What Comes Next (27 page)

Terri was momentarily speechless.

“I suppose it was naive of me to assume the police would do anything,” Adrian continued. Terri looked at him closely as he spoke. She could not understand how one second the old professor would seem completely centered, decisive, and clear and then the next as if he’d been blown into some other place by a wind she could not see or feel or hear.

“I think I will go.”

“Wait,” she said. “Go where?”

“Well, I have not often spoken with sex offenders—at least not that I was aware of, because you never really know everything about the people you come into contact with on a day-to-day basis—but I think this fellow is a good place for me to begin.”

“No,” Terri said. “You will be obstructing my investigation.”

Adrian shook his head and grinned wryly. “Really? I don’t think so. But you don’t seem to want my assistance, detective, so I should just make my own path, so to speak.”

Terri shot out her hand and seized Adrian’s forearm. This wasn’t done in the tough-cop strong-arm fashion as much as it was just to stop him from leaving.

“Wait,” she said. “I think we need to understand each other better. You know I have a job and—”

“I have an interest. I am involved in all this, regardless of what you might say. I’m not at all sure that your job trumps my involvement.”

Terri sighed. There is a perception a good policeman gets about people that tells them just exactly how much of a problem or a help someone will be. Adrian, she thought, gave every indication of being some of both.

This was typical. Her fault for living and working in an academic community where everyone seemed to think they knew each other’s business better than anyone else.

“Professor, let’s try to do this right,” she said. She understood that she was cracking open a door that perhaps she shouldn’t, and one that was better left slammed shut, but at the moment she didn’t see an alternative. She did not want this half-crazed ex—college professor trampling on her case—if there was a case—willy-nilly. She thought,
Better to indulge him with a dose of reality and be done with it.

In her experience, thanks to popular culture, people unfortunately romanticized police work. When they got a taste of what it actually entailed—all the boring paperwork and sturdy, steady assessments of details and facts—it generally scared them off and they eagerly went back to whatever it was they were doing beforehand.

For a moment, she glanced at the collection of documents on her desk. What she wanted to do was to call the Boston bus station police and obtain the security tapes for the night Jennifer disappeared. She sighed inwardly. That would have to wait a couple of hours.

“All right, professor,” she said. “I will go ask some questions, and you can come with me. But after that, I want you to restrict yourself to maybe calling me on the phone with ideas before you come stomping in here. And no more of this investigating on your own. I don’t want you following people. I don’t want you questioning people. I don’t want you pursuing this at all. You have to promise me that.”

Adrian smiled. He wished that Cassie or Brian were there to hear the detective make this modest concession. They were not. But he realized maybe they didn’t need to hear things to understand them.

“I think,” he said calmly, “that would make some sense.”

It wasn’t really a promise he was making but it seemed to satisfy the detective. He also liked using the word
sense.
He did not believe he would be able to make sense of things for too much longer, but while he still could, even if only a little, he was determined to do so.

“Look,” Terri said. “Keep your mouth shut, unless I ask you something directly. You’re just here to observe. I’ll do all the talking.”

She glanced over at the old man in the seat beside her. He was nodding in agreement but she did not expect that he would follow her rules. She eyed the house with the small beige car parked outside. The evening dark made each shadow wider. The few inside lights fought against the falling night. There was a metallic gray television glow coming from one room, and she could see a form moving behind a thin curtain that blocked off the living room window.

“All right, professor,” she said crisply. “This is detective work at its simplest. No good-looking actor with psychic abilities in charge of the case. I ask questions. He answers. He probably tells me some truths and tells me some lies. Enough of each to keep himself out of trouble. Pay attention.”

“We’re just going to knock on the door?” Adrian asked.

“Yes.”

“We can do that?”

“Yes. Convicted offender. His probation officer has already cleared us inside. There’s nothing Wolfe can do about this without getting himself into trouble. And trust me, professor, what he doesn’t want is the sort of trouble I can make for him.”

Adrian nodded. He looked around, expecting Brian to be close. Usually whenever there was something even modestly legal, Brian showed up, or his voice echoed in Adrian’s ear with lawyerly advice. He wondered whether Brian would have been on the side of the detective or whether his civil libertarian views would have sided with the sex offender.

“Let’s go,” Terri said. “Element of surprise and all that. Stay right behind me.”

She pushed open her car door and quickly walked through the darkness. She was aware that Adrian was struggling to stay on her heels. She stopped at the front door and pounded with a closed fist.

“Police! Open up!”

Adrian could hear shuffling sounds coming from behind the door. In a few seconds it swung open and a woman perhaps a dozen years older than he peered through the darkness at the detective and her companion. She was overweight, with uncombed gray hair that seemed wiry and explosive in spots and thin in others. She wore a pair of thick eyeglasses, just as her son did.

“What is it?” the woman asked, and then, without waiting for an answer, said, “I want to watch my shows. Why can’t you leave us alone?”

Terri pushed directly past her into the small mudroom entranceway. “Where’s Mark?” she demanded.

“He’s inside.”

“I need to talk with him.”

Terri gestured for Adrian to accompany her as she stepped forcefully into the small living room.

There was a slight musty smell, as if windows were rarely opened, but the room itself was neat and tidy. Hand-crocheted throws adorned each piece of worn and threadbare furniture. In contrast, there was a large-screen high definition television standing on a Swedish-design stand dominating one half of the room, with two yard-sale reclining chairs situated directly in front. The sound was low but she was watching a rerun of
Seinfeld.
Adrian spotted a large soft bag stuffed with yarn and knitting needles by one of the chairs. There were some framed pictures on one wall; Adrian could make out a steady progression of life—a couple with a single child, going through the years from childhood to the present. Mother-father-child, mother-father-child, mother-father-child until around age nine, when the father disappeared from the pictures. Adrian wondered whether this was death or divorce. Regardless, it all seemed completely normal and routine, unremarkable in every way except one. For some reason, completely concealed in the ordinariness of the house, the only child had become a sex offender.

