Fear Dreams

by J. A. Schneider

  “Neither, he’s just...” Paul seemed to run out of steam; waited another minute, then rolled to Liddy on the pillow. “He’s just Carl. He’s always been like that. The cop visit set him off on me; that’s what was really bugging and I’m sorry.”

  Liddy lay stiffly, saying nothing. Paul put his hand over hers. “Anyway it’s over,” he said. “She came, asked her questions, got nothing and left.” He patted Liddy’s hand. “I’d promised myself I wouldn’t even bring it up, but I did and I’m kicking myself. We friends again?”

  “Friends,” she said dully.

  “Your hand is cold.”

  No answer.

  “Try to sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll both feel better in the morning.”

  “Right. Paul?”

  “Um?”

  “Why did Ben come to the lab today?”

  She felt him exhale in the darkness. “Carl called him after the police visit.”

  “That’s funny. He told me he’d just heard about you selling the boat, was in pain about it.”

  “Ridiculous. He’s known for a week.”

  “He’s as phony as Carl.” And then, like a wild flash, it came back, something Liddy had heard - when? In the hospital? Some news report?

  “I…remember now. Sasha was arrested for falsifying a narcotics prescription…written by Ben.”

  “Yeah, I heard them arguing about that - part of it anyway, I wasn’t included. Ben’s still humiliated he was dragged into that. Maybe they’re bothering him again since this thing has re-surfaced.”

  “But why would Carl call him after this morning?”

  “Who knows?” Paul’s voice was fading. “To commiserate? That Blasco’s probably bothering a lot of people. Leave it, Lids, please? I’m blitzed, can we please go to sleep?”

  He rolled back to his pillow. Minutes passed, his breathing got heavier, then he slept.

  Liddy lay, thinking about Kerri Blasco and the resulting uproar at the lab. Should she feel guilty? No, dammit, she’d done what she felt morally pulled to do - which raised the next question: Why did Kerri want to question Carl? What did she suspect that led her to him?

  Then came a question that nagged even more: could all the horrid nightmares, fears and hallucinations be really closer to her than Liddy imagined? Was that why Sasha’s sketch just jumped from her hand that first Sunday in Soho?

  Things came together.

  She tried not to feel angry at Paul.

  Leave it, Lids, please?

  As in, don’t rock the boat – is that what he was really saying? Had he planned that whole bedtime conversation?

  He’d hurt her earlier, she’d gone to bed feeling bad, then he’d timed his coming to bed full of “what really bothered” him: Stay out of it, Lids, don’t even go near the cops, Lids, Carl must not be disturbed, the research, the research.

  Because Paul’s scientific takeoff was on the line, too.

  Liddy blinked into the darkness, letting that last thought sink in. It took hold and wouldn’t let go. She remembered – waking last Friday morning - her nightmare of drowning and Paul swimming away from her, saving himself. A terrible dream! For four days she’d pushed it down and now it was back, she was seeing again the bubbles coming from her nose, the blue circle of sky above getting smaller, the boat’s hull on the surface and Paul’s legs kicking, swimming back up as the blond girl touched her shoulder, took the teddy bear and was swept away crying. The dream had her trembling with her chest heaving again. She had seen it and felt it all over again.

  The clock read three. What? Had she drifted off? Slept and re-dreamt it? She must have, because seconds ago the clock just read one.

  This was bad. She needed to sleep. Wanted to paint tomorrow, catch up and do good work…

  Distraction, maybe a distraction would help.

  Read a little? Turn the TV on low?

  She crept out of bed and went back to the telescope.

  25

  Someone down in the street was throwing up. A girl yards away in a sequined dress was yelling at a cab that passed her. Couples were moving but more slowly, weaving. A man danced alone, seemed to be trying to imitate the graceful arm sweeps and pirouettes of Swan Lake.

