“They
“Doctor,” Dalesia said, “we had our very first meeting about the robbery in your office. Your nurse and your receptionist saw me. You told us the money you’d get from us was your last chance, you were desperate, you had serious trouble.” He shrugged. “Wife trouble, I guess.”
“I was going to run away.”
“Now you don’t have to.”
The doctor’s mind filled with regrets, that he had ever involved himself with these people, but then regrets for the past were overwhelmed by horror of the present. What could he
Dalesia said, “There’s a little bedroom downstairs, by the kitchen. Whose is that?”
“What? Oh, Estrella.”
“Who’s that, your daughter?”
“No, the maid, she’s our maid.”
“Where is she?”
“With her family in New Jersey. I gave her the week off.”
“Well, that’s good, then,” Dalesia said. “I’ll stay down there. I’ll take off before this Estrella gets back, take your car, and that’s the end of it.”
“Oh, no,” the doctor said. “You can’t take my car!”
“I gotta have wheels.”
“But you can’t take my car.”
“Why not? You report it stolen.”
“But that would be the same thing,” the doctor told him. “I’m safe because nobody’s looking at me, that’s what you said. I just had the one patient who was in the robbery with you, that’s all. But if you tell them about me, they’ll look at me.” Dr. Madchen leaned earnestly forward. “Mr. Dalesia,” he said, “this has all been an emotional nightmare for me. I’ll let you stay, but when you go, steal someone else’s car.”
Dalesia nodded at him. “I could just kill you, you know.”
Humbly, the doctor said, “I know you could.”
Dalesia shook his head, as though angry with himself. “I’m not a nutcase,” he said. “I’m not gonna hurt you unless I don’t have any choice.”
“I know that,” the doctor said. “You can stay. Use Estrella’s room. But please don’t take my car.”
“We’ll see,” Dalesia said.
* * *
The next week was harrowing, Dr. Madchen lived his normal life by day, doing his office hours in downtown Rutherford, seeing his patients, but always aware of that lurking demon waiting for him at home. If only he could just stay all night in the office, sleep on an examination table, eat at the luncheonette up at the corner.
But he didn’t dare do anything outside his normal routine. Get up in the morning, eat breakfast with Estrella’s closed door seeming to shimmer with what lay behind it, then go off to his office and return as late as possible at the end of the day.
He took Isabelle out to dinner twice that week, but the strain of this new secret was just too much for him. He couldn’t possibly tell her what had happened. All he could do was wait for this horror to end.
At least the man Dalesia didn’t intrude too much into the doctor’s life. Estrella had her own television set and Dalesia seemed to spend most of his time in there watching it. From the sound, it was mostly the news channels. The doctor bought bread and cold cuts and cans of soup, and steadily they were consumed, but not in his presence.
The few times he did see Dalesia that week were unsettling, because it soon became clear that Dalesia was becoming more and more disturbed by the fix he was in. He’d gotten this far, to this temporary safety, but it couldn’t last, and where could he go next? He had killed a US marshal, and every policeman in the Northeast was looking for him. The doctor began to fear that the man would eventually snap under the strain, that he would do something irrational that would destroy them both.
But it never quite happened, and on Friday evening, when Dr. Madchen got home and knocked on Estrella’s door, Dalesia appeared in the doorway more haggard than tense, as though now the strain were robbing him of strength. “Estrella’s coming back tomorrow,” the doctor said. “I’m picking her up at the bus depot at three. You’ve been here almost a week. You really have to go.”
“I know,” Dalesia said, and half turned as though to look at the television set still running in the room behind him. “They’re not letting up,” he said.
“I’ve been stopped at roadblocks three times this week,” the doctor told him.
Dalesia rubbed a weary hand over his face. “I gotta get away from here.”
“Please don’t take my car. It won’t do you any good, and it can only—”
“I know, I know.” Dalesia’s anger was also tired. “I need a car, but I can’t use one all the cops are looking for.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay,” Dalesia said. “Tomorrow, when you go get this Estrella, you’re gonna drive me somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I’ll show you tomorrow,” Dalesia said, and went back into Estrella’s room, and closed the door.
2
Captain Robert Modale of the New York State Police was a calm man and a patient man, but he knew a whopping waste of time when it was dumped in his lap, and he’d been given a doozy this time. Irritation, which is what Captain Modale had to admit to himself he was feeling right now, had the effect of making him even quieter and more self-contained than ever. As a result, he had ridden in the passenger seat of the unmarked state pool car, next to Trooper Oskott at the wheel, all the way across half of New York State and probably a third of Massachusetts with barely a word out of his mouth.
Trooper Oskott, looking awkward and uncomfortable in civvies instead of his usual snappy gray fitted uniform, had tried to make conversation a few times, but the responses were so minimal that he soon gave up, and the interstates merely rolled silently by outside the vehicle’s glass while Captain Modale contemplated this whopping waste of time he had to deal with.
Which was going to be a two-day waste of time, at that. The captain had to travel these hundreds of miles on a Friday, but he would reach Rutherford too late to meet with his Massachusetts counterparts until Saturday morning. In the meantime, the plan was that he and Trooper Oskott would bunk in a motel somewhere.
At first, though, it had looked as though no accommodation would be available, since it was the height of the fall foliage season over there in New England, and most inns of any kind were full. Captain Modale had been counting on that, the whopping waste of time called off for lack of housing, but then somebody made an early departure from a bed and breakfast with the disgusting name of Bosky Rounds, so the trip was on after all.
* * *
Bosky Rounds was not as repulsive as its name, though it was still not at all to the captain’s taste. Nevertheless, the proprietor, Mrs. Bartlett,
