Lori, p.22
Lori, page 22
Only she hadn't changed it. What made her think so? And why was she recalling that nonsense about Paracelsus from her college textbooks? Because it was easier to bear, easier than remembering she was-
"Lori." Leverett's voice was soft. "Lori? Do you hear me?"
"Yes." She heard his voice, and she wasn't afraid. It was the other voice she feared. Happy deathday.
She told him what had happened-all but that climactic moment last night, the moment when Russ's face vanished and his appeared. She couldn't tell him that, not now, and besides, the other things were more important: the man who pursued her through the sunny streets and the voice that found her in the shadows of her dream.
He listened without interruption, then sat in silence for a long moment before he spoke. "First, the man in the Hawaiian shirt. Did he follow you here?"
"I'm not sure. I think I lost him somewhere on the freeway. Maybe I was just too preoccupied to notice."
"What were you thinking about as you drove here?"
Lori shifted herself in the chair. "Nothing important."
"Perhaps not, but apparently it was enough to distract your attention."
"If you must know, I was thinking about how they lied to me-Ben Rupert, Russ, even Dr. Justin. He said it was only a normal reaction to trauma, but he sent me to you, which means he suspected the truth."
"What truth?"
Lori forced herself to meet his gaze. "There's a name for people who think they're being spied on, being followed, people who think everyone is lying and hiding things from them, people who don't trust anybody-"
Leverett leaned forward, his eyes unwavering. "You may be having phobic reactions, but from what you tell me they're based on reality, not paranoid delusions. It's quite possible someone is or was following you. And from what you've told me it's obvious that your attorney lied to you and that Russ Carter and Dr. Justin were at least guilty of not telling you the whole truth about their actions or motives. Under these circumstances there were logical reasons for your distrust.
"The thing I want you to remember, Lori, is that no matter how you may feel about others, you must trust yourself."
"What about the dreams?"
Dr. Leverett took a deep breath. "Perhaps I made a mistake," he said. "Up until now we've tried to find their origin through analytical evaluation. It may be that the causes are physiological.
"Clinically speaking it's your visual cortex that conveys sensory messages to the limbic lobe surrounding the brain stem. Connections with the hypothalamus send a message to your pituitary. In plain English, if shock or stress triggers glandular imbalance-"
"You too!" Lori made no effort to conceal or control herself. "Do you really expect me to believe that my dreams are just the result of a hormone problem? Why are you lying to me?"
"I'm not lying, Lori. All I'm asking is that you listen to me instead of imaginary voices."
"But they're not imaginary! You said dreams are a way of talking to yourself, and this much I believe. Which means the voice must be me, or at least a part of me, and what it says and what it shows me is true."
Leverett shook his head. "What it's told you is gibberish, word association, verbal garbage floating on a stream of consciousness, and what it's showed you is pure fantasy."
"Not my-her! Don't you understand?" Probably not, Lori realized, because she herself was just beginning to understand as she spoke. "The voice I heard in some of those dreams was Priscilla's. Those were her thoughts, her words. If I was talking to myself, then Priscilla is a part of me. And there's one thing that comes through all that gibberish, as you call it-her hatred. My mother hated me even before I was born. If you insist on stressing physiology, you might say her hate infected me."
Dr. Leverett shook his head. "I can't accept that."
"Then what else is there left to accept?" Lori said. "Reincarnation? It's not just that I look like Priscilla. And I can see now, in some of the other dreams, the ones without the voice, I shared my mother's memories."
Dr. Leverett leaned forward again, ready to respond, but Lori's quick gesture silenced him as she continued. "I know what you're thinking," she said. "That business about the chapel and the body rising from the coffin was fantasy. But it was her fantasy, because no matter how distorted, it came from her memories, not mine."
"Lori, think about what you're saying. There's no possible way of verifying that." Leverett's frown matched the concern in his voice.
"I thought you told me to trust myself."
"That still goes. And I trust you too, when you're in your own persona. But the voice in those dreams, the girl in those nightmares-"
"The last dream was different. I was myself-Lori. My surroundings were real. I was in a place I recognized, Hopeland Cemetery."
"Doesn't it seem natural you might dream about a place where you'd actually been before, a place so strongly connected with the loss of those you believed to be your parents?"
"That's just it-it wasn't until I came here tonight that I learned who my real mother was. If I was talking and showing things to myself, why did I go to Priscilla Fairmount's grave in my dream?"
"You've been identifying yourself with Priscilla Fairmount ever since you first saw her picture in that yearbook."
"But that doesn't explain how I knew where to find her. I didn't even know she was dead."
Dr. Leverett frowned. "Suppose she isn't dead?"
"But she is! I saw her grave-"
"In a dream." He nodded slowly. "That doesn't necessarily mean it actually exists."
"You're right." Lifting her purse from her lap, Lori rose. "There's just one way to find out."
THIRTY-SEVEN
Metz double-parked in front of 528 South Coburg. He didn't have much choice; there were three black-and-whites, three civvies, and the paramedic meat-wagon lining the curb. As he climbed out of the car, he recognized one of the civvies, a late-model Datsun belonging to Sergeant Torrenos.