  Charlie Bass considered this telescope better than cable TV, Beth said. It was. Not for anything prurient, it was just an amazing, fascinating eye into the real human condition, after the makeup smears and the booze turns the belly sour and the whole masquerade is over…kind of like Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, Liddy thought, only nobody was dying down there, not of plague or anything else from what she could see. Just drunks trying to get home and cabs refusing to stop for them. Every New Yorker’s idea of desperation.

  This was good. It was taking her mind off herself and her obsessing. Liddy raised the telescope barrel to apartment windows across from her.

  And up in the wild sex couple’s bedroom…

  …they were arguing.

  No, they were dressed and fighting. Through their window a soundless scream fest of hunched accusations and jutting jaws and then…Liddy’s lips parted…he hit her. Slammed her hard so she spun around crying - and then Liddy saw her face.

  Couldn’t be.

  She was young. Her blond hair whipped her features as she wheeled and fell to the floor, out of sight. There’d been only that split second, but Liddy drew back from the telescope, stunned.

  Close - but Sasha Perry? Couldn’t be, just the mind playing tricks at something terrible. A man hitting a woman. Liddy felt sick.

  In a jerky movement she twisted the eyepiece, feeling her heart throb as she peered through again. The bedroom was empty. Had the girl run out with the man in pursuit? Liddy tilted the barrel down. They weren’t in the street. A different arguing couple was further down near the corner.

  She panned the bedroom again. He’d been only half dressed - shirtless, dark pants looking yanked on, while the girl had gotten back into some kind of black party dress with its bodice torn. A dark, empty bottle lay near a strewn pillow.

  Still no sign of them on the street. Maybe they’d gone into another room to simmer down? Continue the fight in winding down glowers and recriminations?

  No telling, but what Liddy had seen shook her - on top of the fact that the girl for that split second had looked like Sasha Perry.

  She couldn’t be sure. Far from it.

  Sometimes people have emotional breakdowns and just lose it, go into hiding, Kerri Blasco said. Possibly Sasha is in your neighborhood for some reason. Please definitely call if anything else.

  But this wasn’t something else – couldn’t be – just an awful sighting witnessed by an overwrought mind that was seeing double from fatigue, not thinking right, and starting to doubt herself. Crazy, what the three a.m. of the soul can do to you. Because rising too was a new feeling of guilt toward Paul, and those paranoid thoughts she’d had about him. He’d worked so hard all his life; knocked himself out to give her happiness and this new start. Why had she even had that awful dream? Fear, that’s all. Admit it, scared little weenie: fear of losing him, upsetting him, losing their relationship.

  The abused blonde – Liddy’s mind rushed back to her as she took one last look through the ‘scope. No sign of her, and she hadn’t come out of the building. So…maybe crying or simmering down or sleeping it off in another room and he’s on the couch? There was no way to know. Liddy still made a mental note of which building, which floor, which window.

  Then, shuddering, still seeing that girl get cruelly slammed, she went back to bed. Lay and struggled with the image, with her whole flashing storm of questions including…again wondering furiously why Kerri wanted to question Carl.

  Something Alex Minton said came back to her: The psyche seizes on a ‘diversion cause’ - something that’s easier to deal with than the real issue. Some repressed memories are so terrifying that one is unable to remember, let alone face.

  Is that what I’m doing? Liddy fretted. Seizing on mi
streated young women to divert me from something in my own life?

  She dismissed the thought. That abused, crying girl did look like Sasha Perry, she did, she did…

  Outside, a high siren wailed. Other street sounds came dimly through the window.

  Strung tight as piano wire, Liddy stared into the deepest shadows of the room, knowing it might be hours before she could sleep.

  26

  “He’s the guy.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “I haven’t finished, don’t stop me, I’m on a roll.”

  It was five minutes to eight. Kerri, in a blouse and gray pant suit today, was in the coffee-smelling break room with Buck Dillon and Jo Babiak, telling about her visit yesterday to Carl Finn, talking fast because they had a conference meeting at 8:15 with Lieutenant Tom Mackey presiding. She’d already filled them in on everything, as she had with Alex, from Liddy Barron’s visit and interview, to Liddy’s husband’s M.D. pals, and Sasha’s photo of the Hudson. She’d also told how Liddy had finally remembered Sasha’s Winnie the Pooh ear stud, which had never appeared in any released photo. Sipping decaf with one hand, Kerri used her other hand to jab Carl Finn’s face in her open laptop. It was the Facebook shot of him embracing the hard-looking corporate lawyer blonde who’d dumped him around the time of Sasha’s disappearance.

