Shade of Pale (3 page)

The glass animals stood apprehensively before her. Today they were different. Today something was wrong.

Mrs. Willis sensed it.

She leaned toward the glass case that held the animals until her nose was just an inch away from a transparent matchstick giraffe.

“Are you trying to tell me something, my sweet one?”

A roar erupted suddenly in her ears. It swept into her brain like the shock wave from a nearby explosion.

She staggered back, away from the display case.

One thought filled her consciousness, one sound, unmistakable across the centuries. She'd heard it before, the night her father died, the mournful, frightening wail that always brought death.

Her
song.

“Oh, my God in Heaven,” the old woman rasped. “It can't be. To cross the ocean? To come here?”

She sat down wearily on an overstuffed parlor chair. The ringing in her head subsided. She clutched the arms of the chair as if the room were moving, but the figurines and everything else stood motionless.

“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered. “It never ends.”

The teakettle whistled sharply, like a warning siren, and she went back into the kitchen to turn it off.

She sat down at the table and poured a cup of steaming water into a dainty china cup. She lowered a tea bag into the cup and held it with her fingers.

It dangled, steeping in the scalding water at the end of a fine white string. She stared into the cup and worried.

“The time has come at last,” she said. “Destiny is now.”

A clock ticked; outside, an ambulance cried. Mrs. Willis sat for an hour, gazing at the string that held the tea bag. The brew was black and cold now.

She poured it down the drain and went to the closet. Behind the clothes, nestled amid the mothballs, she found the box containing her copy of the Book of Kells.

CHAPTER THREE

Jukes Wahler thought about Loomis as he locked his office, walked across the hall, and pushed the elevator button. The windows on this floor of the Bradley Building faced the Parker Arms apartments, an older brick building. They were separated by Thirty-seventh Street. At night many of the windows were illuminated, and Jukes often wondered about the people living there.

His eyes wandered across the street.

He caught his breath.

It was she
. She stared at him from one of the windows, the red hair and pale skin unmistakable. Jukes's jaw dropped.

It can't be. It's just someone else with red hair who happened to be passing by the window when I looked. Someone else with flaming red hair and impossibly pale skin, that's all. Someone else who just happens to be staring at me, across the avenue, through two panes of glass, at night
. He wrestled with the idea as the elevator arrived.

Whatever this is, it's not anything supernatural
, he thought.
It's either another one of those strange Morticia Addams types with red hair, or it's an incredible coincidence
.

There's that word again
.

Jukes's apartment waited warm and reassuring, an emotional oasis. He lived in modest bachelor splendor, favoring bookcases and leather chairs. His prodigious jazz and classical CD collection dominated one wall. A bizarre Picasso portrait of Dora Marr stared at him from across the hall, a print he bought after attending the Picasso and Portraiture show with Cathy at MOMA. It was Cathy's idea. She loved the facial distortion and thought the colors were just what Jukes's living room needed. And of course he went along with it, not really in love with the thing, but to make her happy. And it said something about Cathy. But tonight Dora Marr made him uneasy and he avoided looking at the picture.

He phoned Cathy at the Doral Hotel, and she agreed to come right over.

For the last two years Cathy had been living with Bobby Sudden, a photographer. Jukes disliked photographers, he thought they were all voyeurs, but Bobby seemed particularly bad. When Cathy showed him some of Bobby's pictures he had to bite his tongue Jukes thought Bobby's work violent and brutish, the worst kind of crap masquerading as art.

He leafed through a book of Bobby's photos that Cathy had given him as a gift last Christmas. He kept it out of a sense of morbid fascination, but then he kept everything Cathy gave him. And that book never failed to depress him; page after page of moody black-and-white images of girls with bored, dangerous faces, in various bondage scenarios. It was the overall attitude of Bobby's work that Jukes found offensive: the depiction of women, of
his sister
, as objects, as slaves, as unhappy victims in Bobby's perverted fantasies. Jukes found nothing erotic about it; in fact, he found it repugnant.

