by Allan Retzky
“What’s that supposed to mean? Did they try the hospital?”
“That’s something else. Seems he’s been suspended. His performance had dropped off the charts in the past few months, and they must have felt he’d become a risk to patients. They certainly weren’t looking for a bunch of lawsuits down the road. Anyway, he hasn’t been in the hospital for well over a month.”
“Friends? Colleagues at the hospital? Family?”
“Nothing there either. He was a classic loner. Some of the other residents didn’t even know he was gone, but maybe they work such crazy hours that it’s not the kind of thing you notice right away.”
“Think someone scared him off?”
“Don’t see how unless the sister got in touch with him and told him to beat it.”
“That’s not possible. She doesn’t even know who he is.”
“You sure about that?”
“Hell, Brigid hated Heidi’s guts.”
“I asked if you were sure.”
Wisdom pauses a second before he affirms.
“Okay then. We’ll have to start looking and assume it’s just coincidence. When were you going to spring the fake Heidi?”
“This week, I hope. I’ve already lined up a meeting with Posner. Welbrook’s just about off the radar screen for now, so after Stern he’s the only one left, but all my money’s still on Stern.”
“That’s what I thought. Any chance of postponing until we’re sure everyone’s lined up?”
“Guess so. Don’t think Brigid’s going back for another two or three weeks.”
“Then let her know we might have to delay. In the meantime we’ll try to see if we can check into his background a bit more. He used to live upstate. That’s where he said he went on the day she disappeared. Remember. That’s when the mileage clocked the same as to East Hampton.”
CHAPTER 12
Dr. Henry Stern isn’t lost, in hiding, or even trying to run away. He is at that moment sitting and watching Posner’s house from the same spot he’s used before. He uses a worn but serviceable pair of binoculars. He follows Posner as the man moves about on the second floor of his house. Posner seems nervous and anxious. Good. He will keep up whatever he’s doing as the man is losing it. At this thought Stern begins to laugh. At first it sounds more like a cackle in a barnyard, but later it comes out more like someone out-of-control, almost alien.
After he finds out the full truth about Heidi, he plans to kill Posner. He’s never taken a life before, although there are those who might believe otherwise. He was seventeen and an all-around everything in school. Sports were easy. Ditto school. The only problem he ever had was with girls. He was afraid to ask anyone out and even more fearful he’d be rejected. It all came together during the summer before his senior year. He’d been trying to work up the courage to ask out Rosalie Sanchez for months after she transferred in, but never had the guts to try. Then on a late August night a few weeks before school would restart he saw her at the drive-in, whose parking lot was where everyone in the town under the age of twenty joined up on warm summer nights.
She was hanging with some guys he didn’t know very well and holding a paper bag with a beer can she greedily sipped at. She was pretty and dark and very well built. He worked up enough nerve and offered to buy her a soda or a hot dog. At first she looked at him with level serious eyes, then just laughed and told him the only hot dog she wanted was the one between his legs. Before he could react she moved right up to him till they were eye to eye, zipped him open, and fished out his cock. He was anything but ready and she took hold of his stumpy limp dick in a soft hand with bright red polish on her nails and held it for barely a second before she dropped it.
“Too small,” she said. “Think I’ll throw it back.”
And with that everyone laughed. Not just she, but also the guys she was with, and then everyone else who either saw or heard what had happened. There were also many who were happy to laugh at him, either for the pure humor in it, or in many cases for the opportunity to take down the big little man on campus; the students he’d outscored on exams, and the athletes he’d bested in team tryouts were all there reveling in his tormented humiliation.
He stood and watched her slide alone into a used and much dented canary-yellow Chevy convertible with a broken muffler and a tailpipe that was tied to the undercarriage with wire, yet still managed to graze the ground with a shower of sparks when the car moved. He watched her drive away to the baffled thumps of hot air raging through the torn metal gaps beneath the car while she saluted him with a crimson-tipped middle finger while all he could do was shout.
“You bitch. I’ll kill you for this. You hear me? I’ll kill you.”
And then she was gone, and he fled moments afterward, oblivious to the night or the road, ostensively going home, but actually wandering to try and rid the foul reek of shame. He lost track of time until he moved across the Beaver Flats Bridge and saw the rear end of a yellow car tilted in a twenty degree angle to the nearly dry creek bed it had fallen into. He stopped the car and saw the tire marks where the Chevy couldn’t hold the approach curve and tore through the modest wooden railing before dropping forty feet into three feet of mud and water.
That’s where the police found him. It seemed like moments, but he later reckoned it had to be more than fifteen minutes. He told the police that he’d left his car off the road just before the entrance to the bridge and gone down and around to the creek bottom where the Chevy had hit and stuck at a strange angle. It was quiet except for the small splashes frogs make in chorus with the occasional night bird. He looked in the driver-side window and at first only saw one arm stretched out with the fingers turned upward. He didn’t try to look at her face, but he still remembers the red nails reaching upward in some kind of plea. He raced to the nearest phone to call for help, then returned to the bridge to wait.
