The Rules of Dreaming (24 page)

“How do you know I’m not just sleeping with his wife?”

“That’s probably true too, knowing his wife.  Is she the one who’s paying you?”

Dubin stood up and started for the door.  “I’ll see you around.”

“All I’m asking,” Bartolli said, following him, “is that you try to persuade Avery Morgan to take Antonia out of the Institute for a few hours and bring her here for treatment.”

“What kind of treatment?”

“Hypnotic regression.  To put her in touch with the unconscious so she can escape from it.  Avery and Susan can stay in the room the whole time to make sure nothing bad happens.  I’m sure you can persuade them to do that.”

Dubin had reached the foyer.  He turned to face Bartolli.  “Even if I were a blackmailer, why should I do this?”

“Because you’re not an ordinary blackmailer.”

“Really? What kind of blackmailer am I?”

“An honest one, I think.”

Dubin let himself laugh.  “It’s been a long time since anyone accused me of that.  Who have you been talking to?”  Without waiting for an answer he turned toward the door, but Bartolli reached out and held it shut.

“I understand,” Bartolli smiled.  “Whatever you’ve got on Morgan, you don’t want to squander it helping me.  But you must understand, this is for Antonia, not for me.  If we can get through to Antonia—if we can coax her away from the demon who’s seized control of her mind just for a few minutes—I think we can save her, and at the same time find the secret you’ve been searching for.”

Dubin nudged Bartolli aside and reached for the doorknob, but the black cat had slipped unnoticed between himself and the door, blocking him from opening it.

“Nero!” Bartolli whispered, stooping down to pick up his pet.  “Leave Mr. Dubin alone.”

Chapter
29

It was cold sleeping in the forest but not nearly so cold as the bottom of the canal where I’d sent Jeff Gottlieb. The police had followed me from Venice, of course.  Two or three times a day they swarmed over the mountainside in a show of force, but since they never strayed more than fifty feet from their cars it was absurdly easy to keep out of their sight.  Nicole was the one I was worried about.  She spent her days searching for me in the forest, returning at night to a small chalet-like hotel just below the crest of the ridge.  I watched her every minute, tracking her footprints in the snow.  Did she know I was following her?  Sometimes I caught her glancing over her shoulder as if she knew I was there.  When she drove to town I climbed to the top of the ridge and watched the Volvo wind its way down into the valley until it disappeared.  Then I waited, in a culvert or behind a tree, until I could hear the car groaning its way back up the mountainside to the hotel.

On that last night I watched her park the Volvo and trudge wearily into the hotel lobby.  I knew how long it would be before the lights in her room flashed on and how long before they’d snap off again.  Behind the curtains my mind’s eye saw everything that happened in between.  Let her sleep, I thought, wishing I could sleep as soundly in my frigid hiding place as she in her bed.  Before sunrise, after my breakfast of stale crusts I’d stolen the day before, I crept down and pressed my face against her window, angling for a glimpse inside through a crack in the curtains.  I tried to be careful but I must have made a noise or cast a shadow—all at once the curtains swung open and for a full thirty seconds Nicole and I stared at each other in astonishment, the glass frosting between us until I slipped back down off the balcony and disappeared into the woods.

She followed me to a spot I knew well, the narrow ravine that ended with a sheer rock wall encrusted with ice.  You could scream all you wanted in there and no one would hear you, and when you got to the wall you had no choice but to turn around and go back.  I hurried into the cul de sac, leaving a trail in the fresh snow, and then doubled back to hide behind a tree about fifty feet up the trail.  She plodded past and when she came to the wall she turned around and saw me standing in the path.  Neither of us said anything.  The world was white and quiet, muffled in the silence of fresh snow.  The fresh snow, it seemed to me, made everything permissible.

“I found you,” she finally said.

“Unfortunately for you.”

She glanced around at the frozen wall and realized that she was trapped.  “What do you mean?”

