The Scapegoat

by Sara Davis

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “Someone is waiting for you upstairs.”

  Like the guest lecturer’s, his lips didn’t move as he spoke, and yet I heard every word clearly.

  “Upstairs?” I mouthed, and looked at the glass wall of the rotunda, the fountain visible behind the singing man, white water arcing against blue sky. And as I did so, the hospital, the guest lecturer, the concert all fell away, and the dark-haired young man and I were in the elevator of the hotel, riding up to the fourth floor.

  “Any idea who asked for me?” I said. I was pleased; my words had come out in a very relaxed way—it felt like a natural question to have asked.

  “I’m sorry,” said the young man, and shook his head.

  Just then the elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened, and the young man inclined his head in a slightly different way, a way that was clearly meant to indicate: After you.

  I stepped out into the darkened hallway, which was in every respect just as it had been in waking life: dark, with dark red wallpaper, the thick carpet soft and pillowy underfoot. I walked down it until I came to the door of Room 409, where I hung back for a moment, hesitating.

  “You’re certain they’re expecting me?” I asked. But there was no reply. When I turned around I saw that I was alone in the hallway—the dark-haired young man had vanished.

  But this, too, was not too daunting an obstacle for the dream version of myself, who, it appeared, was much better at taking things in stride than I was in real life. I turned back to the door, ready to knock, and saw that there was no need, because it was now ajar.

  “Hello?” I called.

  From inside the room, there was no answer. I pushed the door open and went inside.

  * * *

  At first glance, the room was empty. Everything was just as it had been before. The bed, the desk, the thick ocher curtain. In my dream I was able to examine several places at once. I looked at the bed. It had been made. But then again, I thought, a bed is easily made and unmade. And then I thought, Christ almighty! Even in my dreams I cannot escape these ridiculous thoughts.

  The briefcase, I thought. Time in the dream seemed to be speeding up, such that the moment I thought the words “the briefcase,” I was kneeling before the desk, my hand groping in the dark recess beneath. Half a second later the gold buckles flashed, and the briefcase lay open on my lap. It was empty.

  How odd, I thought. The last time I was here things were very different. And then I thought, Perhaps this is a different briefcase. But before I could think that thought through to its logical conclusion, before I could even begin to think it, I became aware of another new development—something else that was different about this dream version of the hotel room, which I had failed to notice upon entering: the sound of running water, coming from the direction of the bathroom.

  I laid the briefcase down carefully on the floor and listened. It was the sound of someone drawing a bath. It had escaped my attention somehow that the door to the bathroom was ajar, and the light was on inside, and a long illuminated strip lay across the carpet.

  “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” said a female voice. I turned.

  Kirstie was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in her usual shiny black athletic clothing. In my dream her presence seemed perfectly natural.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Kirstie looked down at her feet, as if deciding what to say. “There’s something in the bathtub.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” she repeated.

  I nodded. None of that was particularly helpful, and I had my own question to ask.

  “The last time I was here,” I began, “there was something in this briefcase.”

  Kirstie looked at the briefcase and shuddered. Then, collecting herself, she said, “That’s right. There was something. It’s been moved.”

  “Moved where?” I asked.

  She closed her eyes. When she spoke again it was in a thick, dreamy voice, quite unlike her own.

  “It’s on its way back here.”

  “But where is it now?”

  The water in the bathroom was rushing loudly now, so that I had to raise my voice to be heard above it.

  “What did you say?” said Kirstie.

  “Where is it now?” I practically shouted, over the sound of the veritable waterfall coming from the bathroom.

  Suddenly the room was pitch-black, I could see nothing, and I was sitting on the bed alongside Kirstie, a fact that I knew only because I could hear her breathing very close to me. These developments made the thread of the conversation even harder to follow.

  “It’s where you’ll find it,” Kirstie whispered.

  “But where will I find it?”

  But though I meant to speak the words, I had the impression that I had not, in fact, said anything at all, that though I had opened my mouth and moved my lips, no sound had emerged. The darkness was thick all around us, pressing in, as if all the air had been sucked out of the room, and the only living thing in it was the heat of Kirstie’s breath, its quick inhale-exhale caressing my skin. More and more I was convinced that I had not succeeded in asking my last question, and I was just about to try to ask it again when I was startled—genuinely startled—by the sound of applause.

  11

  I woke, wide-eyed, and sat up in bed. Nearby, some unseen time-keeping device ticked inexorably. What a peculiar dream, I thought, and then, a little later: What an admirable synthesis of all that has recently passed. Eventually, I lay down again and closed my eyes, but I slept only fitfully and woke before dawn, when I rose and ate breakfast in the dark.

  I had been sitting at the table with my toast and coffee, my thoughts still full of my dream, when I realized that it was Saturday. The whole day stretched out before me, as unpeopled as a prairie in winter.

  But, I thought now, there is no reason to feel that way on this weekend of all weekends, because there is work to be done, work on the investigation into your father’s death, and what could be more worthwhile than that?

