Chapter 21
Glen’s whole body jerked spasmodically and his eyes snapped open.
A heart attack—he was having another heart attack! He reached out, groping for the buzzer that would summon the nurse, but even as his thumb was pressing it down, his mind cleared and he realized his mistake. It wasn’t a heart attack at all—it was simply a bad dream.
But a dream of what?
A second ago it had been so vivid.
A cat.
Something to do with a cat. Kumquat?
He tried to remember what the cat had looked like, but the details of the dream vanished like ephemera, fading from his mind even as he tried to retrieve them. A second later the door to his room opened and one of the nurses stepped in. It was Annette Brady, whom Glen had liked from the minute he was conscious enough to know who she was, but this morning her normally cheerful smile was nowhere to be seen.
“Yes?” she asked with a curtness that was as unusual as her scowl.
Suddenly Glen understood—Annette worked the swing shift, so she must have been called in early today. “Sorry about the ring,” he said. “I just had a nightmare, and when I woke up I thought I was having a heart attack.”
The nurse scanned the monitors above the bed. “Well, it all looks normal now.” She started out of the room.
“Gonna be a long one, huh?” Glen asked.
Annette Brady turned back. “No longer than usual.”
Frowning, Glen shifted his gaze to the clock. Seven-thirty?
How could it be seven-thirty? He hadn’t even awakened until—
No longer than usual?
His gaze shifted to the window. The streetlights were already on outside, and the last evening light was rapidly fading away. Had he been sleeping all day?
Why hadn’t they awakened him for dinner? This was a hospital—a couple of times they’d even awakened him to give him a sleeping pill! He was about to ask about it when he realized he wasn’t hungry. Now he began to feel totally disoriented. Had he forgotten the whole day? But maybe he was wrong—maybe they really had let him sleep. “I was just thinking, maybe if I could get something to eat—”
Annette Brady’s eyes widened. “After what you had for dinner, you’re hungry again?” She shook her head in resignation. “Okay, let me see what I can do. But if I can find something this late, I expect you to be polite about it, at least. Okay?”
As the nurse left the room, Glen tried to make sense of it. Obviously he’d eaten, and equally obviously he’d complained about the food. But he had no memory of the meal, any more than he could remember the rest of the day.
He glanced around the room as if hoping to find some clue, and the first thing his eyes fell on was a thick file folder lying on the table next to the bed. Picking it up, he opened it, and frowned. Anne’s file on Richard Kraven? What was it doing here?
She must have been here while he was asleep, and left it. Picking up the phone, he dialed the number, but even as Anne answered, he suddenly had a thought.
He was supposed to go home in a few days—if he’d had a memory loss, would they still discharge him?
Not a chance. They’d keep him here until they were certain they knew exactly what had caused it. So when Anne answered the phone, he hesitated. And while he hesitated, she spoke.
“So you decided to call and apologize, huh?” she asked, her voice only half bantering. “Where would you like to start? With me, or Kevin?”
Glen searched his mind. He couldn’t remember having talked to Anne at all that day, but he did recall talking to Kevin on the phone that morning, and asking him to bring some magazines to the hospital. His eyes flicked back to the bed table; the magazines lay under the file.
So at least Kevin had been there, and probably Anne, too.
“I guess it was just a bad day for me,” he said, uttering the total truth, but still not admitting his memory loss. “I’m really sorry, okay?” A minute later, after he’d repeated the apology to Kevin, Anne came back on the line.
“How long do you want my file?” she asked, her voice sounding almost amused now.
His eyes went back to the thick file. So he’d asked for it. Why?
“I don’t know,” he replied, still not lying, but still not admitting that he seemed to have lost most of the day. But why had he even wanted it? He’d always thought Anne’s fascination with the Kraven case bordered on the morbid, which she well knew. “I guess I just thought as long as I was lying here, I might as well try to figure out what you found so interesting about him,” he improvised. “Maybe I’ll stay up all night reading it.”
A few minutes later, after he’d said good night to Anne, he picked up the file, not really intending to read it but half thinking that the motion would jar his memory. He paused, the thick folder in his lap, then, instead of putting the file aside, opened it.
He began paging through it, and as he scanned the articles, he experienced an odd sense of déjà vu.
All the material seemed very familiar, though he had no memory of having read it before. Then, as he turned one of the pages, he froze. He was staring at a photocopy of an article that he knew Anne must have written, though it had no byline:
Richard Kraven: Animal Abuser?
Former neighbors of Richard Kraven report that the suspected serial killer was a habitual torturer of small animals, even when he was as young as twelve years old.
Martha Demming, 76, who lived for nearly two decades in the house next door to the South Seattle residence still occupied by Edna Kraven, reports that on at least two occasions she witnessed Richard Kraven—then in his very early adolescence—stalking his mother’s pet cat.
“I don’t want to say he was torturing it,” Miss Demming stated in a telephone interview, “but [the cat] always seemed to be afraid of him.”
Later in the same interview, Miss Demming reported that there were rumors the body of the cat had been found by another neighbor who “thought it had been electrocuted, or something.” The neighbor who reputedly found the cat, Wilbur Fankenburg, died three years ago at the age of 56, and could not confirm Miss Demming’s report.
Glen Jeffers read the article through twice, small bits and pieces of the nightmare that had awakened him at last coming back. Closing the file and setting it on the bed table, he leaned back into the pillows.
The origin of the nightmare, at least, was now apparent. Obviously he’d read at least part of Anne’s file during the day.
Why, then, didn’t he remember it?
He was still pondering that question as he sank into a deep sleep a few minutes later.