Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

The intruder had said, “You know what we want. Tell us where you’ve hidden them.” She protested that she didn’t know, so the man had growled out: the books of her patient Paul Hoffman.

Don’s voice shook. “Prick said he’d already searched her office. She says it was the worst part, in a way, that she had to keep asking him to repeat what he was saying-he apparently spoke in a kind of growl that was hard to understand. Something deep in the throat; that’s why she couldn’t even tell the sex of the speaker. Also, well, you know how it is when you’re terrified, especially if you’re not used to physical attacks-your brain doesn’t process stuff normally. And this-people look so horrible in ski masks and everything. It’s paralyzing to see someone in that getup. They don’t look human.”

It flitted through my mind that Rhea could test her own theories by getting herself hypnotized, to see what she could recall of her assailant, but the episode had been too traumatic for me to make sport of her. “So she said, Don’t shoot me, Dr. Herschel took the books?”

“The assailant was tossing her china on the floor. She watched him smash a teapot that her grandmother’s great-grandmother brought from England in 1809.” Don’s voice took on a sharp edge. “He said he-she-whoever-knew Rhea was the person closest to Paul Hoffman-he knew his name and everything-and she was the only person Hoffman would have given the books to. So Rhea said someone else had taken the books from the hospital last night. When the bastard threatened her, she gave them Dr. Herschel’s name. Not everyone has your physical stamina, Vic,” he added when I didn’t say anything.

“It may be okay,” I said slowly. “Lotty’s disappeared and taken the books with her. If they’re still looking for Ulrich’s journals, it confirms that Lotty disappeared on her own, that she wasn’t coerced. The police have been around, I presume? Did she tell them about the connection to Paul Hoffman?”

“Oh, yeah.” I could hear him sucking in a mouthful of smoke, then Rhea, plaintive in the background, reminding him that she hated cigarette smoke, and his “Sorry, sweet,” into the mouthpiece, although not addressed to me.

Was that where Fillida Rossy had been going so fast with her gym bag yesterday afternoon? Down to Water Tower Place to search Rhea Wiell’s office? No Ulrich journals in the office, so the Rossys waited until the middle of the night, after the end of their dinner party. Rossy returned from murdering Connie, the two of them entertained, Bertrand sparkling with wit, and then went off to terrorize Rhea Wiell in her home.

“What did Rhea say to the cops?” I asked.

“She told them you’d been in Paul’s house Thursday, so you may get a visit from the investigating team.”

“She’s a never-ending ray of sunshine.” Then I remembered my carefully worded message to Ralph yesterday afternoon-that I didn’t have Ulrich’s books, that someone else had taken them away. I’d been trying to protect Lotty, but all I’d done was expose Rhea Wiell. Naturally the Rossys-or whoever was after the books-had looked first for the person Hoffman was closest to. I could hardly complain if she’d sicced them onto me in turn.

“Hell, Don, I’m sorry.” I cut short his expostulation. “Look, whoever is after these books is lethal. I’m totally, utterly thankful that they didn’t shoot Rhea. But-if they go to Lotty’s and don’t find the notebooks there, they may think Rhea was lying. They may come after her again and be more ferocious this time. Or they may think she gave them to you. Can you go away for the weekend? Go to New York, go to London, go somewhere where you can feel reasonably safe?”

He was shaken. We talked about the possibilities for several minutes, but before he hung up I said, “Look, Don. I’ve got more bad news for you on your recovered memory project. I know seeing those books of Ulrich’s already raised some doubts in your mind, but this story of Paul’s, that he was a kid in Terezin who was taken to England, where Hoffman scooped him up, I’m afraid he may have adapted that from someone else’s history.”

I told him about Anna Freud’s article. “If you can find out what happened to the real ‘Paul’ and ‘Miriam’ in that article-well, I’d hate for you to take your Paul’s history public. A lot of readers would recognize Freud’s article and know he had appropriated the story of those kids.”

“Maybe the evidence will prove he’s right.” Don spoke without much conviction. “The children couldn’t have stayed with Anna Freud’s staff forever; they have to have grown up somewhere. One of them could well have come to America with Ulrich, who might have called him Paul, thinking that was his real name.” He was trying hard to hang on to the shreds of his belief in his book-and in Rhea.

“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “I’ll send you a copy of the article. The children were placed in adoptive homes through a foster parents’ organization under Freud’s supervision. I have a feeling they would have made sure Paul went to a stable two-parent home, not into the custody of a widowed immigrant, even if he wasn’t an Einsatzgruppenführer.”

“You’re trying to ruin my book just because you don’t like Rhea,” he grumbled.

I kept my temper with an effort. “You’re a well-respected writer. I’m trying to keep you from making a fool out of yourself with a book that would be poked full of holes the minute it hit the street.”

“It seems to me that’s my lookout, mine and Rhea’s.”

“Oh, boil your head, Don,” I said, my sympathy gone. “I have two murders to attend to: I don’t have time for this kind of crap.”

I hung up and found Ralph Devereux’s home number. He’d moved away from the Gold Coast apartment where he’d lived when I used to know him, but he was still in the city, in the trendy new neighborhood on South Dearborn. I got his voice mail. On a Saturday he might be out running errands, or playing golf, but someone on his staff had been murdered. I bet he was in the office.

Sure enough, when I called over to Ajax, Ralph’s secretary answered the phone. “Denise, V I Warshawski. I was very sorry to hear about Connie Ingram. Is Ralph in? I’m going to be there in about twenty minutes to talk to him about the situation.”

She tried to protest: he was down the hall meeting with Mr. Rossy and the chairman; he’d called all his claims supervisors to come in and they were waiting in his conference room; the police were there right now interrogating the staff-there was no way he could fit me in. I told her I was on my way.

When I got to Ajax I had a bit of luck. Detective Finchley was in the lobby, talking to one of his juniors. The Finch, a slender black man in his late thirties, is always perfectly turned out; even on a Saturday morning his shirt was ironed to knife creases along the collar. He called me over as soon as he saw me.

“Vic, I didn’t get your message about Colby Sommers until this morning. Idiot on duty last night didn’t think it was important enough to page me at home, and now the dirtbag is dead. Drive-by, they’re calling it. What do you know about him?”

I repeated what Gertrude Sommers had told me. “It was all based on word from the reverend at her church. Trouble is, I talked to Louis Durham about it last night.”

“You’re not saying Durham ’s responsible for this, are you?” He was indignant.

“Ms. Sommers’s reverend says the left hand of Durham ’s left hand isn’t always as well washed as it should be. If Durham talked it over with someone on his EYE team, maybe they felt the heat was getting too close. I’d check with Ms. Sommers, find out who this reverend is-he seems pretty well plugged into the neighborhood.”