Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

There were two images displayed side by side on the screen: one was the schematic of an HO-track configuration; the second was a map of the I-71 loop in Columbus.

There were the same shape. I knew this because I’d just seen it.

It was behind me.

I turned to look at the second table-mounted track and, sure enough, eight mashed cars had been set aside, and seven small memorials had been placed at the spot where the accident had occurred.

Not being one whose grasp of the obvious will ever be called keen, I looked back at the computer screen, then again at the track, then once more at the computer.

Which is when I finally noticed the stack of files beside the desk.

Another shadow, this one bulkier than the last, moved in the periphery of my vision. I stomped to the doorway and looked in every direction but saw no further movement.

“Fred? Goddammit, c’mon , this isn’t funny.”

No answer. No sound.

Checking my watch, I saw that Dobbs had been gone only three minutes. It felt like I’d been alone in here for hours.

Ever had one of those “I-Know-This-Isn’t-A-Good-Idea- But ” moments? The smart thing to do was leave the room and not look at anything else. The smart thing to do was leave. Once more, with feeling: Smart Thing = Leaving. So of course I turned back, picked up the top file, and sat down in the desk chair to look at it. It was a record of traffic deaths.

The first several pages consisted of hand-written columns noting dates, locations, number and makes of cars, fatalities, and the names of everyone involved. Next to each line of information was a number written in blue, silver, or gold ink. The rest of the file contained newspaper clippings, arranged by date, containing details (and sometimes photos) about the accidents catalogued in the first batch of pages.

Closing the file and setting it back atop the stack, I looked around the bedroom once more.

How goddamn lonely, bitter, angry, and morbid would someone have to be to make this their hobby? I mean, it was bad enough she’d spent so much time collecting and organizing this information, but to drop thousands of dollars on custom-made HO track and accessories to recreate the accidents in the privacy of her home…can I get an Eeeewwww! ?

And to top it all off, she hadn’t even gotten the last accident right; five people, not seven, had died as a result of the I-71 crash.

I stood, pulling my wallet from my back pocket and riffling through its contents until I found my lawyer’s business card. I wanted out of this. If it meant some jail time instead of community service, so be it. I was so creeped out that even the threat of incarceration seemed preferable to spending one more minute in this apartment. Brennert would understand. I wouldn’t lose my job over this. He was that kind of guy. (And I had serious doubts that the judge would actually put me in jail; I’d probably end up washing dishes at the Open Shelter or something like that.)

I spotted the phone among the stuff on the cluttered nightstand, walked over, picked up the receiver, and only then allowed myself to look down at Miss Driscoll’s body.

She might have been the same woman in the photo hanging in the foyer, but I couldn’t be certain; at least fifty years separated the face in the picture from the one I was looking at now.

Staring down at her still form that looked more asleep than dead, I couldn’t help but wonder how she came to this, what led from point A to point B (and so on) to her cutting herself off from the rest of the world with only this grotesque hobby to fill her days.

Is that why you cried some nights? I wondered. Did you know or suspect that your life had become something ghoulish and ugly? Did you feel so powerless and alone and afraid that you couldn’t talk to someone about it? Did it hurt that much, knowing what you had become?

“Lady,” I whispered, “what the hell happened to you?”

I reached down with a shaking hand to punch in my lawyer’s phone number and accidentally hit the Redialbutton, freezing just long enough for the seven digits to complete their rapid-fire dialing and hear a voice on the other end say: “Cedar Hill Police Department, how may I direct your call?”

“Sorry, misdialed.” I hung up with too much force, just about tipping over the mostly empty glass of water next to the phone. Steadying the glass, I managed to knock one of the prescription containers from the nightstand. Sometimes I’m so graceful it’s a wonder I didn’t pursue a career in ballet.

Counting the one I’d knocked to the floor, there were seven empty prescription containers on the nightstand: painkillers, sedatives, blood pressure medication, muscle relaxants, anti-depressants, and two different kinds of sleeping pills. There was also a good-sized bowl with remnants of chocolate pudding clinging to its rim and to the spoon lying inside (having consumed more than my fair share of chocolate pudding and knowing how it looks when you fail to rinse out the bowl in a timely manner, I recognized this immediately, perceptive and clever fellow—not to mention tidy housekeeper—that I am). Mixed in with these remnants was a not-so-fine powdery substance.

Oh, shit.

I take in pill form a drug called Imitrex for my migraine headaches. The stuff works wonders most of the time, except on those nights I forget to carry some on me and end up at the ER getting a shot of Demerol so I can be arrested for DUI on my way home and be assigned community service that will lead me to be standing over the dead body of a seriously weird old lady, but I digress. If I do not take the Imitrex with food or milk, I will be vomiting within half an hour. Since it takes two pills to tackle one of my migraines, I break them up into several pieces and mix them in with applesauce or—drum-roll please—pudding.

I stared at the bowl, the empty prescription containers, and knew.

Miss Driscoll had committed suicide.

Now before you shake your head and let fly with one of those long, low-pitched, boy-has- he -lost-it whistles, consider: 1) This was an isolated and terribly lonely old woman who, 2) had a morbid hobby, 3) possessed enough prescription medications to kill herself three times over if she took them all at once, and whose, 4) last phone call had been to the non-emergency number of the police department.

It would have been simple enough; wait until you feel yourself starting to drift toward sleep, then make the call: I’m sorry, this isn’t an emergency, it’s probably nothing, but I live over at The Maples on—oh, you know where that is? I was wondering if you could send some officers over to apartment 716 sometime tonight around, oh, 8:30 or 9? There’s a young man who’s been coming to my door at that time for the last couple of nights—I think he might be trying to sell something—and he will not leave me alone. He’s been very insistent, and he’s starting to frighten me a little. I was hoping the officers might have a word with him?

She’d probably invented a better reason, but my guess was it had been something along similar lines, some vague, borderline silly, old-lady reason to have a couple of officers drop by, nothing urgent, mind you, but allowing for enough time between the call and their visit to make sure she’d be dead when the police arrived.

I can’t say that I was pleased about realizing this—consider the circumstances—because if it was true, then it raised more questions than it answered: why was there no record of this downstairs? The police would have checked in with whomever worked the front desk. The door to the apartment hadn’t been forcibly opened, it had been unlocked by someone with a passkey (presumably the building manager or one of the security guards). How did the mayor come to be involved? And why would the coroner file a false report of “Natural Causes” when it must have been obvious to him that Miss Driscoll had taken her own life? (C’mon; if I could figure it out based on an almost-empty pudding bowl, someone with the coroner’s medical knowledge must have known it the moment he saw the body.)