The Exorcist

  Chris lowered her head. “Judas priest, just a second!”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. It’s painful. And perhaps I’m all wrong. But you’ll think now? Who might have come, please?”

  Head still lowered, Chris frowned in thought for a time, then looked up. “No, I’m sorry. There’s just no one I can think of.”

  Kinderman turned his glance to Sharon. “Maybe you then, Miss Spencer? Someone comes here to see you?”

  “Oh, no, no one.”

  “Does the horseman know where you work?” Chris asked her. Kinderman’s eyebrows rose. “The horseman?”

  “Sharon’s boyfriend,” Chris explained.

  Sharon shook her head. “He’s never come here,” she said. “And besides, he was in Boston that night at some convention.”

  “He’s a salesman?” asked Kinderman.

  “A lawyer.”

  “Ah.” The detective turned back to Chris. “The servants? They have visitors?” he asked.

  “No, never. Not at all.”

  “You expected a package that day? Some delivery?”

  “Why?”

  “Mr. Dennings was—not to speak ill of the dead—but as you said, in his cups he was somewhat—well, let’s call it irascible, and capable, doubtless, of provoking an argument or an anger, and in this case maybe even a rage from perhaps a delivery person who’d come by with a package. So were you expecting something? Dry cleaning, maybe? Groceries? Liquor? A package?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Karl handles all of that.”

  “Ah, of course.”

  “Want to ask him? Go ahead.”

  The detective sighed morosely. Leaning back from the table, he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat as he cast a glum look at the witchcraft book. “Never mind, never mind; it’s remote. You’ve got a daughter very sick, and—well, enough now.” He made a gesture of dismissal. “That’s it. End of meeting.” He stood up. “Thank you for your time,” he said to Chris, and then to Sharon, “Very nice to have met you, Miss Spencer.”

  “Same here,” Sharon answered remotely. She was staring into space.

  “Baffling,” said Kinderman with a head shake. “So strange; so very strange.” He was focused on some inner thought. Then he looked at Chris as she rose from her chair. “Well, I’m sorry. I’ve bothered you for nothing,” he said.

  “Here, I’ll walk you to the door,” Chris told him.

  Both her expression and her voice were subdued.

  “Oh, please don’t bother!”

  “It’s no bother at all.”

  “If you insist.”

  “Oh, incidentally,” the detective said as he and Chris were moving out of the kitchen, “just a chance in a million, I know, but your daughter—you could ask her if she possibly saw Mr. Dennings in her room that night?”

  “Look, he wouldn’t have had a reason to be up there in the first place.”

  “Yes, I know that; I realize that’s true; but if certain British doctors never asked, ‘What’s this fungus?’ we wouldn’t today have penicillin. Am I right? Please ask. You’ll ask?”

  “When she’s well enough, yes; I’ll ask.”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  They had arrived at the home’s front door.

  “In the meantime…,” the detective continued. But he faltered, and, touching two fingertips to his lips, he said gravely, “Look, I hate to be asking you this. Please forgive me.”

  Expecting some new shock, Chris tensed and felt the prescience tingling again in her bloodstream. She said, “What?”

  “For my daughter … you could maybe give an autograph?” The detective’s cheeks had reddened. After a moment of surprise, Chris almost laughed with relief: at herself and at despair and the human condition.

  “Oh, of course! Where’s a pen?”

  “Right here!” responded Kinderman instantly, whipping out a pen from the pocket of his coat while his other hand dipped into a pocket of his jacket and slipped out a calling card. He handed them to Chris. “She would love it.”

  “What’s her name?” Chris asked, pressing the card against the door as she held the pen poised to write. A weighty hesitation followed as from behind her she heard only wheezing. She glanced around, and in Kinderman’s eyes and reddening face she saw the tension of some massive inner struggle.

  “I lied,” he said finally, his eyes at once desperate and defiant. “The autograph’s for me. Write ‘To William—William F. Kinderman’—it’s spelled on the back.”

