Shade of Pale Read online

  His head ached with the slightest movement. Things were quickly going from bad to worse and, at this rate, would soon be beyond his damage control.

  Jukes faced the thought with trepidation—either he was suffering some sort of delusional neurosis because of Cathy … or the Banshee was real.

  He stumbled to the shower. As he turned on the water, he tried to separate the nightmare from reality; then he thought, That’s exactly how Loomis felt.

  He wanted to shake off the feeling of profound sadness that he had received from the Banshee, but it clung to him tenaciously. He stepped into the hot water stream and soaped his body.

  Why had she come to him? Was he being stalked now, just as poor Loomis had been? Would he suffer the same fate? Fear crept back under his skin, scratching at the outer edges of his sanity like a dog scratching at a locked door.

  He let the water pound down on him, willing it to wash away the tangle of feelings. He hoped it was his own sanity that was in question and not the laws of nature.

  He turned off the shower and stepped out. As he dried himself, he made up his mind to go into the office after all. He needed to soldier on and walk again in the world of the familiar. People counted on him and he could not let them down.

  He forced himself to get dressed even though his hands were still shaking.

  Jukes Wahler walked into a wasps’ nest of missed appointments.

  He did his best to pick up the threads of the day and tie them together, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  Later that afternoon the phone rang and Jukes picked it up absently. “Hello?”

  “Dr. Rice from Columbia is calling on line one.”

  “Thank you,” he said as he punched the button.

  “Dr. Wahler? This is Fiona Rice at Columbia.”

  Jukes felt the bittersweet pang of irony; why did it always have to be like this? He wished he were in a better mood.

  “Dr. Rice. You can call me Jukes, you know. I thought we agreed.”

  “Of course. I forgot.”

  There was an awkward silence, as if she expected him to fill in the conversation the way most men did. Fiona Rice was an attractive woman and it was her experience that men used these gaps in the conversation to ask her out on dates, make compliments, get fresh, or whatever.

  So far, Jukes hadn’t been at all like any other man she knew. He seemed a gentleman. He was also shy, and she found that utterly charming in a world full of bullish, egotistic bores.

  For a second, she’d forgotten why she called.

  “I’ve been thinking about the Banshee—”

  Jukes sat up. “Really?”

  “Yes, and I thought maybe we could get together and talk about it some more.”

  “That sounds good to me. I’m having myself a bad day of biblical proportions.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Jukes. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Ah, no, Fiona, that’s OK. I appreciate your concern.”

  “Sometimes it helps to have somebody to talk to, and you seem like such a nice guy.”

  Suddenly he had an overwhelming urge to be with her, to talk to her, to look in her eyes, to hear her voice. His throat was dry, but he managed to speak evenly. “Let’s meet somewhere for dinner.”

  “Are you up for an adventure?”

  “Sure. Why not?” he said. Normally he avoided adventures, sticking close to the familiar, to the things he knew. With Fiona he felt somewhat embarrassed by his predictability.

  He thought, Why am I doing this? I’m already lying to her. Adventure? I hate adventure. This woman, this fine woman, why would she be interested in me?

  As soon as he thought it, Jukes knew that kind of negative self-assessment was poison. He realized with sudden certainty the terrible damage he was doing to himself. But why was it happening? It was not like him. He was a trained professional, yet he was thinking more like one of his patients.

  The loss of emotional equilibrium almost made him dizzy.

  What was doing this to him? The Banshee? Cathy? Who had destroyed his structured, logical world and left him unable to find even the most basic answers?

  He took a deep breath. Physician, heal thyself.

  Jukes Wahler did a very unprofessional thing and canceled some of his afternoon appointments. He had never done that before, for any reason. But knowing his patients as well as he did, he knew that none of those scheduled for the rest of the day were in critical condition.

  He needed time to think.

