What Comes Next (40 page)

She guessed that the same could not be said for the Riggins household. She breathed in deeply and understood that it was soon to be her job to take Mary Riggins aside and say that until some concrete piece of evidence surfaced they were at a standstill. This was not a conversation she looked forward to having. Police are well versed in the ability to deliver bad news. It is something of an art, expressing the details of the overdose or the accident or the murder, giving out information yet not overwhelming the victim’s family with the capriciousness of life. The emotional content of these conversations was better left to priests and therapists. Still, it would fall to her to tell Mary Riggins that she was at a dead end, which probably meant that Jennifer, if she still lived, was also at a dead end.

It seemed unfair to her.

So many tragedies in life were preventable, Terri thought. But people are passive. They let things accumulate into disaster. She watched her own children. She wasn’t like that, she told herself. She had taken steps to avoid everything that could go wrong.

This was reassuring to think, although she knew it was only partially true.

We like to tell ourselves lies,
she admitted to herself.

She collected all the material and decided she would see Mary Riggins and Scott West that day. She would update them with nothing, and let them begin to see what Terri thought was the inevitable vision to come: Jennifer was gone.

She did not like to use the word
forever.
No policeman does. So she did not allow that word into the vocabulary of what she intended to say.

33

Jennifer was daydreaming about home before her father died, fantasizing about food and drink—what she wanted more than anything was a cold Diet Coke and a sandwich made with peanut butter, avocado, and sprouts—when she heard the sudden explosion of a distant door being slammed and voices rising in an argument. As when she’d heard the baby crying, and then the sounds of children playing, she craned her head toward the disembodied racket, trying to make out exactly what was being said, but spoken words were elusive in the torrents of noise, though the emotions were not. Someone was very angry.

Two someones,
she told herself. The man and the woman.
It had to be.

She stiffened, turning her head right and left, muscles tensed. She was only peripherally aware that she might be the cause of the argument. She listened and she heard high-pitched anger fading in and out of her ability to understand, and she felt herself clawing at every noise, trying to decipher what was happening.

She could make out obscenities:
Fuck you! Motherfucker! Cunt!
Each jagged-edged word sliced at her. She grasped at overheard phrases:
I told you so! Why would anyone listen to you! You think you know everything but you don’t!
But it was like leaping into the midst of a story, the ending uncertain and the beginning long disappeared.

She stayed frozen on the bed, alert, Mister Brown Fur in her arms. The pitch of the argument seemed to increase, then decrease, ratchet up, then down, until she abruptly heard the sound of a glass shattering.

Her mind’s eye pictured a tumbler being thrown across a room, smashing against a wall, pieces flying in all directions.

This was followed rapidly by a thudding sound, and then a near scream.

He hit her,
she thought.

Then she doubted that.
Maybe she hit him.

She grasped at any certainty that might penetrate the walls of her prison, but none arrived, except that whatever was happening outside her darkness was violent and intense. It was as if somewhere beyond her things were erupting, the earth shaking and the ceiling threatening to cave in. She barely realized it when she swung her legs over the bed and stood beside the nearest wall. She pushed her ear up against the board, but that seemed to make the noises fade farther away. She stepped in different directions, trying to gain some sort of purchase on the sounds, but like every other game of blind man’s bluff she’d played since she arrived in the room they remained outside her grasp.

Jennifer made calculations in her head.

A baby cries.

School yard sounds of play.

A vicious argument.

All this had to add up into something. All of it had to be parts of a portrait that would maybe tell her where she was and what might happen to her. Everything was a piece of an answer. She staggered about the room, to the limit of the chain, trying to find something in the air in front of her she could touch that would steer her into some sort of understanding.

She desperately wanted to lift the edge of the mask and look around, as if by being able to see she would be able to comprehend. But she was too scared. Every other time she had snuck a view—seeing the camera that relentlessly eyed her, seeing her clothes folded on a table, seeing the parameters of her cell—it had been a quick, surreptitious glance. Every other time, she had tried to conceal what she was doing so that the man and the woman wouldn’t know and wouldn’t punish her. But this time her desire was framed by the intensity of the argument that echoed somewhere right outside her reach. There was something unsettling, something deeply frightening about the fight. Another sound of something breaking filled the room—a chair? A table? Did someone smash dishes?

She reeled. All the fights she had once had with her mother seemed to encapsulate her. She tried to measure what those battles had meant. She could think of only one lesson:
After a fight, people are mean. They want to hurt. They want to punish.

She shuddered at the idea that whoever came through the door to her prison next would have nothing but pent-up rage, and she would be where it was delivered.

This thought made her retreat back to the bed, as if that was the only place she could be safe.

She cringed. Fear and uncertainty overcame her. She could feel tears forming and her breath came in sharp, small bursts, as if whatever the fight was about it involved her. She wanted to scream,
I’ve done nothing wrong! It’s not my fault! I’ve done everything you wanted!
even if these protests weren’t completely true.

She was enveloped by the darkness of her blindfold, but she couldn’t hide. She shrunk back, dreading the next sound, whether it would be the door or another obscenity or something else breaking.

And then she heard the gunshot.

Two second-semester juniors at the University of Georgia were lounging inside their room at the Tau Epsilon Phi house when the unmistakable sound of the gun being fired crashed through the speaker set. One student lay on a metal frame bed beneath an army recruiting poster urging readers to “Be All That You Can Be.” He was flipping through a copy of a magazine called
Sweet and Young,
while his roommate was seated in front of an Apple laptop computer at a scarred and battered brown oaken desk. “Jesus!” the first student said as he lurched up. “Did somebody shoot somebody?”

