Night Visions (11 page)

Samantha searches for the next letters, the ones from six months later, but can't find them. They are still with the untranslated documents in Box C. According to the catalog, three more were written in the last week of May, but after that, nothing. As far as documented history is concerned, Goldberg disappears after May 30, 1742. She sets these letters aside, hoping that Don's German is as good as he says it is, and walks to the door. She leans close, listening for any noise on the other side, then opens it quickly.

She is relieved to feel the cooler air as she returns to the front desk. She asks the librarian to copy the letters left out in the Collections room and walks upstairs to the stacks, searching for a score of the
Goldberg Variations.
It's on a dusty shelf in the far corner of the building. A thin shaft of light from a streetlamp pours through the porthole-shaped window facing the parking lot. The pages are yellow and fragile with age.

Samantha takes it to the listening library, checks out a copy of the 1981 Glenn Gould recording, and sits at one of the listening stations. As the music starts, she lets herself feel tired from the morning, the flight, the loose ends of this case. Folding her arms, she leans back and closes her eyes.

 

…The white porcelain tub feels colder than the water covering her face. Strong hands press her down as she struggles for air.
Blood suddenly appears in the water like a cloud. She breaks above the surface and breathes furiously. He pushes down again. She wants to scream, but her voice sounds distant, as if she were falling….

 

“Miss? Miss?”

She jumps back with a start and looks up at the librarian, who is tapping her on the shoulder, then at the CD player in front of her which reads “Stop. 32 tr. 0:00.”

“Sorry. We're closing the listening library for the night. The main library will be open for another three hours.”

“What time is it?”

“Seven o' clock.”

“
What?
” Samantha checks her watch.

“Seven o'clock. You've had a bit of a nap.” She smiles faintly, then hands Samantha a folder. “Here are the photocopies you requested. Do you need anything else?”

“No, thanks.”

As the librarian walks around the room turning off all the electronic equipment, Samantha wonders about the strange origins of this piece and its promise to make people sleep. Did the haunting melodies of the
Variations
finally lull the count to sleep, as they did her? Or was it another source of pain and disappointment? She touches her stomach where the scar lies hidden beneath her shirt. She knows about pain and disappointment that won't go away.

The librarian coughs softly. It is time for Samantha to leave. She glances down at the score.

She hadn't even turned past the first page.

A
fter the flight lands at 10:55, Samantha decides to stop by her office and fax Don the letters. She has already missed her time at the clinic and wonders if she will sleep at all tonight. A yellow streetlight glows at the edge of the empty parking lot, and in the shadows the dirty brick building looks as if it has been abandoned for years. She locks the front door behind her and turns on the lights. One fluorescent bulb flickers like a horror-movie chandelier as she picks up a phone.

“Did I wake you?”

“No, just reading.” But Frank's voice sounds groggy and full of sleep.

“What did you find out about Father Morgan?”

“Well, the bartender at Lucci's recognized pictures of him and Catherine. He said they ate dinner at the bar and stayed until the restaurant closed—that's why he remembered them.”

“Did they come in together?”

“No, but they left at the same time.”

Samantha pauses. “Well, that's a start.”

“Barely. We still don't know if Father Morgan left Salt Lake voluntarily. His superior, Monsignor Pollard—the one who suspended him for participating in that gay rights parade—doesn't think so. He said that Morgan was upset, but not the kind of man to shirk his other responsibilities with the parish.”

“So Pollard thinks he was abducted?”

Frank can hear the disbelief in her voice. “Look, Sam. He filed a missing persons report for a reason. He says Father Morgan wouldn't just leave, and I believe him.”

“Morgan's murder doesn't prove that he was taken to San Francisco against his will. We're missing something, Frank.” She adds, almost to herself: “What could make him leave so suddenly?”

“Another gay rights parade?”

“He was already angry with the Church. Maybe Catherine convinced him somehow. Maybe they both came here looking for the same thing?”

“I don't know.” Frank sighs. “I might be able to find out more tomorrow. Father Morgan's mother lives in Salt Lake, and I'm going to see her in the morning before flying back. According to Pollard, Morgan and his mother were very close. Perhaps she knows something.”

“I hope so.”

 

Samantha hangs up and imagines Frank in that hotel room by himself—sitting with his back against the headboard, reading some paperback from an airport bookshop. He never watches television or takes snacks from the minibar. He brings his own soap, shampoo, and towel. If it weren't for the unmade bed in the morning, no one would know that he had been there.

