Black Out (15 page)

I start moving backward, my eyes still on the bathroom door. As I do, it starts to open. I find myself paralyzed; I can’t move. I stand and watch it swing wide. She is pale and grim, the young woman I have seen at Ella’s party and standing outside the Internet café. She is soaked in blood. There’s a knife in her hand. Her chest is heaving with the deep, shuttering breaths she is drawing and releasing. We stare at each other for a moment. And then I recognize her. It’s Ophelia.

23

It’s nearly dark when I wake up in my car in the parking lot of my doctor’s office. The sun has disappeared below the horizon line, and the sky is glowing a deep blue-black. My peripheral vision is almost gone from the migraine I have coming on. I am struggling to orient myself, to separate reality from fantasy. I see her face again, her blood-drenched clothes. I see my doctor slumped over his desk, blood draining from him onto the floor.

I don’t feel the appropriate level of terror, I’m just stunned, numb. I look at my watch; it has been only forty minutes since my session with the doctor ended, which seems impossible given what’s happened. There’s a large bloodstain, still wet but drying quickly, on my jacket. I shrug out of it, crumble it into a ball. I don’t want to look at the blood. Then my cell phone, balancing on the dash, starts ringing. I answer.

“Hi, Annie.”

I already recognize the voice—it’s Detective Harrison. I don’t say anything.

“Just wondering if you’ve had any time to think things over.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” I ask him. My voice sounds hysterical, even to my own ears. I am shaking as I put the key in the ignition and start the car. “Did you do this?”

There’s a pause on the other end, as if he’s registering the pitch and tone of my words.

“Annie, what’s wrong?” he asks me. He sounds legitimately concerned. “Where are you?”

“Why are you doing this?” I say again. It must be Harrison. He has done this somehow. He knows about me and is trying to drive me insane. “For
money?
You can have whatever you want.”

“Take it easy,” he says. His tone is calm and soothing; he must be used to talking to hysterical people. “What’s going on?”

There’s something in his voice that reminds me why I liked him that first night. Even though he’s trying to destroy my life, it’s almost as though he would put that on hold to be a cop for me in this moment. I’m half considering telling him about the doctor, but since I’m not a hundred percent sure that he’s dead and that it wasn’t me who killed him, I decide against it. I’d be admitting that I’m either mentally ill or a murderer, probably both.

“What happened, Annie?” he says, more firmly this time.

But his voice sounds tinny and distant. I end the call and throw the phone on the seat beside me. I drive out of the parking lot, heading for home.

The small causeway that leads to our island is not heavily trafficked in the evening. I pull over and grab the jacket from the passenger seat, race to the railing, and toss it over. I watch for a moment as it drifts into the water, then quickly get back to the car and start driving again, too fast. The sight of a cruiser hiding in a speed trap encourages me to slow down, to take the rest of the drive at the speed limit.

I wave at the guard as I pull through the gateway to our neighborhood. Lights glow in windows, televisions flicker, and there are a couple of kids still playing in the street even though it’s fully dark now. Everything is so quiet, so normal. I do not belong here. I realize more than ever that I never have.

I park the car in the drive and walk, though I want to run, into the house. As I shut the door, I hear Gray in the kitchen making dinner.

“You’re late,” he calls with a smile in his voice when he hears me enter.

There are candles lit on the table and lobsters in a huge pot on the stove. When he turns to look at me, his smile fades, he goes a little pale. My legs buckle when he reaches me, and I sink into him.

“What happened?” he asks. His frightened expression tells me how bad I look. “What the hell happened?”

I awoke in the middle of the night with a start to the sound of the horses. They were restless in their stalls, agitated and making noise. I’d heard them act like that twice since we’d been there. Once a Florida panther had been spotted the next day on a neighbor’s property. The second time we never figured why they’d been anxious. I slipped from beneath the covers of my bed and walked over to the window. The doors to the barn stood open. Frank’s truck sat idling, the hatch wide, waiting like a mouth. A full yellow moon cast a strange glow.

I moved to the side of the window and peered through the curtains. I’m not sure how long I stood there, but finally Frank emerged from the dark interior of the barn. In his arms he carried a large bundle wrapped in horse blankets. He leaned back against the weight of it and then dropped it awkwardly into the truck. He closed the hatch quietly, glancing up at the windows of the house. He looked stricken, like a man grieving a terrible loss. Then he got into the driver’s seat of the truck and rolled out of sight.

