The Walker in Shadows (7 page)

"Yes, as a matter of fact. I'd like to leave a note for Mark, in case he wakes and wonders what has become of me. Perhaps you could take it next door."

"Certainly. There is paper here-" He indicated Kathy's desk, which was piled with books and other student impedimenta. Pat took a pen and a sheet of notebook paper and scribbled a brief message. She handed it to Friedrichs without folding it.

"You'll see that I didn't mention names, only that someone was ill and I was needed. Please stick it on the refrigerator door with one of the little magnets."

The lawyer's eyes flashed briefly, as if he appreciated the implied permission to read the note. He did not do so, only took the key Pat gave him and left the room, after a final glance at the sleeping girl.

Pat took off her coat and hung it over the back of a chair. Her purse was still in the car. She should have asked Friedrichs to get it, but it didn't seem important. Her house keys were in her coat pocket, and she made it a rule never to carry much cash when she was out late at night.

She went back to the bed. Kathy had turned on her side, her cheek pillowed on her hand. Pat brushed strands of silky hair away from the girl's forehead; Kathy's lips quivered as if she were about to smile. She sighed deeply.

Pat had no intention of lying down on the chaise longue or anywhere else. She had done a foolish thing-a damned fool thing, Jerry would have said-in advising Friedrichs not to call a doctor. Oh, she hadn't actually said it, in so many words, but she had implied as much, and the responsibility weighed heavily on her mind. She would watch the girl's every breath until she woke; at the slightest sign of trouble she would call the rescue squad. In the meantime…

Her lips set in an expression, if she had but known it, very much like Friedrichs' when he searched his daughter's possessions, Pat pulled out the top desk drawer and sifted through its contents. Friedrichs had seemed to search thoroughly, but perhaps he had missed something-something he really didn't want to find.

As she went through the room, finding nothing except a little dust and the more or less blameless records of a young girl's school and social life, she was thinking, not about Kathy, but about Kathy's father.

She had been prejudiced against Friedrichs from the start, and therefore ready to think the worst of him. Still, that didn't mean that her assessment had been wrong, or that his performance that night had been genuine. She had seen people lie just as convincingly-girls with eyes as big and blue as Kathy's solemnly swearing they had never heard of heroin, though their arms showed the damning marks of injections; cultured men in expensive clothes denying indignantly that they had ever laid a hand on their wives, while the women nursed black eyes and broken bones and flinched at the very sight of their husbands. Yes, Friedrichs could be lying. So why was she now as prejudiced in his favor as she had formerly been biased against him?

That was easy. She was sympathetic because, if his story was true, she knew how he must be feeling. In a perfect agony of terror and doubt, that was how-just as she would feel if this had happened to Mark. To have the one you loved best in all the world turn on you, striking out with hate, rejecting the help you wanted to give… And the fear-the wild, terrible theories. Drugs? Brain tumor? Paranoia, mental illness? The fear of losing the only one you had left.

Her hands were shaking so badly she decided to abandon the search. She had dropped one delicate little china figurine; it would have broken if it hadn't fallen on the rug. She had searched every place she could think of and found absolutely nothing incriminating, except a paper-back copy of
The Joys of Super Sex
under Kathy's mattress. Pat smiled weakly as she returned it to its place. Nothing abnormal about that.

It began to appear as if Friedrichs were right. The kids weren't that smart or that careful. They usually left some evidence lying around. So if it wasn't drugs, what on earth…?

When Friedrichs returned she had settled into a comfortable overstuffed chair, her hands folded in her lap. He was carrying a tray-and her abandoned purse.

"I hope you don't mind," he said, handing it to her, "but I took the liberty of putting your car in your drive-way. You had left the keys in the ignition, and I thought-"

"You were quite right," Pat said, with a smile. "I didn't even park it; I just stopped in the middle of the street. Thank you."

Friedrichs acknowledged her thanks with a grave incli nation of his head, and offered her coffee. Pat took it, marveling at the man's strength of will. He had been on the verge of collapse when she burst in; now he had acquired enough self-control to collect her belongings and restore them to their proper places. And the way he had retreated, instantly, when she took over with Kathy- offering to lock himself in the library… Was that consciousness of guilt, or evidence of a mind that was both rigorously logical and intuitively sensitive to other peoples' feelings?

