Trace (Trace 1) (21 page)

Chico had gone back to her own motel and Trace talked with her for an hour on the telephone before he drove to Mrs. Carey’s home.

The old woman seemed pleased to see him when she answered the door. “Come in, Mr. Tracy. Have you heard the good news?”

“What news is that?” Trace said. He closed the door behind him but was careful that it did not click locked.

“Mitchell’s coming home from the sanatorium. Tomorrow.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Trace said.

“Why don’t you go into the study and make yourself a drink? My tea is steeping, I’ll be right in.”

In the study, Trace looked out the side window toward the bristling hedges jutting up from the rolling trimmed lawn like ghostly black apparitions. He shook his head and poured himself a drink from the liquor cabinet and was standing there when Muffy steamed into the room.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to talk to Mrs. Carey.”

“If you’ve come to talk about Mr. Carey, forget it. Her mind is made up.”

“Who made it up for her?”

“She makes up her own mind.”

“Good. Then she can change her own mind,” Trace said.

“Listen, you—” she started.

“No,
you
listen. I don’t like you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a Svengalian little shit who’s got her hooks out for the Carey money, and you best back off or I’ll spend some time proving it. Now, go haunt a house. Or look in your crystal ball or something. If I want to hear from you, I’ll rattle your chain.”

Muffy looked at him, then curled her lips back, baring her teeth. It was a feline gesture, the thing a cornered cat might do, Trace thought. Wordlessly, she walked from the room, and Trace again glanced toward the window but still saw nothing except the blackness of the night.

Trace was sitting at the small table in the center of the room when Mrs. Carey returned with her tea on a tray.

“Would you rather sit over here?” she said.

“I wanted to talk business with you and I thought this was more businesslike,” he said.

She joined him at the table, and while she poured tea and spooned honey into it, he looked past her toward the side window, but still saw nothing there that he wanted to see.

She looked up at him expectantly and he said, “I’m here as Bob Swenson’s friend and a friend of yours, Mrs. Carey.”

“Thank you. I’ve always sort of felt that,” she said.

“You saw Dr. Matteson today?” he said, in a gentle question that needed no answer, but the woman nodded.

“A nice man,” she said. “Very nice. And so caring.”

“Then why don’t you listen to him? He told you it might be killing your husband to bring him home now.”

She visibly winced when Trace said “killing,” but she sipped her tea, pursed her lips, and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Tracy. Muffy just said you’d probably try to talk me out of it, but I have my reasons.”

“What kind of reasons?”

“I can’t tell you about them, but they’re very good reasons. We’re going to be a family again. A real family.”

“I think I know your reasons, Mrs. Carey. You remember Houdini, the magician?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know he spent most of his adult life looking for a spiritualist, a medium, who wasn’t a fake? And he never found one?”

She had a small smile on her lips, as if to say she had heard it all before. If she was surprised that Trace knew about her reasons for wanting her husband moved, she did not show it.

“All the so-called spiritualists, the fancy mediums, the spoon-benders, the watch-starters, today, they’re all fakes,” Trace said. “Magicians’ tricks.”

“Some people never believe,” she said gently.

Trace saw a motion over her shoulder and he nodded his head. “All right, Mrs. Carey, I didn’t want to do this, but let me show you just what you believe in, enough to maybe kill your husband.”

He walked to the light switch by the door and turned it off. The room was lit only by the hall light shining through the partially opened door.

He sat back down and said, “Close your eyes, Mrs. Carey, and hold my hands.”

“This is—”

“Please. Just do it.”

Grudgingly, slowly, the woman complied, and a moment later, a soft eerie female voice filled the room.

“Devlin, are you there? Are you there?”

It was a soft and haunting voice, and Mrs. Carey’s eyes opened wide with shock.

“Please, Mrs. Carey. Just listen. Yes, I am here,” he called out.

“Devlin, this is your mother.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“It’s cold where I am.” As the voice spoke, Trace kept his eyes on Mrs. Carey. The shock on her face had seemed to give way to confusion, then annoyance.

“Turn up the heat, Mother,” Trace said.

“But they won’t let me, Devlin. They said I didn’t pay my bill. Come and get me, Devlin. In the great beyond. Come and get me, come and…” As the voice began to trail off, Trace said to the woman, “It’s a hoax, Mrs. Carey, don’t you see?”