“Sure sounded like it.”

“Is Number Four okay?” the other demanded quickly.

“I’m watching” replied his roommate. “She seems okay.”

The first student was lanky, long-legged. He wore pressed jeans and a T-shirt that celebrated “Spring Break in Cancun.” He crossed the room rapidly.

“But scared?”

“Yeah. Scared. Like usual. But maybe more so.”

Both boy-men leaned forward, as if by moving closer to the screen they could put themselves into the small room where Number 4 was chained to the wall.

“What about the man and the woman? Any sign of them?”

“Not yet. Do you suppose one of them shot the other? Remember they had that big fuckin’ gun they were waving in Number Four’s face earlier.”

These were questions they didn’t answer, because they knew enough to wait. The two students were prelaw and business management, which made them mildly sensitive to the legal issues associated with what they were watching, but not so outraged that they did anything other than pay the money—as they had to numerous pay-for-entry porn sites—and pay attention, which they did religiously. They, like so many of their classmates, had been raised on video games and were accustomed to spending hours engaged with a computer screen and some unfolding interactive drama, such as Grand Theft Auto or Doom.

“Watch her. See if she hears anything else?”

The two roommates listened as carefully as Number 4. They were unaware that they mimicked her movements—craning their heads, bending toward sounds. From down a hallway in the fraternity house, someone started up thumping Christian rock music, which made the roommates curse in unison. Hearing what was happening in Number 4’s small world was critical, they both thought, without saying this out loud.

“It’s going to scare the piss out of her” one said. “She’ll head to the toilet.”

“Nah, it’ll be the bear. She’ll start talking to the bear again.”

On the screen, the camera angle changed to a close-up of Number 4’s face. They could see anxiety and tension in the set of her jaw, even with her eyes hidden. Each of the roommates imagined that Number 4’s skin was prickling with fear. Each of them wanted to reach out and stroke the small hairs on her arms. Their frat house dorm room seemed just as hot, just as stifling as Number 4’s cell. One of the students touched her on the screen.

“I think she’s fucked,” one said.

“Why?”

“If the man and the woman are really fighting, maybe it’s because they’ve got some sort of disagreement over the entire show. Maybe it’s the rape. Maybe the woman is jealous of the man getting it on with Number Four…”

They both glanced at the clock ticking in one corner of the screen.

“Did you put down our bet?” the roommate asked abruptly.

“Yeah. Twice. First time was far too quick. We lost. It was your fault. Just because you wouldn’t waste any time if Number Four was here.” He paused, and both frat boys grinned at the suggestion in his words. “Anyway, you had to know they would string it out. Makes good business sense. Now we’re locked into an hour tomorrow or the next day, I think.”

“Show me.”

The first student clicked on a couple of keys and the image of Number 4 in her room instantly compressed into a smaller screen. A single message played across the remaining page. It was in a Bodoni Bold Italic script. It said: “Welcome TEPSARETOPS. Your current wager is HOUR 57. There are 25 Hours remaining before your wager is in play. Your wager position is shared with 1,099 other subscribers. Total pool is currently above euro 500,000. Additional wager positions remain available. Wager again?”

Below the message were two boxes. YES and NO.

The student moved the cursor over to the YES box and turned to his roommate, who shook his head. “Nah. I think my card is close to maxed out. And I don’t want my folks asking questions. I told ‘em that this was an offshore poker site and they gave me a really long and exceedingly boring lecture and told me to quit making bets.”

“
They’ll probably follow up with something about a twelve-step program and wonder if you’re going to church on Sunday.
”

He shrugged, moved the cursor to NO, and clicked. Once again, Number 4 immediately filled their screen.

“
You know, this would be a lot cooler on a big LED flat screen.
”

“
No shit. Call your folks.
”

“
No way they’d spring for it. Not with my last semester’s grades.
”

“
So,
”
the first student said, as he leaned back,
“
what happens next?
”
He glanced over at a wall clock.
“
I’ve got that damn Uses and Abuses of the First Amendment seminar in half an hour. I hate missing anything.
”

When he said
“
missing
”
he wasn’t talking about the lecture.

“
You can always go and watch anything you missed in the catch-up window.
”

The student clicked another couple of keys and again relegated the real time image of Number 4 to a corner. As before, a Bodoni Bold Italic message appeared. This said: MENU and contained a number of smaller images. They each had a title like
“
Toilet Use
”
or
“
Number 4 eats
”
or
“
Interview #1.
”

He clicked out of the menu, back to the full screen.

“
Yeah, but I hate that. The fun is watching in real time.
”

He reached for a pile of textbooks.
“
Shit. I’ve got to go. If I miss another class, it will cost me a half-grade point.
”

“
Then go.
”

The student shoved books into a backpack and grabbed a tattered sweatshirt from a pile of laundry. But before exiting he leaned forward and kissed the image of Number 4 on the screen.
“
See you in a couple of hours, darlin’,
”
he said, adopting a fake southern accent. He actually hailed from a small town outside of Cleveland, Ohio.
“
Don’t do anything. At least, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. And don’t let anyone do anything to you. Not for twenty-five hours.
”

“
Yeah. Stay alive and stay a virgin while my asshole roommate goes to his class so he doesn’t flunk out and end up flipping burgers for a living.
”

They both laughed, although it wasn’t totally a joke.

“
Let me know if you see something. Text me right away.
”

“
You got it.
”