The cause of death was a broken neck, but an autopsy showed she was legally drunk. At first there was all manner of speculation. The most prevalent idea was that the two of them had met up by accident and he killed her, and then tried to cover it all up by running her car off the road with her already dead. There was, of course, not a shred of proof for this theory, and the fact that he was the one who called in the accident and was still at the scene when the police found him worked more to his innocence. The final inquest reported an accidental death. There were still, however, many in the small community that believed then and probably still believe that he killed her. And now he was a suspect again, but he’d show them. He’d show them it was Posner.
He never returned to his local high school and his father’s business and political connections enabled him to pull in some favors on short notice to get his son into Deerfield Academy that fall. That was the time just before he began having hallucinations about Rosalie Sanchez. He had promised to kill her and she died. Simple as that, but it wasn’t going away. His father brought him to see a series of mental health professionals where he was diagnosed with a very incipient form of schizophrenia and put on a series of antipsychotic medications. There were side effects, of course, but over a period of time, the worst of these, the dry mouth, blurred vision, and drowsiness ebbed to the point of minor factors he could live with.
Then it was Yale premed and Downstate Medical in the city. He never lived in Hillsdale again and sold the house after his father died. He was smart and capable and his paths through college and medical school were relatively easy. At the time he met Heidi, he was in one of those intervals when he wasn’t taking Seroquel. He knew he could always self-prescribe when the bad feelings returned, which made him feel like he was sharing his body with another person. No one at the hospital knew of his condition. Such records were confidential and would remain that way unless he alone decided to unseal them.
Several months into their relationship, he began to feel those symptoms again and he went back on his meds. And that’s when he began to experience sexual failure. Some call it erectile dysfunction, bu
t it was all the same to Heidi. Viagra didn’t help. He knew she wouldn’t keep him as her lover if he couldn’t fuck her as often as she wanted. After just a few such incidents he stopped his medications. That was his only hope. He was prepared to live with whatever twists and turns his mind would take as long as he had Heidi. But Posner took her away.
Yes. He wants to kill Posner. For several years his work involved saving lives, but this is different. All those people back upstate who might still think him guilty of murder would get their chance to be right. He was innocent then, but now he was prepared to confess his guilt as soon as he finished the job. He catches a movement at Posner’s front door and puts the glasses down. His prey is on the move again.
“Oh Lordy, Lordy, this is so fucking good,” he says to the empty seat and starts the engine.
As soon as he sees Posner’s car head east on the highway, he knows the man’s going back to the Montauk Overlook.
“She must be buried there. She must. I just missed the spot, that’s all. Now he’ll take me there. He will. I know it.”
Then he smiles and begins to hum as if to remind himself that he’s just out for a drive in the country.
Amos Posner’s on his way back to the overlook. He can’t help himself. He suspects that someone’s been watching him and wants to see that the grave is still undisturbed. He’s had the feeling for a few days now. Ever since he got the call from that cop Wisdom. It started with the small blue car in the Overlook parking lot. Just sitting there. Not doing anything. Just watching him. At first he thinks it must be the police, and then decides it’s just coincidence. But he’s seen that same blue car a few times in the last week. Once he even thought he saw it parked on the far corner down the block. Now he assumes once again it’s the police. Who else could it be? His hands are sweating as he grabs the wheel tighter than necessary.
He can’t let his nervousness show. He’s just passing through Montauk village when the full reality of it all hits him. Maybe the police are trying to spook him. Trying to make him commit some act of self-betrayal. Maybe it really was Wisdom. That’s when he sees the blue car. Maybe half a block behind. As he approaches the far end of town, he starts to slow then jerks a quick left across two traffic lanes into a service station. He pulls up alongside a pump that blocks most of his view of the road. Still he has a fleeting glimpse of a small blue car speeding the other way as he pulls to a complete stop, but there’s no time for a clear look at the driver. Even after he turns the engine off, his fingers tighten around the wheel, as if he were trying to squeeze the life out of it.
Henry Stern sees Posner veer off, yet can do nothing. He goes a bit farther down the road and turns left toward the harbor. He thought he was careful, yet not enough, otherwise why would Posner have pulled over? He turns his car around and pulls onto a grassy area where he can watch the eastbound traffic in case Posner changes his mind. He waits for over an hour before he gives up and returns to his motel. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to follow Posner too closely. Maybe now that Posner recognizes his blue compact, the idea of frightening him into a mistake has become self-defeating.
He checks out of the motel after looking up the addresses of a few guesthouses in the area from the phone book. He notes the address of a local Chevrolet car dealership.
“A switch to a Chevy would be fitting. Don’t you think?” he says to his unseen companion. “A kind of tribute to the late Rosalie Sanchez who’d fuck anyone but me. And look where it got her.”
He pays his bill in cash. He has paid all his expenses in cash so far, except for the rented car. He drives to the Chevy dealership and surveys the lot. After a bit, he wanders in and asks about a short-term rental. One or two weeks should do it. “Just to give it a good test drive. Yes, I know it’ll be an expensive rental for two weeks.”
