Delusion

by G. H. Ephron

  “Lisa?” Mrs. Babikian said. Her eyes widened. She looked down at Carole. “But Lisa’s right here.” She placed her thin hand on Carole’s head and smiled. Then her brow clouded. “But she shouldn’t be right here. She couldn’t be …” Mrs. Babikian looked down at the wad of paper towel Carole held, now saturated with the tomato juice. Her mouth fell open. She rose to her feet, touched her hand to her chest, and started to scream. “Lee-ssa! Lee-ssa!” She screamed the name over and over, staring at the red toweling.

  An orderly appeared in the open door, and Mrs. Babikian’s screaming intensified. Now the words were indecipherable gibberish, rich with guttural sounds—perhaps another language— settling into a muttered “Brrgrr, brrgrr, brrgrr,” as she shook her head from side to side. I snatched the paper towels away from Carole and reached over and stuffed them into the garbage can.

  When I turned back, Mrs. Babikian had closed one hand over Carole’s forearm. With her other hand, she stroked Carole’s hair. Recognizable words started to emerge.

  “Erzurum,” she said. Her fingers were like talons grasping Carole’s arm. “My family came from Erzurum.” Her tone was urgent, like this was something Carole had to understand.

  Carole looked up at her and smiled.

  “The Turks came to the house,” Mrs. Babikian went on, her voice now a singsong. Her face had turned calm. Wrinkles seemed to smooth themselves away and a decade of age dropped away as she spoke. “Soldiers’ empty eyes. Their faces were masks. Took my mother. Tied them together with ropes. It was snowing.” She smiled, almost as if this were a bedtime story she was telling to a child. “The mothers. They couldn’t carry their babies. So they left them, the babies, crawling all over the sides. Crying and crawling all over the dirt road.” Her hand loosened its grip on Carole and dropped to her side “They walked and walked. The River Euphrates was red with blood. Clothing floating in the water. Corpses. Bound together. The river was red with Armenian blood.” Mrs. Babikian’s voice grew raspy, as if the words hurt to say. “My mother drank. What could she do? She had to quench her thirst.”

  Carole jerked her head toward the door, indicating that I should go.

  I stood in the hall and listened. I could barely hear Mrs. Babikian’s voice, now quiet, like she was crooning a lullaby. “They walked for days …”

  Then I heard Carole’s soothing voice. And finally, silence.

  Then, “Home.” A moment later, “Where’s Nicky?”

  11

  ANNIE MET me in front of the MIT Boathouse late Saturday afternoon. The grass and pathway between Memorial Drive and the river were teeming with people. Skaters and bicyclists were zooming around joggers and stroller-pushing couples. Annie was waiting, talking to a pair of bladers. With their shoulder-to-knee matte black Lycra, streamlined silver helmets, and seriously padded joints, they looked like something out of Mad Max.

  Annie waved when she saw me approaching. The couple took off, muscles pulsing.

  “Hey, you,” I said. I was trying for nonchalant, but the residue from the last time we were together made me feel awkward, off-center.

  “Hey, yourself,” Annie said.

  I wrapped my arms around her and felt the tension flow out of my back and shoulders as anxiety released itself. I inhaled and filled myself with Annie’s sweetness. I resisted the urge to run my hands all the way up and down her backside.

  Annie pivoted to face the river. It was a gorgeous day. Two-person sailboats glided past, while motorboats—like the bladers on the shore—slalomed around them.

  “It’s a good thing we’re just using the tank,” I said. “We’d be getting waked every two minutes. You want tranquility when you row.”

  “What I want when I row,” she said, pulling away from me and looking longingly at the skaters streaking past, “is dry land. No problem blading today.”

  For me, the pleasure of rowing was on a par with a Turley Zin or a Toscanini’s French vanilla. I’d dreamed of being out on the river at dusk with Annie, slicing through the water, our bodies synchronized perfectly. I was convinced once I got her out there, she’d be hooked too.

  “You getting cold feet?” I asked.

