Delusion

by G. H. Ephron

  “These guys think so,” she said, indicating the pair of paramedics. “And they’ve had a lot of experience with people getting bashed in the head.”

  “And if the police can get him to admit that Ralston Bridges is responsible?”

  “Then party time’s over. We’ll petition to get his telephone and computer privileges taken away for a good long time.”

  That sounded fine to me.

  A few hours later, after the police had left, Annie and Mom and I stood in the garage. I surveyed the damage in harsh incandescent light. The roof had a couple of dents in it, and one of the front fenders had been dealt a few blows. The windshield and side window had been smashed. Ditto the head- and taillights. Stuffing and springs showed through slits in the leather. I gagged. It smelled as if cat urine had been sprinkled liberally about.

  “Could have been worse,” I said.

  “You’re taking this very calmly,” Annie said.

  “I knew what could happen. The point is, it worked. We caught the guy. The glass, the roof, the seats—it can all be fixed.” Insurance would cover some of it. I’d have to pay for the leather upholstery. I was a lot less sure about the smell. I hoped he hadn’t poured whatever stank into the radiator.

  My mother looked up into a corner of the garage. I followed her gaze. “Can we get rid of those awful surveillance cameras now?” she asked. “They’re making me paranoid.”

  “First thing Monday, I’ll call and get them to come and rip them out,” I told her. I blinked up at the camera. I hoped no one was staring back at me.

  24

  ANNIE SPENT the night. We made love, leisurely and without looking over my shoulder. Knowing Bridges was on the way to being neutralized, it felt as if a two-ton elephant had lifted off me.

  I fell into a sound sleep but found myself wide awake at four in the morning. In my dream, I’d been the camera’s eye in one of the masks hanging on the Babikians’ living room wall. From there I watched Gratzenberg and Lisa talking. Just as in the video footage I’d watched over Nick’s shoulder, Gratzenberg handed Lisa a black sweater. Then they hugged.

  Seemed likely that the sweater was the “something” that Jeff told me he’d brought Lisa at her home. Right before he said the shit hit the fan and Nick started disparaging his work. Not long before he was arrested. I sat up and hung my feet off the bed. There was something about the dream, something I couldn’t put my finger on, that was different from the actual video.

  “You awake?” Annie asked, her voice soft with sleep.

  “Just thinking,” I said.

  “’Bout what?” Annie reached out and stroked my bare back.

  I closed my eyes and savored her touch before answering. “Actually I was thinking about Jeff Gratzenberg.” I told her about the dream, about the surveillance data Nick had been scanning. About Nick’s odd behavior—how he’d chased me up the stairs, knocked over the pile of laundry.

  “This seems like stuff the police should know,” Annie pointed out. “About the CDs. Nick obsessing about Gratzenberg, who’s coincidentally disappeared.”

  “I keep thinking I should be putting something together that I’m not.”

  “You think Gratzenberg was seeing Lisa Babikian?” Annie asked.

  “When? Nick never let her out of his sight except when she went to see Dr. Teitlebaum.” I remembered the photograph of Lisa in Gratzenberg’s bedroom. “Though I have no doubt that Jeff was infatuated with her. I’m sure Nick thought it was more than that. He would.”

  I knew my mother was calling Mrs. Gratzenberg every few days and getting an update, urging her not to lose hope. Still, as each day passed, it was looking less and less likely that her son was off somewhere, immersed in a new job. Disappearing was like being in a coma—the longer it lasted, the less likely it was that the outcome would be a good one.

  First thing next morning I called Detective Boley. “I thought you folks might have overlooked the CD-ROMs Nick’s got in a storage cabinet in his home office. I’d have assumed they were music CDs if I hadn’t seen him load one into his PC.”

  There was silence on the line. Then Boley cleared his throat. “CDs,” he said.

  “There’s at least a hundred of them. He’s probably got data from every camera in the house. Who knows how far back it goes. I only saw a few minutes of one of them.”

