Sibs

by F. Paul Wilson

"Many sexually abused children grow up to be promiscuous, a reflection of how they were taught to relate to a male during their formative years. Just as physically abused children grow to be violent adults."

  "Kelly was not abused, dammit! I was there! I grew up with her! The Ingrid part of her is lying!"

  "Perhaps. I have no way of knowing. Ingrid often spoke of how her twin sib was also regularly abused by their father."

  Kara was out of her seat again. She wanted to hurl herself at Gates and throttle that bland, matter-of-fact expression off his face.

  "Are you deaf? It. Never. Happened!"

  It couldn't have happened! Not Dad. Never. She saw his weathered face, his easy smile, his gentle blue eyes. He never even raised his voice. Dad was a… a prude! She remembered how embarrassed he'd be whenever she and Kelly as teenagers would pass him in the upstairs hall in their underwear. He'd shout at them to get their robes on. He couldn't have—

  "She said her twin sister was named 'Janine,' " Dr. Gates said softly.

  "There! What did I tell you! This Ingrid is all screwed up! If she can't even get my name right, how can she have any credibility about the rest of her story?"

  Kara turned and headed for the door. She had tolerated as much as she could of this nonsense.

  "Thank you for your time, Dr. Gates. I've heard all I want to hear."

  He did not raise his voice but, as her hand reached the door knob, Kara heard him with numbing clarity.

  "What if the Janine she speaks of belongs to you, Miss Wade?"

  Kara froze. Her anger vanished as if it had never been, replaced by a cold, sick fear crawling through her chest. She turned and leaned against the door, facing him.

  "Why are you doing this to me?"

  "I am not doing anything to you. I am giving you the information you demanded yesterday, information that might be of vital importance to you."

  She hung there, weak-kneed, trying to comprehend the unthinkable, but the thoughts would not take form. Her mind fought them off, drove them away.

  "Please sit down," Dr. Gates said. For the first time there seemed to be real concern in his voice.

  Kara shook her head. "No. Just finish this and let me go."

  "All right. I'll put it all in a nutshell. Your twin sister developed a separate personality to shield her from a massive childhood trauma. I dealt with that personality. I know it existed. Therefore, since you and your twin grew up so closely together, and since you have no memory of your sister's trauma, I thought it fair and prudent to warn you that it is entirely possible that you, too, may have developed a second personality to shield you from that same trauma."

  "Okay," she said slowly. "You've warned me. Maybe there was a trauma. Maybe we've both repressed it. But that doesn't mean it absolutely had to have been… incest."

  "Judging from Ingrid's promiscuity, I'd say there's a high probability that—"

  "But you can't be absolutely sure can you?"

  Grant me that! Please grant me that!

  "No," he said after a pause. "It's hard to be absolutely sure of anything in this case. Especially with Kelly gone."

  Thank you.

  Now. There was one more thing she had to know before she fled this place, this man, this city.

  "How could I tell if I had another personality?"

  "If you have black-outs, memory lapses, new items around the house that you don't remember purchasing, you might suspect, but short of a chance encounter with a friend or relative when the other personality was in charge, you couldn't actually know. Except perhaps…" His voice trailed off.

  "What? Tell me!"

  "Hypnotism can sometimes bring the other personalities to the surface, but it's not foolproof. And it can be risky."

  Kara turned and opened the door.

  "Good-bye, Dr. Gates. And thank you for your time."

  She forced her feet to carry her from the office, to the elevator, and out to the street. Everything around her seemed blurred, as if she were moving through a fog.

  I'm sleepwalking, she thought. This is a nightmare, and any minute I'm going to wake up.

  She took a cab back to Kelly's apartment. She couldn't face Jill and Ellen now, not feeling as sick and… defiled as she did. She had to pull herself together, put things in perspective.

  But how?

  As soon as Kara stepped through Kelly's front door she realized she had made a mistake. She didn't want to be here. Not now. Not alone. She needed someone to talk to, she needed to bounce all this off someone. But who? Certainly not her aunt. Ellen was practically a basket case as it was.

  Only one person in this lousy city was fit to hear it. She didn't want to call him, but there was no one else.

  ▼

  1:51 P.M.

  When they'd told him he had a personal call from a woman, Rob had assumed it was Connie. She'd been bugging him since Sunday, wanting to forget their falling out and get back to their old arrangement. Rob wasn't interested. So he was surprised to hear Kara's voice on the line. He had expected she might possibly call for a progress report in a few days, but not this soon, especially after the way she had all but run from him yesterday, literally dragging her cute little girl after her.

  "Are you very busy today?" she said. Her voice had a strange, dull sound to it. Almost as if she'd been sedated.

  "Yeah. It's a zoo. You back at the farm?"

