Max rolled his eyes. “When Lotty talked to me, I was thinking more of Martina in Vienna, seeing where she might have gone when the Innsbruck facility was shut down. None of my networks is better than the FBI, believe me.”
“Okay. Find out what happened to Martina. That might bring some comfort to Kitty, anyway.”
My phone rang as he started to ask for more details. I looked at the screen. “Kitty Binder,” I mouthed, and turned away from the table to take the call.
“Is this the detective?” she demanded, without preamble. “They’re stalking me again.”
“Who is, Ms. Binder?”
“The people who always do. I want you to come over.”
“I’m almost an hour away, Ms. Binder: it’s best if you dial 911.”
“Don’t you understand?” she screeched. “The police are the problem. You keep saying you want to help. I need your help now.” She hung up.
“K?the is paranoid,” Lotty said when I repeated the conversation. “I keep telling you that. If she won’t call the police, you must do so yourself.”
“You know what the guy says in Catch-22: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t following you. Someone killed Judy Binder’s housemate five days ago; if they think Judy’s gone back to her mother, then Kitty is in real trouble.”
“All the more reason to phone the police!” Lotty said.
“She thinks they’re part of the problem.” I got to my feet.
“The problem they’re part of is her paranoia,” Lotty cried. “I told you that earlier, this has been her song and dance since she arrived in this country, that the police or the FBI were stalking her.”
“Lotty, this is how I get to where you become furious with me. I can call the police, but I can’t leave her quaking in terror behind those dead bolts.”
Lotty’s eyes were filled with pain. “I do understand that, Victoria. But can’t you take five minutes to ask if there is a better way, an easier way, to solve the problem?”
My own face contorted in lines of misery, but I left the club. Half a dozen times on the road, I started to dial 911 and stopped. Kitty Binder was paranoid. There was nothing to be lost in calling in the pros, except any fragile confidence she might be feeling in me.
19
BLEEDING OUT
WHEN I PULLED up in front of the Binder house, lights were on in the basement and the top floor but not the ground level. I took the flashlight out of my car and went up the walk to the front door. It was shut and locked. I leaned on the bell but didn’t get an answer.
I didn’t like this. This afternoon, she’d parted the living room blinds, and that was when she wasn’t expecting me.
I ran to the back of the house. The kitchen door was swinging on its hinges. I took the extra seconds to call 911. Home invasion on Kedvale in Skokie, I reported.
“The Binder residence?” the dispatcher said. “We just sent a squad car past and they didn’t see anything.”
“Back door,” I said. “It’s been forced open.”
The dispatcher promised to send another car, but her tone lacked enthusiasm. I didn’t have my gun, but I didn’t want to wait for the posse. I made myself as small a target as possible and edged into the kitchen. Crouching, I fumbled for light switches, slipped on something and fell. I turned on my flashlight. All the books and papers that had been stacked on the kitchen table were strewn across the floor; I’d slipped on a loose sheet of paper.
I found the light switch and started calling Kitty’s name. No one was on the ground floor, but in the front room the lace had been ripped apart, the little knickknacks smashed. In the bedrooms on the upper floor, the same savage hands had undone the bedding, slit the mattresses, upended the bureau drawers.
I stumbled back down the stairs, to the basement, to Martin’s suite. Kitty lay on the floor, next to her grandson’s bed. She’d been beaten about the neck and arms; her head was bleeding heavily.
Her eyes fluttered open when she felt my fingers on her neck. “Oma?” she whispered. “Oma?”
“It’s the detective, Ms. Binder,” I said gently. “Hold on; I’m calling an ambulance.”
I kept an arm around her while I once more called 911.
“We’re sending someone,” the dispatcher said, “but it will be a few minutes.”
“An ambulance,” I snapped. “To the basement. A woman has been badly beaten, she’s close to death. Make it happen.”
“Oma, wozu das alles?” Kitty whispered.
I turned on the recorder on my phone, still holding her; the German might be important.
Her breathing grew harsher. “Das war ja alles sinnlos.”