I stood rooted, my whole body shaking. I thought of all the things Marlowe had told me. Part of me hadn’t really believed him…the collection of purses, the shoe under the porch, his recent dire predictions that Frank’s “appetites” couldn’t be kept at bay much longer.

I saw Marlowe leave the barn then, a garbage bag in his hand. He pulled the doors closed behind him and locked them with the key. As he did this, he turned and looked up at my window. Maybe he could sense my eyes on him. I was certain he couldn’t see me where I stood. But something in his face told me that he knew I was there.

I got back into my bed quickly, wrapped myself up in the covers, and closed my eyes. I measured my breathing, made it deep and steady. After a minute I heard Marlowe creaking on the stairs. The floorboards outside my door groaned beneath his weight, and I heard the knob on my door start to turn. I tried to control the quaking of my body, to fight the urge to scream as I heard the door open just a little. The seconds dragged on as I waited to hear him come in or to speak my name. But he didn’t. After a moment I heard him walk away and go back down the stairs.

When I thought it was safe, I raced to my mother’s room. I was sure I’d see an empty bed. But when I burst through her door, she was sleeping soundly, undisturbed by the events that had just transpired. I thought of waking her, telling her what I’d seen, but I didn’t. I just went back to my bed, lay there wide-eyed and listening to the night. Frank didn’t return until just before dawn.

24

It is several hours later when Gray and I return to the doctor’s office. I have told him everything that’s happened. We’ve gone over and over every detail a thousand times. He has made me shower, and while I stood with the scalding water beating down on my skin, scrubbing myself so hard that my skin turned raw and red, Gray disposed of my clothes. I’m not even sure why; it makes me wonder if he thinks I may have actually killed my doctor. I haven’t asked him if this is what he thinks.

We pull in to the lot, which is empty now. I expected to see a swarm of police vehicles and ambulances, some news vans. I expected to see Detective Harrison waiting for me. Instead there’s only a sea of blacktop edged by the Intracoastal. The tall streetlamps cast an eerie amber glow as Gray stops the car. My stomach is churning. There are still some lights burning in the windows of the office building. A night guard sits at the reception desk reading a paperback.

“Wait here,” Gray says, putting a hand on my leg.

“No,” I say, unbuckling my seat belt. “I’m coming.”

He doesn’t argue, waits as I get out of the car and then drops his arm around me as I come to stand beside him. We walk toward the building. I’m keeping my migraine at bay with the medicine I’ve taken, but it’s waiting for me like a predator in the brush.

“It’s okay,” he tells me.

The old bulldog of a guard looks at us with sullen boredom over the edge of his novel. He has dull eyes and a thin mouth that disappears into the flesh of his face.

“I had a doctor’s appointment earlier,” I tell him. “I left my cell phone.”

“It’ll have to wait till tomorrow,” he says. “The building’s closed.”

“It’s important,” I tell him.

“Sorry.”

A hundred-dollar bill from Gray changes his mind. From the looks of him, I think he would have done it for fifty. He gives us a disinterested nod and heaves his body out of the chair, which groans its relief. He slides an enormous ring of keys off the desktop, and we take the elevator up to the seventh floor.

“Was this elevator broken earlier?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Not that I’m aware.”

I am sweating, becoming more and more tense as the elevator climbs. Gray is armed, his hand tucked beneath his jacket, resting on the butt of his gun. He is at his best, cool and in control. When we arrive, the hallway is dark, lit only by fire-exit lights.

I walk us toward the doctor’s door, which is shut and locked. Something’s off; I’m not certain yet what it is. The guard seems oblivious to our tension.

“Are you sure this is it?” he asks as he unlocks the door and swings it open. That’s when I realize that the nameplate on the doctor’s door is gone. The waiting room is empty. No chairs, no silk plants, no magazine racks. We walk through to the office. It’s vacant. The desk, the bookshelves, the Murano glass vase on the table by the window, the cheap, uncomfortable furniture—all gone. Gray walks the perimeter of the room, runs his finger over the windowsill. His eyes scan the empty space. I see his brow wrinkle into a frown, then his eyes come to rest on me.

I walk to the bathroom door and push it open. I’m confronted by my own reflection in the mirror on the far wall. I look haggard, afraid.

“Are we on the seventh floor?” I ask. I look around—even the knobs and lighting fixtures are gone. There’s nothing to connect this place to the office I’ve been visiting for years. I check at the walls for shadows where I know photographs and degrees were hanging, but there are no telltale marks or stray picture hangers. There is no blood on the window.

