The Worst Thing
Page 26
“I don’t doubt it. But it wasn’t your kidnapping they were talking about, and not your ransom.”
“This is supposed to be an explanation?”
“I don’t seem to be doing a very good job of it, do I? All right, read this.”
She undid the clips on her old-fashioned patent-leather clasp purse, took out a folded sheet of paper, and spread it open. On it was a poorly photocopied article from a newspaper or a magazine. “This is from Hürriyet, the English-language Istanbul newspaper. November 18, 1978. Read it.”
I was apprehensive. Wherever this was going, I didn’t like it “Do I really want to?”
“Read.”
I took it from her and smoothed it out on the table.
ANOTHER ISTANBUL KIDNAPPING
November 18. The young American son of a Driscoll Construction Enterprises manager was abducted yesterday afternoon from a children’s playground near the Pera Palace. Witnesses say the seven-year-old was—
“They’ve already got it wrong,” I sneered. “I was five.” Don’t ask me what point I was trying to make.
“Keep reading,” Zeta said placidly.
—was abducted by four armed men and taken away in a gray Skoda sedan. Yavuz Cahit, a private Driscoll security guard, was shot three times as he tried to prevent the crime. As of this morning, he was in the intensive care ward at Taksim Ilk Yardim Emergency Hospital, in serious but stable condition. The boy’s younger brother, a five-year-old, was shot in the foot during the melee. He was treated at the hospital and released this morning. No word has yet been heard from the kidnappers. Police are pursuing several leads.
“No,” I said. “They’ve gotten everything mixed up. Nobody got shot in the foot. And I did get kidnapped. Richard was the one they left behind in the playground.”
She was slowly shaking her head. “No, Bryan. This is the way it was. I had the police in Istanbul check their records. It was your brother, Richard, who was kidnapped.”
“But . . . but it’s so clear in my mind . . . being put in the truck with a load of manure . . . living in that miserable dungeon . . . being beaten when I . . .”
The gray head continued to rock back and forth, wise and kindly. “No. What you remember is your parents talking about it. You assumed they were talking about you.”
“No! Come on, Zeta. That’s—hey, what about my little toe? Did I assume I didn’t have it anymore?”
“No, you were shot in the foot during Richard’s kidnapping,” she said patiently, using her forefinger to tap the relevant place in the article.
“But . . .” It took me a moment to get my thoughts in order. “Look, there’s a big difference here. This is nothing like that experiment. In that one, somebody explicitly made up a story to fool the kid with. His own relative told him it really happened. Well, surely nobody ever told me any made-up story about—”
“No, you made it up yourself. Look, those months during and after the kidnapping were a time of terrific stress for you and your family. Kids’ antennae are very receptive to that kind of thing. You would have sensed the tension, felt the discord, known something was very wrong. You’d have heard the whispers: dribs and drabs about kidnappers, ransom, captivity. It was all beyond your six-year-old grasp, so your mind filled in the gaps for you to make it comprehensible.”
I considered this. And rejected it. “Aw, no—”
“Bryan, according to the police records from 1978, the ransom—for Richard, not you—was asked for and was eventually paid. No toes were involved.”
I was massaging my temples, trying to get my head around this. I still couldn’t believe it. “But I’m telling you, I can see it all right now, as clearly as I can see you. It’s not some vague, dreamlike recollection, it’s been burned into my mind. I can see those black hoods they wore, I can see—”
“Yes, just as Chris could see the blue flannel shirt and the glasses of the man who never was. No, Bryan, you were never kidnapped. It didn’t happen.”
“But—”
“And your brother, Richard, didn’t die of polio. He never fully recovered from his imprisonment. He never even came home. He died in the hospital, two months after he was released.”
“But I remember the polio epidemic—”
“There was a polio outbreak in Istanbul in 1978, yes, and you used it fill in one more gap. The hospital records show his cause of death as—and I quote: ‘multiple respiratory and digestive infections and inflammations resulting from weakened immune system due to his two-month captivity in harsh circumstances.’ I have the death report in my office. I’ll give it to you.”
Well, I couldn’t see how I could argue with that, or with the police report. Reluctantly, I was coming around to believing her. (Odd, that one should be so unwilling to let go of the most terrible experience of one’s life.) “Wow,” I said softly. I had my cup in my hand, but I’d forgotten it was there.
Zeta was peering at me with a mix of personal and professional interest. “What’s worrying you, Bryan? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking about Lori, actually, about what she’s going to say when I tell her that all those panic attacks I woke her up with over all those years, all those stupid phobias that have narrowed her life as much as mine, all those trips we didn’t go on because of me . . . it was all because of something that never happened—something I made up. That’s what’s worrying me. I mean . . . what’s she going to say?”
She considered the question. “I’d be worried too,” she said.
LORI was, if anything, more confounded than I was, but she took it better, and by the time I finished talking and we finished hugging, she was laughing.
“It was bad enough we could never go anywhere together because of what happened to you, and now I find out it never even happened? You owe me big-time, lover! World, here we come—Paris, London, Tokyo . . .”
Other titles by Aaron Elkins
Gideon Oliver Novels
SKULL DUGGERY*
UNEASY RELATIONS*
LITTLE TINY TEETH*
UNNATURAL SELECTION*
WHERE THERE’S A WILL*
GOOD BLOOD*
SKELETON DANCE
TWENTY BLUE DEVILS
DEAD MEN’S HEARTS
MAKE NO BONES
ICY CLUTCHES
CURSES!
OLD BONES*
MURDER IN THE QUEEN’S ARMES*
THE DARK PLACE*
FELLOWSHIP OF FEAR*
Chris Norgren Novels
OLD SCORES
A GLANCING LIGHT
DECEPTIVE CLARITY
Lee Ofsted Novels (with Charlotte Elkins)
ON THE FRINGE
WHERE HAVE ALL THE BIRDIES GONE?
NASTY BREAKS
ROTTEN LIES
A WICKED SLICE
Thrillers
TURNCOAT
LOOT
THE WORST THING*
*Available from Berkley Prime Crime