  Chris eyed him with a wan and unexpected affection, checked the spelling of his name and wrote, “William F. Kinderman, I love you! Chris MacNeil,” and then gave him the card, which he tucked into his pocket without reading the inscription.

  “You’re a very nice lady,” he said to Chris sheepishly.

  “Thanks. You’re a very nice man.”

  He seemed to blush harder. “No, I’m not. I’m a bother.” He was opening the door. “Never mind what I said here today. Forget it. Keep your mind on your daughter. Your daughter!”

  Chris nodded, her despondency returning as Kinderman stepped out onto a wide and low, black iron-gated stoop. He turned around, and in the daylight was more conscious of the dark sacs beneath the movie star’s eyes. He donned his hat. “But you’ll ask her?” he reminded, and “I will,” she said. “I promise.”

  “Well, then good-bye. And take care.”

  “You too.”

  Chris shut the door and then leaned back against it, closing her eyes, then almost instantly opened them again as she heard the chiming of the doorbell. She turned and opened the door, revealing Kinderman. He grimaced in apology.

  “I’m a nuisance. I’m so sorry. I forgot my pen.”

  Chris looked down and saw the pen still in her hand. She smiled faintly and handed it to the detective.

  “And another thing,” he said. “Yes, it’s pointless, I know that; but I know I won’t sleep tonight thinking maybe there’s a lunatic loose or a doper if every little point I don’t cover. Do you think I could—no, no, it’s dumb, it’s a—yes; yes, forgive me but I think I really should. Could I maybe have a word with Mr. Engstrom, do you think? It’s the deliveries, the question of deliveries.”

  Chris opened the door wider. “Sure, come in. You can talk to him in the study.”

  “No, you’re busy. You’re very kind but enough already. I can talk to him here. This is fine. Here is fine.”

  He’d leaned back and was resting on the stoop’s iron railing.

  “If you insist,” Chris told him, smiling faintly. “I think he’s upstairs with Regan. I’ll send him right down.”

  “I’m obliged.”

  Chris closed the door and, not long after, Karl opened it. He stepped down to the stoop with his hand on the doorknob, holding the door ajar. Standing tall and erect, he looked directly at Kinderman with eyes that were clear and cool. “Yes?” he asked without expression.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Kinderman greeted him, his eyes now steely and locked on Karl’s. “If you give up the right to remain silent,” he intoned rapidly in a flat and deadly cadence, “anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney and to have the attorney present during questioning. If you so desire, and cannot afford one, an attorney will be appointed for you without charge prior to questioning. Do you understand each of these rights I’ve explained to you?”

  Birds twittered softly in the branches of the elder tree beside the house as the traffic sounds of M Street came up to them softly like the humming of bees in a meadow far away.

  Karl’s gaze never wavered as he answered, “Yes.”

  “Do you wish to give up the right to remain silent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you wish to give up the right to speak to an attorney and have him present during questioning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you previously state that on April twenty-eighth, the night of the death of
the British director, Burke Dennings, you attended a film that was showing at the Fine Arts theater?”

  “I did.”

  “And at what time did you enter the theater?”

  “I do not remember.”

  “You stated previously you attended the six-o’clock showing. Does that help you to remember?”

  “Yes, six-o’clock show. I am remembering.”

  “And you saw the picture—the film—from the beginning?”

  “I did.”

  “And you left at the film’s conclusion?”

  “I did.”

  “Not before?”

  “No, I see entire film.”

  “And leaving the theater, you boarded the D.C. Transit bus in front of the theater, debarking at M Street and Wisconsin Avenue at approximately nine-twenty P.M.?”

  “Yes.”

  “And walked home?”

  “I walk home.”

  “And were back in this residence at approximately nine-thirty P.M.?”

  “I am back here exactly nine-thirty,” Karl answered.

  “You’re sure.”

  “Yes, I look at my watch. I am positive.”

  “And you saw the whole film to the very end?”

