Michael Crichton - A Case of Need

“How did she feel afterward?”

“Like hell. She was really turned off. Wired out. Down, you know, they were really down-trips.”

“Did she stayed turned off?”

“Yeah. The rest of the summer. Never made it once with a guy for the rest of the summer. Like she was afraid.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.”

I looked around the apartment. “Where is Angela?”

“Out.”

“Where did she go? I’d like to talk to her.”

“She really needs to talk to you, right now.”

I said, “Is she in some kind of trouble?”

“No.”

“I’d like to talk to her.”

Bubbles shrugged. “If you can find her, talk to her.”

“Where did she go?”

“I told you. Out.”

“I understand she’s a nurse,” I said.

“That’s right,” Bubbles said. “You got the—”

At this point, the door opened and a tall girl burst into the room. She said, “That bastard isn’t anywhere, he’s hiding, the rotten—”

She stopped when she saw me.

“ ’Lo, Ang,” Bubbles said. She nodded to me. “You got an oldie but goodie here to see you.”

Angela Harding swept into the room and slumped on the couch, and lit a cigarette. She wore a very short black dress, black-net stockings, and patent-leather black boots. She had long dark hair and a hard, classically beautiful face with bones that looked chiseled; the face of a model. I had trouble picturing her as a nurse.

“You’re the one who wants to know about Karen?”

I nodded.

“Sit down,” she said. “Take a load off.”

Bubbles said, “Ang, I didn’t tell him—”

“Get me a Coke, would you, Bubbles?” Angela said. Bubbles nodded quietly and went into the kitchen. “You want a Coke?”

“No, thanks.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She sucked on the cigarette and stubbed it out. Her movements were quick but she kept her composure, a calm in her face. She lowered her voice. “I didn’t want to talk about Karen in front of Bubbles. She’s pretty upset about it.”

“Karen?”

“Yes. They were close.”

“And you?”

“Not so close.”

“How’s that?”

“She came on strong, in the beginning. Nice girl, a little wild, but fun. Very strong in the beginning. So we decided to share a room, the three of us. Then later Bubbles moves in with Superhead, and I’m stuck with Karen. It wasn’t so easy.”

“Why?”

“She was a crazy kid. She was nuts.”

Bubbles came back with the Coke. “She wasn’t.”

“Not around you. She had an act for you.”

“You’re just mad because of—”

“Yeah. Right. Sure.” Angela tossed her head and shifted her long legs. She turned to me and said, “She’s talking about Jimmy. Jimmy was a resident I knew, in OB.”

“That was the service you were on?”

“Yes,” she said. “Jimmy and I had a thing, and I thought it was good. It was good. Then Karen stepped in.”

Angela lit another cigarette and avoided my eyes. I could not really tell whether she was talking to me or to Bubbles. Obviously the two girls did not agree.

“I never thought she’d do it,” Angela said. “Not your own roommate. I mean, there are rules...”

“She liked him,” Bubbles said.

“She liked him. Yeah, I suppose so. For a quick seventy-two hours.”

Angela stood up and paced up and down the room. Her dress barely reached to mid thigh. She was a strikingly beautiful girl, much more beautiful than Karen.

“You’re not fair,” Bubbles said.

“I don’t feel fair.”

“You know what you’re saying is a lie. You know that Jimmy—”

“I don’t know anything,” Angela said. “All I know is that Jimmy’s in Chicago now finishing his residency, and I am not with him. Maybe if I was—” She stopped.

“Maybe,” Bubbles said.

“Maybe what?” I said.

“Skip it,” Angela said.

I said, “When did you last see Karen?”

“I don’t know. It must have been August sometime. Before she started school.”

“You didn’t see her last Sunday?”

“No,” she said, still pacing. She didn’t even break step. “No.”

“That’s funny. Alan Zenner saw her last Sunday.”

“Who?”

“Alan Zenner. He was a friend of hers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He saw her, and she told him she was coming over here.”

Angela and Bubbles exchanged looks. Bubbles said, “The dirty little—”

“It’s not true?” I asked.

“No,” Angela said tightly. “We didn’t see her.”

“But he was positive—”

“She must have changed her mind. She usually did, you know. Karen changed her mind so often you wondered if she had one.”

Bubbles said, “Ang, listen…”

“Get me another Coke, will you?”

There was no mistaking the command in the voice. Bubbles got up meekly for another Coke.

“Bubbles is nice,” Angela said, “but a little naive. She likes everything to be sweet and nice in the end. That’s why what happened to Karen bothers her so much.”

“I see.”

She stopped pacing and stood in front of me. Her body took on a rigidity that melted slowly into an icy calm. “Was there anything in particular you wanted to ask me?”

“Just if you’d seen Karen.”

“No. The answer is no.”

I stood. “Well then, thank you for your time.”

Angela nodded. I went to the door. As I left I heard Bubbles say, “Is he leaving?”

And Angela said, “Shut up.”

SHORTLY BEFORE NOON I called Bradford’s office and was told that one of the staff was taking Dr. Lee’s case. The man was named George Wilson. My call was put through to him. Over the phone he sounded smooth and self-confident; he agreed to meet me for drinks at five, but not at the Trafalgar Club. We would meet at Crusher Thompson’s, a bar downtown.

After that, I had lunch in a drive-in and read the morning papers. The story about Art’s arrest had finally broken, big, hitting all the front pages, though there was still no link to Karen Randall’s death. Along with the story was a picture of Art. There were dark, sadistic circles under his eyes. His mouth drooped in a sinister way and his hair was disheveled. He could have been any cheap hood.

The stories didn’t say much, just a bare outline of the facts of his arrest. They didn’t have to say much: the picture said it all. In a way it was clever. You couldn’t move for a prejudicial pretrial publicity on the basis of an unflattering picture.

After lunch I smoked a cigarette and tried to put it all together. I didn’t have much success. The descriptions I had heard of Karen were too conflicting, too uncertain. I had no clear picture of her, or what she might have done. Particularly what she might have done if she arrived in Boston for a weekend, pregnant, and needing an abortion.

At one I called Murphy’s lab again. Murph answered the phone.

“Hormones Unlimited.”

“Hello, Murph. What’s the word?”

“On Karen Randall?”

“Murph, you’ve been doing homework.”

“Not exactly,” he said. “The City just called. Weston was on the phone. Wanted to know if you’d brought in a blood sample.”

“And what did you say?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he say?”

“Wanted to know the results. I told him.”

“What are the results?”

“All the hormone and excretion metabolite levels are flat low. She wasn’t pregnant. Absolutely impossible.”

“O.K.,” I said. “Thanks.”

Murph had just put some life back into my theory. Not much, but some.

“You going to explain all this, John?”