When She Was Bad: A Thriller (21 page)

“But Dr. Cogan says the cops can probably tell from our fingerprints and stuff who killed which victim. So I figured that before you decided whether to come along with me or stay behind, you needed to know that it was Lilith who killed the woman in the bathroom—that’s what she told me, anyway. She said she—”

“No, don’t!” cried Lily, covering her ears with her hands. “I don’t want to hear about the details.” It wasn’t guilt—she felt precious little of that. Some shock, maybe, and a mounting sense of panic as the full import of Lyssy’s revelation began to sink in. Still, she couldn’t help feeling it was like one of those mystery movies where the main character has an identical twin who does all this stuff the other twin gets blamed for.

Only an alter is closer than a twin, Dr. Irene was always saying—it’s a part of
you,
a part of yourself that had broken off when your psyche was shattered. Lily glanced over at the psychiatrist, who was tapping her long, russet-brown fingernails on the desk in time to whatever music she was listening to, and suddenly it occurred to her how much easier it would be if she could just give up and let Lilith take over—and how much better for all concerned.

The thought was kind of scary (for Lily, not being in consciousness was a little like what she imagined being dead would be like: the world goes on, but you’re not there) but also tempting. She pictured herself waking up somewhere in the future, the way she’d awakened this morning, or in the airplane the other day, and looking around in confusion at palm trees and a white-sand beach, straw huts and turquoise reefs; on the patio table next to her there’d be a colorful drink with a tiny umbrella in it.

Where am I?
she’d ask, and Lyssy would reply,
A safe place. We made it, Lily—it’s all over but the happily ever after.

Then Lyssy’s voice yanked Lily back from her daydream. “Me, I’m already looking at life without parole, minimum,” he was saying. “If I’m lucky. Lethal injection if I’m not. So basically, I’ve got nothing to lose. I don’t know what they’d give
you
for just
one
murder, but if you want to take a chance on coming with me, I’m pretty sure it won’t make any difference to your sentence.”

“Do you think we really have a chance of getting away?” Lily asked him.

“More of a chance than we have if we don’t do anything, if we just sit around here waiting for a knock on the door.”

“What I still don’t get is why you want me to come with you. You’d probably stand a better chance alone. And it’s not like
we
were ever lovers—that was Lilith, not me.”

“But I fell in love with
you
first,” he blurted.

She thought she’d misunderstood him. “You what?”

“Fell in love with
you
—with
this
you—the second I laid eyes on you in the arboretum.”

“But—but
why
?”

“I don’t think love
has
any whys,” Lyssy told her. “It just—” He broke off, cupped a hand to his ear. “Hear that?”

Footsteps on the front porch, then a clanking sound.

“It’s all right,” said Dr. Cogan, who had taken off her earphones when she saw they were listening for something. “It’s just the mailman.”

The footsteps receded. “We’re almost done here,” Lyssy told the doctor. “Would you mind…?” He waited until she’d donned the headphones again, then turned back to Lily. “The sooner we get going, the better our chances.”

“But we can’t just drive away and leave Dr. Irene—she’ll call the police the second we’re gone.”

“Does that mean you’ve decided to come with me?” Lyssy tried to keep his voice casual, though his heart was in his throat.

“You said it yourself—what do I have to lose? But what about Dr. Irene?”

“Oh, I can handle that,” said Lyssy happily.

9

Driving south in the red GMC pickup, Pender didn’t even try to pretend he hadn’t crossed the line. Aiding and abetting, obstruction of justice, possession of a stolen vehicle—he’d broken enough state and federal laws to put him away for at least a couple years.

Of course, he could still put it all to rights with one call to the Shasta County sheriff. But in this new, topsy-turvy world Pender found himself in, he knew that if he did the right thing, dropped a dime on Mama Rose, he’d be ashamed of himself for the rest of his life. He knew his life had been in her hands back there. She could have killed him easily enough—
should
have killed him, from a strictly pragmatic point of view: it was the only option that would have guaranteed her safety. Instead, by trusting him, she had put her life in his hands—that had to count for
something.