  “Yes, I said that.”

  “Your answers are being electronically recorded, Mr. Engstrom. Therefore, I want you to be absolutely positive.”

  “I am.”

  “You’re aware of the altercation between an usher and a drunken patron that happened in the last five minutes of the film?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Can you tell me the cause of it?”

  “The man, he was drunk and was making disturbance.”

  “And what did they do with him finally?”

  “Out. They throw him out.”

  “There was no such disturbance. Are you also aware that during the course of the six-o’clock showing a technical breakdown lasting approximately fifteen minutes caused an interruption in the showing of the film?”

  “I am not.”

  “You recall that the audience booed?”

  “No, nothing. No breakdown.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “There was nothing.”

  “There was, as reflected in the log of the projectionist, showing that the film ended not at eight-forty that night, but at approximately eight-fifty-five, which would mean that the earliest bus from the theater would put you at M Street and Wisconsin not at nine-twenty, but nine-forty-five, and that therefore the earliest you could be at the house was approximately five before ten, not nine-thirty, as testified also by Mrs. MacNeil. Would you care now to comment on this puzzling discrepancy?”

  Not for a moment had Karl lost his poise and he held it even now as he calmly answered, “No. I would not.”

  The detective stared at him mutely, then sighed and looked down as he turned off the monitor control that was tucked in the lining of his coat. He held his gaze down for a moment, then looked back up at Karl. “Mr. Engstrom…,” he began in a tone that was weary with understanding. “A serious crime may have been committed. You are under suspicion. Mr. Dennings abused you. I have learned that from other sources. And apparently you’ve lied about your whereabouts at the time of his death. Now it sometimes happens—we’re human; why not?—that a man who is married is sometimes someplace where he says that he is not. You will notice I arranged we are talking in private? Away from the others? Away from your wife? I’m not now recording. It’s off. You can trust me. If it happens you were out with a woman not your wife on that night, you can tell me, I’ll have it checked out, you’ll be out of this trouble and your wife, she won’t know. Now then tell me, where were you at the time Dennings died?”

  Something flickered in the depths of Karl’s eyes, but then died as he insisted through narrowed lips, “At movies!”

  The detective eyed him steadily, unmoving, with no sound but his wheezing as the seconds ticked by. Then, “You are going to arrest me?” Karl asked in a voice that now subtly quavered.

  The detective made no answer but continued to eye him, unblinking, and when Karl seemed again about to speak, the detective abruptly pushed away from the railing, moving toward his parked squad car and driver, with his hands in his pockets as he walked unhurriedly, viewing his surroundings to the left and to the right like an interested visitor to the city. From the stoop, Karl watched, his features stolid and impassive as Kinderman opened the door of the squad car, reached inside to a box of Kleenex affixed to the dashboard, extracted a tissue and blew his nose while staring idly across the river as if considering whether to have lunch at the Marriott Hot Shoppe. Then he entered the squad car without a glance back.

  As the car pulled away and rounded the corner of Thirty-Fifth Street, Karl looked at the hand that was not on the doorknob.

  It was trembling.

  When she heard the sound of the front door closing, Chris was brooding at the bar in the study as she poured herself a vodka over ice. Footsteps. Karl going up the stairs. Chris picked up her glass, took a sip and then slowly moved back toward the kitchen with absent eyes while stirring her drink with an index finger. Something was horribly wrong. Like light leaking under a door into a darkened hallway somewhere out of time, the glow of coming dread had seeped further and further into her consciousness. What lay behind the door?

  She feared to open it and look.

  She entered the kitchen, sat at the table, sipped at her drink and broodingly remembered, “I believe he was killed by a powerful man.” She dropped her glance to the book on witchcraft. Something about it or in it. What? And now footsteps tripping lightly downstairs, Sharon returning from Regan’s bedroom. Entering. Sitting at the table and cranking fresh stationery into the IBM typewriter’s roller. “Pretty creepy,” she murmured with her fingertips lightly resting on the keyboard and her eyes on her propped steno notes to the side.