“How do you know? How can you be so sure?”

“Because my mother’s not in any great beyond. She’s in the Bronx, busting my father’s chops.”

“But—”

“No buts. You want more? Here.” He nodded again and suddenly an apparition began to appear on the drapes at the far end of the room.

“Look,” Trace said. He pointed toward the drapes, and Mrs. Carey followed his hand with her eyes. “A spirit picture,” he said.

The image on the drapes danced a moment, then stopped. It was fuzzy and dull and unrecognizable, and as Trace watched, it began to slowly grind its way into focus.

Finally the picture on the drapes was clear.

It was a cartoon of Porky Pig.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Carey with pain in her voice.

The ghostly voice filled the room again. “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks,” it said.

“You want more, Mrs. Carey?” Trace snapped. “I can give you Goofy or Donald Duck. Maybe Clarabelle Cow? Or Buffy, if you want.”

“Stop, stop,” the woman cried. She covered her eyes with her hands.

Trace went to the light switch. The door to the room was now wide open. He turned on the light and waved toward the window for Chico to come in.

When he went back to the table, Mrs. Carey had tears in her eyes and he felt a pain in the pit of his stomach at having been forced to hurt her.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Carey. But all this spook nonsense around here, the crystal ball, the incense, the voices, they’re all magic tricks, all part of a swindle.”

The woman took a deep breath as if to compose herself. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tracy, but I saw Buffy’s face the other night. And I heard her voice.”

Chico came into the room, carrying a tape recorder with the suction-cup mike and the image-projection light.

“Mrs. Carey, this is my assistant, Miss Mangini. That was her voice you just heard.”

The old woman turned toward Chico and for a moment her face showed anger at the young woman’s participation in the scheme. Then her good manners reasserted themselves and she just nodded.

“I was wondering about that face, Mrs. Carey,” Trace said. “But remember, the other day, the picture of Buffy was missing from the mantel there. Look over there. It’s back. I think Muffy had a projection transparency made of it. I found the receipt in her room.”

“Trace,” said Chico.

“You were late.”

“I know. I was meeting that reporter. He gave me this.” She held out a high-school yearbook. “You ought to look at it.”

She put it on the table and opened it. Even with a different hairdo, the girl in the lower right-hand corner of the page was Muffy. The legend under the photograph read:

Melinda Belknap, AKA Bucky. A twin and already a veteran at being cut in half onstage. This talented mimic will go far in show business. Drama Club, Class Night.

Trace glanced at the picture, then turned the book around so Mrs. Carey could see it.

“There’s your daughter’s voice, Mrs. Carey. From our talented mimic, Muffy.”

The gray-haired woman looked at the picture blankly, as if she could not comprehend what was being said.

“There’s more, Trace,” Chico said. “Turn another page.”

He did, and at the top left-hand corner was a picture of a young man with a big gap-toothed smile. “Peter Belknap,” said the caption. “Class magician. He and twin Bucky (Melinda) continually captivate the class with their illusions. A show-business career looms for Petey.”

“The accomplice,” Chico said.

“More than that,” Trace said, and he looked down at the picture again. He had seen the face before, but it hadn’t belonged to anyone named Peter Belknap.

“That’s Jack Ketch,” Trace said. “The night nurse in Mr. Carey’s room.”

“What name?” said Chico.

“Jack Ketch.”

“Oh, Trace,” she said with a keening sound.

“What’s the matter?”

“Jack Ketch. It’s an old British slang name. It means hangman.”

The door to Mitchell Carey’s hospital room was locked. Trace kicked it open. The flimsy lock splintered through the dried old wood of the frame and the door swung wide.

Jack Ketch was leaning over Carey’s bed. He swung around as the door flew open.

“Hey, what the hell—”

Trace interrupted him. “Just came to check on Mr. Carey.” He walked casually toward the side of the bed, but as he neared Ketch, he balled his fist and buried it deep in the young man’s stomach. The air went out of him with a rush and he sank to his knees, groaning and holding his stomach.

Trace looked through the oxygen tent at Carey and saw the old man’s face had a faint bluish pallor. He reached out his hand for the oxygen tank and found the valve had been turned off.