Meanwhile, he’d done all he could for Mick—or rather, Mick’s wife, whom he’d never met. At least this way,
all
the widows would get to bury their husbands, was Pender’s thinking. And he’d get another shot at rectifying the worst mistake of his career—not finishing off Maxwell when he had the chance.

The late morning sun glinted off the hood of the pickup. Pender flipped the sun visor down and found a pair of
Men in Black
-looking shades clipped behind it. The fit was a little tight around the ears. Carson must have had a much narrower head, thought Pender—but then, who didn’t? He tilted the rearview mirror to catch a glimpse of his three-quarter profile. Pretty sharp for a fat old bald man, he told himself.

And there was no denying that it felt awfully exhilarating to be the Lone Ranger at long, long last. No Bureau-cracy to hem him in, no higher-ups to thwart him, and only one imperative to follow: find Ulysses Maxwell and take the sonofabitch
down.

10

“Dr. Irene?”

Irene took off the headphones, paused Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” in the middle of the pizzicato winter ice storm. “Yes, dear?”

“I’ve made up my mind—I’m going with Lyssy.”

“Are you absolutely sure that’s what you want to do?”

“Um,
excuse
me? Isn’t that what ‘I made up my mind’ usually means?” said Lily, her voice dripping with adolescent sarcasm. In other circumstances, thought Irene, that would have been a healthy sign—in our culture, it was one of the primary tools used by teenagers to effect the inevitable separation from the parent. “Only there’s something you have to do for me first,” Lily added.

“What’s that?”

“I want you to put me under again and bring Lilith back instead.”

“What?”
Lyssy yelped. He looked as surprised as Irene felt—obviously this was something they hadn’t discussed beforehand.

“It’s the best thing,” Lily explained to him. “She’ll be a lot more use than I would—and I couldn’t stand it if we got captured again. And maybe Dr. Irene could put in some kind of posthypnotic suggestion, so if we made it to someplace safe…” In her mind’s eye she saw the beach again, the white sand and the palm trees. “…if you still wanted to, you could, you know, bring me back like?”

Lyssy tried to picture how that scenario might play itself out. It sounded like the rescue fantasy of all rescue fantasies, only for real. And of course he did miss Lilith: the memory of their lovemaking was never far from his thoughts. But when he looked over at Dr. Cogan, she was shaking her head.

“Absolutely not. Even if I thought it could work, which is far from likely, reinforcing an alter identity at the expense of the original personality could have far-reaching, potentially disastrous consequences for the system. And it’s unnecessary besides—remember what I’ve been telling you all these years: Lilith is not a separate magical being, Lily—she’s part of you. There’s nothing Lilith is capable of that you’re not: when you’ve finally internalized that, you’ll have come a long way toward integrating.”

Then Irene stood up—she was still wearing Frank’s pajamas—came around from behind the desk, dragged the side chair over to the couch again. “Speaking of alters, there’s one crucial point neither of you seem to have taken into consideration,” she said, sitting opposite the two seated on the couch, her gaze traveling from one to the other, finally resting on Lyssy. “What if Max or Kinch comes back?”

It should have been the clincher; instead, Lyssy grinned.

“What’s so funny?” asked Irene.

“Max already tried,” said Lyssy. “I kicked his butt right back to the dark place.” He put his hand on Lily’s knee, gave it an encouraging squeeze. “What do you say, kiddo? You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said. “C’mon, let’s get this show on the road.”

1

A Ferris wheel turned slowly against the hazy Santa Cruz sky. An old-fashioned wooden roller coaster roared and rattled overhead, trailing shrieks and laughter. On the carousel, painted horses and other, more fantastical creatures bobbed to the cheerful piping of a calliope. The familiar scent of popcorn, cotton candy, and corn dogs packed a Proustian wallop, sending Pender back in time to the county fairs of his boyhood in upstate New York.

