F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 (2 page)

           
Ed remained kneeling on the carpet,
frozen in shock, shivering in the cold wind pouring through the shattered window,
thinking this couldn't be real, this couldn't be happening, listening to the
terrified wail that continued long after she was gone from view, much longer
than it should have. And then he realized that the sound was coming from him.

 
 

           
Kara felt the old tension come alive
as the city hove into view. She had been able to hold it at bay during the
express ride through central
New Jersey
, but after pulling out of the Amtrak
station in Metropark and hearing the conductor call out
New York
as the next stop, she'd felt it stir. Now,
with the spires of the
Manhattan
skyline poking at the morning clouds across the river, it came writhing
to life.

           
Ten years ago she had walked out on
the city, leaving behind the two most important people in the world.

           
Manhattan
. The City That Never Sleeps. The City of
Opportunity
. She and her twin sister Kelly had arrived
there fresh out of their respective secretarial and nursing schools, two
ingenues, a pair of
Pennsylvania
hicks leaving home to take their bite out of the Big Apple.

           
Everything went swimmingly at first.
They stayed at their Aunt Ellen's place while hunting for jobs. Kelly found a
nursing position almost immediately—it was the late shift, but it was a job.
Kara looked over the prospects and decided she'd do better starting out as a
temporary, figuring that way she'd be exposed to a variety of companies and
could see how they operated.

           
When she found a good one that would
pay enough to cover a few college courses, she'd hire on as a permanent. For
Kara didn't intend to stay a secretary forever. She had plans. She wanted to
write, wanted to work her way into advertising and copywriting.

           
So Kara started off as a Kelly Girl.
She didn't like the "Girl" part but she went along. She preferred to
think of herself as a secretarial gun for hire. There was no such thing as word
processing then. The IBM Selectric was her weapon of choice and she wielded it
with deadly efficiency. The Kelly people paid her well and kept her busy.

           
Who knew where she might be working
now if she'd stayed on in the city? Perhaps she'd be a big name at Saatchi
& Saatchi. Or maybe she'd have started her own temporary office help
service. She had seen no limit to her potential in the Big Apple.

           
Until the
Central Park
incident.

           
That was when Kara learned that Big
Apple bit back and she'd run for home.

           
Ten years later now, and she was on
her way back to identify her sister's body. Alone. Mom was rushing back from
Florida
and so there was no one else to make this
trip but Kara.

           
Kelly
dead
! She still couldn't believe it! And the way she had died! Naked,
smashed on the sidewalk in front of the Plaza! How could someone have done that
to her?

           
Kara's mind balked at the very
question.

           
Since the call from
New York
yesterday afternoon, Kara's life had been a
bad dream. Kelly, she'd learned, had been dead for more than half a day before
the police had got around to calling her.

           
And it had been Rob of all people
who'd made the call.

           
They hadn't spoken in ten years, yet
she had recognized his voice immediately. And she had known that it was
something bad, something about Kelly. Why else would Rob call from
New York
after all this time?

           
Rob Harris. She had left him high
and dry. When she first met him he'd been attending the police academy. She
still remembered how cute he'd looked in his hated recruit grays. When she left
him he was in regular blues, and she'd been convinced the city was going to
kill him.

           
She wondered if he'd forgiven her
yet.

           
And now she had to see him again. At
the morgue. Over poor Kelly's shattered body.

           
God, how was she going to do this?

           
Kara shivered in the cold as she
stood in the morning crowd outside Penn Station. The city hadn't changed much.
The
Penn
Station-Madison
Square
Garden
area looked older and dirtier. She noticed
that the old Statler Hilton was now called the
Vista
. She felt the pedestrians crowd against her
as they stacked up on the sidewalk, waiting for the
Seventh Avenue
traffic light to change. She clutched her
pocketbook tightly against her. These people frightened her.

           
The
Central Park
incident came back to her in a rush.

           
It had been a sunny Sunday in June.
She and Kelly were strolling along the Park side of
Fifth Avenue
on their way back from an exhibit at the
Metropolitan, enjoying the day, enjoying the admiring stares from all the guys,
killing time until they met the men in their lives later in the day. Kelly
stopped to get a pretzel and a coke from a pushcart. While she was waiting on
line, Kara wandered onto a path to listen to an old black fellow playing Delta
blues on a portable electric guitar.

           
Without warning, she felt herself
jerked off her feet, stumbling backwards as something hard and sharp tightened
across her throat, digging into the soft flesh there. She fell, and it dug
deeper as she was dragged backwards. She tried to scream but her air had been cut
off. She heard other screams and blurred glimpses of staring, horrified faces.
Yet nobody moved to help her.

           
And then with a snap, the pressure
was gone as suddenly as it had come.

           
Gasping, choking, Kara rolled over
in the dirty and saw the receding back of a man as he dashed down the path, saw
people darting out of his way. Her hand went to her throat. Her gold necklace,
the heavy chain her father had given her a year before he died, was gone.
People tried to help her to her feet but she batted their hands away. She
wanted to scream at them, ask them why no one had lent a hand when she needed
it most, but her voice seemed paralyzed.

           
"Y' shouldn't wear gold
necklaces near the Park, hon," said a middle-aged woman in a housedress.
"Y' should know that."

           
Kara wanted to strangle her, but
then Kelly ran up and Kara fell into her sister's arms and began to sob with
reaction.

           
Nowadays she didn't cry so easily.

           
That was when the Big Apple began to
rot for Kara. It never was the same after that. She found herself constantly
looking over her shoulder. She became afraid to go out alone. And she
never
went near
Central Park
again.

           
Six months after the
necklace-snatching she was on the train, outbound from
Manhattan
, never to return.

           
Until now.

           
She looked east along Thirty-Fourth.
Bellevue
Hospital
Center
was that way, on
First Avenue
and Thirtieth. The morgue was in its
cellar.

           
She shut her eyes.

           
Why
am I here? I don't want to be here. I don't have to be here.

           
Which was true. Her presence here
today would not speed Kelly's body back to
Pennsylvania
by a single minute. But she had to do this,
had to make this trip. For Kelly. Kara had left her sister here, and now the
least she could do was see her home.

           
She ignored the schools of cabs cruising
the area and decided to walk. It would put off having to see Kelly.

           
She jumped as a hand squeezed her
left buttock through her coat. She whirled and glared into the press of people
around her but couldn't tell who'd done it.

           
God, she hated
New York
.

           
Detective Third Grade Rob Harris
leaned against the wall in
Bellevue
's lobby, smoking a cigarette and listening to the couple over by the
phones. Amazing. Somebody was in the middle of pulling a variation on the old
Spanish handkerchief scam in the middle of a hospital. He'd become suspicious
when he saw the pencil case, so he'd sidled over to listen.

           
"You got da money? Da fi'
thousan'? Lemme see. Good! Here. Put it in this pencil case."

           
"Why?" the woman said.
Sheathed in a shapeless old coat, she was chunky, fiftyish, with mocha skin.

           
"For safekeeping. No one wants
a pencil case. An' you hoi' onto it. I don' wan' even touch it."

           
The^ woman shoved the bills inside
the case and then clutched it between her ample breasts with both hands.