Requiem for Ashes

by David Crossman

  He handed the paper back to the inspector.

  "Your house," Naples said, pushing Albert's hand aside.

  "Why?"

  "Because I think we'll find Tewksbury there, Professor. That's why."

  "I don't think he's there," said Albert. "He doesn't have a key."

  "And if he's not there," continued the Inspector, "maybe he has been. And . . . maybe he left his calling cards."

  "Calling cards?"

  Naples rubbed his fingertips. "Fingerprints, Professor."

  "But . . . he was there," Albert stammered. "I mean, before. He visited. I told you."

  "Fingerprints are like fruit, Professor. New ones are fresh, old ones are stale."

  "Fresh?"

  "As a morning in Paris," said the inspector. He stood up and began unbuttoning his overcoat. "By the way . . . I meant to ask you about the burn on your face and . . . "

  The inspector's words froze on his tongue as Jeremy Ash screamed in pain, pushing himself up on his elbows, arching his torso and tossing his head back. Naples backed toward the door where he was temporarily stranded by the inrushing tide of nurses and orderlies. He mumbled something Albert didn't hear and left.

  The screaming continued long after Naples had gone. Albert smiled. It was a masterful performance. But enough was enough.

  More doctors and nurses came and went and there was a lot of noise and people yelling at each other. Finally one of the doctors said, "We're losing him!"

  As the truth dawned on Albert, it tore the bottom out of his stomach. Something told him to pray. He did.

  For the next two days the musical patient brought food to the historical prisoner at irregular intervals. Tewksbury was much improved. He'd removed his own stitches at the appropriate time and was full of praise for Albert's criminal ingenuity. Though the future was still bleak, he was over the despondency that had led to his suicide attempt and was ready to fight. He was much heartened, too, to hear that Miss Bjork doubted his guilt and had actively undertaken the job of proving his innocence.

  Albert didn't say anything about Terry Alter. That wasn't good news.

  On the morning of the third day after Tewksbury's escape, Albert had just finished his breakfast when Dr. Williams came in.

  "Professor, glad to see you're awake." Albert's quizzical expression prompted him to continue. "I popped in last night . . . you were asleep."

  "Oh."

  "Well, today's the day, then!" Williams found some bacon between his teeth and was crunching at it thoughtlessly with his incisors. "Let's have a look."

  The doctor removed Albert's bandages. "Ah," he said to himself over his glasses. He conducted all his business over his glasses. Albert wondered why he wore them. Without glasses Albert's world was a blur. "Beautiful seam. I should've been a tailor." He dropped the bandage in a pile on the table. A nurse appeared beside him in response to some telepathic communication only nurses understood.

  The doctor held out his hand and the nurse slapped an odd-looking pair of scissors into it. "Let's just see if we can keep most of the gray matter in." He proceeded to pluck the tiny spiders of black thread from Albert's itching scalp. "Eighteen in, eighteen out!" he said, clapping his hands to his knees and rolling back on his haunches to survey his handiwork. "I'm getting better!"

  "And hardly any leaks this time," said the nurse without cracking a smile. The possibility had never occurred to Albert. He was reassured. The nurse gathered up the remains of the operation and padded away in soft-soled white shoes.

  "I expect you'll be wanting to go home today," said Williams.

  Albert's mind suddenly began to race with the implications of the statement. What about Tewksbury? What about Jeremy Ash?

  "What about Jeremy Ash?"

  "Who? Oh, the boy." He lowered his eyes and shook his head. "He's in intensive care." Thoughtful pause. The eyebrows contract. "What he's been through, Professor, I don't know. He's got half a dozen ailments: hepatitis, kidney failure, not to mention the obvious." He slapped his knees. "God only knows what's going on inside." Pause. "Remarkable. I can't imagine where he gets the will to live."

  "What happened?" Albert asked softly.

  "Ah, so you're not a mind reader today?"

  It was Albert's turn to lower his eyes.

  "Sorry," Williams said. "His leg, you mean?"

  Albert looked at the doctor.

