What Comes Next (7 page)

She shivered, although she wasn’t cold; in fact, it was very hot in the room. For the first time she became aware that she was nearly naked. Once again, she shuddered through her entire body. She could not remember being undressed, nor could she remember being brought into the room. The only thing she recalled was the man’s fist coming at her like a bullet, and the sensation of being thrown into the back of the truck. It all confused her; she was unsure whether it had really occurred. For a second, she imagined she was dreaming, and that all she had to do was stay calm, and then she would wake up in her bed at home and she could go down to the kitchen and fix herself some coffee and a Pop-Tart and remind herself of all her plans to run away.

Jennifer waited. Beneath the hood, she squeezed her eyes shut and told herself
Wake up! Wake up!
But she knew this was a hopeless wish. She wasn’t nearly lucky enough to have it all dissolve into a dream.

All right, Jennifer,
she told herself.
Concentrate on one thing. Just one thing. Make one thing real. Then go from there.

She was suddenly terribly thirsty. She ran her tongue over her lips. They were dry cracked, and she could taste more blood. She pushed against her teeth with her tongue. Nothing loose. She crinkled her nose. No pain.
All right, now you know something useful: no broken nose, no fractured teeth. That’s good.

Jennifer could feel something near her stomach that itched. There was also an odd sensation on her arm that she could not place. These confused her more.

She knew she had to take two different inventories: one of her self, one of where she was. She had to try to make some sort of sense out of the darkness and come up with some kind of clarity. Where was she? What was happening to her?

But these simple tasks eluded her. And the more she insisted on control, the more elusive it seemed. The blackness inside the hood seemed like it was taking over within her, as if the hood did more than merely prevent her from seeing out; it prevented her from seeing
in
. She had the sense that her entire world was descending into her stomach and painting over her mind; all she could imagine was a fierce terror of nothingness. And then, as this despair swept over her, she understood a truly awful idea:
Jennifer, you’re still alive. Whatever it is that is happening to you, it’s not going to be anything you’ve ever known before or ever even imagined taking place. It’s not going to be quick. It’s not going to be easy. This is just the beginning of something.

She could feel herself spiraling down. A vortex. A whirlpool. A hole in the emptiness of the universe. Her legs shook and she was powerless to prevent the sobs from returning. She gave in to the fear, and her entire body was wracked with agonizing spasms right until the moment she heard the muffled sound of a door opening.

She bent to the sound. Someone was in the room with her.

She thought in that split second that being alone created the terror echoing within her. But in truth being alone was far better than knowing that she was not. Her back arced, her muscles tightened; if she could have seen herself, she would have imagined that her body reacted to the sound in the same way it would have to an electric current.

I have become an old man,
Adrian told himself as he stared in the mirror above his wife’s bureau. It was a small, wooden framed mirror and over the years she had used it to do little more than make a final check of her appearance before heading out on a Saturday evening. Women liked that last-second examination, making certain that things matched, blended, and complemented each other before they sallied forth. He was never that precise in how he’d appeared to the world. He affected a far more haphazard look—rumpled shirt, baggy pants, tie slightly askew—in keeping with his academic life.
I always looked like a caricature of a professor, because I
was
a professor. I was a man of science
. He reached up and touched the streaks of white-gray hair that fell from his scalp and rubbed his hand across the gray-flecked stubble on his chin. He ran a finger down a line creased in his flesh. Age had scarred him, he thought; age and all the experiences of life.

From behind he heard a familiar voice.

“You know what you saw.”

He looked into the mirror.

“Hello,
Possum,”
Adrian said, smiling. “You said that already. A few minutes ago.”

He stopped. Maybe it had been an hour. Two. How long had he been standing in the bedroom, surrounded by images and memories with a weapon in his hand?

He used his wife’s nickname, one that had been shared only with the closest members of the family. She had acquired it as a nine-year-old, when a crew of the slightly more than rodents had moved into the attic of the family’s summer home. She had insisted to her brothers, sisters, and parents that
any
attempt to oust the unwanted invaders would be met with all the retaliatory resources that a dedicated child could muster, from tears to tantrums. So, for that one summer, at least, her family had put up with the nocturnal scratching sounds of clawed feet racing through the eaves, undefined threats of disease, and general distaste for the beasts, who had the unsettling habit of staring intently at the family members from the shadows. The possum family, for its part, had not taken long to discover the many wondrous attractions of the kitchen, especially since the creatures instinctively seemed to understand the unique status that their nine-year-old protector had bestowed upon them.
Cassandra was like that,
Adrian thought.
A fierce defender.

“Adrian.
You know what you saw,
” she repeated herself, this time far more forcefully. Her voice had a familiar rhythmic insistence to it. When Cassie had wanted something done in all the years of their marriage, usually it had been expressed in tones more suited to a 1960s folk song.

He turned to the bed. Cassie was stretched out, languid, with a
come hither
look on her face. She was the most beautiful hallucination he could have imagined. She wore a loose-fitting cornflower blue shift with nothing underneath, and it seemed to him that a breeze pulled it invitingly tight to her body although there wasn’t a window open, nor even a hint of wind within the bedroom. Adrian could feel his pulse accelerate. The Cassie looking at him from her perch on the bed couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight, as she was at the beginning of their first year together. Her skin glowed with youth; each curve of her body—her slight breasts, narrow hips, and long legs—seemed like memories he could feel. She shook her dark mane of hair and frowned at him, her mouth turning down at the corners in a small way that he recognized; it meant that she was very serious, and that he needed to pay attention to each word. He had learned early in their life together the look that spoke to something more important.

“You look beautiful,” he said. “Do you remember when we went to the Cape in August and went skinny-dipping in the ocean that one night, and then couldn’t find our clothes in the dunes after the current knocked us down the beach?”

