Of Sound Mind Read online

  A scraping, wood on wood. Then stillness. But not for long.

  Sounds of struggle, choked breathing, a desperate bid to escape a trap. A grunt—male. The struggle abates.

  Richard stands there, transfixed. He looks down at his feet, but they seem to have no purchase; then at his hands, the fingers curled and stiffened. He doesn’t feel whole. He could lift off and hover in the hallway, or he might sift through the door like a wraith. He hears a rasping, like a drain trying to clear, then a sound that is a cross between a fist pulverizing meat and an openhanded smack.

  The rasping is gone, and the silence is unsettling. Movement. The faint strain of exertion. A small crack, like a snapped wishbone. Now a thud with a floor squeak underneath, and—Richard blinks in consternation—a thump, heavy and full, like a ball of wet towels hurled into the dryer, a stack of books plopped onto a desk, a body fallen to the floor.

  And then someone breathing.

  It’s as if Richard is on the apartment side of the door, right in the center of the apparent crime. Committing it. But he can’t be; that can’t be. The door is still in front of him, a barrier between himself and the horror.

  He steps back, distraught, all rigid limbs and frightened eyes, and looks nervously around the empty hallway. This is what he has dreamed of and dreaded almost forever, a crazy happenstance, a signal from The Stranger’s universe of benign indifference, from the dark horizon of his future. Richard stands there, muscles coiled to flee, to strike he knows not what. Finally, three jerky strides take him to the elevator and he presses the down button, repeatedly presses it. Sweat that has beaded on his forehead now falls off in droplets. He wipes his face with his towel, which he then jams between his sharp hip and the waistband of his shorts. A fresh layer of sweat surfaces within seconds. When the elevator arrives, its chime is like an air-raid siren.

  On the elevator, a heavyset woman in a tentlike dress takes one look at dripping, disheveled Richard and keeps her distance. He makes his way to the rear, turns, braces himself against a metal rail, and sits into the corner. Wants to wrap himself into a small ball.

  He is back there, back in the row-house bedroom of cowboys riding bucking broncos across the wall, from beyond which come the muted, disturbing gasps of a young girl. And a man’s voice, just a few quiet words. He knows who is speaking and who is gasping, now whimpering. There is no mistaking it. To his ears, sound permeates these walls as if they were tissue paper. He lies there frozen, not sure of what is going on, but he knows where it’s coming from and who is involved, and he knows there is something very wrong.

  When the elevator door opens, the heavyset woman walks into the lobby, not bothering to look back at Richard, who pauses at the threshold, disoriented. As the door closes, it brushes the back of his damp T-shirt bunching at the waist, and he lurches forward.

  He approaches the front desk and Frank, who is dawdling on the phone. Richard passes the desk, stops, puts his hands in his pockets, lowers his head, and flexes his knees in a standstill position. Frank watches as he winds up his phone call.

  “You okay, man? You look like you gotta go to the bathroom or somethin’.”

  Two young guys with baseball caps pass with a “Yo, Frank” on their way out.

  Richard tries to stifle his trembling and turns toward Frank, who now looks concerned. Not so much for Richard as for the distraction, a possible problem in the works, an upset to lobby decorum. Frank likes a tight ship.

  “Take it easy, man. What’s wrong?”

  Richard’s instinct is that he must talk to someone. This time he must, right away. He steps to the counter. Hesitates. Frank’s musky aftershave hits him. “Who lives in 2307?” He is surprised at the firmness of his voice.

  Frank is amused at Richard’s uncool style and issues a little smile. “Hold on a second. Just relax and tell me what’s goin’ on before you start runnin’ the place.”

  Richard feels the familiar little sting of put-down. He must fight through it. “I’m, uh, concerned about something. Can you call up there?”

  “Slow down, man. Just tell me what’s up. What’s got you jazzed?”

  They look at each other and Frank waits. Richard takes some breaths. What did he really hear? Tricks the mind plays . . . Wherever this leads, he must speak up. To say nothing, to run and hide, is to swallow a cancer. A second cancer. His lips stick for an instant as he opens his mouth to speak.