When they took trips together, she never asked why he didn't feel comfortable in these places. In part, she was too busy shoving hotel lotions into her suitcase, opening desk drawers, glancing at the Bible, and flipping through cable channels.

She walks over to the fax machine and enters Don's number. She feels guilty for not telling Frank about scheduling an interview with Catherine's roommate for tomorrow. In truth, she is afraid of what he'd say. Afraid that he is already convinced of Catherine's guilt. But she needs to find out why Catherine really came to San Francisco, and Don has agreed to help. Catherine's former roommate is still an undergraduate at UNC and even took Don's nineteenth-century American history course last year. Through the camera attached to Don's desktop computer and the conference equipment in her office staff room, Sam will be able to see and talk with her online at three o'clock.

It beats a six-hour flight and a bag of unsalted peanuts.

She opens the file from UCLA and begins faxing her copies of Goldberg's last three letters. On a cover sheet, she scribbles:
Don, can you translate as soon as possible? Thanks! S
. She watches the machine devour, then regurgitate each one. Underneath the last letter, she is surprised to find an additional sheet of paper. It is a reprint of a painting. An emaciated Christ hangs from the cross, his feet twisted and flattened by an iron spike, each finger writhing in frozen agony from his impaled hands. Three women—their eyes, like the landscape, too dry for tears—stand below him in mourning. The bottom right-hand corner reads: “Matthias Grünewald's
The Small Crucifixion
.”

The librarian must have included it by mistake.

Samantha wonders if this, the last gasp and agony before death, is what the count feared. He wanted everlasting life without sacrifice…. She looks again at Christ's feet and thinks of Peter's request not to have his own impaled. It seems to her that most people try to live with the least amount of sacrifice. She looks down at her shoes, still stiff and shiny from the department store, and picks up the letters.

She then flips off the lights and leaves the office—thinking about what she might have to sacrifice for a night of sleep.

TUESDAY

D
on waits anxiously for Sam's call.

They started UCLA together as freshmen but didn't meet until the fall of senior year—fourteen months after the car accident that permanently damaged his right leg. They sat next to each other in a seminar on
Paradise Lost
and passed notes like sixth-graders in the back of the classroom. Sometimes he let his hand linger for a moment, briefly touching her long, silky fingers when she handed him a folded paper. The feeling was electric. Sometimes her hands seemed charged, alive, like a conductor's in front of an orchestra; but instead of music, he heard only the rhythmic sounds of a longing heart.

He fell in love with her that semester.

She was dating someone at the time. Alexander or Andrew. Something with an A. It didn't matter. She rarely talked about him, and Don liked it better that way. He told himself that she couldn't love him.

Besides, he could wait.

A few months later, they were both accepted to graduate schools up north. He would start a doctoral program in history at Berkeley while she studied law in Palo Alto. He imagined possible futures with her. Romantic dinners, trips to the beach, a first kiss. He wondered what her coffee-brown eyes would look like a handbreadth from his face. But after graduation, she spent the summer in Sri Lanka visiting her grandparents.

He was used to waiting.

Graduate school began, and for the first few months, the distance between Berkeley and Stanford seemed far greater than any space on a map. They were both busy, overwhelmed by new places and countless hours of studying. Finally, they met for dinner. He was nervous. His palms sweated steadily. The pain in his leg surged.

That night, she told him about Frank. They had met in an ethics class. On their first date, he did nothing more than hold her hand as they strolled from the restaurant back to his car.

Don's heart threatened to stop with each word….

The phone rings.

 

On the computer screen, the visible part of Don's office is just as she imagined it—a complete disaster. The bookshelves defy gravity, with stacks of journals, student papers, and books on the verge of spilling onto the floor. Several picture frames hang on the wall directly behind him, but the images are blurry. Four ornately painted wooden elephants—a gift from her after one of her trips to Sri Lanka—appear to march across his cluttered desk in a perfect line. An oasis of order.

Don wears a neatly pressed shirt and tie. His rectangular glasses accentuate the sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones.

She remembers their long weekends together. The three of them, Frank, Don, and herself, wine tasting in Napa Valley, getting drunk and stuffing themselves at overpriced restaurants.
The white sun, high above the fields of green and red grapes, warming their faces.