“I murdered Gottlieb and you saw me do it.”

“You didn’t murder Dr. Gottlieb.”

“You shouldn’t have followed me here.”  I moved toward her, swishing the snow as I went.  I still had my knife in my pocket, but I didn’t think I’d need to use it.  I could do what I had to do with my bare hands.  It would be better that way.

She tried to hold me in place with her fierce emerald eyes.  I glanced away and took another step forward, my hands raised in front of me.  I was close enough now that I could see the snowflakes melting on her white skin. The two ends of her woolen scarf dangled within my reach.

“Hunter!” she shouted in my face.  “Don’t do this!  Stop!”

I stood still and squinted into her eyes.  “Hunter?  Why did you call me Hunter?”

“Because that’s your name.”

Was this some kind of a trick?  I felt queasy, heavy, as if I needed to sit down.  “No, you’re wrong about that,” I said.  “My name is Hoffmann.  I’m Dr. Ned Hoffmann.  Hunter is a patient of mine at the Institute.”

“No.”  She shook her head.  “You’re Hunter Morgan.”  She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.  “You’re Hunter Morgan and I’m taking you home.”

Nicole dug her fingernails into her thigh, to remind herself, for the thousandth time that afternoon, that she wasn’t dreaming.

Dr. Klein reached across the table to turn off the tape recorder as soon as it was clear that Hunter had come to the end of his narration.  “Is there anything else you
’d like to tell us?” he asked, fingers poised over the controls.  Hunter stared down at the tile floor as though he were deaf.

Dr. Klein was Chief of Psychiatry at
the small community hospital in the mountains where Nicole had brought Hunter that morning after she found him in the woods.  He nodded to an orderly, who touched Hunter’s arm and led him out of the room.  “Almost five hours,” Dr. Klein said.  “Let me wind these tapes back to the beginning to make sure we got all of it.”

Dr.
Ned Hoffmann mustered a reassuring smile for Nicole, who’d been sitting between him and Hunter throughout the session.  They had started at noon and now it was almost five o’clock.  Everything Hunter said had been recorded on tape.  Before trying to talk to him, Dr. Klein had called in Dr. Hoffmann, who had previously informed him that he was in the area searching for Hunter.  It was Dr. Hoffmann who decided that Nicole should also be present since she was responsible for finding Hunter and bringing him in.

The
y sat in stunned silence for almost five hours as Hunter told his tangled tale.  Now Ned and Nicole waited as Dr. Klein rewound the first tape back to the beginning.  He pushed the “Play” button and they heard Hunter’s voice:

“
All right, Dr. Klein, you can turn that thing on now.  I’m ready to tell my story.  But first you have to understand, I’m not who you think I am.”

“Okay
,” Dr. Klein said on the tape. “We’re listening.”

And Hunter began to talk:

“Late last summer, after less than two months at the Palmer Institute, I witnessed an extraordinary performance.  One of my patients, Hunter Morgan (that was not his real name), sat down at the piano in the patient lounge and started playing like a virtuoso.  Hunter was a twenty-one year old schizophrenic who had lived in the Institute for the past seven years, and as far as anyone could remember he’d never touched the piano before.  The piece he played was classical music—that was about all I could tell—and it sounded fiendishly difficult, a whirlwind of chords and notes strung together in a jarring rhythm that seemed the perfect analog of a mind spinning out of control....”

Dr. Klein clicked the tape recorder off and shook his head.  There was more, almost five hours more: Hunter as his own psychiatrist, Hunter as Nicole’s psychiatrist, Hunter as the lover of the mechanical Olympia and the voluptuous Julietta, finally as the crazed murderer of Gottlieb and Julietta herself on a Venetian canal—all of this a gargantuan fabrication that swept in all the movies he’d ever seen, all the books he’d ever read and everyone and everything he’d encountered in his cloistered life at the Institute.  It was like an elaborate novel in which the narrator turns out to be a different character than the one he purports to be.  Did Hunter Morgan really think he was Ned Hoffmann? Dr. Klein wondered.  And had he actually experienced these events in some hallucinatory fashion during his week in the wilderness?  Or was it only in the recollection that they had burst into existence?