  "I'm talking out of school, I suppose, but," Williams stood up, pulled the chair within whispering distance, and sat down, "the boy's been abused most of his life. You see how small he is. How frail. As I understand, his mother and father were divorced. Mother had a drug problem, so the father got custody. This was some time ago. Jeremy would've been two or three.

  "Anyway, his father remarried, and was killed in a car wreck – no motorcycle. Whatever. So, here's Jeremy left with a stepmother who'd've scared the bejeebers out of the Brothers Grimm. Kept him locked in his room, most of the time, according to the police report.

  "Then a boyfriend moved in. So there he was with two stepparents . . . adoption by default and both of a mind in matters of childrearing.

  "He'd watch TV. That was his only contact with the outside world. His only education. It's amazing he's not demented as well.

  "Anyway, he took their abuse all those years . . . then it seems the stepparents took a long weekend in Atlantic City. Dead of winter. There was a power outage . . . the heat went off. Two days later neighbors heard the cries . . . his leg had been wounded, frostbite set in. To this day he won't talk about it."

  Albert took off his glasses. He didn't want to see the picture that had just been etched on his brain. A solitary tear played hide-and-seek from whisker to whisker down his cheek. The doctor passed him a Kleenex and used one himself.

  "That's how he lost it," Williams continued. "Worst case of gangrene I ever saw." There was a few seconds' silence. "He's been here for . . . fourteen, fifteen months now. One thing after another. A day at a time. Just when it seems he's over the worst . . . well, you saw."

  Albert was speechless.

  "You can see everyone here thinks the world of the boy. There's none of us couldn't learn a lot from him. When we get someone feeling oversorry for themselves, we bunk 'em with Jeremy a few nights." The doctor shook his head. "I'm not a religious man, Professor. Well . . . maybe I'm not as irreligious as I once was, but, I swear . . . if there's such a thing as angels, that boy's one of 'em."

  For a few minutes the two men shared the sympathy of silence.

  Albert spoke first. "There's a lot of pain out there."

  "Speaking of which," the doctor replied, "did you ever get to see your lady friend the one who . . . " He tapped his temple.

  "No. Jeremy Ash said she never came back after I was conscious. I've seen the other one, though. Miss Bjork."

  "Miss Bjork? Oh. The lawyer? Yes. I've spoken to her . . . in the halls." The doctor stood up with his customary slap of the knees. "Much too pretty for a lawyer," he said. "If I were you . . . well, I'm not, am I? Good day, Maestro. P'raps I'll see you before you go." He was about to leave the room when, once again, Albert stopped him in the doorway.

  Williams turned. Albert held out his hand, which the Doctor shook warmly, and left.

  Albert wanted his piano.

  Chapter Ten

  “I didn't get to see Alter till yesterday afternoon," said Miss Bjork. The phone had rung just as Albert was stuffing the last of his possessions into a paper bag. He'd been wondering what to do with Tewksbury. The sudden beeping of the phone jolted his heart; there was something accusatory about it.

  "How well do you know him?"

  "Not very," said Albert. His hands were acting independent of his brain, loading the bag with the hospital jetsam that had washed up around his bed: a box of tissues, a glass, a washcloth.

  "He teaches biology and . . . what I told you. That's all."

  The bedpan wouldn't fit in the bag. He'd have to carry it in his free hand.

  "He's a very
nice man," said Miss Bjork. "I can't remember when I last said that about anyone, but . . . he's so nice. Quiet. Well mannered. A gentleman."

  In the pause that followed, Albert caught himself cramming the phone base into the bag. What was he supposed to do with Tewksbury? Where was Jeremy Ash?

  "I couldn't imagine him drunk in the streets, let alone . . . until I thought how a man like that would be affected by the news about his daughter." Miss Bjork sighed. "You never know."

  "You never know." For some reason the words struck a chord in Albert, drawing him out of his worries for the moment, crystallizing a resounding, universal truth in their ringing simplicity.

  He had found a credo: You Never Know. "You never know," echoed Albert, who never did.

  "He knew who I was," Miss Bjork continued. "And he knew why I wanted to talk to him. He said he was surprised the police didn't question him after the murder. Then, well, it was as if somebody pulled a plug. He just spilled the whole story."

  Albert stopped packing and sat on the bed. He didn't know what to do with the sheets.