The tilt of Don's head suddenly reminds her of a trip to the Gilroy Garlic Festival several months before graduation. Frank was out of town, but he didn't mind missing it. (He wasn't passionate about garlic, and she promised not to smell too bad by the time he got back.) So Don and she drank beer and ate garlic bread, garlic pizza, and dozens of foods that shouldn't have had garlic in them. She is certain that they smelled awful, but no one around them could tell the difference. The sun was setting on the festival, on their lives in school. They decided to leave. After unlocking the passenger door, Don kissed her.

Well, they kissed each other.

They didn't talk on the drive back to Palo Alto, and they never did speak about the kiss. Don said thank you when he dropped her off, and that was it. She thinks it was something they both wanted to do, just to know. Frank and she graduated in June, and two years later, Don was hired as an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

“Can you hear me all right?” Don smiles brightly into the camera. Some of his movements are choppy from the connection.

“Yeah, everything sounds and looks good—even the elephants.”

“Great.” He nods, then turns to the young girl sitting next to him. “This is Sage Olsen. I've told her that you're investigating Catherine's disappearance with the San Francisco Police Department and need to ask her a few questions.”

Don is in full professorial mode—the seriousness of his tone and stern expression almost make her laugh. He's very convincing, no doubt a dynamo in the classroom, but she is more used to his flippant remarks and sexual innuendos.

Sage squirms a bit in the uncomfortable chair, smiling nervously as Samantha introduces herself.

“Sage, do you have any idea why Catherine would take a trip to San Francisco?”

“No, ma'am, I don't.”

Samantha grimaces at the word
ma'am,
realizing for the first time how much older she is than Sage, how much older she must seem.

Sage's voice is surprisingly deep and sonorous. Her dazzling blond hair and perfectly straight teeth seem more fitting for the cover of a magazine than the confines of a professor's office.

“Like I told the police before, she didn't know anyone out there. She'd never even been to California.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Since we were kids. We grew up in the same neighborhood in Raleigh. She was like my big sister.”

“Catherine was older than you?”

“Yep. Three years.”

“Did you notice anything different about her in the last few months?”

“No, ma'am.”

“No detail is too small, Sage.”

She shrugs, looking down at the floor. Samantha can't read her body language through the monitor. Is she upset about Catherine? Afraid of something else? Samantha wants to reach out, to feel something other than the coldness of the conference room.

“Did she get along with her parents?”

“Yes.”

“Did she ever talk with you about traveling or taking a vacation from work?”

“No.”

“Sage, was she happy?”

For the first time, the girl hesitates. “Happy?”

“Yes, was she happy?”

“…Yeah, I guess.”

“You realize,” Don interjects, “that Catherine is in danger?”

“She was my best friend—”

“And you want us to believe that she didn't talk to you about any of this stuff? That you didn't notice any changes in your
best
friend before she ran away?”

“Yeah. I mean no. I—”

Don leans forward in his chair. “She could die, Sage. She may already be dead. But who cares? She's just your best friend. It's a hell of a lot easier not getting involved, right?”

“That's not true!”

“Then what is the truth? What happened to Catherine before she left?”

She looks down again, her body perfectly still.

“Is this how you show your friendship? With secrets and lies?”

“I never lied!”

“Silence is the worst kind of lie, Sage. If you'd read any of the books for my class, you'd know that.” Don turns to the screen. “Well, Miss Ranvali, I thought we could be of some help today. I'm sorry we wasted your time.” He leans forward to turn off the monitor.

“She fell in love!” Sage blurts out with a cry that sounds as if she's yelling and weeping at the same time.

Don backs away from the monitor. They're all silent for a moment, and Samantha lifts her hand to the monitor, touching Sage's face on the screen.

Sage says in a small voice, “Catherine didn't want anyone to know.”

“Where is he, Sage? We need to find him.” Don's tone is much softer, almost paternal.

“He's dead.” Then she starts weeping—grief and guilt shaking her body like a tremor. “I'm sorry, Cath. I'm so sorry—”

 

Eleven months ago, love crashed into Maxwell Harris at a Wendy's drive-through window. A medium Coke, extra-large fries, and a double cheeseburger catapulted out of his hands on impact. The bag fell to the ground with a splat, and most of the Coke spilled on his white long-sleeved shirt. She ran to his window and started to apologize.

“I'm sorry. My foot slipped off the brake and—” Her eyes began to water, not from anxiety or frustration, but from laughter. And the harder she tried to stop, the worse it got.

