The Walker in Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  That last appeal affected Pat more powerfully than anything else the man had said. Surely Friedrichs would not have asked for Mark's help if he hadn't cared more for his daughter than for his reputation. So-as Jerry used to say-so maybe your premises are wrong, kid.

  "I think she's all right," Pat said slowly, tilting Kathy's head back so she could see the girl's face. It was relaxed in the peace of deep sleep. A little too deep, perhaps… Pat looked at Friedrichs, who had risen and was backing away. His eyes were fixed on Kathy's face, and his expression… "Are you telling me you didn't attack the child?" Pat demanded.

  "I was sitting up in bed reading when I heard her scream," Friedrichs said. "Not really a scream-not then-more like a choked, gurgling moan-a horrible sound. I froze for a second. The next thing I heard was a crash from her room, and then the sound of her footsteps running like a crazy thing. By the time I got out of my room she was halfway down the stairs. I turned on the lights as I followed; that slowed me down. She went in a headlong rush, stumbling and sliding. I thought sure she'd break her neck. I didn't catch up with her till she reached the front door. She had the chain off and the key turned-"

  "So that's why the door was open?"

  "That's why. When I touched her she let out the most god-awful yell and turned on me like-" Friedrichs touched the scratches on his cheek. "I had to grab her hands, hold her, or she would have run straight out of the house in her nightgown. She-she didn't know me. Her eyes were absolutely empty of recognition-empty of everything except mindless terror. I guess I lost my wits too, it was so damned awful… I tried to stop her from screaming, the sound cut right through me, and then I remembered they slap people sometimes, when they get hysterical…"

  The damp night air was cool on Pat's arms and cheeks. Friedrichs was sweating. Great clammy drops stood out on his forehead.

  Pat came to a sudden decision. If Friedrichs was faking that look of agonized love and concern, he was a better actor than Olivier. And he was right; Kathy's needs came before any other issue.

  "Close the door," she said. "Then we'll get her to bed." Friedrichs obeyed, circling Pat and Kathy with the cau-tion of a leper. Pat's fingers sought the girl's pulse. Strong and steady. Now that her nerves were settling down she found the incident more and more unbelievable. What had gone on in this house tonight?

  "Here," she said brusquely. "I can't carry her. You'll have to do it."

  Their hands touched briefly as she transferred Kathy's limp weight to her father's arms. His fingers were as cold as ice. Pat followed him up the stairs and along the hall to Kathy's room, the equivalent of the one Mark occupied in her house. It had the same deep bay window and fire-place, and it was decorated in a frilly, flowery style suit-able for a girl much younger than Kathy. The dainty wallpaper and matching drapes, the canopied bed and white-painted furniture would have looked pretty if the room had not been such a mess. Papers were strewn about, books had been thrown from the shelves flanking the fireplace, and the bedsheets trailed onto the floor.

  Pat touched the light switch and an overhead chandelier flooded the room with brilliance. She picked up the lamp lying on the pillow, a serviceable reading lamp with a bronze base, and restored it to the bedside table. Fried-richs put the girl on the bed. Pat bent over her, checking pulse and respiration again, lifting an eyelid. A blank blue orb stared back at her.

  "She seems to be all right," Pat said slowly.

  "A doctor-"

  "I'm a nurse, you know. I don't think she's in any immediate danger." Pat tucked blankets around the girl's body and straightened. Friedrichs stood on the other side of the bed, his arms hanging limply. Pat was conscious of an unwilling surge of sympathy.

  "Look," she said. "If what you told me was the truth- and I'm beginning to think maybe it was-well, there's one obvious explanation for what happened. Are you sure you want the publicity of a doctor and a hospital?"

  "Publicity?" Friedrichs stared at her. The perspiration on his forehead was a slick, shiny film. Large drops ran down his lean cheeks. "What do you mean?"

  "Drugs. Her behavior suggests one of the hallucinogens."

  "No," Friedrichs said. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. "No. You mean LSD, something like that? She doesn't take drugs."

  "Will you search her room?"

  "No. I've never done a thing like that. I wouldn't insult her so."