“Yes, ma’am,” the guard says, casting a suspicious glance. “I thought maybe you knew something I didn’t. It was my understanding that this floor has been vacant for months, waiting on renovations. Some real-estate agency moving in here.”

I don’t know what to say. I blink back tears of frustration, put my hand to my forehead so neither of them can see my face. I am afraid and ashamed in equal measure.

“You sure you got the right building?” the guard asks gently.

I nod, not trusting my voice.

“You have a building directory downstairs?” asks Gray.

“Believe so,” the guard says. He looks uncomfortable now, shifting from foot to foot and avoiding eye contact. I’ve seen people act like this before. A kind of mystified embarrassment comes over people when they encounter someone who might be entirely off her rocker.

He keeps his distance as we walk down the hallway and get into the elevator. My mind is racing through options: wrong floor, wrong office, wrong building. The doctor’s dead; someone hid his body and cleaned out his office. Or someone, as Drew so eloquently put it, is fucking with me. I can see from the look on Gray’s face that he’s running the same catalog of possibilities in his mind. He’s holding my hand tightly, as if he thinks I’m going to make a run for it.

At the desk the guard gives Gray the building directory. I notice that the pages on the clipboard are crisp and new. On the list, Dr. Paul Brown, Ph.D., is nowhere to be found.

“This looks like a brand-new directory. When was it printed?” asks Gray.

The guard shrugs. “Does look new,” he admits, peering over Gray’s shoulder. “Maybe he moved his office. I don’t know.”

“Do you know him?” I ask. “Dr. Brown?”

He shakes his head. “But I’m just the night guy. Come on after most people have gone home for the day. I don’t really know anyone in the building.”

The guard is looking at me with pity now. He takes a piece of scrap paper from the drawer, writes down a name and a number.

“Nobody moved anything out of here in the last few hours?” I ask, trying not to sound as desperate and hysterical as I feel. I force my face into a mask of calm. I have learned in moments like this to keep the surface still even though the depths are raging. Animals hide fear and illness; they cannot afford weakness in the wild.

“No, no. Nothing like that tonight,” he says, handing me the paper. “This is the daytime building manager. He’d know better about all of this.”

Gray thanks him, and we leave. We walk in silence to the car, neither of us knowing what to say. We get inside and just sit for a minute. I examine the dashboard, since there’s nowhere else to rest my eyes. I can’t bring myself to look at Gray.

“I didn’t imagine the doctor—or what happened tonight,” I say.

“I know,” says Gray a little too quickly. I wonder if he’s humoring me. He puts a hand on my leg. When I find the strength to meet his eyes, I see his love for me, his compassion. This causes the tension in my shoulders to relax, my breathing to come easier.

“I saw her,” I say, remembering the moment and feeling a shudder move through my body. “I saw Ophelia.”

Worry is etched now in all the lines on his face. “You saw
someone,
” he says. “In the terror of the moment, your mind played a trick on you.”

“I’ve seen her before, at a cocktail party and on the street. I just didn’t recognize her.”

He moves his hand from my leg to my arm and squeezes firmly. “What are you saying, Annie? You
are
Ophelia. She’s not a separate person from you.”

“I know that,” I snap. What
am
I saying?

“Then what are you telling me?”

I take in a deep breath. “Nothing. I don’t know.”

“There was no dust on the windowsill,” he says, changing the subject. He doesn’t want to talk about Ophelia. He wants to deal with the facts, with the empirical evidence, not ghosts and hallucinations. “If it had been sitting empty for weeks, there would be dust.”

“Really?” I say, feeling hope release some of the tightness in my chest. “What does that mean?”

“It could mean that something happened there tonight, and between then and now someone cleaned and took the furniture out.” Gray releases a long breath. Does he believe this, or is he just saying it to make me feel better? I don’t know, and I don’t ask.

Anyway, I do know what he’s thinking. He wishes I’d let him meet the doctor. But I never have. I’ve needed my present happy home life never to mingle with the nightmare of my past. But maybe that was part of my folly, to ever believe that I might separate the parts of myself like that, that I could keep the person I was from poisoning the person I am…especially when my present self is a fictional character I have created to escape my own heart, my own past, my own deeds.

You belong to me.
But it’s not Marlowe’s voice I hear this time. It’s Ophelia’s.