  “Come on now,” Frank says. “I’m all ears.”

  “Someone may have been attacked.”

  Frank leans in with “What’s that mean?”

  “I think someone may have been attacked in that apartment . . . I mean, it’s possible.” Richard squeezes the countertop ledge with both hands.

  Frank is no longer smiling, but he’s a long way from believing this tenant, already deeming him to be one shaky dude. “You talkin’ 2307?”

  “Yes.”

  Frank tries to situate Richard’s apartment. He’s given him several pieces of mail in the past few weeks, including one just a couple hours ago. “You’re what, twenty-two—?”

  “—Oh seven. I got off on the wrong floor.”

  “Okay . . . and?”

  “I heard something.”

  “Like what?”

  Richard looks beyond Frank and sees himself reflected in the gold-leaf mirror behind the counter. He tries to measure the resolve in the image he sees. He could still run away from this, drop it and shrink into the night. “Like maybe a woman being strangled.”

  Frank deadpans it. “Like a woman being strangled?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you’re tellin’ me you heard this?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure ’bout that?”

  He’s damn sure of the sounds that he heard. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure that something actually happened, you know, that somebody was harmed.”

  “Well, what exactly did you hear, man? Was there screaming or—?” Frank pretends to choke himself and makes a few strangulated grunts. “Or what?”

  “There was a scream. Well, kind of a scream.”

  “Kind of a scream?”

  “It won’t hurt to call up there,” says Richard, quietly frantic. “That’s all I want.”

  “Oh, so that’s all you want.” This time, Frank’s smile fronts a touch of resentment. But Richard won’t back down; he rocks nervously on his feet and forces himself to maintain eye contact. He won’t let Frank clear him away like a picked-up parcel.

  Finally, Frank picks up the phone and punches in four numbers. “What did you hear, again?” he asks as the line rings.

  “I think it was a scream. And there were whimpers, then kind of a rasping, then a—”

  Frank holds up a hand and speaks into the phone, “Hello, Dr. Braun?” With that, he arches an eyebrow at Richard, signifying the respectability of a man of medicine. Frank oversees a mixed roster at the 42s, but he likes to highlight the professional people.

  “This is Frank at the front desk. How are you, sir?” Frank listens, chuckles. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Listen, just checking, is everything all right up there? A neighbor heard somethin’, some noises, thought there might be a problem; that’s all . . . Oh, don’t worry about that, that’s nothin’ . . . Right, got it. Well, thank you. Sorry for the disturbance.”

  Frank hangs up the phone and shoots Richard a told-you-so look. “Everything’s cool.” But Richard stares past him in rapt concentration, seeing something awful on the flocked wallpaper that surrounds the mirror. Then he drifts to his face in the mirror once again and, through the decorative golden cobweb, the old fright shivers him.

  “You hear me?” says Frank. “Everything’s okay up there. Hunky-dory. You can relax. Thanks for bein’ concerned, though. I like that. Makes for a better lifestyle around here. Know what I mean?”

  Richard’s cheek twitches and his eyes turn frantic.

  “Hey, man, you’re startin’ to freak me out.”

  “Brawn?”

  “That’s right, Dr. Braun, Davis Braun. Good guy. Know ’im?”

  “Is he married? Who’s he live with?”

  Frank turns and opens the storage-room door behind him. “You takin’ a census?”

  Richard is back on the elevator and headed to the twenty-third floor. The noises he heard—the tearing and rasping and thudding—dance in his ear. He tries to make sense of them. His instincts guide him and, in the realm of acoustics, they are powerful. Something falls in your lap, and it can be your one chance for redemption. Or, he concedes, assessing it as the psychiatrists who treated him might, it could be a matter of wish fulfillment—how often has he lain awake, straining through the earplugs to hear a muted alarm, a muffled cry for help, among the disparate noises of the night?

  Then, of course, maybe it was nothing more than TV, a fake-out, a delusion. But no, there was something very real about this, he thinks, he feels. He must find out.