  Pat felt a wave of utter exhaustion, partly physical but primarily emotional. She had been through this before, too often, when she had worked briefly at a local hospital. Six months of night duty in the emergency room had been enough; she had quit and found a job as an office nurse. There were tragedies in that job too, but not like the hospital. It wasn't the blood and mess, or the pain of seeing a life slip through one's hands, a nurse got used to that. But she couldn't get used to the young people, mangled and smashed in needless car crashes, staggering drunk, or spaced out on some drug. Some of them had looked as young and innocent as the girl on the bed. And the parents had usually reacted just as Friedrichs was reacting- "Oh, no, not mine. I know there's a problem, but my child never…"

  "You must search," she said. "In justice to her."

  Intuitively she had touched the right note. Friedrichs thought it over for a moment and then, without a word, turned to the dresser drawers.

  The harsh, unpleasant job took quite a long time. Friedrichs hated what he was doing; his mouth was a thin line of disgust. After a while Pat said, "Shall I…?" and the lawyer nodded silently. So Pat searched the adjoining bathroom-hamper, medicine chest, even the tank of the commode. She didn't enjoy the task either, but it was easier for her than for the distressed father. She found nothing except the usual patent medicines and cosmetics.

  Then a sound from the bedroom sent her running back to Kathy. The girl was twisting uneasily and muttering in her sleep. Her eyes were still closed. Pat bent over Kathy. She could not make out distinct words. Then Kathy's eyes opened. They moved around the room, passing over her father as if he had been a piece of furniture. Then she saw Pat; and the light of normal, sane intelligence transformed her face.

  "Mrs. Robbins… What-"

  "Thank God," Pat said, the worst of her fears removed. "How do you feel?"

  "Tired. I'm so tired…"

  "Kathy. Did you take anything?"

  "Is something… missing?" Kathy asked.

  "No, I didn't mean that. Pills. Did you take anything like that?"

  "No." Kathy's hand moved, groping. Pat took it in her own and the girl's slim fingers tightened on hers. "Don't go away. Stay here. Please."

  "Of course, if you want me. But you must tell me-"

  "Thank you…" The words trailed off in a long sigh. Kathy slept again.

  Still holding the girl's hand, Pat caught Friedrichs' eye.

  "Is she-"

  "She's sound asleep," Pat said. "It looks like normal sleep. Mr. Friedrichs, it's up to you. I'm not going to advise you, but-"

  "If she were yours?"

  "I'd let her sleep it off, and see how she is in the morning."

  Friedrichs nodded. He looked like a man who had just finished running twenty miles.

  "I have no right to ask this, but-could you stay?"

  "I have no intention of leaving. Didn't you hear me promise?"

  "I heard you. But I didn't expect…" He sat down quite suddenly, not as if he had intended to do so, but as if his knees had given way and there just happened to be a chair behind him. Pat freed her hand from Kathy's grasp and started toward him, but Friedrichs shook his head. "I'm all right. Why don't you lie down on that chaise longue, where she-she can see you if she wakes. Would you like some coffee?"

  "Yes, thanks. And have some yourself-with plenty of sugar."

  "I'm all right," Friedrichs repeated. "I'll get the coffee. Is there anything else you would like?"

  The meticulous formality of the speech sounded so incongruous that Pat smiled unwillingly.

  "Yes, as a matter of fact. I'd like to leave a note f
or Mark, in case he wakes and wonders what has become of me. Perhaps you could take it next door."

  "Certainly. There is paper here-" He indicated Kathy's desk, which was piled with books and other student impedimenta. Pat took a pen and a sheet of notebook paper and scribbled a brief message. She handed it to Friedrichs without folding it.

  "You'll see that I didn't mention names, only that someone was ill and I was needed. Please stick it on the refrigerator door with one of the little magnets."

  The lawyer's eyes flashed briefly, as if he appreciated the implied permission to read the note. He did not do so, only took the key Pat gave him and left the room, after a final glance at the sleeping girl.

  Pat took off her coat and hung it over the back of a chair. Her purse was still in the car. She should have asked Friedrichs to get it, but it didn't seem important. Her house keys were in her coat pocket, and she made it a rule never to carry much cash when she was out late at night.