  I got up, poured myself a second cup of coffee, and retrieved a pen and the notebook I kept by the telephone for messages. Not, presumably, how actual investigators did things, but I would make do.

  First, I thought, begin at the beginning. That was the open house, where I’d found the stationery with the drawing of the steeple. Then the dinner with the guest lecturer, and my brief, unplanned visit to the Old Mission Hotel. The next day, the lunchtime concert of the Kindertotenlieder, where I’d seated myself next to Kirstie, and she had commented on my physical resemblance to my father. Then, that evening—yesterday evening, I amended—dinner with the Van Gelders, and in the night, my dream, in which Kirstie and the guest lecturer had both featured, although in my dream, I noted, their roles had been reversed: Kirstie had been at the Old Mission Hotel, and the guest lecturer at the concert.

  I looked up at the bay window for a moment. Could this all have really happened in the course of a few days? Certainly, events seemed to be building on themselves at a rate I had not personally experienced before.

  But that was enough marveling at events, I told myself. I could use the day to decide how to proceed. First I considered the open house: Would it be helpful to return? I sipped my coffee and thought. No, I concluded. The real estate agent had already been there, confusing the situation with her props and scents—it had been a stroke of pure luck that I had found the stationery there. The guest lecturer, too, I dismissed, despite the grotesque thing in the briefcase and her strange prominence in my dream. She was nothing but a distraction; the reason being: she had nothing to do with my father.

  Two possible avenues presented themselves. First, there was Kirstie’s declaration at the lunchtime concert of the Kindertotenlieder. True, it was not exactly incriminating to say I resembled my father; to be sure, anyone could have said it. But as I had conjectured on the Van Gelders’ sofa, it was also possible that ther
e was something more there, some depth to be plumbed. Still, the more I turned things over in my mind, the more convinced I became that my second idea would be more fruitful: to return to the Old Mission Hotel. People were changeable, I thought; there was no telling what they might say if they thought it suited them. But a place held all its history without bias, like layers that sat one on top of the other. It could no more hide or delete them than a leopard could change its spots.

  I took another sip of coffee. But how to return?

  * * *

  The answer did not come to me until Monday afternoon. I had slept poorly the night before (poorly but without dreams), and as I crossed the reservoir that morning, coming out from under the thick of the ridge, I could see that the black sky was beginning to purple at the edges; dawn would break soon. I thought to myself: So this will be one of those days, long and disconnected, made mournful by lack of sleep.

  In the afternoon I began to feel the effects more acutely; words were beginning to blur together, to require rereading once, twice, then three times. I took myself back to the break room for another cup of coffee.

  I had barely flipped the switch to warm the pot when the thought came to me, fully formed. Of course, I thought, of course! I brought my hand down triumphantly on the counter, causing a selection of teas to jump. I had the piece of information on which my thoughts had snagged, which I had tried and failed to remember that night after dinner. It was, of all things, what Gerry Van Gelder had said about his trip to North Dakota—or rather, it was Ann’s rejoinder: “Don’t forget to call the hotel about the bag,” she had said, as if it confirmed what she had suspected for years about Gerry and bags, that he was incapable of remembering them. Stop, I told myself, that is exactly the kind of thinking you don’t want. The salient thing was that people left their belongings behind sometimes, at hotels, and then they called to retrieve them. It was a usual, natural thing, something people did every day. Or if not exactly every day, then commonly. And I could do it, too. Not exactly like Gerry, of course, because I had no reason to believe that my father had left a bag at the Old Mission Hotel, but I could at least discover if he’d stayed there at all. Because it had occurred to me that a piece of hotel stationery might end up in one’s coat pocket for any number of reasons. There was at any rate something to be gained, I was sure of it. With two fingers, I felt the coffeepot—it was still tepid. But perhaps I didn’t need coffee at all, I decided, and strode out into the hall with new vigor.

  * * *

  Back in my office I retrieved the phone book from the shelf above my desk, and within moments I had located the number and placed the call. Someone picked up on the first ring, but before speaking gave a tiny but noticeable space, like the time one might leave for throat-clearing.

  “This is the Old Mission Hotel,” said a male voice, and I was almost certain that it was the smooth-faced young man who had pointed out that my watch had stopped, and who had appeared in my dream.

  “Hello,” I said, and I felt a certain facility with words, not unlike the one imagined in my dream. “I’m calling about a bag I left behind.”

  “I’d be happy to help you with that, sir,” said the young man. “You were a guest at the hotel?”

  “Yes,” I said. How simple this was, I thought, what a breeze. I was a guest at the hotel. This is how an investigation is performed, no doubt about it.

  “What were the dates of your stay?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  There was another pause. “The dates of your stay, sir?”

  Suddenly all my triumphant thoughts came to a hasty halt.

  “The dates of my stay,” I murmured, when too long a silence had elapsed. Of course, how could I have been so stupid?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t remember them.”