After wiping the cab clean of fingerprints, he abandoned the red pickup in a metered space in front of the Carousel Motel, across the street from the Boardwalk, then strolled casually back to the weedy lot behind the bowling alley where he’d left the Barracuda only—good Lord, was it only yesterday afternoon? It seemed like months had gone by—Pender had himself half-convinced that when he got there he’d find the car missing or up on blocks, stripped.

But the ’Cuda was intact, only a thin film of dust marring the gleam of the hand-polished black finish. With a turn of the key and a little babying of the accelerator, the engine rumbled to life, setting the dust motes on the hood vibrating aimlessly like the little plastic players in one of those old electrostatic football games.

From Santa Cruz, it was a relatively straight shot down Highway 1 to Pacific Grove. Driving at a sedate ten miles over the given speed limit, with the dashboard radio tuned to a Salinas oldies station, Pender made it in just under fifty minutes. Twice during the drive he tried to call Irene; twice he reached her voice mail. Detouring past her two-story cream and tan board-and-batten house, he saw that her driveway was empty. Since she rarely garaged her new beige Infiniti (central coast homes were built for the most part without basements or attics, so storage space was always at a premium), he assumed she was out and about.

Just as well, he told himself, driving another three blocks to his cottage—he and his clothes were decidedly gamy by now. He took a quick shower, ran an electric razor over his jowls, and changed into plaid Bermuda shorts and a chocolate-brown Hawaiian shirt patterned with green palm trees and a yellow sunburst, which actually caused certain aesthetically sensitive souls to wince when they first saw it. Black socks and logan green Hush Puppies completed the outfit. He tried Irene’s phone again, got her voice mail again. Made himself a Pender-size sandwich of ham and Swiss on rye for supper. Redial; voice mail. Washed it down with a pony bottle of Rolling Rock. Redial; voice mail.

Man, I hope she hasn’t left town, thought Pender. No doubt the BOLOs had been updated by now—cops in three states would Be On the Look-Out for the red Caddy. They’d have choppers out, dogs, the whole caboodle—and lord knows he wished them luck. But Maxwell had eluded the authorities successfully before. He had a talent for it that bordered on genius, and more than his share of luck. If he made it to ground with all that cash, there was no telling how long he could evade capture.

That’s where Irene Cogan came in. She was Pender’s ace in the hole. Between the two of them, they knew more about Maxwell and Lily than anyone else alive—their histories, habits, and psychological profiles, their likes and needs, their dislikes and aversions—so it stood to reason they had a better chance of predicting the direction and object of their flight.

Another twenty minutes went by, then thirty. The kitchen phone rang; Pender snatched it off the hook. But it was only Marti Reynolds from
The People’s Posse
show. She was hoping that in light of recent developments Pender wouldn’t mind doing a supplementary interview to discuss the latest murders. He told her he was kind of busy at the moment, asked her to call him back on Monday.

“Of course,” she said. “By the way, do you have any other numbers for Dr. Cogan? I’ve been trying to reach her all afternoon, but I keep getting her voice mail.”

That makes two of us, sister, thought Pender. “No, sorry. If I do see her, I’ll tell her you called.”

It’s probably nothing, he told himself, pacing the tiny kitchen. Mountain out of a molehill. She’s out shopping, or jogging down by the rec trail. Or maybe she’s with a patient or taking a nap—you just assumed the car wasn’t in the garage.

But
assumed
was a dirty word to a graduate of the FBI Academy, retired or not. He grabbed his madras sport coat and a powder-blue Pebble Beach golf cap on the way out the door, and walked the three blocks to Irene’s place.

Cogan’s garage jutted out from the corner of the house, leaving only fifteen feet of driveway between the garage door and the street—a common enough arrangement in space-starved Pacific Grove. Tall as he was, Pender still had to rise up on tiptoe to peek through one of the narrow, horizontal windows set high in the garage door. At first he saw only his reflection. Cupping his hand over his eyes to block the glare, he pressed his nose against the cold glass. The garage was dark, but not so dark he couldn’t make out the outlines of the car inside.