  She went back to the bed. Kathy had turned on her side, her cheek pillowed on her hand. Pat brushed strands of silky hair away from the girl's forehead; Kathy's lips quivered as if she were about to smile. She sighed deeply.

  Pat had no intention of lying down on the chaise longue or anywhere else. She had done a foolish thing-a damned fool thing, Jerry would have said-in advising Friedrichs not to call a doctor. Oh, she hadn't actually said it, in so many words, but she had implied as much, and the responsibility weighed heavily on her mind. She would watch the girl's every breath until she woke; at the slightest sign of trouble she would call the rescue squad. In the meantime…

  Her lips set in an expression, if she had but known it, very much like Friedrichs' when he searched his daughter's possessions, Pat pulled out the top desk drawer and sifted through its contents. Friedrichs had seemed to search thoroughly, but perhaps he had missed something-something he really didn't want to find.

  As she went through the room, finding nothing except a little dust and the more or less blameless records of a young girl's school and social life, she was thinking, not about Kathy, but about Kathy's father.

  She had been prejudiced against Friedrichs from the start, and therefore ready to think the worst of him. Still, that didn't mean that her assessment had been wrong, or that his performance that night had been genuine. She had seen people lie just as convincingly-girls with eyes as big and blue as Kathy's solemnly swearing they had never heard of heroin, though their arms showed the damning marks of injections; cultured men in expensive clothes denying indignantly that they had ever laid a hand on their wives, while the women nursed black eyes and broken bones and flinched at the very sight of their husbands. Yes, Friedrichs could be lying. So why was she now as prejudiced in his favor as she had formerly been biased against him?

  That was easy. She was sympathetic because, if his story was true, she knew how he must be feeling. In a perfect agony of terror and doubt, that was how-just as she would feel if this had happened to Mark. To have the one you loved best in all the world turn on you, striking out with hate, rejecting the help you wanted to give… And the fear-the wild, terrible theories. Drugs? Brain tumor? Paranoia, mental illness? The fear of losing the only one you had left.

  Her hands were shaking so badly she decided to abandon the search. She had dropped one delicate little china figurine; it would have broken if it hadn't fallen on the rug. She had searched every place she could think of and found absolutely nothing incriminating, except a paper-back copy of The Joys of Super Sex under Kathy's mattress. Pat smiled weakly as she returned it to its place. Nothing abnormal about that.

  It began to appear as if Friedrichs were right. The kids weren't that smart or that careful. They usually left some evidence lying around. So if it wasn't drugs, what on earth…?

  When Friedrichs returned she had settled into a comfortable overstuffed chair, her hands folded in her lap. He was carrying a tray-and her abandoned purse.

  "I hope you don't mind," he said, handing it to her, "but I took the liberty of putting your car in your drive-way. You had left the keys in the ignition, and I thought-"

  "You were quite right," Pat said, with a smile. "I didn't even park it; I just stopped in the middle of the street. Thank you."

  Friedrichs acknowledged her thanks with a grave incli nation of his head, and offered her coffee. Pat took it, marveling at the man's strength of will. He had been on the verge of collapse when she burst in; now he had acquired enough self-control to collect her belongings and restore them to their proper places. And the way he had retreated, instantly, when she took over with Kathy- offering to lock himself in the library… Was that consciousness of guilt, or evidence of a mind that was both rigorously logical and intuitively sensitive to other peoples' feelings?

  "She's sleeping," Pat said, as Friedrichs turned toward the bed. "I'll watch her, don't worry. The rescue squad can be here in five minutes, if… You don't have to stay."

  Friedrichs' lips twisted. He sat down at the desk. "Do you suppose I could sleep? I don't expect you to believe me, Mrs. Robbins, but I told you precisely what happened. I almost wish what you suspect were true. It would provide an explanation." His eyes went to his daughter, lingered, and then moved around the room as if he were really seeing it for the first time that night. "You didn't have to clean up in here. Merely staying is kindness enough."

  "I just put a few things back in their places," Pat said. "books and ornaments-not much. She must have knocked them down when she ran."

