The Final Act

by Joy Fielding

  “Maybe you should just leave it,” Neil advised, removing the picture from her trembling hands.

  “What else is in here?” Cindy asked, ignoring Neil’s warning, turning the wastepaper basket upside down, and watching as scrap pieces of paper, used tissues, pencil shavings, and a browning apple core tumbled toward the floor. “Garbage, garbage, garbage,” she muttered, her fingers loosening their grip on the white plastic container, allowing it to slip from her hand. She began pulling open the desk drawers, poking around inside them. There was nothing of consequence in the first drawer, and she was just about to close the second when her fingers located something at the very back. An envelope, she realized, pulling it out, and opening it, a small gasp escaping her lips.

  “What is it?”

  Cindy’s mouth opened, but no words emerged, as her fingers flipped through a succession of small color photographs, all of Julia, all in various stages of undress: Julia in a see-through lavender bra and thong set; Julia wearing only the bottom half of a black string bikini, her hands playfully covering obviously bare breasts; Julia in profile, the curve of one naked breast visible beneath the crook of her elbow, the top of her bare bottom rounding out of the frame; Julia wrapped provocatively in a bedsheet; Julia wearing high heels and a man’s unbuttoned shirt and crooked tie.

  “Why would she do this?” Cindy wondered out loud, showing the pictures to Neil before tucking them into the pocket of her khaki cotton pants. What was the matter with Julia? Had she no common sense whatsoever?

  Cindy rifled through a few more items, and was about to close the drawer when her eyes fell across a sheet of densely typed paper.

  The Dead Girl, she read.

  By Sean Banack.

  Cindy pulled the piece of paper from the drawer and carried it over to the bed, where she sank down, her lips moving silently across the page as she read.

  THE DEAD GIRL

  by Sean Banack

  CHAPTER ONE

  She stares up at him defiantly, despite the fact her hands and feet are bound behind her naked body and she knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that he is going to kill her. He should have taped her eyes shut as well as her mouth, he thinks; then he wouldn’t have to see the look of contempt he knows so well. But he wants her to see him. He wants her to know what’s coming, to see the knives and other medieval instruments of torture spread out across the floor, and understand what hell he has prepared for her. He lifts the smallest, yet sharpest of the knives into his hands, cradles it delicately between his fingers, fingers she claims are hopelessly inept.

  He draws a fine line down the taut flesh of her inner arm. Her eyes widen as she watches a thin red streak wind its way across the whiteness of her skin. Slowly he lifts a second knife into the air in a graceful arc, then plunges it into her side, careful to keep the blade a safe distance from her vital organs, making sure the thrust isn’t hard enough to kill her, because what would be the fun in that? Over so soon, so quick, before he’s had a chance to really enjoy himself, before she’s had a chance to fully suffer for her sins. And she must suffer. As he has suffered for so long.

  What are you doing? Let go of me, she’d yelled when he pulled up beside her, then bundled her into the trunk of his car. She, this spoiled child of privilege, who claimed nosebleeds anywhere north of Highway 401, is about to bleed to death in an abandoned shed just south of the King Sideroad, in the middle of bloody nowhere. Serves you right, bitch, he says, slicing at her legs before throwing her on her back, pushing the largest of the knives between her thighs.

  Green eyes widen in alarm as the knife slides higher, cuts deeper. Not laughing now, are you, bitch? Where’s all that defiance now? With his free hand he grabs another knife, slashes at her breasts. Her blood is everywhere: on her, on him, on the floor, on his clothes, in his eyes, beneath his fingernails. His faggot fingernails, he thinks, rejoicing as he plunges the knife deep inside her, then savagely rips the duct tape away from her mouth so that he can hear her final screams.

  “Oh, dear God,” Cindy cried, rocking back and forth.

  Neil extricated the paper from Cindy’s hands. “What is it?”

  “No, please no.”

  It was then she heard the noise from somewhere beside them. “What’s going on in here?” Paul asked from the doorway. “Mrs. Carver? What are you doing in here?”

  Cindy scrambled to her feet, lunged at the startled young man, naked except for the white towel wrapped around his waist. “Where’s my daughter? What have you done with her?”

  Paul took a step back, clutching the towel at his hips. “I don’t know. Honestly, I have no idea where she is.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I really think you should leave.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I speak to Sean.”

  “I already told you I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  “Is he with Julia?”

  “No way. Julia ripped his guts out, man. Look, I’m gonna have to call the police if you don’t clear out of here right now.”

  Neil looked up from the pages he was reading and yanked the phone from the small table beside Sean’s bed, thrust it toward Paul. “Call them,” he said.

  NINE

  A DARK green Jaguar was parked in Cindy’s driveway when she got home.

  “Oh no,” Cindy said, panicking as Neil pulled his black Nissan alongside it. “It’s my ex-husband. Why is he here?”

  “Maybe he brought Julia home,” Neil offered hopefully.

  Cindy bolted from the car and was halfway up the steps when her front door opened. Tom stood in the doorway to her house, one well-toned arm crossed over the other, a look of bemused impatience creasing his tanned face. He was dressed head to toe in beige linen, a color that complemented the recent blond streaks in his still shockingly full head of hair. His feet were bare inside brown tasseled loafers. As smugly handsome at forty-five as he’d been at twenty-five, Cindy thought, disappointed that middle-age hadn’t damaged him in any obvious way, that he hadn’t grown fat or bald, that his wrinkles actually added to his appeal. Elvis was sitting at his feet, as if he were used to having Tom there, Cindy groused silently, when behind him, something moved. A young woman, Cindy realized, relief pulsing through her veins. “Julia!” she cried out.