  “Moi?” Annie asked. “No way.” She gave the boathouse a sideways glance. Built in the sixties, it resembled a packing crate someone dropped into the river. “Though you know, I really don’t like boats.”

  This wasn’t news. “You won’t be in a boat. And the water’s only four feet deep,” I said, using my best coaxing bedside manner.

  Annie didn’t seem impressed. “After all the unpleasant things that have happened to you in boathouses, I’m surprised you still row.”

  The last time she and I had been together at a boathouse, I’d just had my boat destroyed, and MacRae and I got into a pissing contest. He’d ended up in the Charles and I’d ended up facedown in duck shit. I’d say it was a draw.

  “That was at the old BU Boathouse. It’s been torn down.” With its hundred-year-old rotting timbers, the old Boston University Boathouse had looked like a condemned hunting lodge.

  I propelled Annie across the gangplank and inside. The boathouse was nearly empty. A pair of young women, probably varsity rowers, were working out with free weights. An older man, lean, with thinning gray hair, was hard at work at the rowing machine, the ergonometer—the erg, for short. I had no doubt this instrument of torture had earned the nickname because of the sound you can’t help making while using it.

  Erging requires great strength and endurance but very little skill. I can’t stand the thing. My mind goes numb and my brain starts screaming Get me out of here when I reach the four-minute mark. I’d rather be out all afternoon on the river in a cold rain than spend thirty seconds on the erg.

  The man slowed and stopped. Then he checked his watch and took his pulse. His black sleeveless sweatshirt had an inkblot of sweat going up and down his spinal column. I wondered if he competed in the CRASH-Bs, Charles River All Star Has-Beens, the olympiad for indoor rowers held every winter for years when more than a thousand rowers from all over the world packed into MIT’s Rockwell Cage.

  In the grand tradition of irreverent MIT, CRASH-B winners get hammers instead of medals. A “hammer” is what they call an oarsman who’s long on power but short on finesse.

  I went downstairs to get some oars. The massive doors, which would have been flung open to the river on any weekday, were shut. When I came back up, Annie was gazing into the long, narrow room that held a tank that was a bit longer than a racing eight. The two outside walls were mirrored to the halfway point. Above that, horizontal windows stretched across.

  The tank itself was divided the long way down the middle by a two-foot-wide concrete divider. Eight fiberglass seats slid on rails that were bolted to the top of the divider, with a pair of oarlocks flanking each one.

  “Pee-yew,” Annie said.

  I’d gotten used to the smell. The three S’s: sewage, seawater, and sweat. “It’ll grow on you,” I told her.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Annie approached the edge of the tank and peered in. It was the way my mother approached something in the refrigerator that’s turned green.

  “You’re not going to fall in,” I told her.

  “I know what I was going to tell you …” Annie started.

  “You’re stalling.”

  Annie grinned at me. “Maybe. But you’re going to want to hear this.” Her look turned serious. “Autopsy results.”

  I set the oars against the wall.

  “Lisa Babikian died of massive head trauma. Multiple blows. After she was killed, she was cut open and thrown into the swimming pool. They’re unclear on the time of death. The pool was heated.” No surprise, so far. I waited. “She was pregnant.”

  “Christ.” I sighed and shook my head. Teitlebaum said she’d been looking radiant. Had gained some weight. “How far along was she?”

  “They can’t tell. Best guess is seven to twelve weeks.”

  “Why can’t they be more pre
cise?”

  “There wasn’t any fetus. No uterus. Whoever butchered her took part of her away.”

  I leaned against the wall. I felt a heavy weight on my chest as I thought about the young woman who’d bled out into the pool and the new life that had been torn from her.

  “Hey,” Annie said, giving my arm a squeeze. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put it so crudely. You okay?”

  I nodded, unable to speak. Finally I said, “Nick told me his wife didn’t want children.”

  “Women have been known to change their minds on that particular topic,” Annie observed.