Wedged between two of the pages was one old photo of Cathy before Bobby. It was a color print of her first modeling card, when Cathy was an ingenue with a future as bright as her smile. Her face beamed; she looked the very essence of unspoiled beauty. In contrast, Bobby's dark images of her were of a completely different person.

Another piece of paper detached itself from the book and fluttered to the floor. As he bent over to retrieve it, he realized with a scowl what it was—a doctor bill from Bobby's last tirade. He scanned it for the hundredth time, still not wanting to believe.

That son of a bitch has beaten her up for the last time
. Jukes felt his rage dilate and focus on Bobby.

Jukes looked at the doctor bill and remembered how he had insisted that she file charges with the police, which she did, and later dropped.

And then, incredibly, against Jukes's pleading and every logical argument, she went back to that monster again.

Jukes blamed himself. For all his professional training, Jukes was impotent when it came to Cathy.

He begged his sister to move out, to leave Bobby, but she stayed. For some unknown and terrible reason, she loved Bobby—and it was killing her.

Down deep, Jukes had always believed that Cathy was the reason he became a psychiatrist. Yet he never understood her, even though they'd grown up together. Everyone else, it seemed, he could help, but not Cathy, and that rankled Jukes.

She seemed to be slipping further away, and Jukes was determined to pull her back.

He shuddered to think what his parents would have said: “Instead of watching over her, you're watching her destroy herself.”

But as easy as it had been for him to understand the monster Bobby, that's how hard it was for him to fathom his own sister, the victim Cathy. Knowing her background, he agonized that he could not think of one event, one unhappy period of time, one tragedy, other than the death of their parents, that would have shaped so strongly a victim's personality. Whatever events that caused Cathy's problems were part of her secret life, the part of her she never showed Jukes. The part Bobby lived in.

The doorbell rang, bringing Jukes back.

He opened the door and looked into Cathy's blackened eyes. His stomach turned.

The insanity of the situation overpowered him, and he fell into the easy grip of helpless rage. She stood there in the doorway like a monument to his failure. He stepped forward and threw his arms around her. They embraced for an unspoken minute, and Jukes felt the tears well up.

“Oh, God … Cath—”

“Jukey, please, don't say anything.”

“You look like you've been hit by a truck,” he said softly as he led her inside.

The skin around her eyes was discolored, her lower lip was swollen and split, and there were bruises the length of her arms.

“He did this to you?” Jukes asked as he examined her wounds, relieved to see nothing was broken.

“Yes.”

Jukes smoldered, his face darkened. He flashed Cathy a look so uncharacteristically cold it frightened her.

“Jukey, I had no choice. We had a fight; it escalated. It was all my fault. He … he didn't mean it; I know he didn't. It was an accident, that's all. One thing led to another—”

“One thing led to another? Since when does a domestic argument lead to criminal assault?”

She turned away, tears streaming down her face. “This time I won't go back; I promise.”

“You're damn right you won't go back!” he shouted. “You're staying here with me until I sort this out, do you understand? Jesus, it's a good thing Dad's not alive to see this or he'd kill the guy. I swear he'd get out his old shotgun and blow the asshole's brains out for this!” Jukes paused and took a breath. He gave her a look that said,
Maybe that's what I should do
.

“I don't want you going anywhere near that jerk, OK? You're lucky he hasn't killed you yet. I'll see he winds up behind bars for this; you can bet on that. Then we'll get a restraining order. I don't want him to come within a hundred yards of you.”

The tears began to flow from Cathy's discolored eyes.

“Jeez, Cath. How can you let this happen?”

She fell into his arms, trembling. “I don't know.”

“You've got to promise me you'll never go back to him, no matter what happens. Never, ever, ever go back.”

“What about my stuff?”

“Forget about it. Just leave it there. I'll buy you all new stuff.”

“But where am I gonna live?”

