Boundaries (13 page)

He takes several steps. Stops. He is still holding the small dull knife in front of his face and for a moment he’s aware that he must look very foolish. The moment is gone.

He says, "And what if I told you that I loved you, Anne?" He’s very surprised by this and unsure of where it comes from.

Suddenly he’s filled with anger. He rushes at Anne and plunges the dull blade into her back.

He did not intend his first blow to be so accurate, and for several moments he’s not entirely aware of its accuracy. He watches Anne fall face forward onto the oak floor, so her head is turned to the right—he sees that her eyes are closed—and her arms are at her sides, left palm down, right palm out. Her legs are together.

He stares at her. He realizes that his first blow has killed her, but he does not admit it at once. He didn’t want his first blow to kill her. It’s why he chose such a small knife. He wanted her to endure many blows.

"
Damn
you!" he hisses.

He falls to his knees so her legs are between his legs. He is enraged. She must react, must react!

He raises the small dull knife high over his head and brings it down.

He does it again.

And again.

And again.

~ * ~

The earth. The body on the tile floor.

Past blindness into sight.

It could have been days or no time at all that she had been here. Only the body on the tile floor counted such things and it was beyond counting. It did not breathe. Or perspire. It no longer cared for itself. It counted nothing. It was the moment that it died. The moment. The inhale and the exhale and then the stillness, but not the counting of it—the memory of it, and, so, the naming of it:

The body on the tile floor named nothing. It had no awareness of names—a wave does not call itself a wave, nor did the body on the tile floor have a name for itself.

It was the body on the tile floor that was, at
this moment
, an exhale, and, at this moment, stillness
.

O
ne of the nurses monitoring David outside his room in Intensive Care noticed a change in his respiration and EEG. She paged David’s doctor, who was in the middle of a shower but heard the paging anyway. Five minutes later he was beside David’s bed, his legs and bottom still damp from the shower. He scowled at the dampness.

David’s eyes flickered open. Closed.

The doctor leaned over him. "Mr. Case?" he whispered. "David?"

No reaction.

The nurse monitoring outside the room said into her microphone, "His respiration is becoming shallow again, Doctor."

"Dammit!" the doctor whispered. "David!" he said sharply.

David’s eyes popped open.

"Respiration heavier," the nurse said into her microphone.

"David?" said the doctor. "Can you hear me? Blink if you can hear me."

No reaction.

The doctor shone the beam of a penlight into David’s eyes, found the pupils responsive.

David turned his head ever so slightly toward the doctor. It was a quick and unexpected motion, and the doctor straightened a little in surprise. He grinned, embarrassed, and leaned over once more. "Mr. Case? Are you with us?"

No reaction.

"Mr. Case?"

David turned his head so he was once again staring at the ceiling. "My God," he whispered, "I’m back."

~ * ~

THE FOLLOWING DAY

"He’ll tell you a wild story," the doctor said to Christian Grieg and Karen Duffy, seated in front of his desk. "He’ll tell you he’s gone over to the other side." He shrugged. "Heaven, as it were—"

"No," Christian interrupted. "He’d object to that.“

"Object?" The doctor was puzzled.

"To your characterization of this . . . place he claims to have gone to as ‘heaven.’ He’d disagree with it."

Again the doctor shrugged. "Be that as it may—and I really fail to see the difference; the difference is actually just one of semantics, isn’t it? Be that as it may," he repeated, "we are going to hold him for a few more days."

"Why?" Karen asked.

The doctor shook his head a little as if in reassurance. "Observation. Merely observation, Miss Duffy." He paused meaningfully. "And there really is no assurance that he won’t try it again, is there?"

"Try ‘it’?" Karen asked. "Try what?”

“Suicide," the doctor said.

Karen gave him a tight smile. "You can’t hold him forever."

Christian said, "Perhaps it would be better for David if they did."

The doctor stood. He said to Christian, "But that’s out of the question, of course."

Christian nodded vaguely.

The doctor came around the desk, went to the door, opened it. "If you’d follow me, please. I’ll take you to Mr. Case."

~ * ~

David’s memories were as vivid as pain, as vivid and as real as the bed he lay in or the smell of anesthetic that hung in the air like a mist. And precisely because his memories were so vivid, he found it very hard to believe them. Memories were always dulled by present events, and by the expectation of future events; they got filed in a mental storehouse where they could be pulled out now and again. And they were never as vivid and as real as these memories were.