  "It turns out he'd been having a kind of affair with Mrs. Glenly." Albert sat bolt upright.

  "Kind of affair?"

  "Well, for lack of a better word. Apparently it was platonic. There was nothing physical."

  Albert felt his cheeks flush.

  "He was sorry for her. She was so much younger than Glenly, you know. Very morose most of the time. Depressed. She was Glenly's second wife. You know that, of course. She was just six or seven years older than his daughter. Anyway . . . Glenly treated her terribly, according to Alter. He didn't beat her or anything. But he was verbally abusive. Mentally and emotionally abusive."

  Albert was reminded of what Miss Moodie and Professor Lane had said about the games Glenly would play. "I've heard that.”

  "Well," Miss Bjork continued, "a relationship developed between them . . . Alter and Mrs. Glenly, sort of a fellowship of sadness. Alter's wife had died about a year earlier. Maybe a year and a half. They consoled each other, you know? Then there was an academic conference of some kind."

  Albert cringed. The school had made him attend a conference once. One of his recurring fears was that it would do so again.

  The hospital was preferable. So was jail. Or outright execution.

  "Glenly was drunk; monopolizing conversation, as usual." Beat. Breath. Sigh. "Mrs. Glenly had gone up to their room early. She couldn't go to sleep apparently. So she went down the hall in her dressing gown and knocked on Alter's door. Unfortunately he was there."

  "Unfortunately?"

  "They talked for a while and eventually she invited him back to her room for a drink. Glenly walked in on them. Aside from the obvious stupidity and impropriety, they hadn't done anything, according to Alter. He says they were just talking. But there they were, she in her pajamas . . . sitting on her bed . . . and Glenly was three sheets to the wind. He started yelling at the top of his lungs, calling his wife names. And Alter punched him in the mouth.

  "Alter said Glenly just stood there for a minute, letting the blood run from his lip. Finally he held out his hand to Mrs. Glenly and pulled her to his side. Then he ordered Alter to leave the room. He wouldn't listen to any explanation. As Alter walked down the hall, Glenly yelled at him. Told him he'd get even."

  There were traffic jams at the synapses in Albert's brain. Too many notes. He couldn't make out the music for the noise. Sometimes he thought he heard the faint strains of a melody . . . just enough to know it was there not enough to make it out.

  "That's where Alter's daughter comes in."

  All at once the noise resolved into a single, astounding crescendo of clarity.

  "Glenly got her pregnant!That's how he paid Alter back."

  "It makes sense," said Miss Bjork. "And that happened a long time after the threat. Says something about the kind of man Glenly was." Even over the phone Albert could hear her skin crawl. "So, it all comes together. That's what Alter was yelling about outside Glenly's house that night."

  In the static-filled silence that followed, Albert could hear faint voices on the line. He wondered what they were saying. He wondered if it was important. "What did he do?"

  "Nothing, he says," Miss Bjork replied. "And everything about him screams innocence. I mean, the guy's Father Theresa. Still, I've seen people driven to pretty desperate extremes. You never know what someone's capable of until . . . "

  "You never know." There were those words again. They rushed through Albert's overheated brain like little lights. "You never know," he echoed,sotto voce.

  "I take it they haven't found him yet," said Miss Bjork.

  "What?"

  "I take it they haven't found Tewksbury yet."

  "No. They haven't found him, yet," Albert replied carefully. It was a good time to change the subject. "I'm going home today," he said. "The doctor said I could."

  "Oh, good, Albert . . . Professor . . . I'm glad," she said. "I'm sure it'll be good to get back to a normal routine. I'll come by and visit when I get back to town."

  "You're not in town?"

  "No. I'm in Brattleboro, Vermont, didn't I say? This is where Joanne Alter lives. With her aunt. I had to do some research on another case so I thought I'd kill two birds . . . I'll be here for a couple of days."

  Why was he upset by the knowledge that Miss Bjork was out of town? Why did the world suddenly seem to have the color sucked out of it? Before he could follow those thoughts - and their attendant emotions - any further, a desperate thought erupted in Albert's brain and, before he knew it, had formed on his lips. "Can I stay in your house . . . till you get back?"