  I could hear him breathing. I imagined him calculating the hours it would to take just to figure out which CDs were relevant. And none of it was likely to help him convict Teitlebaum.

  “I saw him running one that showed Jeff Gratzenberg returning a sweater to Lisa Babikian.”

  “Gratzenberg. That’s the kid I arrested who was up for breaking and entering.”

  “The one who’s been missing now for about a week,” I said.

  “You like to stir the pot, don’t you?” he said. “Well, for your information, we didn’t overlook them.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No. We checked them out. There’s nothing on them that’s relevant to the murder case.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling deflated.

  “But thanks for letting us know.”

  After he hung up, I stood there staring at the phone. I didn’t believe him. He wasn’t any more interested in examining the surveillance footage than he had been in DNA testing. But he’d happily gone after the duck boots, dug up Teitlebaum’s backyard. Selective laziness? Or something else?

  The next week got off to a busy start. We had a half dozen new patients on the unit—usually we get only two or three coming and going at a time. Gloria had jury duty, putting an extra strain on us all.

  The car was back in my garage, but I hadn’t had a chance to go in and inventory body damage, never mind start hammering out the dents. I’d had the car towed so the glass people could replace the car windows. Trolling the Web, I’d lucked out and found replacement headlight covers and taillights. And I’d found a place that removed the seats, promising to reupholster and reinstall them good as new. The thought of a new car with its readily replaceable parts was growing more appealing by the minute.

  Friday evening, Annie came over. She’d called earlier to say that she had news. Good news. When I opened the door she was holding a bottle of champagne.

  I kissed her and held her for a moment, burying my head in her neck. I loved the way Annie smelled.

  “What are we celebrating?” I asked.

  She gave me a mysterious smile and handed me the bottle. “Pour, then I’ll tell you.”

  We walked back to the kitchen. I undid the wire harness. It was a bottle of Piper Heidsieck. “Must be something worthy of a celebration,” I said as I eased the cork out of the bottle. At first it resisted, then began to slip. Finally, with a satisfying thock, it came free.

  I took two champagne flutes from the top shelf of the china cabinet, rinsed and dried them. Then I poured. Annie picked up her glass and sniffed at the bubbles. She raised her glass. “To court orders!” she said, waiting for me to raise mine.

  I stopped with my arm halfway up. “Bridges?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did the guy in my garage confess who put him up to it?”

  “No. He’s refusing to name anyone. But remember our friend Mr. Spatola? They were able to trace who hired him. You said it yourself. Follow the money.”

  It wasn’t quite the home run I’d been hoping for. I clinked my glass against Annie’s and drank.

  Annie went on. “Looks like Bridges was using the computer in the prison library to create the flyers, using the Internet to hire someone to post them. Then he used an electronic payment service to pay him. He won’t be able to do that anymore.”

  “Let’s hope,” I said. “I mean I’m relieved that he’s out of commission. But I’d be happier if I knew for sure he was the one who was responsible for defacing my dad’s grave. For breaking in. For my car …”

  “Speaking of which, how is the car?”

  “I got the glass replaced. And I’m getting new se
ats. I haven’t started hammering out the dings.”

  “Dings?”

  “Makes me feel better to call them that. Wanta see?”

  Annie stroked my jaw. “You bet.”

  She followed me outside. The streetlights had come on, though dusk hadn’t yet settled into night. On the porch, Annie scanned the shadowy overhang above the front door. “I had them remove the cameras,” I told her.

  “Glad to hear it,” she said. “Those things give me the willies.”

  “You and my mother.”

  We walked across the lawn to the garage. The hinges creaked as I pulled opened the heavy wooden doors. I turned on the light. The space smelled of car wax, cement dust, and gasoline, under a thin veneer of cat urine. The car looked worse than I remembered it. Now there were holes where the headlights and taillights had been. Annie ran her hand gently across the dented roof where it looked as if he’d brought the sledgehammer down more than once.

  “I’ll have to take out the head liner so I can work on the roof,” I told her, trying to sound like this wasn’t such a big deal.

  “Most of the stink seems to have departed with the seats,” she said, peering inside.

