Sibs

  "I don't care if you keep it or not, Kara, but I've got to see the inside of that house. I've got to."

  Kara looked at him, unsure of what to do. Then she realized that she wanted to see it, too.

  "Let's go."

  ▼

  1:24 P.M.

  "The lights are on," Kara said as they stood before Gates' house.

  It was a tall, narrow Victorian row house of dark brown stone, looming behind a wrought iron fence. Each floor had its own large bay window. A tiny patch of winter-browned lawn sat on either side of the short slate walk that led to the front steps.

  "They've been on since Monday night," said Rob close by her side. "Let's go. I've got to be back at the precinct soon."

  He opened the low iron gate and walked ahead of her. Kara held back. Something within her—the same something that had rejoiced with the news of Dr. Gates' death—was afraid and was trying to hold her back. She overcame it and followed Rob up the steps to the front door.

  There were two front doors. The outer one was unlocked. As she stood in the vestibule with Rob, Kara tried to peek through the designs in the frosted glass of the inner door but couldn't see much.

  "Why don't I go first," Rob said as she turned the key in the lock.

  "I can take care of myself," she said.

  "I'm sure you can, but since we're dealing with a guy who qualifies as the Daffy Duck of the New York State Medical Society, maybe I should just check the place out to make sure he doesn't have any crazies living with him."

  "You're thinking of that padded cell in his office?"

  "That, and some other things."

  "All right," Kara said, suddenly glad Rob was along. "Be my guest."

  She stepped into the front hall behind him. On her right was the common wall Dr. Gates shared with the house next door. A long narrow staircase ran up along that wall. An ornate chandelier, festooned with heavy red glass grapes, hung overhead. Far to the rear, daylight filtered in through the tall windows overlooking the rear courtyard.

  Just inside the front door on the left wall of the foyer was an alarm panel. A red light glowed at the top of the panel. The numbers 1-7-4-2-3 were written on a tag tied to the key ring. Kara punched them in and the light turned to green.

  "We're in."

  "Let me check the basement first," Rob said.

  He stepped down the hall to a door that opened into the space under the stairs and went below.

  As Kara watch him go, she remembered that incident in Philadelphia a few years ago where they found three women chained in the basement of someone's house. She shuddered with revulsion.

  She spun and stared the length of the foyer. For a moment she had thought someone was there. The foyer was empty. But she couldn't escape the feeling that she wasn't alone.

  Be careful, Rob.

  To distract herself, she began to look around.

  ▼

  Rob entered the basement cautiously, wishing at first for a flashlight. But when he flipped the switch he found he didn't need one. There were plenty of incandescent bulbs hanging among the pipes in the exposed ceiling.

  The basement was not quite what he had expected. There were the usual crates of odds and ends, and a furnace and a water heater at the rear. But it was smaller than he had anticipated. And it was clean, warm, and dry—heated and dehumidified. There was green industrial grade carpet on the floor and relatively new oak planking on the walls. Part of the area appeared to have been walled off but there was no access to the space.

  He sniffed the air. There was a sour smell. Maybe Gates was having some trouble with his sewer line. Maybe it was time to call Roto-rooter.

  One thing was sure at least: Nobody was hiding down here.

  ▼

  Kara explored the first floor. All the ceilings seemed at least fifteen feet high. She peeked into the front room. It was a small study with curtains drawn across the bay window. A computer terminal sat on a desk. The next room was a bathroom with ornate tiles and an old fashioned paw-footed tub. Next came the kitchen and pantries. She opened a few of the cabinets. One of them was stocked with jars of baby food.

  She was standing there and staring at the rows of Gerber Junior Meals, trying to imagine what use Dr. Gates could possibly have for them, when she felt suddenly weak. Hungry… so hungry. Her knees wobbled as the room whirled about her once, then stopped. Then she was fine.

  What had caused that? And then she remembered that in the turmoil of Rob's visit and Mr. Wheatley's bombshell about inheriting this house, she hadn't got around to eating lunch.

  Promising to grab a bite soon, she moved on to the rear of the house which was taken up entirely by a large dining room with a huge marble fireplace.

  She heard Rob on the stairs and hurried back to the foyer.

  "All clear," he said. "On the small side, but it's clean. Looks like whoever does the rest of the house vacuums and dusts the basement as well. Never seen a clean basement before."

  "That kind of goes with the rest of the place. It's immaculate. But he looked like the fastidious sort, didn't he."

  Rob was rubbing his jaw, looking at the gleaming oak paneling running around the foyer.

  "Yeah. Real fastidious. But something's up. Got to be. Why would he leave you his house?"

  Kara only shrugged. She couldn't answer that question. At least not yet.