  He congratulates himself on his rationality.

  Now Richard stands in the hallway of the twenty-third floor. Sounds jump out of apartments, keen to his ear: laughter, a toilet flushing, a teakettle whistling. He is at once reckless and fearful as he walks past the door to 2307, stops, and cocks an ear toward the wall. He slows his breathing so it doesn’t distort other sounds. Still, there is nothing coming from inside 2307. No telltale sounds of panic or improvisation. No television. Nothing at all. Richard stands there for several minutes, poised to dart away should someone come to the door or someone else leave a nearby apartment.

  He walks across the hallway to the elevator, presses the down button and waits. Behind him, an apartment door swings open, and instantly he knows that it’s 2307; he can tell by distance and direction. He won’t betray himself, stares straight
ahead at the closed elevator door. Impeccable timing or did the guy see him through the peephole? It will be a guy, of course.

  Davis Braun totes an empty pizza box and a small plastic garbage bag as he walks out of 2307 and makes his way to the trash room tucked into an alcove next to the elevator. His muscular arms extend from the short sleeves of a pale-green medical smock. Sandy blond hair feathers his forehead, and an expression of casual confidence reinforces his relaxed gait.

  Richard is rooted to the floor.

  “How ya doin’?”

  Richard forces his voice into the carpet-hushed corridor. “Good . . . and you?” A monotone.

  Braun opens the door to the trash room, holds up the pizza box and smiles. “With this diet, how can I miss?”

  Richard glances at the evidence. When Braun goes inside the trash room, the door closes behind him, and in a moment Richard hears the creak of the metal trash flap and the whoosh of air rushing up the chute. Braun emerges, unburdened. Now he seems to be in a hurry.

  “I live on that stuff, unfortunately,” he says, in motion. “Med school doesn’t leave much time for cooking.”

  What about your girlfriend? Richard thinks. Doesn’t she cook? Didn’t she cook?

  The elevator chimes.

  “Yeah,” is all that Richard says, and he steps onto the elevator. As the door closes, he hears Braun’s apartment door slam shut.

  So that’s him.

  Impressive-looking guy. Has a relaxed way about him. Implausible to most people that this fellow is a killer, but he just might be.

  Back on the twenty-second floor, Richard hears silverware tapping plates, microwaves beeping, snatches of conversation. This time he has the right apartment, and his key opens the door at once. He sits on his garage-sale couch and reaches for the remote sitting on the scarred coffee table. He hits the Guide button immediately after pressing the TV power button, and the FiOS channel lineup appears on the screen. He repeatedly presses the down arrow to see the listings in the current time slot, looking for a possible culprit, a television show or movie—one that has been playing within the past hour.

  That could be the answer; his fears might be allayed. Yes, TV sounds might have been it, all of it.

  Or not.

  Or they might have masked or complemented the live deed in real time. A random synchronicity? Richard knows that murderers can be much more than impulsive; they can be devious, crafty, symbolic. He knows because he has read about them in newspapers and books, has studied them in movies and documentaries and . . . row-house neighborhoods. He knows because he remembers.

  And he simply knows this: what he heard coming from apartment 2307 was all live, all in the flesh.

  Or all in his mind.

  There it is, right in front of him on the television screen: a listing that thrills him—one that he has either desired or dreaded; he’s not sure.

  He hurries into the bedroom and taps the keyboard of his aging laptop. The monitor brightens, and he Googles the movie title—only clips and a trailer are available on YouTube. He views the three-minute clips. They’re not what he needs. He finds the website for Netflix, which he’s heard a lot about but hasn’t joined until now, via the credit card his mother has established for him, opting for streaming though he fears he’ll have trouble accessing the movie, computer klutz that he is. (How is it that he deftly manipulates an audiometric testing machine but loses that agility around a computer?) Sure enough, after half a dozen attempts, he can’t manage to access the movie he needs. Not because of his incompetence, though—Netflix simply doesn’t carry it yet. No streaming tonight.

