Black Mirror (21 page)

“Oh,” I had said uncertainly. “Saskia.”

I had a moment of all-too-familiar fear. I thought: What difference did it make exactly how Patrick Leyden had had Daniel killed? I knew Daniel had been involved with Unity, up to his neck in drug distribution and evil. Did I really want any more details? Did I need them? Did I want to hear what Saskia had to say?

No. I did not. But … but … I also
had
to.

I pushed the fear back.

“Okay,” I had said. “I’ll talk to Saskia.”

“We’re here,” said Diefenbacher now, as I clutched my stomach against another round of cramps. I looked up and discovered that we had parked in front of a large brick apartment building.

Saskia, I thought. Saskia is in there. I took a deep breath.

I got out of the car.

“
H
ello, Frances,” said Saskia.

She was standing just beyond the apartment’s small foyer, balancing somehow with legs crossed and one sock-clad foot on top of the other. She wore ancient jeans, the tails of a red flannel shirt hung over her hips. I stared in shock—she looked so sloppy! And yet somehow she looked comfortable, at ease in her skin, despite the situation. Despite everything.

Her gaze was fixed on me like a laser beam. Just behind her I could see a middle-aged uniformed woman sitting on a sofa and pecking away at a laptop computer. A cop.

“Hello,” I said. My cramps clutched at me again but I tried not to react. Not in front of Saskia.

“We can talk in my room.” Saskia jerked her head toward a hall to her left. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and I
could see the empty pinprick holes for her earrings. “Okay, Maria?” Saskia’s tone had gone slightly sarcastic. I followed her gaze to the policewoman on the sofa.

“Fine,” said the policewoman calmly. I noticed that she was wearing a gun. “Leave the door ajar.” I saw Saskia wince before her face smoothed out again into blandness.

The policewoman was looking at me now. “Did they say they’d be back to pick you up in two hours?”

“Yes.” I wished it were fifteen minutes. From across the room I could feel Saskia’s intensity.

I followed her into a small room with a daybed, a nightstand, and a desk on which a pile of familiar textbooks were stacked. The novel
Beloved
sat right on top, looking as untouched as my own copy. “They got a tutor for me,” Saskia said, noticing where I was looking. “Like it matters.” Somehow she had moved behind me, blocking my access to the door. “Have a seat,” she said.

There should have been a chair in front of the desk, but there wasn’t. Uneasily, I settled down on an end of the daybed. I tucked one leg beneath myself, keeping the other on the floor. But then I heard Bubbe’s mocking voice in my head:
Ready to run?
I put both feet on the floor. I’d run if I wanted to. I placed one arm against my stomach so that I could press on it, when I needed to, in an unobtrusive way.

Saskia plunked herself down at the other end. Seated, our different heights ceased to matter and, although separated by three feet of mattress, we were eye to eye. As I looked at her, I thought with the old wonderment and
resentment that she was still beautiful. She was still what I wished I were. And she was the one who had exposed Patrick Leyden. She was the one who had avenged Daniel. She was the heroine of the drama, while I had only walked on and bumbled around in the last act.

“Well,” I said uneasily. “Are you okay? Are they treating you all right?”

Saskia shrugged. “Sure. I have a lawyer. They let my mom visit. Of course, there’s the twenty-four-hour security—they think Patrick might try to have me killed—but I’m adjusting to that.” At my expression, her lips twisted and she added, “Oh, don’t worry about it. I know Patrick better than they do and believe me, it’s the last thing on his mind. He’s busy with his lawyers, writing checks, trying to figure out an escape strategy.”

Patrick, I thought. “If he’s got smart lawyers and lots of money—”

“No,” Saskia interrupted. Twin red spots appeared in the middle of her cheeks. “He’s not getting out of this. Listen, I got bank statements and accurate money trails. I got tape recordings. I got drug bags with his fingerprints on them. I have a diary over the last six months that details every meeting, every conversation, every decision. I knew what I was doing. I have him tied up.”

I knew that Diefenbacher and Sorensen thought the same thing. “Well, then,” I began.