  Rob said, "Let's give the rest of the place the onceover and then get out of here."

  The second floor had a bedroom in the bay-windowed front section, but the rest of the level was one huge library. Bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling around the entire open space. Two ladders on rollers stood ready to give access to the top shelves.

  "I've never seen this many books outside of a public library," Rob said.

  "They look old and rare. I don't know much about book collecting, but I'll bet he's got some choice first editions here."

  She pulled out a copy of Huckleberry Finn. The book was dated 1884. Suddenly it slipped from her fingers. For an instant her hand felt numb, tingling, as if recovering from a novacaine injection, and then.it was fine again.

  "Oops!" she said and replaced the book on its shelf. She wondered if her blood sugar was low.

  "So much for the second floor," Rob said, heading for the stairs. "Now for three. The Magical Mystery Tour continues."

  The third floor had been opened up into one huge room. The windows at each end were hung with heavy draperies and the walls were covered with an assortment of rugs and hangings. Plush carpet hid the floor. A grand piano dominated the rear end of the room; the front section was taken up by an eight-foot high projection screen set up before the draped bay window. It was flanked by racks of electronic equipment arrayed in two arcs. Along the side wall were shelves holding thousands of record albums, tapes, and CDs. A television projection unit was suspended from the ceiling, aimed at the screen. And in the center of it all was a single reclining chair.

  Kara noticed Rob being drawn to the front section as if by a magnet.

  "Look at this stereo rig!" he said.

  "That's all it is? Just a stereo?"

  Rob laughed. "Right. 'Just a stereo.' Kara, this is to the average stereo what the space shuttle is to paper airplanes. He's got a turntable that plays both sides of a record, reel-to-reel, cassette, and even eight track tape players, a ten-disk CD player, plus for video he's got VHS, Beta, and videodisk." Rob was like a little boy in a toy store at Christmas. He approached one of the coffin-sized, fabric-covered boxes situated around the room. "Look at these surround-sound speakers! Christ! There's enough wattage here to blow the roof off!"

  "I'm surprised his neighbors haven't had the police on him."

  "That's what I think all these drapes and wall hangings are for. They're like baffles. They keep the sound from bouncing off the walls as well as vibrating through. He's fixed himself a miniature concert hall here."

  Kara looked through the titles of some of the albums.

  "He must have every opera
by every diva whoever warbled a note."

  "You like opera?" Rob said, coming over to her side.

  "Can't stand it." But as she stood there with her hand on the record rack, she thought she heard an operatic voice wailing faintly in the back of her mind. She shook her head and it was gone. She moved to his classical section.

  "He's got composers I've never even heard of," she said.

  "No ZZ Top?"

  "Not a one."

  "Guess there's no accounting for taste." He put a hand on her arm. "Let's go. I've got to get back."

  "I want to look around some more," Kara said. "It's safe, don't you think?"

  "Nobody here but us. You really want to stay?"

  "I want to check out his study, see if he's got any papers that will give me a clue as to what he was all about—and why he left it all to me."

  "You sure you want to know?"

  "I think so."

  Kara didn't say so, but she was still half-convinced that Gates had somehow used her body. She wanted to find a way to contact the person who had sent her that warning note. She wouldn't rest easy until she knew for sure.

  Rob had her follow him down to the front door.

  "Make sure you keep it locked while you're here, and turn on the alarm when you leave."

  "Yes sir!"

  "Now—when can we get together tonight? We've got a lot of talking to do, and some decisions to make."

  She'd known this was coming.

  "How about after dinner? Meet me at Ellen's and we can go someplace."

  "Ellen knows?"

  Kara nodded. "Ellen, my mother, and Bert. They're the only ones. And Kelly, of course."

  Rob's eyes were intense as they bored into hers.

  "Of course. Everyone but me. And Jill. We've got to figure out when to tell her."

  "Yes. I know."

  Kara wasn't looking forward to tonight's discussion.

  Rob hovered outside until she had locked the door behind him, then waved good-bye and hurried off.

  As she turned away from the door, Kara felt her arms and legs give way, as if someone had severed all their nervous connections. As she went down, a voice spoke in her mind.

  "At last! I thought he'd never leave!"

  February 26

  12:17 A.M.

  Rob was cruising Manhattan.

  I'm a father! Jill's my daughter!

  The two thoughts kept echoing in tandem off the inner walls of his skull. They'd kept him awake, kept him wired. Which was why he was up and out and doing something he never did: driving around the city.

