hurting anywhere, groping with her toes automatically for one shoe that had fallen off. With this strange high of hers she was not in the mood to wonder about the why of anything, to worry about whether she had actually been raped or not.

  Both shoes on, Kate stood up, a little giddily just at first, and observed that she was still wearing her warm blue jacket. There appeared to be nothing to do in this room, so at once she headed for the door.

  She went quickly down the creaky stairs, and out into the shabby, unfamiliar street. At the moment fear and worry were as remote to her as curiosity. Maybe in the morning she would have the world’s worst hangover, but right now she simply felt like walking. The sky had cleared, as clear as it ever got above the city itself.

  Still feeling immune to cold and wind, Kate set out, marching in a direction she was sure was east, and noting the steady diminution of the address numbers that she passed, numbers that seemed to indicate that she had not too far to go, to reach the shops on North Michigan. These days all the best shopping was up there, not in the Loop.

  She passed a man who turned to look at her, perhaps only wondering that she dared to walk Chicago’s streets at night and alone. In this neighborhood there were only a few people about. What time was it, anyway? Might the stores be closed? Kate’s watch showed 7:48 when she pressed its button—which was odd, considering that it must have been later than that when she left Craig’s. But she was not capable of trying to puzzle it all out now. She was going to walk.

  She came upon Michigan boulevard from the west, passing through a region of closed printing shops, closed antique dealers, nearly empty parking lots, ad agencies all but anonymous behind their discreet signs, walls, and shutters. An elegant restaurant was open, so was a fast-food place a block away. She didn’t feel at all hungry. Here was a subway entrance. She had ridden the subway and El once with Johnny, from Evanston all the way down through the city to the far South Side and back again, just to see what it was like, and nothing had happened to them at all, though their parents had been angry when they found out . . . and here were the stairs to the upper level of Michigan, where she would find the shops she wanted.

  And here on the upper level were the shops at last, open till all hours of the night on these last shopping days before Christmas; here were the well-dressed crowds struggling muffled through the decorated streets against a wind that did not bother Kate. The traffic inched. The buses roared, befouled the air, crept ahead two, three, four of them together sometimes, threatening to crush their way right through the endless herds of walking bodies that bravely disputed every crosswalk with the vehicles.

  Kate was on the point of entering a store before she realized that she had with her no money and no credit cards. She couldn’t remember now whether or not she had been carrying a handbag when she went up to Craig’s. She must have been carrying money and cards for shopping. And so somehow they must have been left at Craig’s, or in that strange little room.

  She wondered, without any real concern one way or the other, if Enoch might have taken them, and if Enoch had returned to the ugly little room by now. She wondered also, every now and then, if she were dreaming, because this high of hers seemed to be just going on and on; there had to be something more than pot, or even pot and wine, involved in it. If she went back to her car, and it hadn’t been stolen or stripped or towed away, she might drive home . . . but first she wanted to do some shopping. With this in mind she walked into a store, and then remembered that she had no money . . .

  Around and around went the cycle, like a fever-dream. At one point it stuttered and broke, and she found herself in a phone booth, using small change discovered in her jacket pocket, punching numbers. Joe’s voice on the line, saying hello, came like a tonic shock, a shock that if it went on very long might threaten to wake her up, and in a moment she had hung up the receiver without speaking. He must never see her like this, he must never know . . . but now she had to find a gift for Joe. She had known him now for more than a year, and had never given him a thing that really mattered . . .

  The crowd of shoppers had thinned to a mere scattering of people, the stores on the verge of closing, before the cycle broke finally and she was free. Or was she? First, bac
k to the room, of course. Her valuables must be there, and her car was parked nearby. For some reason her life, her new life, centered there now. You’ll get to like it here. Think of it as home, maybe even.

  Kate did not feel physically tired, and walked back at a brisk pace. Approaching the dingy building, she looked for the Lancia, but the space by the hydrant was empty now. Still, she felt no alarm at the discovery.

  Walking up the gritty stairs she met no one, though now a radio was playing somewhere in the building, making it seem not entirely deserted. Now what? She had been through all her pockets several times, and was certain that she didn’t have a key. She pressed her body against the room’s door, though, and it quite smoothly let her in.

  Kate made sure that the door was locked behind her. Then, feeling a little dizzy though not exactly tired, she threw herself down on the bed. Her right arm fell back over her head. One of her shoes fell off.

  * * *

  She did not sleep, or lose consciousness completely, but lapsed into a queer, semi-waking state, during which she was aware of the gradual brightening of the room into full daylight. Kate’s eyes, half-open, ached in the sunlight reflected from one dingy wall. But she did not even blink, being afraid that if she tried to move she would find that she could not.

  There were feet on the stairs, several heavy people coming up. Voices outside the door, then in the room with her. Three or four men in the room, standing about, talking in low voices. A couple of them wore fur-collared blue Chicago police winter jackets, with badges on their fur-flapped caps. She could see details very plainly whenever they came into the center of her field of vision.

  They’ll take me home, Kate thought, they’ll snap me out of this. Not that she cared, yet, whether they did or not. But gathering in the back of her mind was the first inkling of concern, taking form like the knowledge that the dentist’s numbing shot is presently going to wear off.