Now, in his day, Pender had seen some truly awful sights. Mutilated corpses, severed heads stacked like cannonballs, that sort of thing. This was only a car in a garage. Nothing world-shattering about that—other than the fact that it wasn’t Irene Cogan’s new Infiniti, it was Mick MacAlister’s Cadillac.

He tried the handle of the garage door: locked. He tried Irene’s front door: ditto. Out of habit, he started to reach for his wallet—in the old days Pender had always kept a little jimmy in there for occasions such as this. But in those days, he’d also packed a badge—carrying one around without the other was a misdemeanor in all fifty states.

A narrow cement walk led around the side of the garage to Irene’s office in back. The office door was locked, and the kitchen curtains drawn, but the horizontal sliding window that ventilated the downstairs half-bath was wide open. Irene often kept it open—not only was it six feet above ground, and scarcely large enough to admit a full-grown adult, but if memory served, there had been a fixed screen there as well.

There was no screen now, though, and lying a few feet away, overturned in the flower bed bordering Irene’s back fence, was a sturdy plastic recycling bin Maxwell could easily have used as a stepstool.
He came in through the bathroom window,
chimed in that irrepressible, and often annoying, little jukebox in Pender’s head.

Okay, this is the part where the retired old FBI guy calls the cops, he thought. You tell the nice policemen everything there is to tell, then you go home, pop a cold one, put your feet up on the hassock, and watch the ball game.

Because this is no longer your business, old man. From here on in, all you can do is screw up somebody else’s crime scene. Or if Maxwell’s still inside, get somebody killed.

Then he remembered where he was: The Last Home Town. Crime rate slightly lower than Vatican City. This would be the most exciting thing that had happened in Pacific Grove since Princess Topaz’s dragon boat had nearly sunk a few years ago during the annual Feast of Lanterns pageant. One call to 911 and the locals would be swarming the scene, sirens screaming and roof lights blazing. And if Maxwell
was
inside—whichever version of him was currently playing in the multiplex of his mind—and it
was
a hostage situation….

Pender found himself picturing Irene wearing the filmy negligee she’d had on Monday night. Only now, in his mind’s eye, he saw Maxwell standing behind her holding a knife to her throat. Her eyes were pleading for Pender to
do
something—anything.

Ah, fuck it, thought Pender, drawing the hickory-handled Colt from the flap pocket of his sport jacket. In for a dime, in for a dollar, he told himself, brushing off the muffin and Danish crumbs and jacking a round into the firing chamber before returning the gun to his pocket.

2

Perched on a wide flat boulder jutting out over the creek bank, bathed in the emerald light of the redwood forest, and serenaded by the babbling creek, Lyssy watched a dragonfly skimming lightly over the rippling water, its wings transparent and shimmering.

Lily joined him a few minutes later, wearing a Stanford sweatshirt—a red hoodie—over a dark-brown, V-neck T-shirt and a pair of Guess? jeans she’d borrowed from Dr. Irene’s closet. Hours earlier, when they’d first arrived at her family’s rustic retreat deep in the Lucia Mountains south of Big Sur, she’d hung a string bag bulging with items liberated from Dr. Irene’s refrigerator—bottles of juice, sparkling Italian soda, a quart of 1 percent milk, and a pint of half-and-half—into the clear, cold running water from an eyebolt drilled into the underside of the rock. Now, kneeling and leaning out over the edge of the jutting boulder, she double-checked to be sure the bag was still there, still securely fastened. “Mother Nature’s fridge, Grandma always used to call it.”

“Cool,” punned Lyssy, who was now wearing a faded orange S.F. Giants T-shirt over Dr. Al’s button-fly 501s. The two had spent the first part of the afternoon unloading the car, sweeping out the cabin, putting fresh sheets on the bed, and hauling firewood from the shed—all the chores she and her grandmother used to take care of while Grandpa fished for their supper. (“Only the very rich or the very poor can afford to live this simply,” he used to tell Lily.)

When the chores had been completed, Lily had selected a stout walking stick from her grandfather’s collection for Lyssy to use, and they’d spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the five-hundred-acre parcel known as La Guarida: the narrow canyon, the slow-running Little Bear Creek, the millennium-old redwoods.