Dr. Klein fixed his eyes on Ned.  “I gather that he thinks he’s you, Dr. Hoffmann.”

Ned Hoffmann nodded warily.  “Hunter has a number of different personalities.”

“And one of them is you?”

“Evidently.  I never realized it before.  It leaves me feeling a little uncomfortable, to say the least.”

“Understandably.”

Multiple personali
ty disorder, Nicole thought.  A delusional parallel world, and she’d been dreamed into it.  Luckily her doctor, the real Dr. Ned Hoffmann, was sitting beside her.

“H
unter’s version of my life is a little too convincing,” Ned smiled.  “Frankly, it seems more lifelike than the one I’ve been living.”

Dr. Klein turned to Nicole and asked, “Is there any truth to the story?”

“Absolutely not,” Ned interrupted.  “It’s a classic confabulation—with a few realistic details, of course.”

Dr. Klein peered over
the tops of his glasses.  “Such as?”

“Well, there really is a receptionist named Julietta.”

“And your relationship with her?”

“He made all that up.
  I didn’t do any of those things.”

“T
he violence in Venice?”

“A complete fantasy.”

Dr. Klein posed his questions almost hypothetically, as if he were talking to one of his patients.  “Then Julietta is safe?  And the other physician—Dr. Gottlieb?”

“He seemed in good health when I called him this morning.”  Ned glared back at Dr. Klein in triumph, his color rising.  “And so was Julietta, who answered the phone. They do sleep together, as you might as well know, since everyone else
does.  But as far as I know neither of them has ever been to Venice.”

Ned glanced at Nicole as if for confirmation, but she
was in no condition to talk after listening to Hunter’s narration.  The last part was no fantasy—she had followed Hunter into the ravine that morning and the encounter he described was accurate to the last detail.  But it was only in the retelling that she understood what had really happened.

“And neither have I, by the way,”  Ned added.

Dr. Klein nodded and smiled, and then he stood up.  “As I’m sure you understand, I’ll have to confirm all this with the Institute before I can turn the patient back over to you.”

 
III.  Antonia

Chapter
30

The day they found Hunter
, the temperature dropped below freezing and there was snow in the air.  Dubin woke up with a savage hangover from drinking half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in a desperate effort to get some sleep.  After his last visit to Peter Bartolli he’d spent three sleepless nights in an agony of excitement and dread.  He knew he’d found the killer—when he heard Bartolli call his black cat ‘Nero’ it was like the last cylinder of an intricate combination lock falling into place.  But now what was he going to do with him?  Better to be a blackmailer, he realized, than the lowliest of detectives.  A blackmailer doesn’t have to prove anything; it’s just a matter of preying on the victim’s conscience and fear of exposure.  But that wouldn’t work with Bartolli.  He had to prove that Bartolli was guilty, or trick him into revealing himself—and in the meantime keep him from hurting Antonia, who seemed to be marked as his next victim.  He’d never even considered Bartolli’s request that he persuade Avery Morgan to bring Antonia to him for treatment.  The man had killed three women and there was no telling where he would stop.

Dubin wondered if Avery Morgan would listen to him.  He picked up the phone and dialed, assuming for some reason—probably because he and Susan had been avoiding each other since Hunter’s disappearance—that Avery or the au pair would answer.  He thought about hanging up when he realized it was Susan.

“I need to talk to you,” he said in a low voice.  “It’s—”

“Did you hear the news?  They found Hunter this morning.”

“Where?”

“Upstate somewhere, hiding in the woods.  That Irish girl he met at the Institute is the one who found him.”

“Nicole?”

