Pulse

62

I t had taken only fifteen minutes for Dr. Grace Moore and Linda to cab from Grace’s apartment to Linda’s. Grace had changed into more comfortable shoes, and left the thumb drive video of her session with Linda with her other home files.

The phone was ringing inside Linda’s apartment, but it stopped just as the two women got to the door.

“Do you have an answering machine?” Grace asked.

“Not anymore. It talked to me sometimes when it shouldn’t have.”

Linda unlocked and opened the door but stood back, allowing Dr. Moore to enter first. Grace did just that, smoothly and confidently. She took in the apartment with a glance: neat, neutral furniture that was carefully arranged, a small flat-screen TV resting on what looked like an antique table, hardwood floors that were scratched and dented but glossy with a recent coat of wax, a bookcase stuffed with books and stacks of magazines (so Linda was a reader), and a window with half-lowered white blinds. A lineup of small, potted geraniums spanned the marble sill.

“I bought those yesterday,” Linda explained, noticing the geraniums had caught Grace’s attention. “Now nobody can climb in through the windows without disturbing my flowerpots.”

Grace simply nodded, thinking the flowerpots didn’t provide much security.

Linda was only halfway into the apartment, as if she was still considering staying out in the hall. Grace gripped her gently but firmly by the arm and guided her the rest of the way in. She could feel tremors running through Linda’s body.

“Why are you so nervous? You’re home. I’m here.”

“And he’s here,” Linda said.

“The reason I’m here,” Grace said, “is to demonstrate to you that he isn’t.”

“Hah!”

“So how does he get in?”

“Obviously, he has a key.”

Grace almost smiled. “Tell me, Linda, is this person part of the secret government organization you mentioned during our last session?”

“Oh, no. He’s on his own. I’d know it if he was with the government.”

“How?”

“He’d be dressed differently, for one.”

“Like the government agents you see on TV or at the movies?”

“I don’t go to the movies very often. That stuff isn’t real.” A click and a low, soft humming made Linda’s body jerk.

“That’s only the refrigerator,” Grace told her.

“So maybe he’s getting something from it. A glass of milk.”

“Has he done that before?”

“Of course. He’s left the glass out where I could see it, with just a little milk left in it. I know why he does stuff like that, so it creeps me out. He wants me to hope he goes ahead and does whatever he’s planning, wants me to give up and put my fate in his hands. Work with him.”

Grace raised her eyebrows. “Work with him?”

“You know what I mean.”

Grace did. Linda was referring to the theory that victim and killer sometimes fell into a mutual rhythm and cooperation. The killer wanted his prey. The victim wanted the terror and anxiety finally to end. In a sick sense, their goals became the same.

“Is it possible that it was a glass of milk you drank and then forgot about?” Grace asked.

“Possible? Sure.”

The apartment was silent except for the refrigerator’s soft hum. The air was warm and still. Grace walked to the doorway leading to the small galley kitchen and stood staring while Linda watched.

“Nobody in there,” Grace said. “No empty glass.”

More geraniums in green plastic pots, though, lining the windowsill. Some of them still had price tags on them.

“I didn’t say for sure he was there,” Linda pointed out.

Grace turned so she was facing her patient directly and made eye contact. “What do you think he wants, Linda?”

“To do the most awful things to me.”

“Have you been reading the papers about those women who were killed?”

“Now and then. And I see things on television.” She didn’t tell Dr. Moore about her conversation with the detective, Quinn, who was hunting the killer. He seemed, if not to believe her, not to totally dis believe her.

“Television can stimulate your imagination,” Dr. Moore said. “Especially if you haven’t taken your meds.”

“It’s difficult to remember to take them,” Linda said. “And he comes when I’m not here and moves things around. Sometimes I have to hunt and search for my meds.”

“Do you want me to look through the apartment while I’m here to convince you we’re here by ourselves?”

“I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

“But if I did it, would you be convinced?”

“I suppose so, but-”

“There aren’t that many places he could hide. It will only take a few minutes. Do you want to come with me?”

“No. And I’d rather you didn’t go looking for him.”

“When you think he’s here like this, do you ever simply leave?”

“Of course I do. He just follows me. Sometimes he’s already waiting for me when I arrive wherever it is I go.”

This interested Grace. Hallucinations weren’t uncommon in schizophrenia. Linda had reported them before.

“How is that possible, Linda?”

Linda shrugged and gave Grace a look that suggested the answer was obvious. “He understands me so well he knows most of the places where I go.” A glitter of fear played in her eyes. “How would you like to live with something like that?”

“Sometimes,” Grace said, “it helps to face your problem squarely and it won’t seem so intimidating.” She began moving toward the hall leading to the rear of the apartment.

“I wouldn’t go there,” Linda said, starting to follow her. Three steps and a pause.

“There’s no need to come with me,” Grace said. “I’ll look every place anyone could possibly hide, then I’ll call for you.” She walked a few feet down the hall and glanced into the bathroom. The plastic shower curtain was closed. She went to it without hesitation and yanked it open.

“The drip isn’t in here,” she said, and heard Linda, who’d been peeking around the door frame, laugh.

Grace didn’t like the tone of that laugh. She moved farther down the hall toward the bedroom. Linda, who was torn between keeping a safe distance and not being left alone, was hanging back and looked frightened.

“He isn’t in there,” Grace said, when she was at the bedroom’s open door.

“He is. I can feel it.”

“The room feels un occupied to me,” Grace said. She entered the bedroom without hesitation. She smiled as she saw the familiar geranium sentries on the windowsill. Beyond them the window was open a few inches, letting in a subtle breeze.

Linda had made it to the doorway and was staring into the bedroom, her eyes wide, her fists clutched tightly at her sides.

“Did you open the window?” Grace asked.

“Of course I did.”

Grace looked on the far side of the old walnut wardrobe; she even opened the twin doors and looked inside. The wardrobe’s interior contained nothing but clothes on hangers. It emanated a clean, cedar scent.

“Nobody’s here,” she said reassuringly, glancing over at Linda.

She went to the closed closet door.

“Don’t-” she heard Linda say.

Sure. They’re always hiding in the closet.

Grace yanked the door open.

There was a sagging wooden rod supporting more hangered clothes. Above them on the closet shelf were cardboard shoeboxes and a stack of self-help books. Seeing that she had Linda’s full attention, Grace stuck her arm into the darkness between the clothes so she could feel around behind them in the depths of the closet, where she couldn’t see.

Her fingertips found only roughly plastered wall.

She closed the closet door and, smiling, moved toward Linda. “No lurking monsters anywhere,” she said. “Now let’s have a look in your medicine cabinet and make an inventory of what it is you’ve been taking.”

“It’s what you prescribed.”

“I’m sure. But I’m wondering about over-the-counter drugs. You take them sometimes, too, don’t you?”

“Sometimes,” Linda admitted. “To help me sleep.”

Grace took a step toward the door.

Linda hadn’t moved. “You didn’t look under the bed.”

“True enough,” Grace said.

She went to the bed, got down on her knees, and bent forward, making a show of it for Linda. She lifted the bedspread and peered into the dimness beneath the bed.

A pair of eyes stared back at her