Castleview (18 page)

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Authors: Gene Wolfe

BOOK: Castleview
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Far below, an owl fluttered slowly against the leaves like a moth. There were little day-birds hiding there, and she heard their soft, clear voices:
“Look out!” “Don’t go!” “Look out!” “Don’t fly!” “Look out!”
The wind stirred the ivy as she scrambled over the railing, but there were a million places to put her feet and jillions of handholds, although some tore loose when she put her weight on them. She laughed a little bit—just to herself—thinking about how scared she had been.
TOM’S TARGET PISTOL
“No,” THE sheriff said, “I’ve finished with the Howard boy.”
“He’s not up in his room, either.” The plastic surgeon gnawed his lip.
“I’m sure you’ll find he’s around here someplace, Mr.—”
“Doctor,” the plastic surgeon corrected him absently. “Dr. von Madadh.” He snapped his fingers. “I think I’ve got it.”
“Might be in X-ray,” the sheriff suggested helpfully.
“And you’re the girl who assisted him.” Von Madadh stepped into the room. “You were wonderfully brave, I’ve heard.” With grace surprising in so large a man, he crouched beside Mercedes’s wheelchair so that their eyes met at a level.
He’s like a tame lion, Mercedes thought. And indeed there was something leonine about his sleek, wavy, red-gold hair and full, curling beard.
The sheriff said, “She didn’t just assist—she was the main one. She yelled at the Chinaman, and that’s what made him stop. That’s when her boyfriend—that’s the Howard boy, the one you’re looking for—got hold of him. Then she hit him with the plastic dingus they had her arm in. That took the fight out of him, and her boyfriend threw him down.”
“Wonderful!” von Madadh exclaimed. For a moment he stared into Mercedes’s face, and she could almost hear the click of the shutter.
He rose as gracefully as he had crouched, and brushed the fingers of her good hand with cool lips. “What’s your name, my child?”
“Mercedes Schindler-Shields.”
“The merciful one. What a lovely name! What a noble name! But what is mercy toward
this
is so often cruelty toward
that.
How well we physicians know it! You saved a life—yet wasn’t it at some cost to an unfortunate Chinese?”
Mercedes shook her head. “I didn’t think of that then, but it wasn’t. If I hadn’t stopped him, he’d have been a murderer, and he might have been electrocuted. He couldn’t have escaped with so many people around.”
Von Madadh nodded and smiled. “Well reasoned, although one can never be certain. I thank you both.” He smiled again, and was gone, leaving them alone in the little conference room.
“Not from around here,” the sheriff said. “Nice fellow, though. I guess he’s just come to work here.”
Mercedes nodded cautiously. “I suppose.”
“You were about to tell me about this blonde.” The sheriff glanced at his notes. “Ms. Morgan—you say you and she were in the back?”
Mercedes nodded.
“And Seth Howard was driving?”
“No. Jim was driving. I heard his last name, but I don’t remember it now. It was his car, I think.”
The sheriff leaned forward in his chair and scratched his nose. “And what did
he
look like, this Jim?”
Mercedes reflected. “Tall. Probably six four or six five. Seth’s pretty tall, and he was a lot taller. Real skinny. You could see the cords in his neck, you know? All the parts. His cheeks pulled in—that might have been because there were teeth gone in back. He needed a shave.”
The sheriff had scribbled once or twice while she spoke (he was probably writing his mother, Mercedes told herself); now he asked, “How was he dressed?”
“Old felt hat, leather bomber jacket, jeans like everybody wears, and I didn’t notice what kind of shoes. I think he had on a plaid flannel shirt under his jacket.”
“And he was out with this Morgan woman? Seemed to be?”
“That’s what he said. When he came up to our car, he said his was broken down and he and his date were stuck out there, or something like that. Some girls have funny tastes.”
“Uh huh. This was a different car, the one this Jim came up to, your car.”
“Seth’s mother’s car; that was what he told me.” After a moment Mercedes added, “I’m sure it was true—there isn’t any reason it shouldn’t be.”
“Where’d all this happen?”
“I don’t know the name of it, but it’s up on a hill, pretty close to here. There’s places to park about a dozen cars, and a stone wall. Seth said we might be able to see the castle from there, but we didn’t.”
The sheriff nodded. “That’s the scenic view on Baker’s Knob. It’s a lover’s lane—I have a man check it a couple of times every night.”
Mercedes said, “Well, there wasn’t anybody up there when we were.”
“I can’t keep somebody up there all the time. I don’t have that kind of manpower. If you two gave this Jim a lift, why was he driving? Are you telling me Seth Howard let a stranger drive his mother’s car?”
“That wasn’t Seth’s car—his mother’s.” Mercedes paused. “This gets pretty complicated.”
“I’ll listen.”
“Well, Seth had Jim get in our car, and we drove down the hill to his car. But his girlfriend—Ms. Morgan—wasn’t there. We thought she’d started to walk home.”
The sheriff nodded again, pencil poised.
“So we went down the road a little farther, maybe a quarter mile, and we found her. But then Seth’s car wouldn’t start. So
Jim walked back up to his car, and this time his car worked, and he said he’d give us a ride back to town.”
“His car wouldn’t run,” the sheriff said slowly, “but then it would.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So all four of you got in that one—you and this Morgan woman in back, Seth Howard and Jim in front, with Jim driving.”
“That’s right, sir. That’s exactly how it was.”
“You went down Baker’s Knob Road to the state highway—”
“No, sir,” Mercedes interrupted. “We took a shortcut, a dirt road.”
“From Baker’s Knob onto the highway?”
“Yes, sir.”
The sheriff stared at her, tapping the table with the end of his pencil. At last he dropped the pencil, folded his hands, and said, “About how far down does this shortcut turn off?”
“If you mean in elevation, like maybe four hundred feet.”
He shook his head. “How far down the road.”
“Half a mile. Maybe a little more.”
“Does it turn off to the right or the left?”
“To the left, sir.”
The sheriff sighed. “Miss Schindler, I’ve—”
“Schindler-Shields, sir.”
“Right, thank you. I was going to say, Mercedes, that I’ve been sheriff of Castle County for almost five years. I’m in my second term now.”
“Good for you, sir.”
For a moment he regarded her narrowly. “Before that, I was a state trooper for eight years, and for most of that time I was assigned to the Castleview Barracks, ten miles outside of town. I know the roads around here like the back of my hand. I know Baker’s Knob Road like my wife’s face.”
I’m really in deep shit now, Mercedes thought.
“So let me tell you a couple of things. In the first place,
nobody except you and Seth Howard claims to have seen either the blond woman or the tall man. The officers who were at the scene say there wasn’t anybody there like that, and the people here at the hospital say there wasn’t anybody like that brought into the Trauma Center. Understand?”
“But—”
“And there’s no dirt road from Baker’s Knob Road to the highway—not a one, anywhere. And if you were to drive up to the scenic view on Baker’s Knob and turn around, and then go down half a mile and turn left, you’d be headed straight down a slope so steep it’s almost a cliff. You couldn’t stop and you couldn’t steer, and the first time you hit a rock, you’d start rolling. If you were lucky as hell, you might get caught in the trees. If you weren’t—”
The door opened, and a woman’s voice asked, “May I come in, Sheriff? A few pictures for the
View
?”
As though a switch had been thrown, the sheriff smiled. “Of course, of course. Come right in.”
It was Viviane Morgan.
 
