She does not, in all truth, enjoy her father’s company very much. She confesses this, too, to the pickup jury of five men who sit noncommittally around the long table scarred with the cigarette burns of too many long interrogations over too many long years. It is almost as if she has been wishing to confess forever. She has not yet said a word about Tampering or Obstructing, but she seems willing to confess to everything else she has ever done or felt. It suddenly occurs to Carella that she is a woman who has nobody to talk to. For the first time in her life, Cynthia Keating has an audience. And the audience is giving her its undivided attention.
“He’s a bore,” she tells them. “My father. He was a bore when he was young, and now that he’s old, he’s an even bigger bore. Well, he used to be a nurse, is that an occupation for a man? Now that he’s retired, all he can talk about is this or that patient he remembers when he worked at ‘The Hospital.’
I don’t think he even remembers which hospital it was. It’s just ‘The Hospital.’ This or that happened at ‘The Hospital.’ It’s all he ever talks about.”
The detectives notice that she is still referring to her father in the present tense, but this is not uncommon, and does not register as anything significant. They are patiently waiting for her to get to Tampering and Obstruction. That is why they are here. They want to know what happened in that apartment between nine o’clock last night and ten-oh-seven this morning, when she dialed 911.
She has dressed for today’s weather in a green tweed skirt and turtleneck sweater she bought at the Gap. Low-heeled walking shoes and pantyhose to match the skirt. She likes walking. The forecasters have promised rain for later today…
It is, in fact, still raining as she continues her recitation, but none of the people in the windowless room know or care about what’s happening outside… … and so she is carrying a folding umbrella in a tote bag slung over her shoulder. The subway station isn’t far from her apartment. She boards the train at about twenty to nine, and is across the river and in the city forty minutes later. It is only a short walk to her father’s building. She enters it at about nine-thirty. She remembers seeing the super putting out his garbage cans. Her father lives on the third floor. It is not an elevator building, he can’t afford that sort of luxury. His wonderful days at “The Hospital” left him precious little when he retired. As she climbs the stairs, the cooking smells in the hallway make her feel a bit nauseous. She pauses for breath on the third-floor landing, and then walks to apartment 3A and knocks. There is no answer. She looks at her watch. Nine thirty-five. She knocks again.
The things he does often cause her to become impatient at best or exasperated at worst. He knows she is coming here this morning, she told him last night that she’d be here. Is it possible he forgot? Has he gone out somewhere for breakfast? Or is he simply in the shower? She has a key to the apartment, which he gave to her after the last heart attack, when he became truly frightened he might die alone and lie moldering for days before anyone discovered his corpse. She rarely uses the key, hardly knows what it looks like, but she fishes in her bag among the other detritus there, and at last finds it in a small black leather purse that also contains the key to his safe deposit box, further insurance against a surprise heart attack.
She slips the key into the keyway, turns it. In the silence of the morning hallway-most people off to work already, except the woman somewhere down the hall cooking something revoltingly vile-smellingCynthia hears the small oiled click of the tumblers falling. She turns the knob, and pushes the door open. Retrieving her key, she puts it back into the black leather purse, enters the apartment…
“Dad?” … and closes the door behind her.
Silence.
“Dad?” she calls again.
There is not a sound in the apartment.
The quiet is an odd one. It is not the expectant stillness of an apartment temporarily vacant but awaiting imminent return. It is, instead, an almost reverential hush, a solemn silence attesting to permanency. There is something so complete to the stillness here, something so absolute that it is at once frightening and somehow exciting. Something dread lies in wait here. Something terrifying is in these rooms. The silence signals dire expectation and sends a prickling shiver of anticipation over her skin. She almost turns and leaves. She is on the edge of leaving.
“I wish I had,” she says now.
