God Told Me To (12 page)

“We only rode single patrol those days. Now there’s always two, sometimes three men who can cover for each other. What in hell would you think if you come on a naked woman screaming on a highway in the middle of November. I still don’t know. Don’t know who dropped her there. You put yourself in my place. Didn’t have all that much time left to go before gettin’ the pension. I wasn’t goin’ to risk no crazy female charging me with rape.

“I made her stand outside until I got my call in on the radio. Called in and told them what I found.

“I got her a blanket out of the trunk. Made her wrap herself up. She had a nice pair of tits. But not for me. I wasn’t about to touch her. No sir! I asked her who had done the number on her. Asked for a description. This is when I begin to see she’s a real crazy. She tells me, says to me, she says, It wasn’t men.

“By now I got her inside the car. Wrapped in the blanket. It was a cold witch of a night, Nickley. So I tell her she’s upset. Tell her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And I’m headin’ for the nearest hospital.

“Damn to hell if she doesn’t start to scream. Yells to me, Not that way! They’re out there!

“Come on, lady, I say to her. There’s nothing out there but the city dump and an old dirt road that’s not been used since before the war. The Second War.

“Know what she pulls next? She reaches over and grabs the wheel. We were damn lucky there weren’t no ice on the road. Or any other traffic. She’s got the blanket off now and here I’m struggling with her and trying to control the damn car. I manage to finally stop the car. I’m pissed now. I gave her a couple raps to quiet her. Pow!

“So that makes her quiet, see. After a while she says, says real whispery, It was big as a house.

“What? I ask.

“A house, she answers. But it didn’t land. It hovered up over and they raised me.”

Callaghan dropped his glass and spilled gin over his lap. He made no attempt to dry himself before refilling the glass.

“Damn if by now but I’m just thinking about getting her to a hospital. I try to humor her. I asked her how they raised her? Did they use a rope?”

“I floated, she says. I floated up into it. And they took my clothing. I couldn’t see them. Only a light that blinded me.

“Sudden-like she wants to know where we are. I nod out the windows and tell her those are the lights of Jersey City.

“They took me, she says, they took me from Cape Cod. I was walking alone on the beach. I heard this sound. A hum overhead and I couldn’t run. I looked up and it was like a cloud coming down over me.

“Ma’am, I tell her, what were you doing in Cape Cod in November?

“She and her husband like it there, and she claims they were on a honeymoon. Damn to hell if her husband don’t back her up on a lot of this nonsense she’s talking.

“Okay, ma’am, so what else happens to you in this big cloud?”

“It was like a medical examination. They had instruments. But they weren’t cold. Or metallic like ours are. They were warm. Almost alive. They put it inside of me.

“Put what?

“Instruments, tubes.

“Then she glances at the clock on the dashboard. It was a little after ten-thirty. She says, It seemed to last so long. But it was only after ten when I went out for my walk.

“I reminded her that Cape Cod is a bit of a distance from Jersey City. Her husband backed her story. But damn if it don’t always look to me like some crazy woman just couldn’t handle getting fucked. She said it was her honeymoon. Probably got a look at the guy’s whanger and ran off. Never did, though, never learned how she got from the Cape to the Jersey Sound.

“That’s about the story, Nickelby. She talked some more ’bout their warm instruments. I dropped at the hospital and made out my report. I half ’spected her to make some charges against me. She never did.”

Callaghan’s head flopped down and he began to snore. Nicholas went over to him and shook him.

“What happened next? What kind of investigation did you do on her story?”

The old man waved his arms. “Nothing to investigate. The husband backed her story and she never give us no descriptions. Few weeks and the hospital released her. Only one thing I know for sure.”

Nicholas had to shake him awake again.

“What!” he demanded. “What do you know for sure?”

“For all her crazy talk. Naked and crazy. She wasn’t raped.”

“How do you know that?”

“Doctor examined her. No sem’nal fluid.”

Nicholas stood on shaky legs. The heat and smell and the effort of putting together the old man’s story had exhausted him. He whispered his thoughts: “Judith Phillips had a child nearly nine months later to the day.”