Matter of fact, Torrenos himself was just coming out of the house. Clusters of neighboring residents, restrained by uniformed patrol officers, gaped toward the sergeant from positions on the lawns adjacent to both sides of the Hopkins property. Torrenos, conscious of his audience, spotted Metz coming up the walk and moved toward him. He looked as happy as a child molester in a Santa Claus suit.
"He's all yours, Lieutenant," Torrenos said.
"Carter?"
Torrenos nodded as he turned and moved with Metz to the front door. "Found him inside when we got here."
"Time?"
"Eight twenty-four. Division dispatched two other units. Came in maybe a minute or two behind me, but we didn't
need them. For the record, suspect offered no resistance when Hennig and I went in and made our collar."
"Formal arrest?"
Torrenos shook his head as he opened the door. "Detention. Paramedics came charging in just in time to shake up the whole neighborhood with that damned siren of theirs. Dumb bastards try to take over, but all they do is screw things up for us-"
"Any determination yet?"
"Homicide. Looks like manual strangulation. See for yourself."
Entering the parlor Metz accepted the invitation. This was always the part he hated most, the moment he came face-to-face with the victim. Sometimes the condition of the bodies was hard to take, but the faces were always the worst. Particularly when their eyes were open.
Clara Hopkins's eyes were open, and so was her mouth. Sprawling there beside her overturned walker, the mottled indentations left by the killer's fingers encircled her throat like a purple necklace.
Metz ignored the paramedics crouching over her at either side, ignored the uniformed officers posted just within the front entrance and the rear doorway which he glimpsed in the kitchen beyond the hall. But he couldn't ignore the rising buzz of conversation as he made his way across the room to the corner where Russ Carter was seated. A patrolman from one of the black-and-whites stood beside the chair. Obviously he'd been assigned to keep an eye on the suspect but at the moment he was occupied in a noisy exchange with a plainclothes officer Metz recognized.
"Lieutenant-" Russ Carter's voice sounded above the surrounding babble but when he started to rise it was Sergeant Torrenos who replied.
"Hold it right there," he said. His hand offered additional eloquence as it moved toward his hip. Carter
slumped back in the chair, and the patrol officer turned to meet the sergeant's scowl.
"Look, dummy, this guy's supposed to be in your custody. What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"I'm sorry, sir. Fellow here wanted to tell me something about the prisoner."
"He's not a prisoner," Metz said. "Not yet, anyway." He nodded at the plainclothes officer. "Okay, Kestleman, what's the story?"
"I wasn't sure whether or not you'd show up so I figured I better set things straight before somebody made a mistake. That's what I was telling the officer. I tried to speak with the sergeant when I came in, but he wasn't having any-"
"He comes up to me just when I'm getting a first look at the body." Torrenos's scowl deepened. "I told him to cool it, we'd talk later."
"Maybe that won't be necessary." Metz glanced down at Russ Carter as he spoke. "Suppose you do the talking."
"What do you want to know?"
"For starters, how'd you find this place? When we spoke this morning you mentioned something about somebody called Clara but you didn't know her last name. Where'd you get hold of it?"
"Nursing registry, an old one. Just on a hunch, I checked through to see if I could find any listings that had Clara for a first name. There were only two, and the address on the other was way out in Duarte, so I decided to try here first."
"I'm listening."
"I rang the doorbell when I arrived but nobody answered. The light was on here in the front room so I kept ringing, just in case somebody had dozed off and didn't hear the bell. That's when the cat started yowling."
"I don't see any cat around."
"It ran out when I opened the door." Carter glanced up. "Hearing the cat making so much racket gave me an idea that there might be something wrong, so I tried the door. Turned out it wasn't locked."
Metz stared at the man seated before him. "Then what happened?"
Instead of meeting his gaze, Carter glanced toward the other side of the room, his voice carrying over the competing clamor from the far corner. "What I told you over the phone," he said. "I found her lying there, just the way she is now."
"Then what did you do?"
"Nothing, except look long enough to make sure I knew what I was seeing."
"You didn't touch anything-didn't make any attempt to search the house?"
"That's right." Carter nodded. "Naturally I looked around for a telephone. When I couldn't spot one, I left and walked two blocks over to the corner of Sumnter Street. I called you from the pay phone outside the filling station there."
"What time had you first arrived here at the house?"
"Around quarter after eight."
Metz glanced toward the plainclothes officer named Kestleman. "Confirm?"
Kestleman nodded. "Eight-thirteen to be exact. It was eight-fifteen when he came out, eight-eighteen when he got to the pay phone and made his call. He was back in the house again at eight twenty-two, just a couple of minutes before the sergeant showed up here."
Russ Carter glanced toward Metz, frowning. "He was tailing me?"
"Ever since you left my office this morning." Metz nodded. "Damned lucky for you he did. Otherwise there'd be nobody to confirm your story about going into town to look up the victim's name in the registry or give us a fix on your time of first arrival here." He glanced at Torrenos. "Satisfied?"
The sergeant substituted a shrug for his scowl. "All you're getting is a timetable. He came in and came out alone. What makes you so sure he didn't knock off the old lady the first time he went inside?"