  The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Room was not crowded. Fiona had suggested it. It was a dark wood-paneled room with filtered light and lots of plants. A big Arthur Conan Doyle fan, Fiona loved the place and came here whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  There was an air of respectability and refinement to the place It was never loud or raucous. Fiona thought that was wonderful, especially here, in the heart of the most intense city in the world.

  On the walls were framed reproductions of many of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book covers. Their table happened to be under a poster of the cover of a fifties paperback version of The Lost World. Across the room from them was a picture of the author with a photograph in his hand. The photograph showed several fairies dancing in an English garden.

  Fiona followed Jukes’s gaze. Her voice was bright. “Sir Arthur assumed that photograph, an obvious fake, to be absolute proof of the existence of fairies,” she said as they sat down together. “Photographing fairies became all the rage. Few people actually believed in them, but it was quite sensational in its day. People are always interested in things that can’t possibly exist.”

  Jukes was too distracted to really look at the pictures. His mind was far away.

  “Not unlike the Banshee.” She smiled.

  Jukes seemed distracted and Fiona wondered what was wrong. She felt his shyness and the great weight that seemed to be on his shoulders.

  “Isn’t this place great?”

  Jukes nodded.

  “I come here every once in a while when I want to get away. I love the decor; don’t you?”

  Jukes nodded again.

  “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a fascinating man.”

  “Something bad has happened,” Jukes said suddenly, changing the subject.

  Then Jukes told her about Cathy’s abduction. Fiona was shocked. She listened sympathetically, watching the hurt in his eyes grow as he filled in the details. He even gave her some background on Cathy’s life, pointing out the failures he’d made as her guardian. After an hour he abruptly stopped talking and ordered another drink.

  Jukes became quiet again. She found she could read him like few other men in her life—odd, because she had only known him a day or two. Something about him was so fragile, so vulnerable, and it drew her in. Jukes had never been one to hide his inner feelings from the people around him. He’d always been a guy who wore his heart on his sleeve.

  Fiona let some quiet time pass.

  She really liked this sensitive, caring man. His eyes were misty now, something she found extremely alluring even though it was the height of his tragedy. Her voice, soft and expressive, slid gently into the quiet minutes like a velvet glove.

  “Have you thought of hiring a private detective?”

  Jukes looked up. “What?”

  “A private eye. They find missing people all the time.”

  Jukes nodded. “Well, it has crossed my mind, but isn’t that just a lot of Hollywood crap?”

  Fiona smiled; she had gotten through. “Not necessarily. I happen to know of a reputable agency right here in this neighborhood.” She fished a card out of her purse and handed it to Jukes. “These guys are excellent. They helped a friend of mine out recently. She was trying to track down her ex-husband. They found him tending bar in the Bahamas.”

  Jukes looked at the card.

  MERKEN DETECTIVE AGENCY

  PRIVATE INVESTIGATION AND SECURITY

  SINCE 1962

  “You keep their card in your purse? What are you
expecting to happen?”

  Fiona flashed a genuine smile; her whole face seemed to light up. She had a sparkle in her eye that he hadn’t seen until this moment and he suddenly became aware again of how extraordinary she was and, more important, how much she seemed to enjoy his company. She smiled at him in a way that he hadn’t seen before.

  Jukes found himself wondering what Cathy would think of her. Instantly that thought pulled him back into melancholia. Cathy would like her very much, he thought. She was certainly pretty enough, and intelligent.

  “I don’t normally carry business cards for private eyes in my purse, but this friend of mine—”

  “The one with the ex-husband in the Bahamas?”

  “Right. She was very impressed with them and she insisted that I put their card in my pocketbook. I mean they tracked this guy all the way down there; they must be good.”

  Jukes was trying not to stare at her. She seemed to get lovelier with every passing minute. He cleared his throat continuously, became aware of it, stopped, then started again, unconsciously.