  He cruised the avenues, using Harlem or the Park as his uptown boundaries, and Canal Street downtown. Traffic was light. He drove at a leisurely pace, staying in the center lanes to let the cabs and everyone else in a hurry slip by on either side. The street lights glimmered on his windshield and off the passing cars, the neon from the various store fronts refracted through the steam rising from the street vents. The city had its own brand of beauty. He felt enough at peace with himself tonight to enjoy it. He smiled. Stopping to smell the roses, Manhattan style.

  He wished he could have got together with Kara tonight but she had called around 4:30 or so to tell him that she wasn't feeling well. She seemed to have picked up an intestinal virus or something and was going to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening in bed.

  Probably the best idea. She hadn't sounded well at all. Rob had been tempted to drop by Ellen's and hang around with Jill anyway but had canceled the idea. He was afraid he might start crying again.

  Christ, hadn't that been a scene this afternoon! He didn't know where it had come from but all of a sudden he'd been bawling like a wimp. And in front of Kara, too. Embarrassing as all hell, although it hadn't seemed to bother her in the least.

  Anyway, his throat tended to get tight every time he thought of Jill, so maybe it was better if he hung loose on his own tonight.

  He was tooling up Sixth into Chelsea when impulse pulled him left onto Twenty-first. He was glad he no longer had to camp out here every night. He came to a complete stop in front of Gates' house.

  The lights were on.

  That wasn't so strange, really. If Kara hadn't been feeling well, she probably hurried back to Ellen's without bothering to turn them off.

  He wondered if she'd locked the door.

  Rob double-parked and ran up the steps. He tried the door. Rattled it. Good. She'd locked it behind her. But through the glass he spotted the green light glowing on the alarm panel. She'd forgotten that. He rattled the door again, then walked back to his car. He'd have to remind her about the alarm. It would be a sin to let vandals get hold of that library, or that fabulous stereo rig.

  He put the car in gear and started rolling again, thinking about instant fatherhood.

  ▼

  Kara wanted to scream but had no voice, wanted to run, crawl, claw a path away from here but had no limbs, none at least that would obey her. And what good would blind flight do? The horror was within her, all around her, it permeated her flesh, it encapsulated her like a steel bubble.

  Horror, gut-wrenching panic, rage—they'd been her world since this afternoon. And they were with her even now, but they were under control. She could almost say she was calmer now—as calm as a madwoman in a straitjacket. She had to hold on. That was all she could do. She could feel her sanity jittering on its already frayed tether, blindly straining to pull free and flee into the waiting darkness.

  After the horrors of the past ten hours it was a wonder that she retained any control at all.

  She knew a few things. She knew it was night, and knew she was in the dining room. She could smell and hear, she could taste her dry mouth but could not move her tongue or lips, could see but was incapable of moving her eyes. She'd been a prisoner within her own body since this afternoon.

  This afternoon…

  Now that her body was in one of its quiet periods, the insane events of the afternoon and evening rushed back in a flood…

  At first she had simply lain there on the floor inside the door. The voice didn't speak again. Eventually she became convinced that she had suffered a massive stroke; some sort of brain aneurysm had ruptured.

  But then she started to move.

  First the fingers of the right hand, then the left, moving independently of her volition, without her permission, rippling up and down like a pianist playing rapid scales. Then the arms bent, the knees straightened. She sat up. Kara had a sense of the muscles moving but she was exerting no effort, she felt no strain.

  The terror was building inside her. Her body was like a runaway machine. A moment ago she had been pleading with her limbs to move, now she was trying to stop them. Her body turned over onto its hands and knees and began crawling down the hall. Where am I going?

  Her body crawled into the big dining room. It headed straight for the couch and pulled itself up onto the cushions. She was panting but had no feeling of breathlessness.

  And then the voice spoke again.

  "There! That's better! A cushion is much preferable to a hard floor any day, don't you think, Kara?"

  She tried to scream but still she had no voice.

  "Don't be afraid, Kara. You're in no danger."

  Panic swirled around her again. She felt as if she were sealed inside a tight cubicle of foot-thick glass, banging frantically, desperately on the walls with no one to hear her but this disembodied voice.

  Where was it coming from? It sounded like…

  Then her eyes closed.

  Kara panicked. She was in total darkness. It was like being blind. She fought to raise her lids but they might as well have been someone else's for all the response she elicited.

  The last thing she remembered seeing was the gold mantle clock over the fireplace. It had read 3:20. Through the darkness she heard faint noises from the street outside—horns, trucks shifting gears. She had always hated the incessant street sounds of New York for keeping her awake, for intruding on her concentration. Now s
he loved them. They proved that she was still alive. And she heard the clock's chime—once on the half hour, once for each hour of the day on the hour.

  When her eyes reopened, the afternoon light was fading and the clock said 4:32.