"The timetable," Metz said. "I don't imagine you've ever strangled anyone to death, Sergeant, but common sense should tell you it's not your ordinary two-minute job. And even if you could complete it that quickly, I doubt if you'd go running off to look for the nearest phone, report to the police, and return to the scene of the crime."
If the sergeant meant to respond, the opportunity was lost as Russ Carter broke in. "Then I'm off the hook?"
"Not entirely. We'll be checking to see if there are other witnesses, maybe neighbors or someone passing by who can testify about any comings and goings here. Right now even the cause of death isn't official. Could have been a heart attack before or during strangulation. In any case, you're still a material witness."
Metz paused for a moment reflecting on why it was he'd changed his mind about Carter. Earlier today, at the office, the young man seemed both an antagonist and a possible suspect-enough so to justify checking on his movements. Tonight Russ Carter had become an ally but that still didn't fully explain his motivations. "Supposing you'd found Clara Hopkins alive when you came here," he said. "What would you have been asking her to talk about?"
"I think you know the answer to that, Lieutenant. I thought perhaps she might be able to give me some information about Priscilla Fairmount."
"Any other reasons?"
If there were, Metz never heard them. That's when he got word about the message on the squawk.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The barred double gate loomed in the glare of the headlights. Seated beside Leverett, Lori glanced past him toward the shadow which emerged from the cubicle at the left of the entrance and glided up to the open car window. The shadow had a voice. "Can I help you, sir?"
"Yes. We're looking for a family plot that's probably registered in the name of Royal S. Fairmount. Would it be possible for you to direct us?"
"Sorry, sir, not at this hour. The cemetery is-" The voice halted abruptly as Dr. Leverett held out his card. Meanwhile Lori's attention wandered, wandered past the barred gateway and into the darkness beyond. Somewhere Leverett and the shadow were speaking, their words blending into a blur-medical doctor, that's right, emergency, patient here overnight from out of town, relative of the deceased, important she verify, map inside, I could look it up, wouldn't that be enough?afraid not, wants to actually see it, only take a minute, come with us if you like, won't be necessary if you'll just give me a minute doctor I'll get you directions from the map- Somehow it all managed to register vaguely, even though
Lori's thoughts were far away, moving through that deeper darkness where the shadows did not speak and guarded gates never opened.
But this gate, the real gate, was opening now; the bars on either side swung back from the headlights' beam. And now the car moved forward down the curved snake-back of the winding road ahead.
"Problems?" Leverett glanced at her, concern in his voice and eyes.
She shook her head. "I'm okay. It's just that I've never been in a cemetery at night. Not in real life, anyway."
"But you remember it from your dream?"
Lori peered through the passenger-seat window as the car swung left. "Not exactly. I thought I did, but I can't be sure. Perhaps you made a wrong turn."
Leverett lifted his right hand from the wheel, squinting down at the small map the caretaker had given him. "According to this it should be just ahead on our right." As he brought the car to a halt on the shoulder of the narrow road he glanced toward Lori again. "Look familiar?"
Lori stared through the windshield, but now, without the help of the headlights, it was difficult to find any landmarks in the surrounding darkness.
There had been moonlight in her dream but tonight the sky was black. Leverett had come around the side of the car to open the door for her, and when she emerged he reached in behind her and took a flashlight from the glove compartment. Holding the map in his left hand and flashlight in his right, he switched on the beam, sweeping its rays across the clusters of headstones beyond. Now the beam halted.
"That's it," he said. "Come along, but be careful how you walk." Now the flashlight focused on the grassy expanse directly before them, guiding their footsteps toward the slab-surmounted mounds ahead.
"It can't be." Lori's eyes searched the encircling shadows. "I remember coming down a hill from behind the tomb." And there were trees just this side of the graves."
"That was a dream." Dr. Leverett spoke softly. "This is reality."
This was reality, the twin mounds set side by side in the shadows, the flashlight beam arcing across the surface of the marker at the left. And it was now as she stared down at the inscription that dream and reality commingled. Here was the proof, graven in granite:
ROYAL S. FAIRMOUNT
1913-1968
"You see?" she murmured. "Maybe my imagination elaborated the details in that dream but what it told me is true. He and Priscilla are buried-"
As she spoke the flashlight beam was moving to the headstone at the right, and when it halted there was no need for further words. The inscription on the matching headstone said it all.
GENEVIEVE OTIS FAIRMOUNT
1919-1947
"His wife." Leverett nodded. "Priscilla's mother."
"But it wasn't here before!" Lori's reply combined conviction with defiance. 'The name I saw on that tombstone was Priscilla Fairmount. And that's the truth."
"I believe you, Lori. But you've got to understand that there's more than one kind of truth. What's true for us in dreams may be a distortion of what we perceived in waking life."
"How could I distort something I've never seen?" She peered past the beam into the blur of darkness beyond. "Maybe I remembered it wrong-the way I did about there being trees and a tomb below a hill." Moving between the mounds, she started forward. "There must be another grave back here."
It was Leverett's hand on her shoulder that halted her; his hand and the sight of the flat, empty expanse stretching beneath the flashbeam for a dozen feet behind the twin markers.
