An Old Friend of the Family

“No, someone kindly offered me a ride from the motel this morning.”

“Must’ve been early. Snow’s covered all the tracks completely.”

“Indeed, it was.”

Judy put in: “If you’re ready to leave, we can take you back to the motel. Or wherever you want to go.”

“Thank you, my dear, that would be kind.”

Corday was in the act of pulling the mausoleum door shut behind him when Joe stepped forward, saying: “As long as we’re here, I’d like to take a look at the pottery to . . . Judy, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just felt a little dizzy, all of a sudden. I’m all right. You go on in, but I don’t want to.”

She looked so white-faced that Joe and Corday between them, both peering at her anxiously, walked her down to the car and saw her settled in the rear seat.

“I feel better now. I think it was just a little too much like the dream. Go ahead, Joe, I’m all right.”

The two men marched back up to the dark doorway, over the now well-trampled walk.

“You first, Doctor.”

With a slight bow, the old man went on in. Joe followed. Once inside, there was really plenty of light, coming in the windows. The doorway had looked so black from outside only by contrast with the snow.

Plenty of light, but not all that much to see. Joe wasn’t really sure what he was looking for. The tombs and their decorations, and the big urns, and maybe Corday was really enthusiast enough to want to spend a day here in the cold among them. Joe’s breath steamed in the air. To him, the place looked not much different from a fancier- than-usual funeral home, or the inside of one of the older Chicago churches. It reminded him a little of the chapel of Thomas More University, where he had been going to take Kate a couple of days before Christmas, to see The Play of Daniel . . . there was plenty of pottery here, all right, and in this large urn someone’s crumpled bra, which must have been here since last summer, so evidently the door wasn’t always kept carefully locked.

As soon as his eyes met Corday’s again, he told the old man bluntly: “Kate’s body was missing from the morgue this morning.”

Corday’s response was controlled surprise, or at least a very good imitation thereof. “Really? Is such a thing a common occurrence there?”

“Very uncommon. I was wondering if you might have any ideas about it.”

“Because I wanted to go there last night? No. No, I should not care to venture an opinion. Joe, what brings you and Judy here to the cemetery this afternoon?”

Joe sighed. “The kid had a very vivid dream last night. A couple of dreams, rather. She’s upset—of course. Anyway, one dream was that Kate was here, in the family mausoleum, alive, but unable to get out of the place for some reason. And all day today Judy’s been saying she thought she’d go crazy if she couldn’t get out of the house for a while. Andy’s back at the office, being a workaholic as usual. Lenore is—sedated. Clarissa can’t decide anything. I finally just took it upon myself to decide that Judy would be better off getting out, and it’d be safe enough if I rode shotgun.” He blinked at Corday’s blank stare. “Chicago cops always go armed, you know, even off duty. So here we are.”

While Joe talked they had been slowly gravitating back to the doorway. Now Corday gestured and Joe stepped out. At the bottom of the little slope, Judy’s scarf-wreathed face smiled back from the small car’s window.

Joe led the way down to her. Behind him he could hear Corday shutting the metal door of the mausoleum carefully, and the key turning, grating, in the little-used lock.

Judy looked well enough when they rejoined her in the car. “I think it was just the idea of going in there,” she said again. “I didn’t want to go in after all.”

“Natural enough,” said Joe, getting the engine and heater started. Why was the old man here, today? 'Where can we take you, Dr. Corday?”

The old man, in the right front seat, was twisting round to face the back. “Joe tells me you had two vivid dreams last night. What was the second?”

Judy smiled, a quick little flicker, as if to mark the passage of some secret between her and the old man. Then her face turned bleak. “Towards morning I dreamed of Johnny. He was in a closet somewhere. All naked, and bloody, and . . . just awful. God, I hope it isn’t true. But I can’t stop feeling that it is.”

“And can you lead us to this closet?” The old man was intensely serious.

“I’m taking her home,” said Joe, and reached to move his selector lever into Drive. The old man’s fingers settled gently on his wrist. Joe urged his own hand forward anyway; his hand stayed right where it was, as if he were trying to lift the car with it instead of one thin elderly arm. He felt ridiculous. What was he going to do now, start a wrestling match?

The old man continued to stare at Judy, and Joe followed the direction of his gaze. He was disturbed to see that although Judy still sat up straight, her eyes were closed and the utterly relaxed expression on her face suggested that she was asleep.

In wonder, he asked: “Judy?”

“She is asleep,” Corday informed him soothingly, and at the same time let go of Joe’s wrist.

“Judy, are you all right?”

“Answer Joe, Judy.”

“I’m fine.” Her voice was pleasant, but remote. Her eyes stayed closed.

Corday asked her: “Can you now guide us to the building where John is being held?”

“Yes.” Her voice held sudden urgency. “Turn west as soon as you leave the cemetery.”

Joe looked at her a moment longer, then got the car in motion, this time without interference. “What is she, hypnotized? Whatever you’re doing with her, I don’t like it. She’s going home.”

“Joe, don’t.” Judy’s voice was intense but calm. “I’m all right. If you love Kate, you’ll help to find her brother.”

Joe glanced into the rear-view mirror. Judy’s eyes were open again and she looked quite normal.

She said: “Do you think the police are ever going to find him? They don’t have a single real clue, do they?”

They had reached the plowed section of the cemetery roads by now. The gate was only a quarter mile or so ahead. Joe said: “If you want the truth, I don’t think they’ll ever get him back alive.”

“There you are. But we can. He’s in a white house, out in the country just a few miles west of here. I think the roof has shingles.”

“I think you better go home.”

“If you try to take me home I’ll jump out of the car before we get there. I’ll fight and scream. If you humor me a little I’ll be just fine.”

Joe slowed, indecisively. Half angry, half pleading for help, he turned to the old man. “Doctor?”

Corday’s face was altered by a smile, small, confident, and almost irresistibly comradely. Softly he said: “Turn west.”

ELEVEN

“Your hour’s almost up,” Joe commented. Almost an hour after leaving Lockwood Cemetery, they had at last penetrated the western belt of suburbs and were entering real countryside. The two-lane highway, coated in salted slush, ran northwest. On the left were cornfields, snowy stubble now, and on the right at the moment was a new apartment development, decorated barracks that seemed to have been extruded against the road’s shoulder by the congestion to the east.

“Keep going,” Judy urged. Again, as happened every time Joe so much as hinted at giving up, there was an underlevel of panic in her reply. “Joe, he’s so badly hurt. We’ve got to get to him right away. There’s a man in the house with Johnny, but he’s not helping Johnny at all. I can feel how close it is. We’re almost there.”

“Six more minutes,” said Joe firmly. “Then we’re going to find a phone and call your home and tell ‘em you’re all right. I agreed to spend an hour at this, and we will, and then you’re going home. Right, Doctor?”

No answer came from Corday, who had his hands in his coat pockets, and was gazing fixedly ahead, as if he were lost in his own thoughts.