He thought there was far more mystery in the room than there were answers. He wondered whether Detective Collins saw the same. She seemed forceful, demanding, and her stiff-backed requests were designed to make an impression, he decided, rather than acquire one.

Behind them, the old woman lurched off in pursuit of her son. On the screen, Kramer and Elaine were enthusiastically trying to persuade Jerry to do something he was reluctant to do. Knitting needles were on the recliner, where the woman had put them down. He could smell something cooking but Adrian was unsure what it was.

“Keep alert,” Terri whispered.

She turned and saw Mark Wolfe standing in the passageway that led back to a small dining area and kitchen.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” was the first thing he said.

The second thing he said was, “Who’s that?” as he pointed at Adrian.

24

They had made her exercise before eating a meal. The woman had entered the room and gruffly ordered her off the bed and onto the floor. She was told to perform a series of jumping jacks followed by sit-ups and stomach crunches and ending by running in place—all a little like gym class from elementary school, except there was no counting out loud.

She could feel sweat dripping off her forehead and she was breathing hard at the end, not understanding why they had ordered the workout but realizing that it probably did her some good. Jennifer could not imagine why they wanted to do
anything
that might improve her condition, but she was willing to take whatever good came with the bad. In fact, after the woman said, “That’s enough for now,” in a moment of defiance Jennifer had reached down and touched her toes five times in quick succession, hoping that the stretching would help her. The woman had spoken sharply, “I said,
that’s enough!
” Jennifer had wordlessly climbed back onto the bed, neck chain rattling slightly, and been rewarded with dinner.

Jennifer was finishing her meal—a cold bowl of processed spaghetti with greasy meatballs delivered from a can—and gulping down her bottle of water, all the time aware that the woman was in the room watching her silently and waiting. There had been no further conversation as she ate—no threats, no demands—and nothing had changed in her situation, as best as Jennifer could tell. She remained clothed only in her skimpy underwear and blindfolded, restricted by the dog collar and chain around her neck. She had grown accustomed to moving a few feet from the bed to the camp toilet, which someone must have emptied while she slept. She was grateful. A powerful stench of disinfectant overcame any odor that the food might have carried.

Under most circumstances, she would have turned up her nose and complained and thrust aside the disgusting food offering. But the Jennifer who would have done that belonged to some prior life that no longer seemed to exist. It was a fantasy Jennifer, a remembered Jennifer, who’d had a cancer-dead father and a whiny mother and a perverted soon-to-be stepfather, a dull suburban house, and a small room where she hid out alone with her books and computer and stuffed animals and dreamed of a different, more exciting life. That Jennifer went to a boring school where she didn’t have any friends. That Jennifer hated just about everything in her daily existence. But that Jennifer had disappeared. Maybe that Jennifer had once lived, but no more. The new Jennifer, the imprisoned Jennifer, recognized she needed to cling to life—if
they
told her to exercise, she was going to exercise. Whatever food was offered, she was going to eat no matter what it tasted like.

She licked her bowl clean, trying to steal every bit of nourishment and protein, anything that might give her strength.

She stopped when she heard the door open.

There was a slight rustling sound as the woman reached down and took away the food tray and moved toward the door. Jennifer’s head swiveled in the direction of the noise and she waited for some exchange of words.

She heard whispers. She could not make out what was said.

She heard a
sloshing
noise. She tried to picture in her head what it could be. It was like a wave approaching.

She could sense someone crossing the room. Jennifer did not move, but she felt the closeness of another’s presence, and she sniffed the air and picked up the scent of soap.

“All right, Number Four, you need to clean yourself.”

Jennifer gasped.

It was the man’s voice, not the woman’s.

He gave orders in a cold, flat monotone.

“Two feet from the edge of the bed is a bucket of water. Here is a towel and a washcloth. Here is a bar of soap. Stand next to the bucket. Give yourself a bath. Do not attempt to remove your blindfold. I will be close by.”

Jennifer nodded. Had she been older—a Peace Corps type, or someone with military training, even an ex—Girl Scout or an Outward Bound or NOLS graduate—she would have known exactly how to give herself a thorough cleaning with only a bar of soap and a small amount of water. But the few camping trips she’d taken with her father before he died had featured locations with baths and showers or a river or pond to dive into. This was something different. She recognized that it was about precision.

She carefully swung her feet over the bed. She reached out with her toe and located the bucket. She bent down and felt the water. Lukewarm. She shivered.

“Remove your clothes.”

Jennifer froze.

She felt a rush of heat pass through her. It wasn’t embarrassment precisely. It was more humiliation.

“No, I—” she started.

“I did not give you permission to speak, Number Four,” the man said.

She could feel him come closer. She imagined he had cocked his fist and that she was inches away from being beaten. Or worse.

Electric confusion riveted her. Inhibitions that she should no longer have had, desires to maintain some sense of herself, doubts about where she was and what was expected of her, and the constant question
How do I stay alive?
flooded through her.

“The water is getting cold,” the man said.

She had never showed herself to a boy or a man.

She could feel her face flush, her skin redden with embarrassment.

She did not want to be naked—even if she had already been close to it, and knew she probably had been watched as she used the toilet. But there was something about taking off the two flimsy items of clothing remaining to her that frightened her beyond embarrassment. She worried that once she removed them she wouldn’t be able to find them or the man would take them away, leaving her totally exposed.

Like a baby,
she thought.

Then, in the same instant, she realized that she had no choice. The man had been specific.

He underscored this by growling, “We’re all waiting, Number Four.”