"She's sleeping," Pat said, as Friedrichs turned toward the bed. "I'll watch her, don't worry. The rescue squad can be here in five minutes, if… You don't have to stay."

Friedrichs' lips twisted. He sat down at the desk. "Do you suppose I could sleep? I don't expect you to believe me, Mrs. Robbins, but I told you precisely what happened. I almost wish what you suspect were true. It would provide an explanation." His eyes went to his daughter, lingered, and then moved around the room as if he were really seeing it for the first time that night. "You didn't have to clean up in here. Merely staying is kindness enough."

"I just put a few things back in their places," Pat said. "books and ornaments-not much. She must have knocked them down when she ran."

"Would it be out of place for me to suggest that fact substantiates my story? Or do you suppose I came in here to attack her?"

With an effort, Pat forced her eyes away from his tormented face. At least he had had enough experience to know that things like that did happen, that horrified outrage was no defense. His hands were gripping the arms of the chair so hard the knuckles showed like naked bone. They were big, hard hands, and the arms bared by his rolled-up shirt sleeves were the arms of an athlete. He must play tennis or handball, she thought to herself. If he had attacked the girl in her bed she would have had a poor chance of getting away from him.

"If I really thought you had tried to hurt her I wouldn't be sitting here now," she said. "Mr. Friedrichs, have you-"

"My name is Josef. With an
f
."

Pat had to smile.

"Yes, I suppose we have progressed to first names. Mine is Pat. You needn't fear that I'll take advantage of it."

A wave of red swept over Friedrichs' face. She hadn't realized how pale he was until the flush gave his cheeks their normal color.

"Drink your coffee," she said. "You're still in a state of shock. It won't do Kathy any good if you pass out, or-or have a heart attack."

"My heart is perfectly sound." He gave her a startled look. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to touch on-"

"I touched on it," Pat said steadily. "My husband died of a heart attack a year ago. We thought his heart was perfectly sound too."

"I owe you an apology, Mrs.-Pat. Not for what I said just now; for my behavior the other evening, when you most generously offered new neighbors…" He hesitated, and the ghost of a smile curved his thin lips. "Bread and salt, shall we say?"

"Pasta is basically flour, like bread," Pat agreed. "And there was plenty of salt in that casserole."

"Whatever the ingredients, the intent was the same. It was a kind gesture and my response was boorish. I regretted it at once. I tried to call to you, but apparently you didn't hear me. That's no excuse, however, I might have telephoned to express my regrets-or, at the very least, returned your umbrella! My apologies are belated, but, I assure you, heartfelt."

"Forget it," Pat said, amused at his carefully constructed sentences and meticulous grammar. Mark was right; the man should be living in the nineteenth century.

"Thank you." He relapsed into silence, as if to free her of the obligation to talk. Maybe he didn't feel like talking either. The apology had been made with a certain grace, although he had offered no explanation for his boorish-ness, as he called it. But the omission had its own decorum. Excuses would have necessitated personal references, and perhaps, if Nancy 's hunch about his marital misadventures were correct, an appeal to sympathy or an expression of self-pity. Pat glanced at him from under lowered lashes. He must be in his forties; his cheeks and forehead showed the harsh lines of experience, harsher now with strain. No, not the face of a man who indulged in self-pity or allowed others to pity him. Nor, unless all her instincts were false, the face of a man who would mistreat his daughter.

They did not speak again. The night wore on, with the deadly slowness of all vigils. Pat had long since learned the art of sleeping with one eye open; she did so now, drifting in and out of half-slumber, her senses always alert for any untoward sound or movement from Kathy. Once she slipped deep enough into sleep to dream. It seemed to her that the light from the lamp on the bedside table burned low, and that in the shadowy corner behind the bed something moved. A long arm, skeletal in its pallor and bony thinness, reached out toward the sleeping girl.

Pat woke with a start, to hear Kathy moaning. Fried-richs was sound asleep, his head on the desk, resting on his folded arms. Pat got up, stretching stiffened limbs, and tiptoed to the bed. When she touched Kathy, the girl's breathing resumed its quiet pattern.