  “Yeah. But not all. I stripped out the carpet and I’m getting that replaced. Maybe over time …”

  “Looks like your nights will be occupied for a while,” Annie said.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” I said, coming up behind her and putting my arms around her waist. “You could help me. Isn’t car repair something you’ve always wanted to learn?”

  “Not,” Annie said. “I like car repair almost as much as I like rowing.”

  “I thought you liked rowing.”

  “Not.” Annie squinted up at the ceiling. “I thought you said you had the video cameras removed.”

  I followed her gaze. I shaded my eyes from the overhead light, trying to see into the gloom overhead. I thought I saw two tiny spots of yellow light, like the Seer’s eyes glowing from the shadows in Running Scared. In spite of myself I listened, half expecting to hear distant boot heels. Get a grip, I told myself.

  Sure enough, when I stepped closer the lights were gone. I could just make out a small black object mounted against the dark boards of the roof.

  “Argus came back two days ago to remove their video camera,” I said. “It was over there.” I pointed to the opposite end of the ceiling, alongside a bare lightbulb.

  “Could there have been two cameras in here, and they took only one out?”

  “I …” It had been daytime. I’d watched them do it. Could they have missed a second camera?

  “I don’t like it, Peter,” Annie said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  There was urgency in her voice. I welcomed it.

  As we rushed out into the night air, veering away from the open doors, I thought I heard a click. Then there was a flash. It wasn’t until I was on the ground with Annie under me that I registered the other sound. An ear-splitting explosion. I put my arms over my head to protect myself from the debris that rained down. I groaned as something sharp hit my back. Pieces of wood and roof shingles fell around us.

  It was odd lying there. Like watching a silent movie. Through air thick with smoke, I could see cars rolling by slowly, silently. A man on a bike pulled up and stopped. He took out his cell phone. I hoped he was calling 911. I strained to look around. It looked as if the garage roof had been lifted off and squashed back down. One of the doors hung on a single hinge, and smoke billowed out.

  Annie had wiggled out from under me. She was sitting up. Her mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear anything. I opened my mouth wide, put my fingers by my ears. “Hello hello hello,” I said. It sounded like I was calling to myself from across a wide canyon. “You okay?” I asked Annie, mouthing the words. She gave me a thumbs-up.

  As I raised up on my knees, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. I could barely hear myself say, “Shit. What the hell …” I held my hand to the spot. It came away bloody.

  Annie crawled over to me. She pulled my shirt away and probed gently. “Looks like you got hit by some glass,” she said, her mouth close to my ear. “Hang on.”

  Suddenly there was an even sharper pain. Then Annie was holding out an inches-long shard of glass, looking at it as if it were some fascinating laboratory specimen, and mouthing some words that because of the explosion and the pain I couldn’t make out.

  She bunched up the end of my shirt and pressed it against the wound. She held my hand in her other hand. I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them again, the hand in mine had turned old, the skin thin and spotted with age. I jerked my head around. My mother was alongside me. She was holding my shirt against my back, just as Annie had been doing. I wondered how long she’d been there. Her other hand pincered me in place as I strained to see where Annie had gone. Suddenly, I was cold. I could feel a glaze of sweat on my face.

  A crowd had formed on the sidewalk. There were lights flashing, and people backed away and watched a hook-and-ladder truck pull up, followed by police cars and an ambulance.

  A police officer was crouched beside me now. He was asking questions I couldn’t hear. Now my mother was talking to him.

  I wondered about my car but didn’t have the stomach to look at the garage again. Two paramedics loomed over me. In short order, one of them examined my wound, rolled me onto my side, took my blood pressure. The other one talked to my mother and took notes on a clipboard. I tried to protest. I didn’t want to go to the hospital. I’d be fine, I wanted to reassure them. But I found I couldn’t summon the words, or move my mouth to talk. I tried to raise up on my elbows, but my muscles wouldn’t work.