“This isn't funny,” he protested.

It was Max's first day in the development office for the Durham Police Department. He had been recruited to direct fund-raising because of his success as a grant writer for the Raleigh Arts Center. Naturally, he wanted to make a good impression. Wearing a Wendy's meal wouldn't help, but her laughter was too infectious to let him stay angry. He smiled in spite of himself.

“Here.” She grabbed her order from the startled girl at the window. “You can have everything but the fries.” A car honked behind them, and she handed him her card. “I don't see any damage, but here's my number if you need to get in touch with me. I'm Catherine Weber.”

He looked at her card, then back up to her. “You work for the Durham Police Department?”

“Yep.”

“Me too.”

 

“They loved telling me that story,” Sage explained during the interview—in part because Sage was the only one who knew about them. They kept their romance a secret from coworkers
for political reasons, and Catherine, though she wanted to tell, knew that her parents weren't ready for their only daughter to be dating a black man. So Catherine and Max decided to keep a low profile. She often compared their love to a ballroom dance—floating across the floor without being conscious of each step, confident it would last as long as neither one let go. At least, that was how she felt for a few months. Then Max started to change. He became introverted, complained about migraines, and stopped sleeping through the night. Catherine asked him to see a doctor, but he refused. She started feeling alone, even when they held each other. She tried everything she could to fix things—staying up with him, maintaining appearances at work. She hated watching their love fall out of step.

Three months ago, he killed himself, jumping off a bridge onto the tracks of an oncoming train. Catherine was with him that night but never spoke about it. His death squeezed something out of her. Other than Sage, no one knew about them. No one understood her pain, her need to mourn. She had spent so much time keeping their love a secret that she wasn't sure it had been real after he was gone. She had nothing left but the memories she shared with Sage.

After that, Catherine shut herself off from friends. She came and went at erratic hours. She lost weight, smoked more heavily, and started taking sick days off from work. Late one night, Sage woke up to the clamoring of pots and pans and the sound of running water. She found Catherine hand-washing dishes in the kitchen.

“It's four o'clock in the morning, Cath. What's going on?”

“I'm doing the dishes. This place is a sty.”

“It's four o'clock in the morning.”

“I heard you the first time.” She didn't look up from the plate she was drying vigorously.

“Are you all right?”

“It's happening to me too,” Catherine replied after a moment.

“What is?”

“I'm getting sick, like Max.” Still looking at the plate in her hands.

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Cath? Talk to me.”

“It's nothing, really. I'm just tired.” She looked up, having regained her composure. “I'll be all right once I get some sleep.”

Sage walked over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “I'm sorry about Max.”

They hugged for a long time before Catherine let go and said good night.

After Max's death, life was like this for Catherine—keeping to herself, doing the dishes, and listening to classical music. Max used to take her to concerts at Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh. Their last one was a performance of Stravinsky's
Symphony of Psalms.
Catherine bought a recording the next day and listened to the second movement for weeks—the wind instruments crying out one at a time in anguish, asking for help and waiting for voices to reassure them:

 

I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.

He brought me up out of an horrible pit….

 

Catherine listened, waiting herself.

 

Before leaving the office, Samantha tries calling Dr. Clay one more time to apologize for missing last night's session, but no one answers the phone at the clinic. He needs a new receptionist, she thinks.

Her phone rings as soon as she places it on the receiver. It's Frank calling from the airport.

“Hi, Sam. I'm on my way to the hotel. Can you meet me there?”

“Sure…,” she replies, and Frank hangs up before she can say anything else.

 

“What!”

“You were in Salt Lake. Don had already set up the meeting.”

“Because you told him to.”

“I thought it would save time. Besides,” she adds flippantly, “we found out that Catherine had a boyfriend.”

“Good for her.” He turns to the window. “You lied to me, Sam. I asked you not to involve Don until I said it was okay.”

“I don't see what the big deal is. We're wasting time arguing about—”

“You lied to me.” Frank spins around, his face glowing red with anger.

“No, I just didn't listen to you.” She smiles slightly, hoping to deflect his anger.

“You should have told me about the interview last night. Not telling me was a lie.”

They stand in a silence that Frank doesn't rush to fill, and Samantha understands how Sage must have felt under Don's didactic scrutiny.

“You're right.” Her voice is soft. “I should have been honest with you about the interview. I'm sorry.” She looks down, not wanting to see the hurt in his eyes.