On Tenterhooks (24 page)

“No,” he replied, with eyes on the road.

She liked that answer.
She didn’t want to go back there, for any reason.
She hadn’t done anything wrong, right? She wondered if Roth
were
dead
.
Was that even really Roth anymore? She hadn’t
actually
known him at all
;
he had been a fixture, just like the desk he occupied. But he was (
had been?
) a person. Back in that alley
he
was something different. His eyes were lifeless, like a zombie out of a B horror movie. And the preacher
—who
was he? What did he want? She wanted answers, but more important
right
now, she wanted to
put some
distance between herself and what she had just experienced.

“Okay, please hurry then,” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” the driver replied.

She pulled Steve’s business card from the side pocket of her briefcase
and
dialed his number,
her
hands still trembling.

“Steve?
It’s
Veronica
. Yeah. Are you guys still here?”

She
paused, listening.

“Grea
t.
What time is your flight?”
she asked, rummaging for a pen and paper in her briefcase.

She wrot
e as she talked.
“Okay, which airport?
Uh-huh, got it
. . . .
Okay, I’ll see
you there in the morning. What’s
the weather like in Texas this time of year?
. . . .
Yes, count me in for now. I’ll explain in the morning.”

She paused
, watching
as the cabbie cocked his head, seemingly listening to her conversation.

“No
,
I am fin
e
.
I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”

Pause.

“Okay, great
.
See you both then. G’nite.”

She hung up and dialed again, watching the cabbie intently.
 
“John
?
H
ey, listen, I am
sorry to bother you on a Fri
day
night. But you remember how you offered to cover for me if
I wanted to take some time off?
”

She paused.

“Yeah, I do. I am heading out tomorrow for a little “me” time. I’ll be back soon
.
Can you cover for me?
”

Pause.

“Thanks John
.
No, I am good
—
just need some time away from the office to take care of some personal things. Thanks
,
John
,
I’ll catch up with you mid-week next week and see how things are going, okay?”

Pause.

“Great, I will
.
You have a great weekend too! Hugs and kisses to the wife and kiddies
.
G’nite.”

When she
hung up and sat back in the cab,
she
looked
out the windows as the Midtown nightlife streaked by
, letting herself be calmed by the familiar but always fascinating panorama for the ten
minutes
it took
the cab
to
arrive at her brownstone. She gathered her purse and briefcase and passed the fare and a tip to the driver through the partition window.

“You enjoy spying on conversations, cowboy?” she asked
as
she slid to the door.

“No ma’am. I only do what needs to be done.”
She shook her head
,
and as
s
he
always did,
looked up and down the quiet street
before stepping out of the cab.
As she climbed her stairs,
the
driver rolled down his passenger side window.

“Stay safe out there,
darlin
’
,
” he
called to her
. “It’s a rough road you’re on.”
He
rolled up the window and left her on the stoop.

“What an ass
.”

She f
ished her keys out of her purse
, swiftly
unlocked the front door and entered her building, closing the door behind her.

Chapter
2
8

“Sooooo
. . .
San Antonio, huh?” said
Veronica
, to no one in particular.

Martin grunted in response.

It was 8:12 AM. She, Steve and Martin were sitting at their departure gate in LaGuardia. Their flight did not leave until 10:17, but the security checkpoint had been unusually light for a
Friday
morning, so they
had
made it through
more quickly
than
they had
expected
.

Martin looked at his boarding pass again
.
“Yeah, San Antonio,” he said
, shifting and stretching
, “b
y way of Denver
.
It’s gonna be a long day.”

Steve worked to find a comfortable sitting position
on the
black vinyl bench
, the kind
that
had
a monopoly on the floor space of every airport he had
ever
visited
.
 
“Sooooo
. . .
Veronica
,”
he said
, “y
ou mind filling us in on why you changed your mind so quickly?  You seemed pretty adamant
that you wanted
to stay out of it when we left your office yesterday.”

“Yeah, well
,
t
hings change
,
”
she snapped, then clearly felt better of it.
.
  “
Sorry
, boys
.
I don’t mean to be harsh
.
Just tired
,
I guess. I was up
very
late packing for this
. . .
adventure
.
A girl needs to know what to wear when she’s
—
what are we doing
exactly
? Stalking? Solving a
great mystery
? I dunno.”

She shook her
head and sipped her
gourmet
mocha
.
 
“Plus
. . .
I saw
. . .
Him.”

“The p
reacher?” asked Steve.

“Yeah
.
He came to my office last night. It was just like you said
.
Tall, pale, eerie.
T
he guard said he was talking to
himself, staring at the walls.”

“What h
appened?” asked Martin. “Did you talk to him
?”

“Hell no!
I didn’t get that close
.
I had
the
security guard keep him busy
,
and I snuc
k out the
basement
. H
aving him in the same building terrified me. I
don’t know why
.
I am not
usually a person to run from anything.
I can take car
e of myself, if
I need to
!”

She balanced her coffee on the armrest and leaned
toward
them.
 
“
But when the guard called me
to tell
me he was at the front desk, I panicked
.
I mean
I
literally panicked. I nearly passed out on the way down in the elevator
!”