Dubin had blurted his question a little too eagerly.  “Yes,” Susan said after an awkward pause.  “I think that’s her name.  Do you know her?”

“I’ve spoken with her.”

“Well”—she seemed to be choosing her words deliberately—“Hunter must have stayed in touch with her somehow because she went up there and found him and brought him to the local hospital.  Apparently he’s OK. 
Dr. Hoffmann’s up there with him now.  Frank Lynch is driving up to bring them back.”

“Why are they sending Lynch?” Dubin ask
ed, though he knew the answer.

“The police don’t want to lose sight of him.  They think—well, you know what they think.”

Susan was called away from the phone by the au pair, who was taking the children to the movies.  “I have a busy schedule today,” she said.  “If you want to talk to me you’re going to have to come over here and stand in line.”

He took his time getting there, stopping for a breakfast of eggs and pancakes at a diner along the highway.
  Which Susan would it be today? he wondered.  The loyal wife standing by her man in his time of crisis?  Or the jaded equestrienne pining for a roll in the hay?  He rehearsed his lines and braced himself with three cups of coffee but he still wasn’t prepared for the scene that ensued.  Susan rushed out to meet him in the driveway with a raw, tormented look on her face, as if she’d awoken in the middle of a nightmare.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s Antonia.  He’s taken Antonia.”

“Who’s taken her?  Where?”

She gripped his hands and pulled him into the barn.  It was Peter Bartolli, she explained.  One of the physicians at the Institute had called a little while earlier with the news.  No one knew how it happened—Dr. Hoffmann was upstate with Hunter, Dr. Palmer was traveling home from Washington, Dr. Gottlieb had been put on probation after being caught in bed with the receptionist—but somehow Bartolli had spirited Antonia away from the Institute and driven off with her in his car.

“Damn it!” Dubin shouted.  “I shouldn’t have let this happen.”

“No, nobody could—”

“You don’t understand.  I should have seen this coming.  Bartolli tried to get me to talk you and Aver
y into bringing her to him for some crackpot therapy.  That’s what I wanted to see you about.”

“We wouldn’t have agreed to it anyway.”

He followed her past the horse stalls into the apartment in the back of the barn where they had played their little game of cat and mouse.  All that seemed far in the past now, like an ancient ritual whose meaning had been forgotten.  The couch was cluttered with papers, magazines, odd bits of clothing.  They sat across from each other at the table she used as a desk.  She flicked a wisp of hair away from her hollow eyes and tried to smile.  “I don’t know what to do,” she said.  “I don’t think I can take this.”

The phone rang and she answered it.  The acting director of the Institute had evidently received a call from Bartolli and was able to provide some new information.  “It’s just as you thought,” she told Dubin when she hung up.   “Bartolli claims Antonia isn’t in any danger.  He just wants to put her under hypnosis and he’s willing to have us there when he does it—at his house at eight o’clock tonight.”

Susan made some coffee while Dubin leafed through a stack of newspaper clippings about the search for Hunter.  That search had ended and now Hunter would be charged with two murders unless Dubin acted quickly to expose the real murderer.  Had Bartolli made a fatal mistake with his abduction of Antonia?  The little soiree he’d planned for that evening—if Dubin could find a way to manipulate it—might be his undoing.  And what was he to make of Susan?   Something hung in the air between them like a winter fog.  When she poured his coffee he studied her weary eyes.  Her summer tan had faded and she looked blotchy and bruised, far away even from her own emotions.

“How well do you know Peter Bartolli?” he asked her.

“I haven’t seen much of him in the past few years,” she answered.  “He’s been sort of weird since he left the Institute.”

“‘Sort of weird’ doesn’t begin to do him justice.”

“Eccentric, for sure.”

“More like stark raving mad.  He’s got a puppet theater set up for mass executions in his basement and he thinks schizophrenics are travelers to a parallel universe.”  Dubin took a sip of his coffee and waited until she sat back down to face him.  “Did you know Bartolli was
Maria Morgan’s lover?”