Callaghan’s eyes opened and clouded with suspicion. “Wasn’t me. That why you come here? Look me up and accuse me of a thing like that. It was probably one of them nut doctors in the hospital who bagged her.”

“I don’t think it was a doctor. And I don’t think it was you, Callaghan.”

“I was a straight cop. Nothing wrong in thirty years and you come here, accuse me of something like that. You go now.”

The detective drove with the car windows open. The wet night air woke him, but during all of his long drive Nicholas’s stomach jumped with nervous excitement.

A police shield, especially a New York City shield, doesn’t carry much weight in the mental ward of a Jersey hospital at 4
A.M.
But a twenty-dollar bill does.

The male nurse who brought Nicholas the thin file on Judith Phillips watched that the detective took nothing.

There was little to take.

Judith Phillips had been admitted and held six weeks for psychiatric examination. Medical examination at time of admission showed she had not been raped. She had a few minor bruises. It was believed that her initial confusion was due at least in part to wandering nude in the cold November air. There had never been tests given for pregnancy.

ELEVEN

The Deputy Commissioner’s long face had the look of thin crystal about to shatter from an icy cold. He stared at the two detectives sitting across from him, his eyes moving between the men in unctuous appraising glides.

Nicholas was speaking. “Listen to me, sir. A child was born of that union. Bernard Phillips. I’ve checked the birth records. I checked the—”

“Settle down, Lieutenant.” The manner in which Nicholas was handling himself was enough to cause Hendriks to question the detective’s sanity. Erratic gestures. A voice rising to peaks of excitement, then falling. “You have been working hard. You have recently taken serious wounds. I am going to recommend you take a leave.”

“A child was born! And it wasn’t a human being. It was special.”

“Lieutenant.”

“It may even have been born as a kind of God.”

The Deputy Commissioner’s eyes narrowed. It was always a shame to see a good officer go off the deep end. He clucked his tongue against his cheek, then spoke with an oily compassion:

“Please, Lieutenant. I am trying to be reasonable about this situation. I would, however, appreciate it if you manage not to add heresy to your science-fiction.”

“I am going to prove it! Prove it as a scientific fact.”

Hendriks pointed a bony finger at Nicholas. “Quite enough.” He turned his attention to Detective Jordan. “You. What do you have to say?”

Jordan’s shoulders moved in a small shrug of discomfort. “Sir, I tend to go along with you.”

“And just to where did you have in mind that we should go along together?”

“What I mean to say, sir. Like you, I think the lieutenant needs a rest.”

“Very astute.” Hendriks looked at the round, red, overfed face of the detective. He thought he spotted a slight smirk, and he felt a sense of loathing and betrayal. Nicholas, while a sad wreck, had at least provided Hendriks with a means to extricate himself from the absurd special assignment into which he’d allowed himself to be talked. But there were no mental explanations for Jordan’s behavior in this affair. “About yourself, Detective Jordan. How are you feeling? I believe you went along with this . . . this . . .” and his hand fluttered above his desk as he tried thinking of a phrase for Nicholas’s latest report.

Nicholas said, “I kept him in the dark, sir. He didn’t know what I was—”

“Well, Jordan?” the Deputy Commissioner again silenced Nicholas.

“To be honest, sir, I—”

“I expect honesty, Jordan.”

“There were strange coincidences, sir. I thought a man of the lieutenant’s experience should be given every chance.”

Nicholas leaped from his chair and leaned over the desk.

“Listen! Maybe Bernard Phillips doesn’t realize his power. I try to make myself believe he’s still finding out about himself. He’s only twenty-one. Learning, flexing his muscles. I don’t want to believe he’s really cruel.”

Jordan pulled the lieutenant back into his chair. Jordan bent down near Nicholas and spoke quietly and calmly. Meanwhile, the Deputy Commissioner reached into a desk drawer and pressed a small button which activated a tape recorder.

Nicholas spoke somewhat more softly.

“I’m only trying to understand what goes on in Bernard Phillips’ mind. How he sees himself. He must see himself as God. At least his victims recognize him as God.”

The Deputy Commissioner pressed an intercom button. “Come in here with your steno pad. Bring another person.”

When the stenographer and a witness had entered the office, Hendriks said, “Detective Lieutenant Peter Nicholas, I would appreciate if you would repeat, calmly repeat, what you’ve been telling me.”