Leaning
back into her bench seat
, she
sighed
:
“
I slipped out via the parking garage and caught a cab
.
I had the driver swing around so I could see him
.
At
first,
his back was to me.
Then
he turned suddenly and stared right at
me
.
I swear
he was seeing me
. . .
through the tinted windows of the building and the cab, in the dark!
”

She shuddered involuntarily
,
zipped up the fr
ont of her
designer
turquoise tracksuit
and cupped her coffee with both hands, looking for warmth.
“
I told the driver to go
,
and he sped up to an intersection. And then the security guard, the same one you two met, attacked the cab!”

“What do you mean?” Martin asked.

“I mean, he attacked it! He
jumped out of an alley and
tried to break through the window and force the door open. He scared the
shit
outta me
!
It was like he was possessed or something. His eyes were rolled back in his head
,
and he was spitting
and drooling
all over the place. The driver gunned it
,
but
Roth
held on for like half a block or so. We were actually
dragging
him down the street
.
He fell off and got
himself
run over. I guess he’s dead, although I can’t find anything in the paper about it.”

“You mean you didn’t stop?” asked Steve.

“No. We didn’t. I asked the driver if we should call the cops, but he said no, and that was fine with me. I couldn’t go back there, not with that preacher man so close by.”

“You think he
did that to
the security guard?” asked Martin.

“Yes
,
I do. You didn’t see how bizarre
Roth
looked when he stared at me through the wind
ow of that cab. He was like a robot. What could do that to a person? It was nothing short of evil.”

Steve and Martin were silent.

“A few minutes
later
, I called you from the cab.
”

Steve nodded.

All three were silent for several minutes, lost in their own thoughts. They drank their caffeine and absently read
portions of a
discarded copy of
the
day’s paper
.
Occasionally they’d glance at the television mounted in the ceiling nearby
.
They passed the time in silence
, watching the crowd and frequently checking the time. Martin pulled a tarnished gold pocketwatch from his breastpocket nearly every fifteen minutes.

“Quite the timepiece you’ve got there,”
Veronica
remarked.

Martin smiled. “Thanks.  A family heirloom.  My father left it to me when he passed nearly ten years ago.” He closed it and rubbed the cover with his thumb. “I’ve got three wristwatches, really nice ones too. But they all live in my sock drawer.” He
chuckled, picked the watch up by its chain,
and carefully dropped it back into his pocket. “Seems to be that all I need is this one right to get me where I need to go on time.” He patted his pocket.

“Have you guys thought about what you’re going to say?”
Veronica
asked
.
“When we get there?”

Martin and Steve looked at each other.

“No, not really,” admitted Steve. “We spent a lot of time planning how we were going to talk to you
,
and that didn’t work out
so well
.”

“Well, she’s what? Seventeen?
Eighteen?
” asked
Veronica
.

“Yeah” said Martin. “She’s a
senior in high
school.”

“Okay, so
she probably
lives with her parents,” said
Veronica
. “You have an address, right?”

“Yeah, got it,” said Steve. “I checked it out
.
She’s in
a
suburb, halfway between San Antonio proper and New Braunfels
.
I
also
got the address for the high school
in
that district, so we could go there too.”

Veronica
looked at him with a
raised eyebrow
.

“What?”

“Nothing, Mr. Creepy Stalker
,” she grinned. “
I just
wouldn’t advise going anywhere near th
at
school
.
They don’t take kindly to people on school grounds
who
do not belong there.”

“Okay,
fine.
I just like to be thorough.”

“How about we just talk to her and her parents?” asked Martin
.

“Yeah, we
can try that,” replied Steve, “b
ut I wasn’t sure how well that was gonna go over.
Our story
is
a bit unusual
.
”

“Agreed,”
Veronica
said, “but I still think we should try the direct approach
.
Stalking her
—or even looking like that’s what we’re doing—
is not going to work.”

“I wasn’t going to stalk her!
Look, when I got that info, I was alone and had no idea if any of you people were going to listen to me. But you did
,
and now we’re in it together
.
If you guys want the direct approach, that’s fine by me.
I don’t care how we do it,
so
long as we reach her
.

“Okay,” said Martin. “It’s settled then. We’ll go to her parents and be straight up with them.”

“Yeah,” said
Veronica
, “b
ut what do you want them to do? I mean, hear me out here guys
.
We stroll in, tell them we’re all being targeted or exploited or whatever it is and then what?”

She
looked at them both, shrugging her shoulders
.
 
“I mea
n
, seriously,
w
hat are you expecting them to do?  Best case, they
might
let
us
talk to her
—
ask her if she got a message from that site or if she’s seen the creepy preacher. But then what? I doubt they’re gonna let her go
cruising for answers
with us
. And
even if they did, I don’t think she’s gonna want to
do that
.”

“Who knows what she’ll say,
Veronica
?” said Steve. “We have no idea where her head is. Maybe she’s dying to talk to somebody about it, somebody other than her parents.”

“That might
be true,” said Martin, “b
ut I really doubt it’d be us she’d confide in. Teenagers, girls especially, tend to be particular about their closest friends.
It is rare
for
a teenage
d
girl
to be
wide-open with adults. Trust me on this one.”

“I understand th
at
,
Martin.
But this isn’t a typical situation we’re dealing with here
.
None of this is reasonable or normal.”