“There’s been no answer to the page,” the receptionist told Sally Howard.
“You remember Dr. von Madadh, don’t you? He was sitting right here beside me. A tall man, very nicely dressed, with a reddish beard. You saw him.”
The receptionist nodded. “I saw him, but I don’t know where he is, and he doesn’t answer his page.”
“He went to look for my son,” Sally told her.
The receptionist said nothing.
“Now I can’t find Seth either. How could they lose him like that?”
“This is a hospital,” the receptionist told her, “not a prison.”
Sally stared at her.
“You son was ambulatory. I know, because Dr. von Madadh brought him out here. They hadn’t taken his clothing yet and given him a gown. And then he was angry because Dr. de Falla
made him go back. So quite possibly …” She let the sentence lapse. After a few seconds she added, “Your Dr. von Madadh is
not
accredited to this hospital. I checked.”
“You think that Dr. von Madadh took him home.”
The receptionist turned back to her switchboard, although the telephone had not chimed and there were no blinking lights. “It would appear to be a possibility,” she said frostily, “since they’re both gone.”
Sally shrugged, sagging shoulders telling her how tired she was, how very tired. “Would you call me a taxi?”
The receptionist pretended not to hear, and when a minute or more had passed, Sally turned wearily and went out through the heavy glass hospital doors, into the wet, windy night. Most houses here were already dark.
There was no chance of hailing a passing taxi in Castleview this late, she knew—no chance at all. Even during the day, you seldom saw a taxi unless somebody had telephoned for one.
She tried to estimate the distance from the hospital to her house; fourteen blocks, she thought, or perhaps sixteen. At any rate she could walk it. She would not beg that woman for a taxi, no, never. And perhaps she would see somebody she knew, perhaps somebody she knew might offer her a ride. Or if someplace open had a telephone, she could call. Then Kate would come and pick her up. Kate liked to watch TV late; she wouldn’t have gone to bed yet.
The rain had ended; but the sidewalk was still dotted with puddles, and icy water dripped from the leafless trees. An old Cherokee Chief skidded dangerously, swinging wide for the abrupt turn into the hospital lot. It seemed to have no windshield at all, so that for an instant Sally saw clearly the drawn face of the woman at the wheel. It was vaguely, naggingly familiar; but Sally did not permit it to nag very long; she was much too tired.
Was this really the day Tom had died? The same day? That did not seem possible, was not possible. It seemed to her that it had been only a year or so ago that they had met in American
History. Lost in a waking dream, she recalled how Tom’s smile had lit up his eyes.
 