While Nicholas spoke, Hendriks wore a sad and pensive expression and rubbed his thin nose.

Detective Jordan kept his eyes on the floor. He, too, had concluded that Peter Nicholas had taken the big step, but he didn’t like what was happening. Didn’t like Hendriks’ sleazy maneuverings, nor the grotesque, shambling spectacle Nicholas was making of himself.

“In 1954 a woman, Judith Phillips, was abducted and taken aboard some extraterrestrial vehicle. A very ordinary woman, only recently married. She was on the vehicle approximately thirty minutes. That is, thirty minutes of earth time. She was examined and artificially inseminated. Nine months later she had a child. A son. From the day of that birth the Phillips family was never the same. Even as an infant, Bernard controlled them. They cut off all outside relationships, saw no one. The father sold his small accounting firm. That sale and a small inheritance had just about run out at the time of his death. The parents devoted every waking moment to the care of their child. They never had another. The child never went to school. Never associated with other children. He was shielded from view. Where or how he was educated I haven’t determined. Quite probably he didn’t require education. The parents killed themselves when their usefulness was ended. Or maybe the eleven-year-old Bernard Phillips told them to.”

Hendriks said, “Would you please repeat that last part.”

“He
tells people to
do things
. And they do them.”

“Now think very clearly, Lieutenant Nicholas, before answering what I’m about to ask. Bernard Phillips, is he a creature from outer space? Or, as you have suggested, a god?”

“Possibly both.”

Jordan wanted to reach out and grab Nicholas and physically force the man into silence.

“I am not saying
he
is God. His victims
believe
he is. I tell you we must find out the answers. Learn the truth before . . . before . . . before we are all destroyed.”

The Deputy Commissioner motioned the stenographer and witness to leave the office. He licked his lips and devoted time to a long pause.

“Lieutenant, I’m afraid I must order you to take a leave.”

“Am I on suspension?”

“You are ordered to go home and remain there until you hear from me.”

“I remind the Deputy Commissioner. There must be a departmental hearing before I can be suspended.”

Hendriks stood. He braced himself on his arms and leaned toward Nicholas, his head bobbing in short nods, his voice terse, his thin nose looking like a beak tearing flesh.

“Enough! If you wish to surrender your weapon and work the Bow and Arrow, you may so do. I will arrange a hearing for sometime in the next forty-eight hours.”

“I refuse to work the Bow and Arrow squad. I won’t give up my gun. I am not an alcoholic cop. I am rational!”

Hendriks turned to Jordan.

“Escort the lieutenant out of here. Escort him all the way home, or so far as you deem necessary for his health and safety. Then return here immediately.”

Outside in the corridor Peter Nicholas made a fist and smashed it hard against the wall. The pain he gave himself caused him to bend over, holding his hand and cursing. When he straightened he seemed calm.

Jordan said, “Look, buddy. How about if I drive you home?”

Instead of answering the question, Nicholas said, “Now I’m on my own. Can do it my way.”

“Sure, buddy.”

Jordan figured Nicholas probably had a car parked somewhere, but what the hell, the guy could pick it up in the morning. He lightly grasped Nicholas’s elbow and, as he had done with hundreds of suspects during the course of his career, began to lead him.

It was, thought Jordan, likely the last ride he would ever take with Peter Nicholas. He wondered if Nicholas was aware of how neatly he had been wrapped in a box by the Deputy Commissioner. If the guy had only kept his mouth shut in front of the damned stenographer. There was still a maybe. A long shot that maybe after an extended leave of absence, because of the guy’s past record, he might be allowed back to work. Probably not on the street, but they might let him have a desk.

It was a quiet ride. The single time Nicholas spoke was when Jordan was nearing where he thought his colleague lived. The lieutenant’s voice rattled like a machine gun as he blurted that he no longer lived here. Jordan asked for new directions. And didn’t question the odd address of Eighth Avenue and a West Side cross street.

When they arrived at their destination Jordan reached across the seat and slapped Nicholas on the leg. He wanted to say something, but couldn’t think of words that wouldn’t sound phony. After a moment he reached across again and lightly hit the man’s arm.