The Craving (16 page)

“Okay,” Alison said, moving closer to him so that their bodies were practically touching. “Going for it sounds like a good idea to me.”

Simon was thinking,
Accept it, accept it
, but being so close to Alison when she was so turned on was way too arousing, and he was terrified of what might happen next.

“Just relax,” she said, and he could feel the heat from her breath on his face. “I’m not going to bite you.”

But
I’m
going to bite
you.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m … I’m just not ready yet.”

She waited, then said, “I understand,” but he could tell she didn’t.

“We made progress today,” Simon said, realizing he was sweating badly; even his face was wet. “I mean I think we’re getting there, slowly but surely.”

Alison didn’t seem convinced. She said, “Well, you let me know when you want me again,” and then kissed him quickly on the lips and went down the hallway toward the bedroom without saying good night.

S
imon understood why Alison was frustrated, but he tried to stay positive. While it was true things were a long way from normal in their marriage, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever have a regular sex life again, he had to look at the bright side—he was making progress, and if he continued to make progress every day, maybe normal, or at least almost normal, wasn’t so far away.

On Sunday morning, Simon was up early, and after his usual extended sets of push-ups and sit-ups, he heard Jeremy stirring in his room. He hugged him—making sure not to get too carried away like the other morning—and then set him up in front of the TV with a sippy cup of milk and a couple of waffles. While Simon could have eaten twenty sausage links, he was content with just eight. He had to eat them ultra slowly to savor the flavor, but he took this as another example of the progress he was making. Maybe soon he’d be able to get by on just three or four links in the morning, and maybe over time the meat cravings would subside entirely. Maybe he’d be happy having fruit and yogurt in the morning, and he’d get satisfaction from eating fruit and vegetables and cereal. While he couldn’t imagine a meatless existence—and the whole idea of it actually seemed like torture—nothing was out of the question.

Simon let Alison sleep late, till about ten. He felt bad about disappointing her sexually again last night, so to help make up for it he prepared her a breakfast of coffee, fruit salad, and oatmeal and had it waiting for her when she came into the dining room.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she said.

“I wanted to,” he said. “You’ve been working hard and I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate everything you’ve been doing.”

“Thank you.” She smiled. “It’s nice to hear you say that.”

Simon sat with her while she ate. He tried to have some coffee, but the bitterness repulsed him, so he sipped from a glass of water instead.

After breakfast, Alison went on “Jeremy duty,” sitting with him on the living room floor in front of the TV while drawing in coloring books with magic markers. Simon slipped away into the bathroom and did his morning shave and body-hair trim. He was trimming the hair on his right leg—he hadn’t trimmed his leg hair in a couple of days and it was getting out of control—when Alison called urgently from the living room, “Simon, come out here!”

Fearing that something had happened to Jeremy, Simon left the razor and rushed into the living room. Jeremy was still happily coloring and Alison was gripped by something on TV.

“I thought it was an emergency,” Simon said.

“Sorry,” Alison said, “but it is kind of incredible and I didn’t want you to miss it.”

Simon saw that Alison was watching the New York City Marathon. He knew the marathon was today; he’d seen them setting up for it in the park last night.

“Miss what?” he asked.

“Just look,” she said.

They were showing the front-runners. Two slim black guys, probably from Kenya—a Kenyan always seemed to win the marathon—and slightly in front of them a noticeably stockier, much more muscular white guy. It was definitely unusual to see a big guy like that among the leaders.

“Can you believe it?” Alison said.

“Yeah, that is pretty weird,” Simon said.

“They’re saying he never even ran in a marathon before,” she said. “And he’s
a New York City fireman. Can you even imagine how big a news story this is going to be?”

The word
fireman
gave Simon a jolt. But even though at that moment he knew what was happening and the huge effect this was going to have on his life, he didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. He wanted to believe it was some mistake. It was a hallucination, he was just imagining he was watching this, or he was still asleep, he hadn’t woken up yet today, and this was just a dream.

But this wasn’t a dream—that reality was setting in fast. This was a nightmare, except he wasn’t asleep—the nightmare
was
reality.

Alison said, “Isn’t it incredible?” as Simon stared at the screen, mesmerized, watching Charlie, the fireman/stay-at-home dad from Michael’s pack, taking over the lead from the Kenyans, as the race was in its final stage in Central Park—it looked like the runners were near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then the angle switched to a close-up of Charlie, and in his expression Simon recognized that look of total euphoria and freedom. It was so familiar, he could’ve been watching himself.

Simon was so absorbed watching Charlie that he lost self-awareness for several seconds, maybe longer, and then he suddenly realized he had a much, much bigger problem.

He was turning into a werewolf.

S
omething rough and wet was touching Geri’s face. She woke up, startled, slapping her cheek.
What the hell?
Then Wonka jumped off of her, screeching, and Geri realized she’d fallen asleep on the couch.

“Jesus,” Geri said, trying to catch her breath and orient herself. She glanced at the window—it was dawn, Sunday morning. She’d been up most of the night, reading whatever she could find online about Diane Coles’s murder in Michigan and ruminating about how it could possibly be connected to the Olivia Becker disappearance. She was also obsessing about the murder in Washington Heights, frustrated that they hadn’t gotten a break yet. She hated unresolved cases, and now she had two of them to deal with. Ter-freakin’-rific.