These could easily have taken form and shared the room with him, as if they weren’t memories at all but a reality that existed outside the scope of his five senses.

No. He could
smell
pine tar. Dust.

"Back with us," he heard. He turned his head toward the door to his room. Christian was there, grinning what looked like a mock-friendly grin. Karen was beside him. She looked concerned, David thought. The doctor was already in the room.

Karen said, "You’re going to be all right, David. You had a bad time, but now you’re going to be all right."

The doctor said, "How are you feeling, Mr. Case? Do you think you’re up to visitors?"

No, I’m not
, David thought. He turned his head so he was looking at the ceiling. He nodded. "Yeah, sure," he said.

There was a moment’s silence. Then Christian said, "So tell us all about it, David. We’re here because we’re your friends. But you know that, of course." David thought he could hear sarcasm in Christian’s voice. He turned his head. Christian was grinning very slightly, as if remembering something that gave him secret pleasure. David turned his head so he was looking at the ceiling.

"Yes," he said, and felt suddenly bone weary, as if sleep were going to overtake him. But it didn’t.

They asked him questions.

"How are you feeling, David? Are you still depressed?"

"No. I was never depressed. Not in the way you imagine."

"What does that mean? Depression’s depression—especially if it makes you suicidal. It’s something to deal with, something to overcome—"

"Don’t badger him, please," the doctor warned.

"Who’s badgering? I’m concerned. I’m the man’s friend, for God’s sake!"

David listened and answered, "It was not suicide that I attempted."

"Of course it wasn’t," Karen interjected.

"So maternal," Christian said. Then, "Was it the same place, David? The same place you went to five years ago?"

David shook his head. "I don’t know." He paused. "Yes. The same place."

"But you went . . . deeper?"

David nodded. "Deeper," he whispered. "Yes."

"How much deeper?"

"He’s tiring," the doctor warned.

"It was a simple question."

"Not so simple," David managed.

"It’s the heart of simplicity, David."

"Deep," he said.

"And you’re going to try it again, aren’t you?”

"No. Of course not."

"We’re not convinced, David." Christian’s voice. A pause; then, "I need answers. I have no answers."

"What sort of answers?" Christian asked.

"Answers to . . . questions I have. We’ve talked about this already."

"Questions about Anne?" Christian again.

"Yes. Mostly."

"I’m afraid that I must insist now—"

"What do you need to know, David? We know what’s important. We know who killed her."

"Possibly. I don’t know. I thought I knew, but I’m not sure."

"Please, no more questions. Your friend is very tired."

"We really
do
know who killed her, David. So what else do we need to know?"

David said nothing and, a minute later, Christian and Karen were gone and he was alone.

But he knew that he was not alone. He knew that something had come into the room with them, and had stayed, and still lurked in their absence.

He glanced about the room, expecting to see more than beige walls, monitoring equipment, gray blankets.

And he did.

He saw dust.

He smelled pine tar.

And he heard distant voices raised in gaiety. Then he slept.

~ * ~

IN BATAVIA—THE FOLLOWING MORNING

Leo Kenner said, "Our boy did the rape. Are we agreed on that?" During Anne’s autopsy, it had been discovered—through bruising on her shoulders and arms and around her pelvic area—that she had very probably been raped.

"Our boy?" said Fred Collins.

"Brian Fisher. We agree that he did it, right?”

“The medical examiner wasn’t certain it was rape. It was just a guess."

Kenner looked suddenly exasperated. He fished for a moment in the thin file on Anne Case’s murder—it lay open on his desk—then handed a page from it across to Collins.

Collins glanced quickly at it. It was page one of the Genesee County medical examiner’s
Report of Autopsy
. At the bottom of the page, outlined in red pencil, were the words, "The high probability exists that subject was victim of forced intercourse one week-ten days prior to death . . . "

"So?" Kenner coaxed.

Collins handed the sheet back. "If she was raped, then I’ll concede that Fisher probably did it. But it doesn’t jive with his profile—"

"That profile was done postmortem. What use is it? He killed
himself
, he killed
her
, so of course he raped her. What could be clearer?" It was to Kenner’s credit that his pointed questions were clearly not rhetorical.