Judy was gone. As Kate spooned powdered coffee into one of Sally’s cups, she thought about that in the same way she thought about Stan. It hadn’t worked out, she and Stan. They had never quite fitted, and now Stan—now Stan’s daughter—was gone. Kate really and sincerely hoped that the two of them would be happier out of her life than they had ever been in it, and it was nice to be able to start fresh.
Damned nice.
She should report it to the police, she knew, so that they could laugh at her, that being the key duty, the main point of police. Here was Sally’s avocado-green phone, right here on the wall, so why not?
She added boiling water from Sally’s teakettle and stirred. Sally had gotten a good man who was crazy about her, or anyway had been while he was alive. Sally liked—loved her kid, even if she understood him no better than she herself had understood Judy. No, worse—much, much worse, because Sally didn’t really understand Seth at all; because Seth was a boy, would be a grown man the next time you looked, and who the hell understood
them?
Kate went to the refrigerator and found a carton of half-and-half. When she had been a little kid herself, Mom and Dad had poured thick, yellow, country cream into their coffee; now you couldn’t do it, because it made you die too soon. The CIA had a plan for spiking every samovar in Moscow with thick cream, or if it didn’t it should. So now Dad had gray hair and false teeth, and he was still working; he had even gotten loose from whoever the hell had stolen him. (Who would want to steal Dad?) And Mom bitched about her feet hurting, when she had walked to town only three times today.
I’m blasted, Kate thought. I haven’t had a thing to drink, but I’m blasted anyway because I got blasted when Stanley split, and went to bed with that salesman, and now Judy’s gone and
I’m thinking drunk again. So I may as well have one—it isn’t going to make any difference.
She carried her coffee into the living room and got a fifth of Wild Turkey out of Tom’s liquor cabinet; two fingers of Wild Turkey improved the instant coffee beyond belief. Tom’s target pistol lay on the coffee table. She set down her empty cup and fingered the long, black barrel.
Back in the kitchen, there was a sticker on the wall beside the phone that gave the sheriffs number. That was convenient—you never knew when you might have your kid stolen. Kate wedged the handset between her shoulder and her ear, leaving her a free hand with which to dial.

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