The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 19

The easy way. Take the easy way out. A knife less sharp across the wrist, but that was only a plea for help, right? We'll get her the help she needs, and soft cooing voices trundle her off to the mountains.

"Our baby girl. She seems so far away now."

"Have we lost her?"

And so...a wrist-band. But every picture tells a story, if we can but open our eyes from time to time.

He listened to her, to the flat affect, to the barely concealed scars buried under each new word.

"Your uncle told me about what happened in San Francisco. I'm so sorry," she whispered at one point, and Harry tried to smile a little but he realized he felt too ashamed for trying to take the easy way out himself.

"Sometimes life just gets too hard," he managed to say, and he took a deep, ragged breath that seemed to last a little too long.

"He mentioned someone named June? Something that happened a long time ago?"

That cold grip around his heart? Would it always come on so hard and fast?

"We were young," he managed to say before he looked away.

Then this stranger from a strange land leaned into his arm, and soon he felt her face leaning on his shoulder and the only thing left to do was turn and kiss the top of her head before he wrapped an arm around her. Time seemed to spin around a different axis for a while, like he was on a planet orbiting a distant sun and not even the sky was familiar.

Attendants from the hospital were waiting for her at the station, as was the old physician in his cape. He smiled at her, then at Harry, when they walked from the railway car, and as soon as she was settled in her wheelchair the attendants whisked her away to a waiting Mercedes.

"Did you have a nice talk?" the old physician said as he came up to Harry.

And Harry looked at the old man for a split second, before he turned and looked back up the mountain. "There's something magic up there, isn't there?"

"You'd not be the first to feel that way, young man."

"Will I be able to see her again?"

The physician shrugged. "I hope so," he sighed. "But we will see." Then he held out his hand, and Harry took it. "We can talk about it when you come for your appointment in the morning?"

Harry nodded, then turned to find his 'uncle'...

___________________________________

"The Russians are less than a hundred kilometers away," one of the camp elders said, his voice trembling.

"Word is the British have broken through, that they are nearing Prague," another said, somewhat hopefully.

"Where is that representative from the Red Cross," another asked. "The Swiss man?"

"With Misha," Imogen Schwarzwald replied quietly, and the others in the room turned to face her, if only because when this strange woman spoke - which was rare enough - everyone stopped and listened. "They will return soon, so do not worry."

She spoke with a preternatural steeliness in her voice, despite an obvious frailty. Despite her - 'condition.' Almost three months pregnant...but how had it happened? No one was seen visiting her, not once. Just the opposite seemed true, if any asked. Yet here she was, just showing and because of lingering conditions in the ghetto not at all well.

But...what if the Russians got to Theresienstadt before the British, or even the Americans? What would become of her - and her baby...?

The elders had come to respect this quiet woman's gentle wisdom, yet even so most feared her. A physicist, she was educated beyond their understanding, yet she was of a cultured people, even if she was, obviously, a troubled soul, and so many of the less well-off regarded Imogen as something of a patrician, of being from a higher station in life, but this was their custom.

She had proven gifted with the children in her care and had even managed to keep clear of the Nazi officers in the camp...so the question remained: how had she come to be with child? Yet, when some suggested she was a collaborator these people soon disappeared from the camp. As a result of these disappearances an aura of fear surrounded Imogen, even if that fear was cloaked in yielding respect.

"Imogen," one of the elders asked yet again, "what of Palestine? Have you heard from your husband again?"

She turned away from the voice and shook her head. "Nothing new," was all she said - before she walked to the window and looked at dark clouds gathering above the far horizon.

___________________________________

Frank moved from the city, to the Sea Ranch area on the coast far to the north, though he kept his apartment near the marina, and he turned in his retirement papers.

Sam Bennett turned in his papers not long after, and when people spoke of Captain Bennett these days there was pity in their voice. Obviously a broken man, Bennett simply disappeared from the department at a critical time. When patrolmen drove by to check on Bennett's house the lights were almost always off, though shadows could be seen moving about inside.

Delgetti and Carl Stanton each had several years to go before they could retire, but peers noted both men seemed completely unmotivated now...and they were soon regarded as shuffling their way to retirement.

And Harry Callahan? No one had heard of or seen any trace of him for weeks, then months. He had simply disappeared without a trace.

And yet, he was very much alive.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse...[note: I typically don't post all a story's acknowledgments until I've finished, if only because I'm not sure how many I'll need until work is finalized. Yet with the current circumstances that might not be the best way to proceed, and I'd hate to have this story stop 'unexpectedly' without some mention of sources. Of course, the primary source material in this case - so far, at least - derives from two seminal Hollywood 'cop' films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman's brilliant screenplay. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the 'Briggs' storyline derives from characters originally found in that screenplay. The Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson. The Samantha Walker character derives from the Patricia Clarkson portrayal of the pivotal television reporter found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician's tour of duty in Vietnam - found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor's Year in Vietnam, worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I've ever come across (think Richard Hooker's M*A*S*H, only in searing non-fiction). Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as a few new characters I've managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to come up with something new - perhaps a commentary of the times. And the standard disclaimer also here applies: no one mentioned in this tale should be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred.]