“So what do you think of our little hideaway?” Lily asked him, leaning back on her elbows—
La Guarida
meant den or hideout in Spanish.

“I am
so
absolutely, I don’t know, knocked out.” Lyssy gazed about him in wonderment. “All these years, I never knew, I never dreamed—It’s so rich and full and busy, it’s like there’s all these worlds, all these
realms.
There’s a realm down there, with the fish and the insects”—the creek—“and another realm up there”—the redwood canopy—“with the birds. And we’re in the middle realm with the deer and the bushes and the flowers, and it’s all so full of, of life, it makes the arboretum look like a parking lot or something.”

His eyes had all the colors of the forest in them, even the golden glint of the sun peeking through the redwood canopy. Suddenly Lily experienced a funny, melting feeling inside, and had to look away. Spotting a white-barked twig the size and shape of a slightly warped pencil on the boulder, she tossed it into the water, just to watch it float downstream.

“You want to know what really bugs me about all this, though?”

“Sure.” She followed the twig with her eyes as it began its downstream journey.

“The timing.” The twig narrowly dodged a mean eddy, took a ducking but bobbed up again. “The stupid darn timing. It’s like, like—Did you ever see that movie
Time Bandits
?”

“The one with the English kid and the midgets?” Lily asked him.

“Right. And there’s this scene, this lovey-dovey couple in oldtimey clothes is standing on the deck of a big ocean liner holding hands. And you can tell how happy they are, how they’re thinking about how much they love each other, and how they’re going to spend the rest of their lives together. Then you see this life preserver hanging from the side of the ship, and then the camera gets closer so you can read the name of the ship on the life preserver: it says
HMS Titanic
—they’re on the
Titanic.”

Lily couldn’t think of anything to say. The twig had gotten itself hung up on an exposed root sticking out from the stream bank. She held her breath, watching it fight its way clear of the root, then shoot downstream and disappear around the last bend, bound for the ocean.

“Made it!” Lyssy exulted.

Somewhat startled to realize that their thoughts had been running in harness, that without saying anything, they’d both been rooting for the little twig, Lily turned to Lyssy, her dark eyes searching for reassurance. “Did you ever think maybe they made it, too?” she said.

“Who?”

“Those two on the
Titanic.
Maybe they made it to a lifeboat and survived—the movie never said they didn’t.”

Their eyes met. Lyssy reached up to touch Lily’s hair, his fingers sifting gently through its dark silky heaviness. Lily noticed that funny melting feeling again; she wondered if he’d touched Lilith’s hair like that. “Pretend I’m her,” she whispered, over the sound of the rushing water.

“Who?”

“Lilith—I want to pretend I’m Lilith.”

“But I already told you, I loved you first.”

“Yeah, but you
made
love to her. And she wasn’t afraid, and she didn’t freeze up, she didn’t see…”
An impossibly swollen, purple-headed penis forcing itself into her mouth, choking her; a flashbulb exploding into white glare.
“Tell me about her. Tell me everything—what she was like, how she talked, how she moved, what she said, how she made love.”

A fellow with some experience in these matters might have been more circumspect, but Lyssy took her at her word. He spoke uninterrupted for a good ten, fifteen minutes, for there was little about Lilith he hadn’t hungrily memorized. When he was through, she leaned in close and whispered, “Kiss me. Kiss me like you kissed her.”

His mouth was soft, softer than she’d imagined a man’s mouth could be. And welcoming—instead of thrusting his tongue into her mouth, the sweet, gentle urgency of his kiss drew her tongue into his mouth. And here came that funny melting feeling, not so funny anymore. She felt herself tensing around it, her panic building. She broke off the kiss to whisper in his ear. “Talk to me,” she said. “Talk to me like you were talking to her.”

Her hair was disarranged; a strand had fallen damply across her eyes. “There was a little girl,” Lyssy began, pushing it back gently, “who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.” He kissed her on the forehead, then again, softly, on each eye. “And when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was—”