  "No. I'm still in the city. Um…" Her voice trailed off...

  Rob waited, then said, "Kara, what is it?"

  The words came out in a rush: "Rob, could you come over?"

  "Come over where?"

  "I'm at Kelly's."

  "What's wrong? Did you find something?"

  "No. But I've learned something about her you should know. I need to talk to you about it. When can you come over?"

  "I won't be able to get free for at least two hours. Maybe more. How about five?"

  "Okay. You know where?"

  "West Sixty-third."

  "Right. Don't be late, okay? And come earlier if you can."

  "Sure. See you then."

  Rob hung up slowly. What was going on? This did not sound like the Kara Wade he had dealt with during the past week. So tentative. As if someone had knocked the pins out from under her.

  Rob did a rush job on the report he had turned in on the double homicide on West 48th, but still it was a little after five before he got over to Kelly's apartment.

  Standing in the building's vestibule, Rob realized that he actually was looking forward to seeing Kara. Why? He was still attracted to her, but obviously she hadn't the slightest interest in him. In fact, she seemed to be trying to avoid him. Why should he be looking for another dose of frustration?

  Well, for one thing, this time she had made the first move.

  Don't get your hopes up, turkey, he told himself as he reached for the bell.

  Kara buzzed the inner door open immediately. She was waiting at the apartment door when he reached the second floor.

  "I'm glad you're here," she said. "Come in."

  She looked awful. Drained. Small, almost frail within her oversized cable knit sweater. Her features were tight, her mouth grim, her eyes red and… haunted looking.

  "Are you okay?" he said as he stepped inside and shucked off his coat.

  "Yes. Sure. Of course. I'm fine."

  Her assurances had all the depth of feeling of someone being held hostage. Instinctively, he glanced around the front room of the apartment.

  "Anybody else here?"

  "No. You want a drink?"

  "Sure."

  "Still scotch?"

  "Uh-huh." Rob was disproportionately pleased she remembered.

  "Good. Because that's all she's got."

  "With a couple of rocks."

  As Kara went to the kitchen counter, Rob stepped across the room for a quick look into the bedroom—a mess, like it had been pulled apart. How long had she been here? He followed her into the kitchen. He noticed a half-empty glass on the coun
ter beside the Dewar's bottle.

  "I see you've got a head start on me."

  She poured some into a fresh glass for him and then a little more into her own.

  "I've got a couple of laps on you," she said as she handed him his drink.

  He looked at her eyes more closely.

  "Yeah. I guess you do."

  "But it doesn't help." She raised her glass. "Here's to the psychiatric profession." despite the dubious sincerity of the toast, Rob clinked his glass against hers and took a long pull on the drink. It felt good going down. Then they settled back and stood there in the kitchen under the fluorescent light, each leaning against different sections of the counter that ran at a right angles along two walls.

  A vision flashed through Rob's mind—the two of them, married, standing here like this every night discussing the events of the day while dinner cooked— then was gone. But it left in its wake a bittersweet trace of a warmth that could have been.

  He shook it off and looked at her.

  "Don't let that Dr. Gates get you down too much, Kara. We'll get a subpoena for Kelly's records. It may take some time, but eventually—"

  "He called me last night," she said. "Said he'd changed his mind. I went over there this morning and he told me the whole story—Kelly's complete case history."

  "That's a real turn-around."

  "I almost wish he hadn't."

  Rob saw the misery in her eyes and realized she wasn't exaggerating.

  "Want to talk about it?"

  "No. Yes. I don't know. I just think maybe you should know what was going on in Kelly's head—what Dr. Gates says was going on in her head—in the months before she, uh, fell."

  "It couldn't hurt, and it might help."

  "Yeah. I guess so. Let's go inside and sit."

  They were half way to the sofa when the buzzer sounded from downstairs.

  "Who in the world—?" Kara said, and went to the speaker.

  Someone named Ed was here. She seemed to know who he was and buzzed him up.

  Rob gave Ed a quick once-over when he arrived: about five-eleven, pushing forty, brown hair, medium build, yuppyish. His eyes darted from Kara to Rob.

  "Oh, sorry," he said. "If I've come at a bad time…?"

  "No. Come on in," Kara said with a resigned tone. "Ed, meet Rob Harris. Rob, this is Ed, an old friend of Kelly's."

  They shook hands and Rob noted that Ed's palm was moist.

  "Nice to meet you, Ed," he said. "I didn't catch your last name."

  "Uh, Bannion," he said.

  Kara said, "Ed's a lawyer with Paramount. He's offered to help with any legal problems connected with Kelly." She turned to Ed. "And Rob's a detective with the New York Police. He's working on Kelly's case."

  For an instant, Rob thought Ed's eyes were going to bulge out of their sockets.