  He Googles Locust Video, right here in center city and one of the last stores of its kind in North America—they even carry ancient VHS tapes. He sees that the weekday closing time is 9:00 p.m.

  A glance at the digital clock radio tells him it’s 9:07.

  THREE

  Frank Grant has worked at the 42s for five years, his first full-time job after numerous stints at convenience and department stores. He knew he could make his mark here, figured he would easily outshine the other jokers. Sure enough, he’s top man at the front desk now. He likes being the hub of the operation, the one who coordinates move-ins and move-outs, fetches the fire department, the police, the electric company, the elevator repairman. He sees himself as the man in the spotlight, doling out FedEx and UPS packages, greeting and dispatching tenants as their lives crisscross with his on the polished lobby floor.

  Despite a desperate boyhood, Frank grew up to be an intact human being. Life in the projects was a daily battle for survival. At Wendell Homes on Fairmount Avenue, the pushers were as prevalent as litter and break-ins were a more regular occurrence than breakfast. It was just Frank and his mother in their little patch of hell, and he made it through, thanks to her strength and his—well, his innate optimism. He was a little guy with an animated way of talking and a lot of words to get out. His mother used to tell him he had a “happy streak.” He also had, from a young age, the ability to think for himself. He avoided the traps that ensnared most of the youth at Wendell.

  Now he’s a young man with aspirations. Two nights a week, he takes courses at a community college and thinks that someday maybe he’ll go into advertising or public relations. Frank likes people, feels he can relate to all types, and the 42s is a perfect forum. He is ingratiating to the elderly, hip to the younger crowd. He’s fast and efficient and sometimes a bit too impressed by his own energy. A well-meaning brother, who grew up far from any public housing project, once suggested that Frank could use a career counselor, an advisor—a mentor, in loftier circles—but Frank downplays the importance of such guidance. He has confidence in himself; he’s self-reliant and convinced he’ll move up in the world on his own. He fancies himself clever and quick on his feet and doesn’t hesitate to spar verbally with people. He thinks he has the right touch for that.

  When Davis Braun strides through the lobby at around 11:00 p.m., showered and refreshed for either a late-night round at the hospital or something more promising, Frank greets him with “Hey, Dr. Braun, checked out any corpses lately?”

  Braun smiles. “Every day at Metro, Frank.”

  “That’s right; I forgot. Didn’t mean to cut so close to the, uh, bone.”

  Braun shuts one eye in mock response to the groaner.

  “Listen, sorry for disturbing you earlier.”

  “No problem. What was it all about, anyway?”

  “One of our nuttier inmates thought he heard somethin’.”

  “Like what?”

  “Nothin’ serious. Just thought someone might’ve been strangled at your place,” Frank says in full-steam entertainer mode.

  Braun wrinkles his nose, squinting. “Strangled?”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.” Frank sniggers. “This cat was really shook up; he’s a strange one. Maybe somethin’ you had on TV, you know, around the time that I called, a little bit before?”

  “It wasn’t one of my neighbors, was it? I didn’t hear from any of them, the ones close by.”

  “No, just some guy passin’ in the hallway.”

  Braun stands there a moment longer, then smiles lightly and leans an arm on the counter, takes Frank into his confidence. “I didn’t want to go into details when you called, understand, but I was kind of busy at the time.” He pushes off the counter with a bemused expression. “That’s the culprit. I’m gonna have to tell her to keep it down, know what I mean?”

  Frank slaps the counter, laughs out loud. “I heard that. I dig that kinda stranglehold . . . Hey, didn’t I just see your lady leaving here with a suitcase earlier tonight?”

  Not two minutes after he had finally dispatched Richard, Frank saw from the rear a woman hurriedly rolling a suitcase through the open exit doors. He had been in the storage room for a moment and, by the time he’d seen her, she was almost out the door. From her size, shape (fine), and hair (long and blonde), he could all but swear she was the doc’s live-in. Down to the clothes she was wearing. When he’d seen her, he’d just shaken his head lightly and smiled to himself. So much for that nutcase Keene.