Time Out of Mind (50 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Gwen Leamas, carrying a small canvas tote, emerged ten
minutes later. Corbin was close behind. Lesko lowered
himself in his seat. Looking at the woman, he saw no sign that she was agitated by anything she might have seen up
stairs, but Corbin was a different story. He was looking
around. Sniffing the air. He had that same funny look,
Lesko saw, that he'd had the day before when he suddenly seemed to realize the old guy was following him. When
Corbin all of a sudden looked taller. When just
for a few
seconds the thought hit Lesko that Corbin was somebody
else. Lesko wanted to shake it away. But this was twice.
What the hell. He shrugged. With all the other weirdness
going on around here, I should decide what's too crazy? Lesko gave the Mercedes a block's head start.
At the Greenwich Public Library, Lesko picked up a large
book entitled
Mainstreams of Modern Art,
a subject that bore no risk of absorbing his attention, and chose a chair
that gave him a partially obstructed view of Corbin's group.
He'd suspected Greenwich as their destination from the
start, especially when he saw Gwen Leamas's tote bag, although the detour up the West Side Drive had temporarily
confused him.
They'd gone directly to the microfilm section. Lesko
made a mental note of the file tray from which they'd cho
sen a reel. He would check it later, but he had little doubt
its dates would correspond to the books Corbin bought at
Barnes & Noble's and to a time when the Osborne Apartments were not so old. Lesko wished he'd thought to bring
a pocket recorder. If he had one, he could just wander along
those nearby bookshelves until he found a place to leave it
running, then go back and sit with his art book until they
were through.
What would he hear? Lesko asked himself. Ghosts? Ray
mond Lesko does not believe in ghosts.
That's fine, Raymond. Then tell me what you think is
going on over there. Do you think it's just three reasonable people doing some just-the-facts kind of research in old
newspaper files?
same year he was born, and who keeps looking like he's
changing into somebody else. You saw it on Fifty-eighth
Street, and coming out of the subway, and when he came
back out of the girl's apartment looking like he picked up
Ed Garvey's scent, and you're seeing it now. And if he is
changing into someone else, who is it? Tilden Beckwith,
right? I know you don't want to believe that. But stay with
it
anyway because what you got, at the very least, is what
those people over there already believe.
Lesko thought of the time when the cops on Staten Island brought in this psychic to help them find some missing little
girls. They gave the psychic, this Dutchman, clothes that
belonged to one of the kids and right away the psychic tells
them where to search for the body and about a guy who
made these girls write compositions before he killed them.
Turned out to be a substitute teacher who later hung himself
in his cell although the cops probably gave him a hand.
Why is this weirder than that? Lesko shrugged. If a psychic
can get into the head of a murdered little girl just by touch
ing her things, why can't Corbin get into the head of the
original Tilden, someone who's already in his blood, by
seeing the same things Tilden saw?
Lesko ducked his head. Corbin was leaving. He was putting on his coat, and so was Gwen Leamas, but Harry Stur
devant looked like he was staying with the microfilms.
From where Lesko sat it did not seem that Sturdevant
wanted them to leave. Neither did Lesko. These people
were enough trouble when they were all in one place. Now
Sturdevant was trying to hand his car keys to Corbin, sug
gesting in a voice loud enough for Lesko to hear that they'd be better off driving. He'd follow them on foot later; Maple Avenue was not that far. But Corbin refused the car, saying it was only a ten-minute walk for them, too. They'd put the
coffee on and whenever Sturdevant got there they'd eat
some of Mrs. Starling's lunch. Whoever that is.
Lesko didn't like this at all. He did not want Corbin
waltzing unprotected up to his house, but he did want to
know what other digging Harry Sturdevant planned on do
ing. He decided to split the difference. Lesko waited until
Corbin and Gwen Leamas had reached the information desk
and turned right toward the automatic doors before he
moved to follow. He watched them cut through the parking
lot, with no other eyes on them that Lesko could see, and
onto the sidewalk of Putnam Avenue, then he walked
quickly to Mr. Makowski's car and pulled out in the direction of Maple Avenue. He was there within two minutes.
Corbin’s house was a few blocks up the hill past the kind of stone church that's built mostly for debutante
weddings
and past an equestrian statue of a Revolutionary War general named Israel Putnam. His car made the hill with dif
ficulty although the road surface had been sanded. Lesko
made a note to explain about snow tires to Mr. Makowski.