Cassandra shook her head. “Of course I remember. It was our first summer together. I remember everything. But that’s not why I’m here.
You know what you saw.”

Adrian wanted to run the tips of his fingers down her skin so that he could remind himself of every electric touch from their past. But he was afraid that if he reached out she would disappear. He did not fully understand his relationship with her hallucination, what the rules were. But he knew that he did not want her to leave.

“That’s not altogether true,” he replied slowly. “I’m not at all sure.”

“I know it isn’t exactly your field,” Cassie said. “Not precisely. You were never one of the forensic boys—you know, the guys who liked to deconstruct serial killers and terrorists and then entertain their classes with gory stories. You liked all those rats in cages and mazes and figuring out what they were going to do with the right stimuli. But you absolutely know enough about abnormal psychology to assess the case at hand.”

“It could have been anything. And when I called, the police told me—”

Cassie interrupted him. She pushed her head back, another familiar gesture where she looked for answers in the ceiling or the sky. This would happen when he was being obstinate. She had been an artist, and she had an artist’s appreciation of events:
Draw a line, make a stroke of color on a canvas, and it will all become clear.
She always followed this
look to the heavens
gesture with something pointed and demanding. It was a habit that he’d loved because she had always been so absolutely certain.

“I
don’t care
what they told you. She was there, on the side of the road, and then she was gone. It was a crime. It
had
to be. You witnessed it. By accident. Only you. So now you have a few stray pieces of a really difficult puzzle. It’s up to you. Put them together.”

Adrian hesitated.

“Will you help me? I’m sick. I mean,
Possum,
I’m really sick. I don’t know how much longer anything is going to work for me. Things are already sliding. Things are already coming unraveled. If I take this on—whatever
it
is—I don’t know that I can survive it…”

“You were going to shoot yourself a few minutes ago,” Cassie said briskly as if that explained everything. She raised her hand and gestured broadly toward the Ruger 9.

“I wanted to be with you. And with Tommy. I didn’t think it made any sense to wait any longer.”

“Except you saw the girl on the street and she disappeared and this is important.”

“I don’t even know who she is.”

“Whoever she is, she still deserves a chance to live. And you’re the only one who can give it to her.”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

“Pieces of a puzzle. Save her, Adrian.”

“I’m not a police detective.”

“But you can think like one, only better.”

“I’m old and I’m sick and I can’t think straight anymore.”

“You can still think straight enough. Just this last time. Then it will all be over.”

“I can’t do it alone.”

“You won’t be alone.”

“I could never save anyone. I couldn’t save you or Tommy or my brother or any of the people I really loved. How can I save someone I don’t even know?”

“Isn’t that the answer we all try to find?”

Cassie was smiling now. He knew that
she knew
that she had won the argument. She always won, because Adrian had discovered within the first few minutes of their years together that it gave him far more pleasure to agree with her than to fight with her. Adrian said, “You were so beautiful when we were young. I never could understand how someone as beautiful as you wanted to be with me.”

She laughed. “Women know,” she said. “It seems a mystery to men, but it isn’t to women. We
know
.”

Adrian hesitated. He thought for a moment that tears were welling up in his eyes, but he didn’t know what he had to cry about, other than everything.

“I’m so sorry, Cassie. I didn’t mean to get old.”

That sounded crazy. But it also made a curious sense to him.

She laughed. He closed his eyes for a moment to listen to the sound. It was like an orchestra reaching for symphonic perfection.

“I hate it that I’m all alone,” he said. “I hate it that you’re dead.”

“This will bring us closer.”

Adrian nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I think you are right.”

He looked over at the bureau. The prescription scripts from the neurologist were gathered in a pile. He had meant to throw them away. Instead, he picked them up.

“Maybe,” he said slowly, “some of these will buy me a little extra…”

He turned, but Cassie had vanished from the bed. Adrian sighed.
Get started,
he told himself.
There is so little time left.

7

She closed the door behind her and then stopped. She could feel a rush of excitement within her, and she wanted to savor it for a moment.

Linda generally arranged things in precise order, even her passions. For a woman with extravagant desires and exotic tastes, she was dedicated to routine and regimentation. She liked to plan her indulgences, so that every step of the way she knew exactly what to expect and how it would taste. Instead of dulling sensations, this quality heightened them. It was as if these two parts of her personality were in constant battle, tugging her in different directions. But she loved the tension that it created within her; it made her feel unique, and it made her into the truly extraordinary criminal she believed herself—and Michael—to be.

Linda imagined herself to be Faye Dunaway’s
Bonnie
to Michael’s Warren Beatty
Clyde.
She considered herself to be sensuous, poetic, and seductive. This wasn’t arrogance on her part as much as it was an honest appreciation of the way she looked and the effect she had on men.

Of course, she didn’t care for anyone who stared at her. She cared only for Michael.

She slowly let her eyes sweep over the basement room. Stark white walls. An old brown metal frame bed with a white sheet covering a dingy gray mattress. A portable camp toilet in the corner. Large overhead lights threw unrelenting brightness into every corner. The still, hot air smelled unpleasantly of disinfectant and fresh paint. Michael had done his usual good job at fixing everything up for the start of
Series #4
. She was always a little surprised by how handy he had become—his expertise was with the computers and Web operations that he had studied in college and graduate school. But he was also adept with an electric power drill and a hammer and nails. He was a regular jack-of-all-trades. Perhaps that was why she loved him as deeply as she did.

Linda believed the two of them were linked in a way that defined
special.

She paused and took a detective’s inventory. What could she see in the room that gave the basement any sort of recognizable identity? What might show up in the background of the webcast that indicated
anything
about where they were or who they might be?