But Saskia wasn’t finished. Words poured from her in a torrent. “Not only that, but he’s going to be bankrupt soon,
so he won’t be able to afford a fleet of lawyers. Get this—it’s so good I can’t stand it. Patrick had just bought back a lot of his own stock. But of course Cognitive Reach’s stock price went right into the toilet last week, and he lost fifty million dollars! The stock won’t recover until the company dissociates itself from him, which of course they’re doing fast. So Patrick is going to lose his beloved Cognitive Reach, Frances, along with all his credibility and stature and reputation. By the time the SEC and the IRS and his own lawyers are through with him, he’ll be a pauper.”

Her eyes gleamed with triumph—and something else. Pain?

“And you know what, Frances? I’m the one who did it. I’m the one who ruined him. Me, little Saskia. He knows it. And he’ll know it even more as things get worse and worse for him. Until finally he’s in jail, choking on it.”

I was silent. I had never seen such hatred. What had caused it? Why did Saskia hate Leyden so much? It had to be about Daniel.

Watching Saskia, I was more than a little awed. I thought back to when she had promised to make my life miserable, and I remembered how I had countered her but inside had curled up with terror. I had been right to fear Saskia. If she had really wanted to make my life miserable, she could have.

She must not have wanted to, then. How could I ask her? I said carefully, “When you didn’t want me to join Unity, I thought …”

“What? That I was being a hateful bitch?”

I nodded.

The red spots on Saskia’s cheeks were fading back now into white. “And what do you think now?”

I stumbled. “Were you—were you trying to protect me?”

Her gaze shifted away from me, then back. “I had work to do. Maybe I just didn’t want you getting in my way.”

“Oh,” I said. The silence elongated. Suddenly I had to press my forearm to my abdomen, hard.

Saskia said clinically, “Cramps?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I thought so. I get them too.” She regarded me closely. “Maybe not so bad, though.”

I had had to close my eyes for a few seconds. Finally the wave of pain passed. I looked up again. Saskia seemed … closer. She burst out, “Look, I’m not really sure, okay? I just—didn’t want you involved.”

“I wondered …” I gathered myself. “I wondered if it was because of Daniel. I wondered if maybe Daniel was protecting me too, all those times he was so horrible to me about Unity …”

I looked across into Saskia’s face. I read an answer there: No.

But then she said, “Yes. Yes, exactly. I was doing what Daniel wanted. Unity was fine for him, and for me, but the last thing he wanted was his little sister involved in it. He went out of his way to alienate you. He wanted to make sure you’d never want to be where he was, doing what he was doing. What I was doing.”

“You’re lying,” I said.

Her eyes dropped away from mine.

The world had tilted on its axis for me. I said after a moment, “I’m sorry, Saskia. I was jealous of you. Of you and Daniel both.”

She shrugged. “I was jealous of
you.
For other reasons. You seemed so … okay on your own. You didn’t need anybody. You just stayed yourself, and that saved you.” Her mouth twisted, and she quoted, in perfect mimicry of Daniel doing his Buddha thing: “
Guard yourself like a frontier town.
That was what you always did.”

I gaped at her.

And then softly she said: “Daniel treated me like dirt, you know.”

Somehow I found my voice. “No …”

“Yes.” And as I continued to stare, she added, “You are so naïve, Frances. I never understood how you could be that way. I still don’t understand. You’re not stupid. Just … blind. Oblivious.”

“Daniel loved you,” I said finally, uncertainly. “Didn’t he?”

“Daniel loved only himself. And the thought of being rich.”

We looked at each other.

Finally I asked: “Did you—didn’t
you
love
him
?”

Saskia shrugged again. “At the beginning I did. When we were first at Pettengill. He made me feel less alone. When I was with him—having a boyfriend, you know—I felt more like I belonged.” Then: “Frances, are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said grimly, conscious that it wasn’t just the cramps that had me in anguish. I was pressing against my stomach with both arms now. “This is … pretty normal for me. First day. You know.” Finally I could look up again.

The conversation had not gone the way I had thought it would go. And there was something else. Something hidden, the way I’d hidden my own nightmares beneath black paint. I could feel it. I could feel it in the room with us. I said, “Saskia?”

She tilted her head to the side. “Yes?”

And my nerve, my courage, was right there with me, steady. Calm. I said, “I was told you wanted to talk to me about Daniel’s death. That you would tell me how it happened.”