From what Geri could tell, the police in Michigan hadn’t made much headway in the Coles case. Last Wednesday afternoon at
approximately two
P.M.
Diane Coles had returned home from shopping at a nearby drugstore. When she was exiting the car, she was shot and killed at close range. Ballistics had determined that the gun was a S&W.38. The police had no suspects in the shooting and no known motive. Her parents claimed she had been “distraught lately” and had “a lot of anxiety” perhaps over a recent breakup with a boyfriend in Manhattan. One article contained interviews with neighbors, saying the usual, about how shocked they were about the murder, how nothing bad ever happened in the neighborhood, and the detective involved in the investigation was quoted, basically saying that the cops had zip.

When Geri had been a patrol cop at the 34th Precinct, she’d had a mentor, Detective Antonio Munez. Antonio—now retired—was an old-timer, had been with the force since the seventies, and Geri had learned everything she knew about detective work from him. Maybe it was corny, but sometimes when she was working on a case she heard Antonio’s voice in her head, guiding her, and now she heard one of his favorite phrases:
No hay tal cosa como coincidencias
(“There are no such things as coincidences”). That advice had never seemed any more appropriate than in the Olivia Becker disappearance case. She was dating a shady guy, Michael Hartman, who was the alibi in three murders in New Jersey, and now her best friend was killed at close range, with no apparent motive? There had to be some connection somewhere.

Geri wasn’t sure what to do next. She could go to her CO, Dan, trying to persuade him to let her take over the investigation, but coincidences weren’t evidence, and she doubted Dan would let her have the case, especially given how much of a hard-ass he’d been about the Becker case. Since the disappearance was Detective Mangel’s case, she could let him in on what had happened to the woman he’d
questioned, but would Mangel take it seriously? Yeah, he’d look into it, talk to the Michigan police, but without any solid link to the Olivia Becker case it was doubtful he’d start requestioning witnesses. Mangel had struck Geri as a paper pusher. He had to be in his midfifties, probably looking at early retirement options. Why rock the boat? If Mangel did find a link to Becker and possibly to the New Jersey murders, it could be even worse because with a killer possibly crossing state lines, the Feds would get involved. At that point, Geri would be shut out of the case completely.

Willy and Wonka were meowing, Willy rubbing his head up against Geri’s leg as she sat on the toilet, peeing.

“Okay, guys, I’ll feed you, I’ll feed you,” Geri said. “Just chill out. Mommy’s got a lot on her mind this morning.”

They kept meowing until she went into the kitchen and put some Fancy Feast filet mignon–flavored cat food into their bowl.

“I helped you guys out, how about you give me some help now?” Geri said to the cats. “What do you guys think I should do? Do I hand this over to Mangel so he can sit on his fat sexist ass, or do I work on it myself?”

The cats ignored her, devouring their food, and then, with horror, Geri thought,
Oh, God, was I actually talking to my cats?
Maybe it was just lack of sleep, or maybe she was going crazy, losing her mind.

But she couldn’t deny that seeking advice from her cats and hearing herself out loud had solidified in her head what she had to do. She had to be uptown later in the morning, to meet about the Washington Heights case, but before then she was going to go downtown, hopefully to talk to Michael Hartman at his apartment in Tribeca. She had questioned him there before, when she was investigating the New Jersey murders. She considered calling first, to save time if he wasn’t there, but she preferred to have the element of surprise in her
investigations. When people were caught off guard they were more likely to slip up, sometimes leading to breaks in cases.

She cabbed it downtown, making it in good time early on a Sunday morning. Hartman lived in an industrial building that had been converted to co-ops, probably in the eighties or nineties when a lot of the gentrification in Tribeca had taken place. She remembered that Hartman had told her that he owned the entire building. How many millions was a building this size in Tribeca worth? Five, ten? His family used to own a brewery, so maybe that was where he’d gotten rich. Or, who knows, maybe he was a drug kingpin. There was definitely something off about the guy. Maybe he didn’t kill his girlfriend and her best friend to cover it up, but he was probably hiding something.

After pressing the
M. HARTMAN
button, Geri waited about a minute. It was possible he wasn’t home or was still sleeping—it was only just after nine after all. Or maybe he was home but just wasn’t letting her in. There was a camera on the intercom; it could be on and he was watching her. She definitely
felt
watched. She buzzed again, waited about a minute, then buzzed a third time and waited. She was about to buzz time number four when she heard the intercom go on.

“You’ve come to see me,” Hartman said.

Geri remembered that Michael had this weird way of talking, where he was very direct and straightforward. It was only one of the weird things about the guy.

“You remember me, huh?” Geri said, looking at the camera, uncomfortable that he could see her but she couldn’t see him. It made her feel like she was one step behind, not in control, and she hated that feeling.

The buzzer beeped and Geri entered the vestibule, where the elevator’s doors opened on their own for her. In the elevator, she
pressed 4, but the button didn’t light up, and then the doors closed very fast. She tried the button again, still no luck, and then tried the other buttons.

Muttering to herself, hoping she wasn’t stuck, she continued pressing buttons. Then, after maybe ten more seconds, the elevator started moving. At the fourth floor, when the doors opened, Michael was waiting. He was maybe ten feet away from the elevator with his hands at his sides. His gray, almost white hair was combed straight back and he was wearing the same red silk robe he’d been wearing the last time she’d interviewed him. Who did the guy think he was, Hugh Hefner?