  “I called first, asked when he’d be in, and somebody who’d been working all night said he usually came in around eight. So I went before that; was just sitting there in his office when he walked in - ha, ambush! Didn’t look at all happy when I introduced myself. Looked even unhappier when I said I was looking into Sasha’s disappearance.”

  Buck, finishing an Egg McMuffin and eyeing a box of granolas, asked, “How long were you there?”

  “A whole nine minutes before he threw me out. It was enough, I got him shook, took mental notes – and there’s more.” Kerri took the granola box from Buck, glanced in, looked back to the other two. “Of course he said he didn’t know Sasha, never laid eyes on her, blah blah, the usual. But, I asked, wasn’t she part of the University and taking the human biology courses that he taught? No, must’ve been somebody else’s human biology course, it was a big department, he’d never laid eyes on the girl.”

  Kerri looked back into the granolas, chose one with chocolate chips, started peeling off the wrapper.

  “Tons of sugar and healthy,” Jo Babiak muttered, scrolling through Carl Finn’s Facebook pictures. She was thin and worked out every day.

  “Yeah, that’s what the label says. Gee, you mean they lie?” Kerri took a good chomp, checked her watch because they had to jet, and tried to talk with her mouth full.

  “He’s not smart, knows nothing about avoiding deceptive behavior. Perps are better at it than this guy. He flees eye contact, hesitates and processes every answer – I even asked him who cleaned the mouse cages to get a base line reaction – he looked away before answering even that. Had his chair pushed way back from his desk so he could cross his legs and swivel his chair and look anywhere but at me. Was sweating, too. Developing a nice sheen on his brow and upper lip – kept wiping his mouth and pulling at his lower lip.”

  “The most common tell,” Buck said, getting up, going to the counter for more coffee.

  “He’s a classic narcissist, too,” Kerri said. “Kept telling me how important his time was to humanity that I was taking. Started saying that after I’d been there for just six minutes.”

  “So?” Buck came back and sat with his filled mug. “You’ve established that he’s a jerk and then he kicked you out. This is the great discovery you wanted to tell us?”

  “Nope.”

  And here Kerri grinned. Sat back in her chair, threw her hands up, got philosophical but still spoke fast. “Y’know how in every investigation, it’s often the serendipities that give the biggest boost? So there I was, kicked out after threats to holler police harassment and call his lawyer, and I’m walking down the aisle past lines of counters by now filling up with students in white coats and hospital scrubs running in with instrument trays – a long, very uptight room - and I passed the last counter up front, saw a heavyset girl in spectacles searching frantically through her box of slides…and right in front of her, honest to God, propped up against something, I saw a Winnie the Pooh, a big tubby one in his red T-shirt, like for a little girl.”

  The other two detectives looked at her. Jo Babiak was suddenly alert. “Winnie,” she said.

  “Yup. So I stopped and asked her about it, went all ‘Oh isn’t that adorable, so cute, it brings back my childhood - is that from your childhood too?’”

  They were looking at her, barely blinking. “Tell,” Buck said. “The suspense is killing me.”

  Kerri gave a smug face, leaned forward again. “The girl – her name tag said Sue Riley - said, ‘No, Carl gave it to me.’ He told Sue a little girl had given it to him, and it was sweet but he didn’t think Winnie looked quite right in his office.”

  “A little girl gave him the Winnie the Pooh...” Jo said, clearly thinking about that wording. “Theoretically, circumstantial at best, he could have considered Sasha a little girl. A needy and annoying little girl.”

  “After the sweet young thing part wore off.” Buck frowned thoughtfully at the tabletop. “Old story, huh?”