“Yes,” said Saskia. Had she paled even more? “That’s true.”

“Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Then let’s do it. Get it over with, Saskia. I can handle it. Tell me how Patrick Leyden killed Daniel.”

She was too silent.

“Saskia?” I said.

She said, “Well, that’s just it. Patrick Leyden didn’t kill Daniel. Maybe he was ultimately responsible—my lawyer plans to say that, and that it was self-defense, in a way. But Leyden wasn’t directly responsible.”

Her eyes were twin pits of hell. “Frances. I killed Daniel.”

“
Y
ou’re quiet,” said Diefenbacher to me from the driver’s seat.

“Uh-huh,” I said. He and I had been in the car, alone, for five minutes only. It was odd. I realized now that on the drive up, I’d secretly longed to have Sorensen not be there. Despite everything, I’d wanted to be alone for a single, precious, even silent hour with James—with Diefenbacher. But now that I had gotten my wish for the drive back, I didn’t care.

Diefenbacher had given me a note from Yvette, who was staying in Boston overnight. He had said that she wanted me to call her; that she wanted to talk to me. I had nodded and stuffed the note in my pocket, but I didn’t think I could call her. I didn’t think I’d want to talk to her ever again.

As we drove slowly through the evening rush-hour traffic,
I watched out the window of the car. On the sidewalk in front of a brownstone, I saw a couple who seemed to be about my age; a tall boy with a shaved head—shaved so close he was really bald—had his arm around a girl with short, dyed-white hair. She was laughing up into his face and he was grinning down at her and, despite the difference in their heights, their steps matched perfectly as they walked, leaning into each other and battling the winter wind. In love, I thought, and abruptly had to blink hard.

When I could focus again, the car had moved on, leaving the couple behind. I realized that my cramps had subsided to dull, intermittent stabs and was grateful for that, at least. The car was warm. I stripped off my mittens and opened my coat.

A silent Diefenbacher was trying to work the car over to the highway. Right now, however, we had come to a standstill. Hoping masochistically for another glimpse of the happy young couple, I looked out at the bundled-up pedestrians, the dirty snow, the anxious cars. No couple, but in the Toyota next to us a man abruptly hurled his cell phone away and then looked directly at me and gave me the finger. Then he smashed down on his horn.

“Yeah, that’ll help,” James muttered. Despite the nasty traffic and his attention to it, I could feel that James’s—Diefenbacher’s—real awareness was of me. There was some small satisfaction in that. It was very small, however.

“Saskia told you?” James said, his eyes straight ahead. “About Daniel?” And then, when I didn’t reply: “Frances?”

“Yes,” I said. “She told me.” I leaned my right elbow on the car’s armrest and angled my body more sharply toward the window. The man in the Toyota was gripping his wheel with both hands. His eyes were closed. Suddenly I noticed that there was a toddler in a car seat in the back of his car. The child’s mouth was open.

I could paint that, I thought. I could paint that man, in that car, with that baby. First I’d wash the entire canvas in dark red—no, better, red with a grayish tint. Oils for this. Not acrylics.

“Are you okay?” James persisted.

“No,” I said calmly. I’d use a thick brush, I thought. I’d make the baby all head. One big head bouncing in the backseat, while his father leaned with huge fisted hands on the wheel in the front. And white headlights all around. The light would be sharp needles attacking the car.

Saskia had deliberately injected Daniel, while he slept, with an overdose of heroine. She had watched, beside him, until he died.

“I wrote the note in advance,” she told me. “I planned everything in advance. This was not an accident. It was murder, Frances. I made love to Daniel that night, and then I murdered him.”

There was actually pride in her voice. Pride, and terror, and something I couldn’t name. I looked at her and she looked back at me, and it had been as if we were trapped, doomed to stare and stare … my whole body had felt frozen …

“I want to help you,” James said. He didn’t look at me, and he sounded calm, but beneath the calm I thought I could hear a certain urgency, determination, in his voice. “Terrible things have happened, Frances. It might take you years to absorb them and come to terms with them. If you ever can.”

I didn’t reply.

“I know you loved your brother. I know what Saskia told you must have been a terrible shock. It was to me, and I knew things you didn’t, and—well, of course, he wasn’t my brother.”