  Staring into space, Chris sipped absently at her drink, then set it down and returned her gaze to the cover of the book.

  An uneasiness hung in the room.

  Her eyes still on her notes, Sharon probed at the silence in a strained, low voice. “They’ve got an awful lot of hippie joints down around M Street and Wisconsin. Lots of potheads and occultists and stuff. The police call them ‘hellhounds.’ I wonder if Burke might have—”

  “Oh, for shitsakes, Shar!” Chris suddenly erupted. “Just forget about it, would you? I’ve got all I can think about with Rags! Do you mind?”

  There was a pause, and then Sharon started typing at a furious tempo while Chris propped her elbows on the tabletop and buried her face in her hands. Abruptly Sharon pushed her chair back with a sound of wood scraping on wood, bolted up and strode out of the kitchen. “Chris, I’m going for a walk!” she said icily.

  “Good! And stay the hell away from M Street!” Chris shot back into her hands.

  “I will!”

  “And N!”

  Chris heard the front door being opened, then closed, and, sighing, she lowered her hands and looked up. Felt a pang of regret. The emotional flurry had siphoned off tension. But not all of it: although fainter, at the edge of her consciousness, there remained that ominous glow. Shut it out! Chris took a deep breath and tried to focus on the book. She found her place and, grown impatient, started hastily flipping through its pages, skimming and searching for specific descriptions that would match Regan’s symptoms. “… demonic possession syndrome … case of an eight-year-old girl … abnormal … four strong men to restrain her from…”

  Turning a page, Chris froze.

  Then sounds: Willie entering the kitchen with groceries.

  “Willie?” Chris called out to her tonelessly, her eyes riveted to the book.

  “Yes, Madam. I am here,” Willie answered. She was setting bags full of groceries down on a white-tiled counter. Dull-eyed and expressionless, her voice flat, and with her slightly trembling fingers holding her place, Chris held up the partly closed witchcraft book, asking, “Willie,
was it you put this book in the study?”

  Willie came a few steps closer, squinted at the book, briefly nodded, and as she turned and started back toward the groceries, answered, “Yes, Missus. Yes. Yes, I put it.”

  “Willie, where did you find it?” Chris asked, her voice dead.

  “Up in bedroom,” Willie answered as she started slipping groceries out of the bags and onto the kitchen counter.

  Chris stared fixedly at the pages of the book, now back on the table and open to her place. “Which bedroom, Willie?”

  “Miss Regan bedroom, Missus. I find it under bed when I am cleaning.”

  Her voice numb, her eyes wide and fixedly staring, Chris looked up and said, “When did you find it?”

  “After all go to hospital, Madam; when I vacuum in Regan bedroom.”

  “Willie, are you absolutely sure?”

  “I am sure.”

  Chris looked down at the pages of the book and for a time did not move, did not blink, did not breathe, as the headlong image of an open window in Regan’s bedroom on the night of Dennings’s accident rushed at her memory with its talons extended like a bird of prey that knew her name; as she recognized a sight that was so numbingly familiar; as she stared at the right-hand page of the open book where a narrow strip had been shaved from the length of its edge.

  Chris jerked up her head. Some commotion in Regan’s bedroom: rappings, rapid and loud and with a nightmarish resonance that was massive and yet somehow muffled, like a sledgehammer pounding at a limestone wall deep within some ancient tomb.

  Regan screaming in anguish; in terror; imploring!

  Karl shouting angrily, fearfully, at Regan!

  Chris bolted from the kitchen.

  God almighty! What’s happening? What!

  Frenzied, Chris ran to the staircase, raced up to the second floor, then toward Regan’s bedroom when she heard a blow, someone reeling, someone crashing to the floor and her daughter crying, “No! Oh, no, don’t! Oh, no, please!” and Karl bellowing! No! No, not Karl! Someone else with a deep bass voice that was threatening and raging!