He thanks the salesman, says he’ll think it over, and then drives back to Posner’s neighborhood, but he’s already decided not to do anything with the dealer. Too much information to give up. He doesn’t know how he’ll handle things from now on, yet he isn’t worried.
Henry Stern has come to believe in premonitions. He also appreciates that certain events have fallen into his lap; like the time he happened to show up just as Posner was leaving to drive to the Montauk Overlook. He feels such happenings are preordained and that Posner will at some point lead him to Heidi’s grave. He has already acknowledged to himself that she is gone and that Posner has killed her. Now he must watch the man like a hawk and wait for the mistake. This is why he again sits in his car a block away from Posner’s house.
It’s not the most comfortable place to wait, but he has nowhere else to go. He plans to sleep in his car and at about eleven that night he sees the lights go off in Posner’s house. He waits another fifteen minutes then gets out of his car to stretch. He walks aimlessly up the nearby driveway of an oversized modern house. He is about to turn back when he sees the garage door lock set vertically, in what is usually the open position. He tries it and it opens. He carefully rolls up the door and looks inside. The light from the gibbous moon is more than enough to illuminate a parked car. A white Chevy Malibu no less. A Chevy. Another omen. Not just a coincidence. He tries the connecting door between the garage and house and finds it open. He calls out without response. And then again. Still silence.
Inside the house is all whitewashed walls and bleached wooden floors. He passes through the kitchen and into a living room with empty leather armchairs and sofas.
“Abandoned for the season, are we?” The lack of vocal response confirms the obvious.
“Well not for long.”
The portents are too numerous. His mind works in overdrive and in less than ten minutes his blue Ford rental rests in the large garage alongside the Chevy while he stands at the window of an upstairs bedroom with a clear unfettered view of Posner’s house. He sets his watch alarm for six and falls asleep. That night he doesn’t dream.
CHAPTER 13
Peter Wisdom is about to call Posner to delay their meeting when he finds himself on the receiving end of Posner’s call. At first he thinks Posner might also want a delay, but that’s not the reason for the call. He seems agitated and raises a different issue.
“I am pretty sure someone’s following me. If it’s the police I want you to know your department’s way out of line to try something like that.”
Wisdom barely waits for Posner to finish before he denies it all.
“There is no one from our department following you. Believe me or check with Chief Ferris. There is no interest in following you. All we wanted to do was go over some of your earlier comments about the missing woman. In fact, I was just going to call you to reschedule.”
The last part is, of course, completely true and the denial of interest completely false. He’s used the same line before with potential suspects when he didn’t want to give them a heads-up.
“What makes you think someone’s following you?”
Posner hesitates, and then clears his throat. Just like that, Wisdom’s put him on the defensive.
“There’s this blue car. It’s been following me around for the last few days. I couldn’t see the driver, but I know it’s been following me.”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“Where was this?”
Posner hesitates. Maybe he shouldn’t be bringing this up at all. He’s about to say he isn’t sure, but he knows that sounds too evasive.
“It was on Montauk Highway. I was taking a short drive toward Montauk.”
“Where to?”
“Why is that important?”
“In case someone was following you for a reason. Like they expected you to lead themsomewhere.”
“Oh. I didn’t think of that.”
But of course that is exactly what Posner had thought about when he called Wisdom. And now things were getting messed up. Too much so. He holds the phone away and bites into the air to slow himself down.
> “You still there?” asks Wisdom, who wonders why Posner seems to be pulling back.
“Yes. Sorry. I was clearing my throat. Let’s see. I really wasn’t going anywhere special. Just out for a drive. I do that a lot.”
“So where did you first notice the car?”
“I think I saw it in my rearview mirror on the highway. Then when I got into the village and it came closer, I could see it was the same small blue car I’d seen hanging around my house the day before. I stopped and let it go past and I was sure of it.”
“Recognize the driver?”
“No. It went by too fast and I had just stopped.”
“Okay,” Wisdom sighs into the receiver and sips from a small bottle of Poland Springs.
“What can you tell me about the car? New? Size? Make? Whatever you remember.”
“It was small and blue. I think domestic. Kind of shiny so I guess it was new.”
“Anything else?”
“Sorry. That’s all I remember.”
Wisdom draws another breath.
“We’ll look into it. You can be sure. And if you see a police cruiser in your area, it’ll be one of ours just looking around for your friend. Now as long as you’re on the phone, I did want to postpone our meeting. Something came up on our side.”
“Till when?”
“Just for a few days. Let’s shoot for Friday. At about two. I’ll confirm in the morning. Is that okay?”
“It’s okay,” says Posner, but in the back of his mind, he still sees things building up too fast.
Events are closing in on him. Then he remembers that Sara will be out on Friday, and he won’t be alone, but Wisdom has already hung up.
Wisdom can’t hang up the phone fast enough before he calls Bennett, but all he can do is leave a message. He paces, squirms, and chews at a fingernail for twenty minutes until Bennett calls back. Another two minutes to update Bennett. Afterward there is only silence.
“You still there?”
“Yeah. Just looking for something that came in yesterday from NYPD.”