  “This gets better,” Kerri said. “I got all impressed, went Oh, wasn’t that nice of him – then asked Sue when Finn gave it to her.” Kerri raised her brows. “Early last May. She’d been worried about her exams and gone in to talk to him. He told her she was doing okay, then with his huge munificence gave her Winnie saying the little girl had just given it to him. Sue said she almost fainted. ‘Carl’s so handsome, so brilliant, he did such a nice thing for me,’ she said - actually blushed as she said it.”

  “Christ, early May?” Jo gaped at Kerri.

  “Pinpointed exactly,” Kerri said. “I told her oh gee, I had so much stress too - could I take a picture to help cheer me? And she said sure, take all you want, it’s really a comfort, having Winnie sitting there right by me. So I took pictures. Close ups, plus mid distance of her whole work station in the U’s lab.” Kerri held her phone up. “Got ‘em here, including one of her holding Winnie. Her name’s right on her plastic name tag.”

  “So she can be subpoenaed,” Jo mused, checking her watch, glancing over as someone else ran in for a quick Styrofoam cup of coffee. “It’s something, but still circumstantial.”

  “But a big breadcrumb on the trail,” Kerri countered. “Carl Finn knew Sasha, I feel it, he gave it away. His most deceptive behavior was when I asked about her being in his human biology class – which ran into a road block because next I called the U’s administration clerk, who said there’s no record of Sasha taking his class. That has to be wrong – he was sweating bullets over that. I asked him twice, he squirmed worse the second time.”

  “Dead end there.” From Buck, with a headshake.

  “Maybe,” Kerri said, “But this guy’s a focus like I haven’t before felt. Ever.”

  They got up, started clearing their cups and wrappers.

  “Devil’s advocate,” Jo said, exhaling with the mix of frustration and excitement that Kerri clearly felt. “What if you find he knew her, even dated her? You’ve still got a whole lot of circumstantial.”

  “No. If it turns out he knew her at all, that’s obstruction. I’d have him for that, at least. Take it from there. Keep digging.”

  27

  At eight she woke with a jolt, trembling, remembering the battered girl and the drowning dream. Paul was sitting by her on the bed. He’d brought her coffee and toast, and made a pained sound when she said she’d had a bad night.

  “How much did you sleep?”

  “Maybe four hours.”

  He grimaced. “I feel awful. I got you upset.”

  Something déjà vu about this morning’s apology. He was dressed and showered; had cut his cheek shaving; touched where he’d put a dab of tissue to the place and shoo
k his head. “Just when you’d started to sleep well again.”

  “Tonight will be better,” she sighed.

  The apartment smelled of burnt toast. She reached to his cheek where his tissue dab was bleeding through. “Ouch,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’ve gotta change it.” He went back to the bathroom. Liddy pulled on her blue kimono and went to the kitchen. The toaster was unplugged and pulled out from the wall. Two slices of burnt toast lay strewn on the counter next to it; also a fork, just left there. Liddy peered into the toaster’s dark recess. Subsequent bread slices had clearly toasted okay, but why did Paul leave the burnt ones just sitting there? Even rushing, that wasn’t like him.

  In a minute he was in the kitchen with a new tissue dab on his cheek, pacing, checking his texts and voice mails, starting to text back.

  “Wait,” Liddy said.

  He looked at her.

  She sank to one of the barstools; gestured feebly. “Last night-”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Right, this is something else.”

  His look changed to, oh Lids, what now?

  But she plunged, described fast and nervously what she’d seen. “Three in the morning. He hit her hard. It was awful.”

  “Terrible,” he said, scowling back to a text.

  “Shouldn’t we do something?”

  His phone dinged with another call. He raised it to read and shook his head, though whether in reaction to the call or to what Liddy had described, she couldn’t tell.

  “People argue, Lids. People fight. It’s not our business.”

  He headed out of the kitchen, going on about the pitfalls of looking into people’s bedrooms at three in the morning. “They’re either asleep or having their worst moments.”