  “That guy probably left a paper trail and lived a normal life. Bobby is underground. I’m sure he’s not running around New York using a MasterCharge and a Visa card. The man is a reptile, a bottom feeder. He’s probably under a rock somewhere.”

  “All the more reason to call. What can it hurt? Like I said before, they’re professionals.”

  Jukes put the card into his breast pocket. He turned his attention back to Fiona.

  “I hope you don’t think that I’m like this all the time. It’s just that I’m rather upset right now. I really like you and …”

  Jesus, he thought. My sister’s out there with that madman and I’m getting horny? What kind of brother am I? He became aware that Fiona was staring at him.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Ahh, I … well, maybe we could … uhm, maybe we could go out.”

  He waited for what seemed like a year for her to answer. It had really only been a few seconds.

  “I’d love to,” she said. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Jukes blushed.

  Jukes called the Merken Detective Agency and gave them complete descriptions of his sister and Bobby Sudden. He included everything he knew about Bobby, including the music he thought he heard in Cathy’s phone call.

  They seemed confident and Jukes felt a little better. At least now he could tell himself that he was doing all that could be done. Between the cops and the private detectives, something was bound to happen. The only thing that Jukes was worried about was that Bobby may have split town, taking Cathy out of the city.

  But he would not fail her this time. The past would not haunt him again. This time, he would be decisive.

  The image of the boy by the boat dock glaring up at him and daring him to fight lingered in his mind. The expression of arrogant stupidity on the boy’s face hadn’t changed in all these years. He still leered like a bully up the hill at Jukes, freezing time around that terrible moment and accentuating every detail of his own inadequate life.

  He’d replayed that scene at the boat dock over and over in his mind for years. The boy, his sister, his failure to react in time, his fear.

  He wondered if Cathy remembered it. He wondered if it had the same meaning for her as it did for him.

  He wondered what the boy’s life had been like. What had become of him? Had he become another Bobby? Was he out there now, somewhere in the world, doing the kinds of inhuman things to women that Bobby did?

  Had he confronted the boy, what would have turned out differently?

  Questions that had no answers swirled in his befuddled mind.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Heroin. Cathy and Bobby had been doing heroin.

  She’d done it before a couple of times, and it didn’t seem like anything that could kill you. Everybody did it, at least everybody Bobby knew. Cathy’s friends had fallen by the wayside. She never saw them anymore.

  But Bobby had the junk. And now Cathy wanted some more.

  She woke up from a nightmare, about a weeping woman with red hair, to face the mother of all hangovers, except it wasn’t really a hangover at all; it was the first stage of withdrawal. It was the surreptitious discomfort that somebody who has only done heroin a few irregular times, and thinks it can’t possibly be that, experiences.

  Cathy sat up slowly, nauseous. The room yawed and tilted. She felt her face as if the dimensions of it had shifted and swollen during the night. But numb fingers touched numb flesh and felt nothing.

  She and Bobby had gotten really fucked up last night. He had started to do things.

  Bobby was funny like that. He did strange things. Cathy convinced herself it was art because he photographed it. But sometimes he went beyond the normal bondage games and provoked real pain.

  “Real pain for real art,” he told her without a hint of irony. “If it hurts, it hurts good, because it hurts for art; it hurts for beauty.”

  Now, with Bobby gone and Cathy alone in his secret studio, she felt the gnaw of opiate addiction and the remorse of the night before.

  She meant to call Jukes. She meant to help herself, but she only succeeded in making her way to the toilet and throwing up.

  Outside, somewhere far away, a chorus of sirens wailed. The sound seemed strange to her. She became claustrophobically aware that there were no windows in Bobby’s studio and only one heavily locked metal door.

  A loud sound made her jump, startling her heart into an adrenaline palpitation. She fell to her knees as the room shook and the walls vibrated.

  “Oh, shit!” she cried. “Oh, God!”

  The floor beneath her knees pulsed with the sound. It assaulted her for a few seconds, smashing her eardrums with anarchistic noise, then throbbed into a regular pattern.