  If Miss Bjork had washed up on the beach, half drowned, Albert's question would have started her breathing again.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Something's not working in my apartment," said Albert.

  "What's not working?"

  Water? Gas? Light bulbs? The tape recorder? The clock? There was a selection. "The water," he said.

  "Oh," said Miss Bjork. She began breathing on her own.

  "Your pipes froze?" She didn't wait for an answer. "You probably forgot to leave the heat on. You should have them wrapped."

  Albert was amazed. She was a plumber, too. "I guess you can stay at my place," she said. "I suppose," she added. "But it's a terrible mess." She gave him the address and told him where to find the key. "Just till I get back, though," she said referring to an experience in her past. "Then you'll have to go home."

  Where else would he go? "Good-bye," he said. "Thank you,"

  Just after dark that evening Tewksbury walked out of the hospital as casually as he'd walked in and, just as casually, he and Albert crossed town to Miss Bjork's apartment.

  Once again Albert's concept of mess seemed at odds with the evidence. He anticipated having to force the door open. Miss Bjork's home looked like a furniture-store window without the price tags or the "sale" sign. The only thing missing was a salesperson.

  Tewksbury was impressed.

  "This is how the other half lives, Albert. Look at this stuff; numbered prints, lead crystal, Persian rugs. She doesn’t pull in this kind of money defending people like me. This is old money; you can smell it."

  Albert didn’t know what old money smelled like. He was rooted to the doormat; this wasn’t a residence, it was a temple, and he a ragged sinner, fouling the threshold.

  This was a level of order he couldn't hope to attain.

  "She collects first editions," Tewksbury droned on. "Look at this:Dombey and Son, The Pickwick Papers, the whole Dickens library!A Christmas Carol. Longfellow, Kipling, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, The Pepys Diaries. Look at this stuff, Albert!"

  Albert felt it would be disrespectful to speak out loud. He left Tewksbury rummaging through Miss Bjork's kitchen cabinets and went home.

  The police who had searched his room had apparently operated on the principle of a cyclone. Not that it made much difference; such wanton destruction in a place like Miss Bjork�
��s would have been devastating. At Albert’s, it was redecorating. He left everything as it was, extracting things from various piles as he needed them.

  He stared at the ceiling for a long time after he went to bed. Oddly enough, it wasn't thoughts of Tewksbury that kept him awake. Or Miss Bjork necessarily, it was Jeremy Ash. The boy's anguished cry replayed itself in his brain. Where had they taken him? What were they doing for him? Most haunting of all . . . what would happen to him after he was well?

  Where would he go? His smiling face appeared vividly in Albert's imagination as he fell asleep in the company of tears.

  First thing in the morning, he called to check on Tewksbury who had apparently discovered his element in the furniture commercial of Miss Bjork's home. His only complaint was the absence of beer in favor of wine coolers. Albert promised to deliver some cigarettes and hung up.

  He hadn't seen himself in a mirror since his "accident." He was shocked. The burn mark on his cheek was bright pink and peeling against his see-through skin. A broad swath of hair had been shaved from his head to admit stitches and now with a week's growth, looked like a hillside cleared for power lines. His eyes were clear, though, bright jewels set in the rummage sale of his face.

  After a shower and shave, he felt better. He ate some pork rinds and an Eskimo pie with his coffee. He preferred a cold breakfast. It was a good break from the routine of hospital food.

  Somewhere in the course of his activities it occurred to him to go to the hospital and find out what happened to Jeremy Ash. He met Detective Naples coming out of the elevator. "Ah, Professor!" The inspector was always glad to see him.

  "I've just been up to your room. They said you'd been released." Albert was standing halfway in the elevator and got blind-sided by the door when it decided to close. "I was," he said. "I’m . . . " he added. "I came . . . I was going up to see . . . " He’d suddenly forgotten the boy's name. It escaped him entirely. "The Teenager."

  "Oh, yes," said the inspector. He pressed and held the "door open" button after it had slammed Albert a few more times.

  "He's there . . . had a hard time, I understand. Poor kid." Something in Albert responded to the note of compassion in Naple’s voice.