  Teitlebaum had said the couple’s sex life had become dysfunctional. How dysfunctional, I wondered, and for how long? Could Nick be the baby’s father, and so what if he was? Did it make it any harder to murder your wife if she was carrying your child?

  “How was your visit to his mother? Useful?” Annie asked.

  “Marginally. That’s par for the course with dementia. It’s hard to attribute actions to particular thoughts. But she seems to have been fond of her daughter-in-law. And I’ll bet she saw something. She got very upset when the nurse mopped up a tomato-juice spill with some paper towels. Could be she associated that with the blood at the murder scene. And I think there were bloodstains on the hem of her bathrobe. But we already know she was there. As a witness, however, she’s useless to either side.”

  “I’m hoping you’re going to tell me you don’t think Nick Babikian did it,” Annie said. “I’m not too thrilled about working for a guy who’d do this to his wife.”

  Test results plus my own observations usually provide clarity. But in this case, I didn’t trust either. Was I getting good data, or just Nick’s vigilance reflected back at me? I even distrusted the empathy I felt for the guy. Was I responding to something genuine, or to my own countertransference since I’d lost my wife too?

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “He’s smart. Very smart. The tests confirm, more or less, what you’d suspect just from knowing about the masks and the surveillance cameras in the home. Paranoia. Problem is, paranoids are very hard to test because they’re so very guarded and suspicious. They let out only what they want to let out. I don’t feel like I’m getting a complete picture. I wish I could talk to someone who knows Nick, who’s interacted with him on a daily basis.”

  “Chip knew him, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t think he and Chip were that close,” I said. “Someone who worked with Nick would be ideal. He would have had to let his guard down eventually.”

  “I tried talking to a couple of his employees,” Annie said. “They’re closemouthed.”

  “Probably afraid of losing their jobs.”

  “What about that former employee of Nick’s who broke into his office?” Annie suggested. “He worked for Nick for four years. You’ll just have to take what he says with a grain of salt. He’s probably more than a little angry at Nick.”

  “Sounds perfect, if he’ll talk to me.”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “Has Chip told Nick about the autopsy results yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’d like to be there with him when he does. I’m curious to see how he reacts.”

  “I’ll let Chip know.” When Annie concentrated, her eyebrows came together and her nose wrinkled up. “What else …” Her eyes widened. “What about getting a look at one of his computer games?”

  Of course. Many people left the imprint of their character on their work. The paintings of Edvard Munch and the writings of Sylvia Plath were indelibly marked by their disturbing obsession with alienation. Maybe the narrative and the visual images in the computer games would shed some light on Nick’s inner self.

  “You’re brilliant,” I told Annie, giving her a hug.

  “And you’re knock-down-dead gorgeous,” Annie shot back at me.

  I doubled over, cracking up.

  When I recovered, Annie was poised to step onto the wall that divided the tank. “God, it stinks in here. Can we get this over with already?”

  “Sit in the third seat,” I told her.

  She picked her way around the other seats. I took a pair of oars, went to the opposite end of the tank, and walked across to meet her.

  “Put your feet here,” I said, indicating slots in the foot stretcher, “and I’ll fasten them in.”

  I set the oars across the tank and Velcroed Annie’s feet in place. I resisted the urge to caress her calves and ankles, to run my hands along the shiny Lycra that clung to her thighs like a second skin.

  “No shackles? Locks?”

  “Stop complaining. At least you don’t have to learn how to fall down, like I did.”

  I fastened the oars in place and coached Annie through a few strokes from the catch, the legs working first, pushing out, sliding the seat backward on the rails. Then the upper body engaging. Then the layback as the arms pull in completely to the finish. Finally the recovery, where you pull the oar out of the water and slide back into position for the next stroke.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Annie admitted.

  “You sure you haven’t done this before?”

  “I told you. Just a dinghy when I was a kid. Which was nothing like this.”

  “I thought you said you hate boats.”

  “A dinghy isn’t a boat. And I was in three feet of water in a fishpond. Damn near killed all the goldfish.”

  I opened the gates at the ends of the tank. It wasn’t much of a flow, but the steady current made stroking a lot more challenging than still water.