Pat went back to her chair. The night had turned quite cold. The thin curtains shifted eerily in the breeze, like formless shapes of ectoplasm. She shivered, and wondered, half-seriously, if nightmares lingered on in the room where a dreamer's mind had shaped them. That pale skeletal arm… If Kathy had dreamed of something like that reaching out for her, no wonder she had fled in terror.

Of course the explanation was more prosaic. In her drowsing state she had heard Kathy moan, and had conjured up an appropriate horror.

But she did not sleep again. The birds roused before the sun, raising a racket in the old apple tree outside the window, and finally the sky began to brighten. The sun was not yet up, but the room was fully light when Kathy awoke.

Her father woke the moment she did, sitting up with a stifled grunt as his stiff muscles protested. His sleep-heavy eyes went straight to Kathy. The girl had turned so that her back was toward her father. She was facing Pat, and after a moment recognition replaced the haziness of waking that clouded her eyes.

"Mrs. Robbins-it is you. I thought I dreamed you." She yawned like a sleepy kitten, her even white teeth sparkling.

"Kathy?" Josef's voice cracked. Kathy rolled over in bed.

"Daddy. Did I oversleep? What time…" Then she really saw him. "What's the matter? You look so…"

She sat up and held out her arms. Josef dropped to one knee beside the bed. Even then he did not embrace her; he took her hands in his and held them tight. Pat, who had moved to the foot of the bed so she could observe what went on in those first, revealing moments, was reassured-about the Friedrichs, if not about their immediate problem. The girl's candid face showed fear, but only for her father, not of him. She turned to Pat.

"Mrs. Robbins, what happened? He's hurt-his face is all scratched and… Is that why you're here? Oh, Dad, you look terrible!"

Pat sat down on the edge of the bed.

"He's fine," she said. "Josef, I could use some coffee, and I'll bet Kathy is hungry."

"Right." Josef rose to his feet, freeing his hands from Kathy's agitated grasp. "I'll just… I'll be right back."

He knew, of course, why Pat had dismissed him. Kathy's bewildered blue eyes followed him as he stumbled from the room.

"Mrs. Robbins, what-"

"Now we talk," Pat said. "You're the patient, Kathy, not your father. What happened last night?"

"Last night? I don't understand."

"Are you taking drugs, Kathy? Pills? Pot? Peyote, or seeds, or-"

Hoping to catch the girl off guard, she made her voice hard and inquisitorial. She would not have been surprised, or convinced, by an indignant denial. Instead, Kathy blushed guiltily.

"I've smoked pot a few times… at parties… Please don't tell Dad, he thinks I'm a virgin saint or some-thing. Hey. Wait a minute. You mean last night? Honest to God, Mrs. Robbins-"

"It couldn't have been marijuana," Pat said, half to herself. "The symptoms weren't right. Besides, I'd have smelled it."

"So would Dad." Kathy pushed a pillow behind her and sat back. "I'd never be dumb enough to smoke here at home, he's got a nose like a bloodhound. What went on last- Oh!" As she twisted to push the pillow into a more comfortable shape she saw something that made the healthy flush fade from her cheeks. "Oh. I'm beginning to remember…"

She was looking at the lamp on the bedside table.

"It wasn't a dream," Kathy said slowly. "That hand- that awful, bony hand… It threw the lamp at me."

The hands of Pat's wristwatch pointed to seven thirty when she inserted her key in her door, congratulating herself on being in time to destroy the note before Mark got up. His first class was at nine a.m., and he saw no reason to rise before eight thirty. After all, it was only a twenty-minute drive to campus.

She had felt compelled to leave a note, in case some uncharacteristic quirk roused Mark earlier than normal, but Pat was thankful he wouldn't see it. She didn't want to tell him the truth and she was too tired to think up a good lie.

But as she opened the door she realized that the fate that hates mothers had dealt her another low blow. Leaving the door ajar, she made a dash for the kitchen.

Unfortunately for her, Mark was already on the stairs, and the hall was long. It never entered his head to wonder why his mother was racing through the house in the early morning hours; he entered into the game with youthful enthusiasm, and naturally beat Pat to the kitchen door by at least six feet.