  "Would it be out of place for me to suggest that fact substantiates my story? Or do you suppose I came in here to attack her?"

  With an effort, Pat forced her eyes away from his tormented face. At least he had had enough experience to know that things like that did happen, that horrified outrage was no defense. His hands were gripping the arms of the chair so hard the knuckles showed like naked bone. They were big, hard hands, and the arms bared by his rolled-up shirt sleeves were the arms of an athlete. He must play tennis or handball, she thought to herself. If he had attacked the girl in her bed she would have had a poor chance of getting away from him.

  "If I really thought you had tried to hurt her I wouldn't be sitting here now," she said. "Mr. Friedrichs, have you-"

  "My name is Josef. With an f."

  Pat had to smile.

  "Yes, I suppose we have progressed to first names. Mine is Pat. You needn't fear that I'll take advantage of it."

  A wave of red swept over Friedrichs' face. She hadn't realized how pale he was until the flush gave his cheeks their normal color.

  "Drink your coffee," she said. "You're still in a state of shock. It won't do Kathy any good if you pass out, or-or have a heart attack."

  "My heart is perfectly sound." He gave her a startled look. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to touch on-"

  "I touched on it," Pat said steadily. "My husband died of a heart attack a year ago. We thought his heart was perfectly sound too."

  "I owe you an apology, Mrs.-Pat. Not for what I said just now; for my behavior the other evening, when you most generously offered new neighbors…" He hesitated, and the ghost of a smile curved his thin lips. "Bread and salt, shall we say?"

  "Pasta is basically flour, like bread," Pat agreed. "And there was plenty of salt in that casserole."

  "Whatever the ingredients, the intent was the same. It was a kind gesture and my response was boorish. I regretted it at once. I tried to call to you, but apparently you didn't hear me. That's no excuse, however, I might have telephoned to express my regrets-or, at the very least, returned your umbrella! My apologies are belated, but, I assure you, heartfelt."

  "Forget it," Pat said, amused at his carefully constructed sentences and meticulous grammar. Mark was right; the man should be living in the nineteenth century.

  "Thank you." He relapsed into silence, as if to free her of the obligation to talk. Maybe he didn't feel like talking either. The apology had been made with a certain grace, although he had offered no explanation for his boorish-ness, as
he called it. But the omission had its own decorum. Excuses would have necessitated personal references, and perhaps, if Nancy 's hunch about his marital misadventures were correct, an appeal to sympathy or an expression of self-pity. Pat glanced at him from under lowered lashes. He must be in his forties; his cheeks and forehead showed the harsh lines of experience, harsher now with strain. No, not the face of a man who indulged in self-pity or allowed others to pity him. Nor, unless all her instincts were false, the face of a man who would mistreat his daughter.

  They did not speak again. The night wore on, with the deadly slowness of all vigils. Pat had long since learned the art of sleeping with one eye open; she did so now, drifting in and out of half-slumber, her senses always alert for any untoward sound or movement from Kathy. Once she slipped deep enough into sleep to dream. It seemed to her that the light from the lamp on the bedside table burned low, and that in the shadowy corner behind the bed something moved. A long arm, skeletal in its pallor and bony thinness, reached out toward the sleeping girl.

  Pat woke with a start, to hear Kathy moaning. Fried-richs was sound asleep, his head on the desk, resting on his folded arms. Pat got up, stretching stiffened limbs, and tiptoed to the bed. When she touched Kathy, the girl's breathing resumed its quiet pattern.

  Pat went back to her chair. The night had turned quite cold. The thin curtains shifted eerily in the breeze, like formless shapes of ectoplasm. She shivered, and wondered, half-seriously, if nightmares lingered on in the room where a dreamer's mind had shaped them. That pale skeletal arm… If Kathy had dreamed of something like that reaching out for her, no wonder she had fled in terror.

  Of course the explanation was more prosaic. In her drowsing state she had heard Kathy moan, and had conjured up an appropriate horror.

  But she did not sleep again. The birds roused before the sun, raising a racket in the old apple tree outside the window, and finally the sky began to brighten. The sun was not yet up, but the room was fully light when Kathy awoke.