He opened the valve, and the oxygen began hissing into the clear plastic tent over the old man’s bed. Trace lifted an edge of the tent to help clear away the carbon dioxide that might have built up underneath it.

Ketch was struggling to his feet. Without a word Trace leaned over and punched him in the face. The nurse fell backward onto his back, groaning.

There was no telephone in the room, so Trace walked to the open door and bellowed down the hall. “Nurse, Nurse.”

A nurse came running around the corner into the corridor and Trace motioned for her to follow him into the room.

“Mr. Carey,” he said. “Check his pulse. Make sure he’s breathing.”

The nurse looked worriedly at the male nurse lying on the floor, then again at Trace.

“Just do what I say,” he snapped.

“Pulse seems strong,” she said after a moment.

“All right. Now go get Dr. Matteson right away. Tell him that Tracy, that’s me, wants him up here right away. Tell him that Mr. Carey’s oxygen had been turned off and his body may be flooded with carbon dioxide. Got that?”

She hesitated, then nodded yes.

“Snap to it.”

The nurse ran from the room.

Ketch was stirring and Trace punched him again in the face, but not hard enough this time to put him out. He reached down, grabbed the young man’s long hair, and jerked him upward to his feet, then twisted an arm up behind him. He could feel the weight as the man sagged against him.

“What…where…?”

“Just move, hero,” Trace said, and pushed him toward the open door to the corridor.

When Ketch came to, he was lying in a bed, strapped down by canvas bands across his legs and another across his chest and arms.

His eyes registered shock when he realized he was under the plastic dome of an oxygen tent and he could hear the faint hissing of the oxygen and feel the chill of the gas surrounding him.

He breathed deeply and turned his head to look around the room.

Trace was leaning against the doorway, staring at him.

“Game’s over, Florence Nightingale,” Trace said. “Start talking.”

“Where are we?”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’re in Three East. Nobody’s going to find you here. Not until I’m done with you.”

“The guard,” Ketch started.

“I sent him off on a wild-goose chase. Nobody knows you’re here. Except me. Just the two of us, isn’t that cozy? Now you’re going to tell me what’s been going on.”

“Wait and read it in my memoirs,” Ketch said.

“Yours. Or sweet little sister Muffy’s?” Trace paused as the man in the bed gaped at him. “That’s right. I know about you and your sister and your whole traveling medicine show.”

“Then I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“You don’t have to, but you will,” Trace said. “Are you really a nurse?”

“Of course I’m a nurse.”

“Then you know how dangerous oxygen can be, don’t you?”

Ketch hesitated. “Yeah…”

Trace took his cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. “You ever seen an oxygen fire?” he asked.

“Just pictures.” The young man squirmed against the bonds around his legs and chest.

“Then you got the idea. You know what you’re going to look like after I puff this cigarette up and then toss it on that plastic tent of yours, don’t you?”

“Now, wait…”

“No, pal. I’m tired of waiting. You’re going to be incinerated, Ketch. I’ll tell you what it’ll be like. First, the cigarette’s going to be on the top of the plastic for a minute before it burns through. You’ll be able to watch the plastic starting to melt. Then the oxygen is going to flare up and you’re going to be swimming in fire. Fire’s a bloodsucker. It’ll burn out the oxygen in the tent, then it’ll burn down your nose and mouth, looking for more oxygen. In the meantime, your clothes will be burning. Your flesh will start to melt. It’s mostly fat, you know, and it burns good. When it gets burning, it’ll keep going because the tent’ll be gone and the oxygen from the room will keep feeding the fire. Oh, yeah. Maybe the hose from the tank will ignite too. That’ll be like a blowtorch aiming at your face. Nice way to die, Ketch.”

Trace puffed hard on his cigarette, shook off the ash, and puffed it again into a bright red glow. He held the cigarette between his thumb and curled middle finger, ready to flip across the room at the oxygen tent.

“So long, Ketch,” he said.

“No, wait. I’ll talk. I’ll talk.”

Trace put the cigarette back in his mouth, reached behind him, and pressed the on button of his tape recorder.

“You’re going to talk of your own free will, isn’t that right?” he said.

“Sure, sure, anything you say.”

“Start at the beginning,” Trace said.

But before Ketch had a chance to speak, something in the back of Trace’s head exploded and his eyes rolled up into his head as everything went black and he pitched to the floor.