“You can stay here until we find you an apartment. OK? It's no biggie. The important thing is that you stay away from Bobby. We'll let the police handle the whole thing.”

Cathy fell silent for a moment, but from her body language Jukes could feel the reluctance she had when the conversation turned to taking legal action against Bobby.

He took her face gently in his hands, careful not to touch the bruises, and spoke into it. “You've got to face it, Cathy. Bobby's time in your life is over. It's madness. For God's sake let it go; can't you see it's killing you? You need help.”

Cathy looked down. “Can't you help me?”

“I don't think I could be objective about you on a professional level. It's just not done. I'm referring you to a colleague, Dr. James Kendall. Jim is the best in the field at this type thing.”

Cathy looked hurt. “But you're so smart, Jukey. You know everything … you got all those awards—”

“They don't mean anything if I can't help you, Cath.”

“What's wrong with me? Why do I keep going back?”

Jukes shrugged. “Why don't we let Jim Kendall figure it out. Whatever it is, we can handle it. In the meantime, let me take care of those abrasions and get some ice on your eyes.”

While Cathy slept, Jukes called the police and reported the incident. He told them he'd be down first thing in the morning, with Cathy, to file charges. He next phoned his lawyer and they agreed to meet at the police station at 9:00
A
.
M
.

This time Bobby would get what's coming
.

Then Jukes made himself a drink and sat back in his leather easy chair to think. Leaning back with a swallow of bourbon in his mouth, he let it swirl slowly down his throat and closed his eyes.

He saw the image of his father. That's how it usually began.

His father had always told him to take care of his sister; he must have said that every day of Jukes's life He could almost hear the man's familiar voice, loud and abrasive, booming through the house: “Jukey, remember, you're the big boy. You're the older brother, and what does the older brother do?”

“Takes care of the little sister,” he had replied timidly.

“Damn right.”

Then his father would nod contentedly, never once considering the fact that Jukes might fail. When his father died and Cathy was only fifteen years old, Jukes swore to protect and care for her. His father had died knowing that and believing that Jukes would always be there for her.

A year later, when his mother passed away, she, too, wanted to hear those words. Little Cathy was too young, too weak, to take care of herself, she said. Jukes had to do it.

When Jukes next saw Declan Loomis, the deterioration the man had undergone in just twenty-four hours shocked him. Loomis's gaunt face looked resigned to death. His eyes were sunken orbs, frightened and dead.

He walked slowly into the office, weary and defeated. He looked at Jukes and smiled weakly. “It's almost time, Doc. She's gettin' closer.”

“Mr. Loomis, have you been taking your medication?”

“Yeah. But all it does is slow me down.”

“You still feel as if you're being followed?”

Loomis shook his head. “Doc, I told you. I don't
feel
anything; I
am
being followed. Except, now, she's starting to call to me, drawing me to her. And I can't resist. It's like I'm swimming against the tide.”

Jukes got out his notebook and prepared to take notes again.

When Loomis spoke, his voice was dry and exasperated. “Is that all you headshrinkers do? Just write things down in your damn little notebooks?”

“All the answers are inside you, Mr. Loomis. All I try to do is help you dig them out.”

“Dig them out? Christ, you'd be better off helping me dig my grave.”

“Let's avoid talk like that, OK? How do you expect me to treat you successfully with an attitude like that?”

“I don't expect successful treatment. I told you; I'm going to die.”

Jukes changed the subject. “Have you been able to sleep?”

Loomis rubbed his red eyes and sighed. The weight of his madness lay heavy on his shoulders. He ignored the question.

“I bought one of those disposable cameras. I figured I could take a picture of her to show you, so you wouldn't think I'm making this up.

“I started taking it with me everywhere. I saw her on the train platform, across the tracks from me. She was only fifteen yards away. I pulled the camera out of my pocket and started snappin' away. I must have got ten good pictures. She just stood there and stared. Then the train arrived and I couldn't see her anymore.