  Then she realized it was music.

  Music! Jesus Christ, that’s what it is. Really loud, frantic, distorted music.

  A rock band was playing next door.

  Cathy acclimated herself to the sound and stood up, brushed off her knees, and lit a cigarette.

  Jukes would kill me if he caught me smokin, she thought, then laughed. Forget the cigarettes; how about some junk? Smoking a cigarette would be the least self-destructive thing she’d done to herself the past few days.

  The band plowed forward, cranking out mindless, repetitive ska instrumental riffs, all at the height of frenzy. Cathy thought they sounded bad.

  Unpleasant music filled the room. The drummer pounded out fills that made her jump and the bass vibrated her internal organs. She considered banging on the wall, but that would have been fruitless. The noise coming from their side was overwhelming.

  She crossed the room and went into the studio, smoking desperately.

  Bobby’s photography studio and living quarters were buried in the corner of a warehouse that had been converted into rehearsal spaces for bands.

  At night the building throbbed with a dozen heavy metal bands, a few blues groups, and a large contingent of ganja-smoking Rastas.

  But it was afternoon now, she thought. Without a visible clock there was no way of knowing for sure. It seemed like afternoon.

  She thought about going outside to see, but she knew without checking that the door was locked. Bobby always kept it locked when he went out. She was a prisoner until he returned.

  She closed the door between the two partitions and it muffled the sound of the rock band somewhat, but it still would have been impossible to carry on a conversation.

  The studio was large and high-ceilinged. In the far corner Bobby’s computer monitor glowed.

  The light caught Cathy’s eye and drew her across the room. She sat down unsteadily at the terminal and stared at the big rectangular screen. Bobby’s Power Mac hummed imperceptibly before her, the menu open to a list of files.

  Jukes had taught Cathy to use his Mac and gave her his old one when he upgraded. Cathy knew her way around the Apple.

  She read down the screen. “Cat
41, Cat 42, Cat 43 w/flash, Cat 44 w/flash, Cat 45 …”

  Across from the list was a corresponding list of applications. They were all PhotoShop. Cathy realized that these were pictures Bobby had taken of her with his digital camera. She knew enough to understand that these were file names for different images: “Cathy 42, Cathy 43 wo/flash …”

  “Cat 51 w/whip.” She shuddered when she recalled the terrible things he made her do, the poses and the disturbing props.

  The damn music blotted everything out, disorienting her, making everything seem strobe-lit.

  Her eyes wandered down the list. There were hundreds of files, many of her, but other girls’ names appeared as well. Using the mouse she scrolled down and scanned the names, recognizing none.

  “Dolly 16, Dolly 17, Dolly 18 w/rope …”

  She leaned back in the chair and rubbed her face. Her fingers felt like she was wearing gloves.

  Then, she leaned forward and double clicked on the “Dolly 18 w/rope” icon.

  The software application opened itself and a blurred image appeared on the screen.

  Cathy squinted at it. PhotoShop worked on the image; the machine hummed. Then, a moment later as the photo sharpened, she gazed in horror at the dead face of Dolly Devane.

  Cathy knew Dolly was dead because no one could have survived having that thick black rope wound so tightly around their neck. And there was the glazed, lifeless stare of Dolly’s eyes, so chilling.

  Cathy uttered a terrible, weighty sob and shrank back in the chair, shuddering violently. She sat there, with the computer presenting Dolly’s image before her like an unholy altar. She couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Oh, my God …,” she said. “Oh … no.…”

  A sound in the hall, a thump that didn’t sound like part of the music, startled her, and she looked around frantically.

  Thump.

  She heard it again. Another thump, followed by a high rachetting sound that stood out against the muffled din of the rock band next door.

  “Shit!” she whispered and moved her fingers back to the mouse. She struggled to overcome the shaking and moved the pointer up the little box in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Her hands moved like clumsy slugs.