  There was a little silence on the other end—not impolite, but patient.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, making an effort to sound careless and blithe, although the palm I had pressed to the phone had grown unhelpfully damp. “It would have been in the last six months or so.”

  Another little pause.

  “I travel quite frequently,” I said unhappily.

  “I see,” said the young man. Still he did not sound the least bit annoyed. I began to take heart; perhaps this was a normal occurrence.

  “Perhaps it would be easier to look you up by name instead,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said immediately. “Yes, of course. My name is…” and, surprised at how natural it felt, I spelled my father’s name.

  “Thank you,” said the young man. “Just a moment.”

  I heard the soft sound of the phone being put down on the desk. Then, more faintly, I heard the sound of music playing in the lobby, just as it had been on the night I’d walked through it with the guest lecturer. I pictured her waving coquettishly, with just the tips of her fingers, at the smooth-faced young man. How unfortunate that had been. I pictured the long bar with its row of candles and, on the far side of the room, the low white curving couches. Was the lobby empty now? I wiped the perspiration from my palm on the leg of my pants, and switched the phone to my other ear.

  “Hello?” said the young man.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Could the reservation have been made under another name, sir?”

  Another name? I thought. Another name? Of course, it could have been, but if I knew it I would be considerably further along in my investigation than I was, or perhaps ever would be.

  “No,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice. “I don’t think it could be.”

  “I see,” said the man. “I’m sorry, but I don’t appear to have any record of your stay.”

  I cleared my throat. “How odd. Well, it’s possible it’s been longer than six months…” I trailed off.

  “Yes, I thought of that,” said the young man. “It’s an unusual name, so I was able to go through the records from the last year without too much trouble. We don’t have any record of your stay here from that time.

  “I’m sorry, sir. We do have a lost-and-found closet—if you’d like to give me a description of the bag, I can check, just in case.”

  A description of the bag, I thought. But of course there was no bag. Because my father had not left a bag at the hotel. Because, in fact, he had never stayed there at all.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “That’s all right. I must be mistaken.”

  * * *

  Perhaps it just wasn’t meant to be, I thought, as I set a pot of water on the stove at home that evening. True, I had not expected my investigation of my father’s death to come to such an unceremonious end, but the more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that it was likely that there were two kinds of people: those who exerted a force on the world, who influenced events, who shaped outcomes by the sheer power of their wills, and those who did not.

  I took a packet of bacon out of the freezer and put a few pieces in a pan to fry. Was it really that surprising, I thought, to discover I was in the latter camp?

  My father, he had been one of those who could set things in motion; he had that quality. If only he were investigating his own death, I thought, and then I laughed once, startling myself in the silence of the kitchen. The water was boiling now, and I added salt and then spaghetti. I poured a jar of tomato sauce into a pan. Everything had gone wrong, really, almost everything.

  Then another thought wriggled its way up: Was it really so bad?

  If, I thought, as I excised a sage-green crust of mold from a wedge of parmesan, the hotel had confirmed the fact that my father had stayed there, what would I have done? I was not a member of the police force, I could not have appeared on the scene to interrogate the personnel, and that was not even accounting for the fact that most likely they would not have remembered him at all. This was not television, it was real life, and deaths did not divulge clues at regular intervals. I drained the pasta in the colander, stirred the sauce, grated the cheese over it, and sat mys
elf down in the chair facing the bay window. The sky was a familiar white gray, and I could see, just barely, that the fog had gathered, as if in anticipation, above the waterline. And was this, I thought again, really so bad? To eat a humble but well-cooked meal in the comfort of one’s home?

  Sometimes it is acceptable to admit defeat.

  After dinner I washed my dishes, showered, and climbed into bed with my book. It had been a few days since I had picked it up—since, I marveled, the night of the open house. I had missed it, and I soon found myself happily engrossed in the universe of semirural Sweden, where temperatures had fallen below zero, and the murder victim’s brother had just come forward with a surprising story about an illegitimate child. Our detective is dubious, but he also has other things on his mind. He is about to have dinner with his ex-wife, for whom he still carries a torch. They are to meet in a real restaurant, and for the occasion the secretary of his department has had his suit dry-cleaned. I knew, without even reading the rest of the chapter, how the story would unfold; in fact, I could have written it myself. His heart would skip a beat when he first caught sight of her. Candlelight would flatter her familiar features. With hope in his heart he would order a bottle of wine. She would be kind, even solicitous, urging him to eat more healthily, to watch his smoking and drinking, but finally, with a note of regret, she would announce her engagement to her current boyfriend, someone more stable, who worked regular hours, like a lawyer or a financier.

  12

  I woke to the sound of the phone ringing in the kitchen. I struggled out of bed and felt my way nearsightedly down the hallway.

  From the look of the sky, or what I could see of it, dawn had just broken. I sighed inwardly—at this early hour it was most likely to be a wrong number.

  Still, I had already made it this far, so I picked up the receiver and said hello.

  “Hello,” said a female voice. “How are you this morning?”