“No,” she blushed.  “I mean, I always suspected it, but I wasn’t sure.”

Maybe he was your lover too, Dubin thought.  “I think he killed her.”

She seemed more curious than surprised.  “Why?”

“Jealousy, most likely.”

“No, I mean what makes you think he killed her?”
             

“I found a letter he wrote a few days before she died.  Evidently your husband knew about their affair and was trying to stop it, and Bartolli was threatening to do something drastic if he got in the way.”

She looked down at her coffee, avoiding the obvious question.

Dubin supplied it for her.  “How do I know the killer wasn’t your husband?  Remember the three items that were missing from the studio?  I think the person who killed her was the one who went back to the studio after Frank Lynch had completed his inventory and removed those three items.  One of them, the record, turned up at the Institute.  Could Hunter have taken it there?”

“No.  I was here when they came for him.  He didn’t take anything with him but a few clothes.  Neither did Antonia.”

“They can be ruled out then.  And it’s safe to assume that Avery didn’t sneak those items out of his own barn and stash them at the Institute.  That leaves the jealous lover.  He admits to giving
her the kaleidoscope.  He denies taking it back, but there are dozens just like it in his house.  One of them was probably hers.”

Susan lowered her head and began to cry.  Was it because Avery was innocent or Bartolli was guilty?  Dubin had no way of knowing and he decided he didn’t care.  He came around the table and leaned down to put his arm around her as she cried.  It was a position he couldn’t maintain for very long, and after a few minutes he sat down on the couch.  She nestled beside him, wiping her tears on his shirt.

“I can’t stand this much longer,” she said.  “This has got to end.” 

“It’s going to end soon.”

She turned and kissed him on the mouth.  It was not a chaste kiss but it was not a sensuous one either, more a request than a demand.  He answered it with a gentle kiss on the cheek, tasting the salt of her tears, and held her as she started crying again.  Yes she was a cynic but he didn’t want to take advantage of her cynicism, even at the price of his own.  He would have felt diminished, as if he’d been paying for sex, or being paid for it.  And he kept thinking about Nicole—even though he’d never touched Nicole—and how he would owe her an explanation.  Susan seemed to understand all this without his saying anything.  They both knew it was a moment that would pass and never happen again.

When she had finished crying he stood her up and wiped her face with a damp washcloth.  She stood in front of the mirror staring into her own vacant eyes.  “Does this mean you’re not blackmailing me any more?”  The old iron
ic tone was back in her voice.

“I never was,” he said.  “I’m a detective, remember?”

“I almost forgot.”  She rustled through the papers on her desk until she found her checkbook.  “Don’t you still need a client?”

“Not really.  Ever since those
two women were killed, I’ve been self-employed.”

“You must have expenses.”

“I sort of enjoy being my own boss.”

She tossed the checkbook on the table.  “I have to tell Avery something.  I can’t tell him you’re helping out with Antonia because you wouldn’t sleep with me.”

“No,” he said, pulling on his jacket.  “Don’t tell him that.”

He smiled ambiguously and headed for the door.  She followed him past the horse stalls and out into the driveway.

“Avery’s going to be home soon.”  There was a note of panic in her voice.  “He’ll go ballistic when I tell him about Antonia.  He’ll jump back in his car and drive over there to get Antonia, even if he has to kill Peter to do it.”

“Make him wait until tonight.  Tell him to humor Bartolli, let him think you’re playing into his hands.  Antonia will be all right.”

Dubin climbed into his car and started the engine.  She tapped on the window and he rolled it down so he could hear her.  “Will you come with us tonight?”

“Give me a call when you’re ready to go.”

She leaned closer.  “Promise me something.”

“I never make promises.”

“Promise me you’ll see this through.  For Hunter’s sake, and Antonia’s—and mine.”

“I never make promises,” Dubin repeated.  “Even if I intend to keep them.”