  One of the paramedics ripped away my shirt and began to dress the wound. I bit my lip and counted backward from a hundred. It wasn’t until I got to forty-three that he stopped probing and began taping.

  Soaked with sweat and shivering with cold by the time he was done, I watched the crowd watching the firemen scurry about. There was the guy who ran the convenience store at the corner. My next-door neighbor and his wife. Lots of strangers. And behind one of them, a shorter man with blond hair that flopped over his face. I felt a surge of electricity through my chest. Was it Ralston Bridges?

  As a police car pulled up, momentarily blocking my view, it felt as if the muffled whine of its siren was actually coming from deep inside my head. I tried to sit up, but my muscles still wouldn’t respond. When the cruiser passed, the blond guy was still there. Now I could see he had a bike and was wearing a backpack. He was just a twenty-something who happened to be shortish and blond. A stranger.

  SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB, the slogan floated back to me. Those had been the words on the T-shirt Jeff Gratzenberg had been wearing when I met him at his home. He said he had a collection of them. Where had I seen a black T-shirt with a similarly odd slogan?

  Then I remembered the laundry that had gotten knocked off the dryer in Nick Babikian’s kitchen, the pile he’d scrambled in front of me to grab. The garment on top had been a black T-shirt. It occurred to me that I’d never seen Nick Babikian wearing a T-shirt. He’d always dressed more accountant than nerd. Shirts with collars. On the other hand, T-shirts were Gratzenberg’s everyday uniform.

  There had been white lettering on the shirt. I’d seen only part of it. ARE BELONG TO US. Gratzenberg had said he had a whole collection of T-shirts with mangled translations from some old computer game. “ZeroWing,” I whispered, the name coming from nowhere.

  I closed my eyes. I saw Jeffrey Gratzenberg handing Lisa a white sweater. Or was it a black one? No, the black one had been in my dream. That’s what had been nagging at me, the detail that wasn’t right.

  I wondered, was that the T-shirt Gratzenberg wore to apply for his “new job”? Did he find his old enemy, Nick, waiting for him instead of a prospective employer? Why take the shirt? A trophy? And then, why launder it? Maybe to keep the police from identifying the body if it was found.

  If Nick h
ad just left the laundry there in a mound on the floor, I never would have noticed. It was picking it up that drew my attention. Typical paranoid—ends up fulfilling his own worst fear.

  A firefighter was using a huge wrench to open a fire hydrant, one I’d cursed for years because it grew out of the sidewalk in front of the house exactly where I wanted to park. He hooked up the hose. In the shadows behind him was a dark figure with a cap pulled over his eyes. The loose-limbed stance reminded me of Nick Babikian.

  It had to have been Nick who’d “set up us” this bomb. Who’d known all about video surveillance cameras. Who’d planted a bomb along with a camera after Argus removed theirs, then watched, waited until I was in the garage to detonate it. The fact that he didn’t hesitate to push the button with Annie and me in the garage was an indication of how desperate he’d gotten. If it had worked and I’d been killed, the attack might have looked to the world like a last gasp from Ralston Bridges.

  But it hadn’t worked. And Nick Babikian, never one to trust anything to chance, had stopped by to see for himself. For the capped figure was still there, and I knew it was him. Still watching. I wanted to sit, to push back the fog. I struggled to sit up but strong hands pushed me down.

  Now the paramedics were rolling me over on my back and hoisting me up onto a gurney. My mother was a few feet away, her eyes tense with concern. The gurney swung around and headed for one of the ambulances. I was starting to hear voices more clearly. “We’re on our way,” said the paramedic hovering over me. “Possible internal bleeding. Shock, puncture wound.”

  Nick wouldn’t stop now. I had to get him. The open doors of the ambulance loomed. Shut inside there was the last place I wanted to be. I tried to tense my leg muscles, flex my knees. The paramedic who’d been holding me down yelled something to his partner and reached inside the ambulance.

  There was a crash as the roof of the garage fell in. I could picture my car, transformed now into a blackened, smoking husk. It meant nothing to me. It was just a possession. In the scheme of things, it mattered not at all.