F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 (37 page)

           
Ed wasn't sure he could answer that.
All he knew was that since she'd opened that weird note in front of him today,
and since he'd seen that lost, lonely, helpless, frightened look on her face
when she found that miniskirt under the dresser, he'd been feeling more
protective toward her with every passing hour.

           
Somehow she had become his
responsibility. Madness, he knew, but that was the way he felt. She needed
someone to watch over her or she might, as that note had said, end up like her
sister.

           
On the sixteenth try, she picked up.

           
He talked her a little small talk
and could sense the tension in her. Poor kid. She was really spooked.

           
"Is your detective friend
coming over?"

           
"No. He's on a stakeout."

           
Damn
!
Ed had stayed away for fear of running into that cop again, and the guy was
somewhere else for the night. Too bad. It was a little too late now to be
popping over there.

           
He talked her through the forms and
had her sign and initial where she was supposed to. When it was all finished,
he thought he'd give getting a late date with her the old college try.

           
"There. That wasn't so hard.
I'll have a messenger come by for them in the morning. Or better yet, why don't
we get together for a drink tonight and you can give them to me then."

           
"Thanks, Ed, but I'm
bushed," she said, and really sounded it. "This has not been a good
day and I'd like to see it over and done with."

           
"That note, huh?"

           
"Right. That note—and the
handwriting analysis of it."

           
"Really?" This was
starting to get exciting. "What did it show?"

           
"Nothing conclusive, but it
raised some frightening possibilities."

           
"Like what?"

           
She told him about how her psychiatrist
had said he knew who had sent it and that it was a woman, but that a
handwriting expert had said otherwise, and had not been able to entirely rule
out the possibility that Dr. Gates might have written it himself.

           
Ed was almost dizzy when he wished
her a good night and hung up. He sat in his living room, staring out at the
glittering skyline.

           
A lot of strange shit going on in
poor Kara Wade's life. And it kept on getting stranger and stranger.

           
And who was helping her? That cop
Harris, who was supposed to be her friend, just seemed to be adding to her
worries. He should have been shielding her from the disturbing news about the
handwriting. She had enough to worry about.

           
And her psychiatrist, this Dr.
Gates. Some help he was. If he was lying to her about whoever wrote that note,
what else was he lying about? She was probably paying him an arm and a leg for
help and he was doing nothing for her. That would be bad enough, but was he
doing something
to
her?

           
The thought brought Ed to his feet.
Where had
that
idea come from? He
began pacing the living room.

           
Kelly and Kara. Both patients of
this Dr. Gates. Both with that same heart-rending look—Kelly a couple of weeks
ago, Kara today. Something going on here. Something definitely not kosher.

           
Hell
,
he thought with a grin,
neither am I
.

           
He grabbed the phone book and found
only one psychiatrist named Gates. His office was on Seventh Avenue. Without
giving himself time to reconsider, Ed memorized the address, grabbed a coat,
and headed for the street.

           
Outside, he flagged a cab. Traffic
was light. Less than ten minutes later he was standing in front of a smallish
office building near the Chelsea-Greenwich Village border. There were lights
over the front entry, lights on in the lobby, but no guard. Without thinking,
he tried the doors. All locked.

           
What
the hell am I doing here?

           
He backed off about twenty feet and
paced back and forth as he stared at the front doors. He'd tried speed a few
times in college, and he felt now like he had then—hyper, fidgety, wired,
can't-sit-down, can't-stand-still, ready to do or try anything no matter how
crazy as long as it involved movement.

           
What he wanted to do now was crazy.
He wanted to get into this Dr. Gates' office and go through his records and see
what they had to say about the Wade twins and what kind of plans he had for
Kara. Maybe there'd be a clue there that would incriminate Gates. Maybe he was
the guy responsible for the haunted look on Kelly's face before she died, and
on Kara's face today. Kara had mentioned both Kelly and she being hypnotized by
Gates. Maybe he had planted some bizarre post-hypnotic suggestions in both
their minds.

           
He heard footsteps and saw some
dapper gent with sandy hair and a mustache wearing a blue cashmere overcoat
walk up to one of the front doors. He used a key from the ring he was twirling
on his finger to unlock it, and then walked inside.

           
A key. That's all it took. No guard
inside. Just a key and you were in.

           
An even crazier idea was forming in
Ed's mind. He pushed it away. It was insane. But the more he fought it, the
more powerful and insistent it became. The excitement of it grew, tingling
through his limbs, until it consumed him.

           
I'm
going to break into Dr. Gates' office
! Yes! He'd do it! Jesus, yes, he'd do
it tomorrow night! If he gave himself longer to think, he'd talk himself out of
it.

           
The idiocy of it made him giddy. He
laughed out loud as he went off in search of a cab back home.

           
Rob hadn't really lied to Kara this
afternoon. He was on a stakeout, but it wasn't a murderer's house he'd been
watching. It was Dr. Lawrence Gates' Chelsea townhouse.

           
He'd followed Gates from his office
to his home around dinner time—a walk of about seven blocks— and had watched
the three stories of lighted windows until about midnight. That was when Gates
had stepped out of his front door and begun walking west. Rob nurtured a twinge
of excitement as he followed him in his car, expecting him to flag a cab on
Seventh. Maybe this wouldn't be a waste of time after all. Maybe he'd learn
something about the secret life of Lazlo Gati/Lawrence Gates, M.D.

           
But Gates simply walked downtown and
returned to his office.

           
At
midnight?

           
What doctor returned to an empty
office at this hour?

           
Rob. parked near the corner and
watched, thinking maybe a patient would show up for an emergency consultation.
He saw a figure standing in the shadows on the downtown side of the Kramer
building. Whoever he was, he gave out a high pitched laugh and walked away.

           
A nut. Maybe one of Dr. Gates' nuts.
Rob kept watching, but no one showed up. He settled back in the seat. He had a
feeling this could turn out to be a long night.

           
Kara sat on the edge of the bed,
trembling. She was exhausted, and she had taken the Halcion a few minutes ago,
but she didn't see how she was ever going to get to sleep tonight. Not after
all that had happened today.

           
She had thrown the leather mini
away. And she had combed the undersides of the night stands and pulled the
dresser apart. There were
no
other
items of sleazy clothing left. If she found something tomorrow, she feared
she'd have a breakdown.

           
But strangely enough, the discovery
of the skirt today wasn't what was bothering her the most now. It was that
note. That crazy, bizarre, frightening note.

           
He
takes over your body while you sleep and uses it for his own pleasures.

           
She found it especially disquieting
in light of the vague memory of Dr. Gates' presence in the erotic dreams she
had experienced the past two nights.

           
What
am I thinking?

           
She had to stop worrying about
impossibilities and deal with the real and plausible. Kelly's multiple
personality had been real and plausible in light of what Dr. Gates said and
what Kara had found hidden around the apartment. A multiple personality
disorder would easily explain the happenings at the farm over the weekend.
Multiple personalities were an established psychiatric fact; books had been
written about them.

           
Despite all that documentation, Kara
still could not accept the existence of a second personality within her. So if
she couldn't accept Janine, why was she even considering a psychotic's fantasy
about Dr. Gates controlling her body while she slept?

           
She turned out the light and pulled
up the covers. She had to learn to trust. Trust Dr. Gates and his ability to
help her straighten this out. You had to trust your therapist.

           
She smiled in the darkness. Taking
over someone else's body while they slept. Now
that
was crazy.

 
 

           
On your fourth brush past Kara
Wade's mind, you find her deep enough in NREM sleep to permit undetected entry.

           
At
last.