  "Oh," Ed said to him. "How interesting. Miss Wade, uh, Kara, told me you suspect foul play. Any, uh, suspects yet?"

  "Not yet. But we're closing in on a couple of guys."

  Ed's expression was tight, almost a mask.

  "Really? Great! I, uh, hope you catch them soon."

  "Only a matter of time. By the way, how did you know Kelly?"

  "She was his mother's nurse when she was in the hospital," Kara said. She seemed impatient. "Ed, you might as well come in and hear this, too."

  "You think that's wise, Kara?" Rob said.

  He didn't know what Kara was going to say, but he felt he should hear it first. Plus, Kara's words were getting slurry and she looked a little unsteady on her feet. How many drinks had she had?

  "I don't know if it's wise or not, but Ed thinks the world of Kelly and the way the papers treated the circumstances of her death you'd have thought she was a hooker or something. I just want to set the record straight, let him know that none of it was her doing. You want a drink, Ed?"

  "Yes. Uh, no. No, maybe I'd better not."

  Ed looked ready to jump out of his skin. Rob wondered why.

  "All right," Kara said. "Let's sit down and I'll tell you all about it."

  ▼

  A cop! Dear sweet Jesus an honest to God New York City detective!

  Ed could feel his armpits growing steadily wetter as the perspiration poured out of him.

  What am I doing here with a cop, for Christ's sake?

  He really wanted that drink Kara had offered, but he didn't dare take it. He had to watch every word he said. No telling what might slip out if he started drinking. And besides, he didn't want to leave fingerprints anywhere. Kara had said the cops had fingerprints of the guys her sister had been with before she died.

  Jesus! Why did I get myself involved in this?

  He realized Kara was talking to him. If the round table were a clock, she would have been at noon, Ed at six, and the detective, Harris, at three.

  "I spoke to my sister's psychiatrist today. I think you both ought to know what he told me."

  Kara paused to take a sip of her drink and Ed realized that she was about two sheets to the wind. She appeared to be stretched to the breaking point.

  "He told me that Kelly suffered from something called a multiple personality disorder."

  "No kidding," Ed said. He'd read Sybil twice. He'd always found the subject fascinating. "I've heard that kind of thing's supposed to be very rare."

  "Yeah, well,— Kelly had a second personality called Ingrid. She was the one doing all the crazy things, not Kelly."

  Detective Harris sipped his own drink. " 'Ingrid?' That was the name she used at the Plaza that night."

  Kara nodded. "Right." She turned to Ed. "That's why I wanted you to know. I didn't want you to think she was some sort of hypocrite playing Florence Nightingale in the daytime and Irma La Douce at night. She had a real problem and she was fighting it. I know she could have beaten it if she'd had more… time."

  Her lips quivered and she bowed her head. Ed's heart damn near broke for her. And for the dead Kelly. Apparently she'd been a very troubled woman. Ed's stomach got queasy. He hadn't known she was mentally ill when he was… God, he'd been humping her, he'd even bitten her, some poor sick girl who didn't even know she was there.

  He felt dirty.

  "I understand," he said. He desperately wanted to lighten Kara's load. "But I never could think badly of your sister. No matter what."

  He noticed Detective Harris staring at him. The cop nodded at Ed, as if to say, Thanks. Which was kind of strange. Was there something going on between these two?

  He felt a compulsion to keep talking, to keep the silence at bay.

  "But if I remember correctly from Sybil, don't most multiple personalities have abused childhoods?"

  Immediately Ed knew he'd said the wrong thing. Kara slammed her glass on the table and was on her feet, glaring at him. Her face was livid.

  "It never happened! Never! Don't you dare say that about my father!"

  Ed was stunned.

  "What? I didn't—"

  "Get out! Get out of here!"

  Ed stumbled to his feet and Harris rose with him.

  Harris said, "Maybe you'd better…"

  "Yeah."

  Harris walked him away from the table. He turned to him at the door.

  "Let me have your card," the detective said. "I may want to call you."

  Ed's bladder suddenly wanted to empty.

  "Why?"

  "There are still a lot of unanswered questions about Kelly Wade. Maybe you can answer a few."

  "Sure," Ed said, fighting the urge to run.

  He fumbled out a card and shoved it into the detective's hand, hoping he wouldn't notice how his hand trembled.

  Harris glanced at it then slipped it into his pocket.

  "Great. We'll be in touch."

  And then Ed was out in the hall, slowly fleeing for the street, wondering how he would explain to his office why the NYPD was calling him. He cursed himself every step of the way.

  Shit-shit-shit! You're in deep shit, Ed! And you deserve to be in deep shit
. Because you're an asshole, Ed! Only a primo five-star flaming asshole could get himself into a mess like this!