He continued on past Corbin's Victorian without slowing,
his immediate interest being cars, especially BMWs with New York plates, that might be parked within a few hun
dred feet of the house. There were no cars at all except
those in driveways. Lesko turned around. He passed Cor
bin's house once more, this time slowing to be sure that
the snow cover on the walk and driveway was not unduly
disturbed. It was not. He saw only the tracks of a single
dog across Corbin's front lawn and the tire marks made by
Saturday's mail truck when it cut within arm's reach of
Corbin's box. A ridge of lumpy snow had also been plowed
across his driveway entrance. That was the good news, that no one had been here. The bad news was that now Corbin might decide to get out there with a shovel so that Harry
Sturdevant could get the car in. Lesko stopped. He shifted
into reverse and backed across the foot high mound, pene
trating half a car length into the driveway, then cut his
wheels and pulled out in the other direction. There. It would
look like someone had just turned around. And it might keep Corbin off the streets. Lesko swung back down the hill onto Putnam Avenue and began looking for him.
They seemed fine. Still no one behind them. Corbin was
gesturing as he walked, telling some kind of story that the
Leamas dame found fascinating, but his manner was calm enough and he appeared to be himself. Go make the coffee.
Sturdevant standing at the information desk. Lesko hesi
tated. Let's see how long he's going to be there, Lesko decided. Maybe I can do a quick pass at the microfilm
machine and see what kind of notes he's taking.
Two women were seated at the desk, which was more
of a U-shaped counter. The older of the two, the one look
ing up at Sturdevant, struck Lesko as being out of place. He knew what it was. Expensive clothes, hair done just
right, a single strand of real pearls. Lesko imagined her
husband was a company president she only saw on week
ends and her kids were moved out or away at school and her shrink told her to get a job like this to keep her out of
the Stolichnaya. He noticed the way she worked. She dith
ered. That was the word. A lot of rich ladies who do vol
unteer work cultivate a certain incompetence so no one
should mistake them for somebody who actually needs the
job. The other girl, younger, sort of pretty, was more clearly
there to make a living. She was moving crisply through a
pile of paperwork and taking all telephone inquiries more
complicated than what time the place closes.
Lesko was about to pass on when a curious change in
the older one's expression stopped him. A few seconds ago
her face was saying to Sturdevant, How do you do, you're
my kind, aren't you, just tell me what you're looking for
and I'll do my best to help you. Now she looked like he
asked whether the library had any good animal porn. What
ever he asked, it made the young girl look up from her
telephone and she was trying not to smile. Lesko edged
closer. He stepped past Sturdevant to a rack of oversized
atlases and opened one at random to a map of Peru.
“
Are you a journalist, by chance?” he heard the rich
lady ask. ”A writer?”
“
No.” Sturdevant looked slightly bemused. He'd no
ticed the sudden chill. “My interest is entirely personal.”
“
Well, I'm sure we have nothing like that at all.”
“
In a library this size? The
Greenwich
Library?”
“
Nothing. I'm sorry.”
Lesko saw the younger woman's eyebrows arch.
“
Is there someone else I could ask?” Sturdevant per
sisted. ”I know you have old newspaper accounts at the
very least because I've been reading them. And, this being the Greenwich Library, I'm confident that you have a sec
tion dealing with the history of Greenwich. I'd hoped that
you could save me some time by telling me where there's
a single source dealing with this Anthony Comstock epi
sode.”
The younger woman was scribbling as he spoke. She tore
a sheet off a yellow pad and held it out to Sturdevant.
“Aisle seven, sir. The far end, lower right-hand shelves.”
Sturdevant glanced at the titles she listed. “Thank
you,
''
he said. He walked away shaking his head. Lesko decided
to study Peru for another minute or so.
”
I don't know why you did that,” the older one snapped.
Because this is a library, Barbara,” she answered pa
tiently. “The man wanted library information.”
“
How do you know he doesn't write for one of those trashy little newspapers they sell at supermarket check
outs? How do you know he's even from Greenwich?”
“
This is also a
public
library, Barbara.”
“
Whose purpose is to
serve
this town,” Barbara Black
thorne added, “not to embarrass it.”
The younger woman winced but said nothing.
Mr. Hoagland.”
across the library floor.
“
The lady's upset,” he said.
“
Excuse me?” Carol Oakes looked up from her index
cards.
”
I didn't mean to eavesdrop. Couldn't help hearing. But
now that I have, who's Anthony Comstock?”
Carol continued sorting. “Oh, he was a nineteenth-
century vice crusader. A fanatic, actually, and a thundering
ass· Have you ever seen
September Morn,
the painting?”
“
Sure. My mother hung a copy in the upstairs bathroom.
Kind of a polite nude. With folded arms.”
bunch of prints and they weren't selling. The dealer had a
brainstorm. He put a copy in his gallery window, then made an anonymous call to this nut, Comstock, saying that a lewd painting was being displayed where passing schoolchildren
could see it. Comstock rushed down, brought a reporter,
and tried to have the dealer arrested for peddling smut if
he didn't take it out of his window. A crowd gathered, the paper ran the story, and within a few weeks this ordinary little nude was one of the best-known paintings in Amer
ica.”