  I went back and crouched in front of Annie, watching her stroke. She was a natural. “It’s a great full-body workout, but especially for the legs and quads. Not that there’s anything wrong with your legs and quads.” I put a hand on each of her thighs. I’d never thought of the tank as a place for a sexual fantasy, but my mind was coming up with some interesting possibilities.

  Later, we sat on a bench along the river and watched the sun set. “Way cool,” Annie said, pointing across the river to the Hancock Tower. The gouge running vertically down the near side of the skyscraper was catching the setting sun, so there was a single strip of fiery light in the dark mirrored surface. The effect was startling.

  “You getting any more calls?” I asked.

  Annie didn’t answer.

  “Shit. You are, aren’t you?”

  “I’m going to catch him. I’ve got every cop from here to Arlington checking the bars.” Annie took my hand. “Which reminds me, why don’t you let Mac find out about Bridges for you. If he was at Bridgewater—”

  “So what if he was there?” I said. “I could drive myself crazy obsessing. It’s time to move on.” I looked around warily. A car horn blasted behind us on Mem Drive at the same time that a motorcycle backfired. There are so many trees along the river, so many places where people could watch from without being seen. It was as easy as adjusting the color on a TV, turning the world from benign to treacherous. “If I let it get to me, then I’d just be doing what he wants me to.”

  12

  SUNDAY MORNING I met Chip at Bridgewater. When we were inside, Chip conferred with the guard, who fortunately didn’t seem to recognize me. We went to the examining room. I put my chair where I could keep an eye on the door.

  When Nick arrived and saw us both waiting for him, he stopped short, but he didn’t ask why we were there.

  Before he sat, he asked me, “How’s my mother? I call but there’s no phone in her room.”

  “She’s in a good place,” I said. “Westbrook Farms is tops. And she’s made a good connection with one of the nurses there.”

  He sat down opposite us. His eyes scanned the room. If anything, his stay in prison seemed to have had a palliative effect. His movements were more fluid, and he wasn’t radiating agitation. “She say anything, about the … about what happened?”

  “She wanted to find you to give you milk and cookies.”

  Nick chuckled. “That’s Mom.”

  “A
nd she asked about Lisa. I had the impression she knew something bad had happened to her.”

  Nick’s gaze sharpened, but he didn’t say anything. He seemed to be straining to hold himself steady. I reminded myself that innocent or guilty, he still wouldn’t want his mother constantly reliving what she might have seen.

  “Considering how very difficult it is for Alzheimer’s patients to adjust to new environments, I’d say she’s doing well,” I told him. “And it’s not uncommon for them to get stuck in the past. Their older memories are still there. For the most part, they don’t take in new memories, unless it’s something that’s emotionally charged.”

  “Do you think she—?” Nick started.

  “She got very upset about a tomato-juice spill. That suggests she remembers something. And the hem of her robe looked like it was stained with blood.”

  Nick’s eyes slid away from me. “So they’re taking good care of her.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “They taking good care of you?” Chip asked.

  Nick shrugged. “The guards. They’ve been watching me. Through the video cameras.” His eyes darted from one corner of the ceiling to another. I wondered what he was talking about. I didn’t think they were allowed to videotape prisoners in their rooms. Still, this didn’t seem as bizarre as it might have a few weeks ago. It wasn’t so many days ago that I’d lain in my own bed and wondered if I was being spied on.

  Nick sat up, as if he suddenly remembered where he was, who we were, and that there were two of us. “What is it?”

  “Autopsy results,” Chip said.

  Nick slouched in the seat, like a fighter protecting his vulnerable spots.

  “Your wife was killed by blows to the head,” Chip told him. I was watching Nick to see how he’d react. So far, nothing. “Then she was eviscerated. The killer removed the baby she was carrying.”

  Nick’s eyes widened and he went pale. “She was pregnant?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  He stared at his hands gripped together on the tabletop. “Find the father,” he said through clenched teeth. “That’s who did it.”