  A shape emerged from the inside shadows, took its place in the doorway, snaked a proprietary hand through Tom Carver’s arm. “Hello, Cindy,” the Cookie said, pushing the dog away with her feet. She was wearing a tight cream-colored jersey over tight cream-colored pants, which at first glance, made her seem nude. A most disconcerting thought, Cindy decided, thinking of the pictures of Julia in her pocket, and watching the Cookie lean her head on Tom’s shoulder, as if to say, “He’s mine now.”

  I get the point, Cindy said to herself. You don’t have to work so hard. Aloud she said, “Is Julia inside?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “We don’t know where Julia is,” the Cookie informed her. Then, noticing Neil standing in the driveway, “Who’s this?”

  Cindy spun around as Neil came up behind her. “This is Neil Macfarlane. My accountant,” she added, stumbling over the lie. “Neil, this is my ex-husband, Tom Carver, and the . . . Fiona, his current wife.” She stressed the word current, as if the condition were temporary.

  “I didn’t realize accountants made house calls,” Tom said slyly, extending his hand.

  “Special circumstances,” Neil said genially. Then quietly, to Cindy, “Would you like me to leave?”

  “No. Please stay. The police might want to ask you some more questions.”

  “The police? What’s going on here?” Tom stood back to let them enter.

  As if the house is still his, Cindy thought, feeling herself bristle as she sidestepped around her ex-husband’s young wife, Elvis licking at her legs. “Julia didn’t come home last night,” she reminded him, looking around for Heather. “Heather?”

  “Heather’s not here,” the Cookie said.

&nbs
p; “What do you mean, she’s not here? Who let you in?”

  Tom smiled sheepishly. “I have a key,” he said, having the grace to look at least moderately embarrassed. “Look, let’s not make this into a big deal, okay?”

  “What do you mean, you have a key?”

  “I said, let’s not make this. . .”

  “And I said, what do you mean, you have a key? I changed the locks seven years ago. What do you mean, you have a key?”

  “Julia thought I should have one.”

  “Julia gave you a key to the house?”

  “The key and the alarm code,” the Cookie said, possible payback for Cindy’s earlier use of the word current. “She thought her father and me should have a key in case she ever needed something or. . .”

  “Her father and I,” Cindy corrected impatiently. “And with all due respect, this really isn’t any of your business.”

  “It certainly is my business.”

  “Okay, okay,” Tom said, arms outstretched, as if trying to placate both women. He glanced over at Neil. Women, his eyes said, clearly enjoying the fuss, knowing it was about him.

  “I can’t believe you came into my house when I wasn’t here.”

  “Here’s your key.” Tom dropped the key into Cindy’s outstretched hand.

  “I don’t understand what you’re so worked up about,” the Cookie said. “We’re the ones who should be upset. We were halfway to the cottage when Irena called, and we had to come racing back.”

  “I thought you were in a meeting,” Cindy said to her ex-husband, pointedly ignoring his young wife. “Secretary’s still lying for you, I see.”

  Tom shrugged.

  (Scenes from a marriage: Cindy cleans up the kitchen after getting both children ready for bed. She wraps Tom’s dinner in plastic wrap and puts it in the fridge for him to eat when he gets home, then re-corks the bottle of wine. “When’s Daddy coming home?” Julia calls out from the top of the stairs.

  “Soon,” Cindy assures her.

  “He promised to read me a story,” Julia says an hour later, sitting up in her bed, stubbornly refusing to fall asleep.

  “I’ll read to you,” Cindy offers, but Julia turns from her, covering her face with her pillow, as if she senses her father’s absence is somehow her mother’s fault.

  Cindy retreats to her own room, thumbs through the latest issue of Vanity Fair, and watches TV until her eyes are so heavy with fatigue she can no longer focus. It’s ten o’clock. She reaches for the phone, her arm stopping in midair, falling to her side. Irena has already told her Tom is stuck in meetings and can’t be disturbed. At eleven o’clock, Cindy turns off the lights and gives in to sleep. At twenty minutes after midnight, she awakens to the sound of a key turning in the front door, and hears her husband’s guilty footsteps on the stairs.

  “Daddy!” she hears Julia cry with sleepy delight as he visits her room to kiss her good night.

  Cindy feigns sleep as he creeps into their room and takes off his clothes, crawling in beside her without washing up. Even though he has undoubtedly showered before coming home, she can smell another woman on his skin. She moves to the far side of the bed, hugs her knees to her chest till morning.)

  “Earth to Cindy.” A voice snapped at the silence.

  Cindy turned toward the grating sound.

  “My husband asked you a question,” the Cookie said.

  “You called the police?” Tom asked a second time.

  “Yes, I did. They should be here any minute.”

  “Julia’s going to be so pissed,” the Cookie said.

  “I don’t understand why you felt it necessary to involve the police.”

  “What exactly is it you don’t understand?” Cindy asked her ex-husband, checking her watch. “It’s almost one o’clock. Nobody has seen or heard from Julia since yesterday morning.”

  “She’s going to be so pissed.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “No,” Tom admitted. “But. . .”

  “But what?”

  “You don’t think it’s a little early to be sending in the cavalry?”

  “Did you know she broke up with her boyfriend?”

  “Yes, I knew that. So what? Kid’s a loser.”

  “A very angry loser,” Cindy said. “So angry he wrote a really scary story about a man who kidnaps his former girlfriend and tortures her to death.”

  Tom waved a dismissive hand in front of his face, as if swatting away a fly. “I think you’re overreacting.”

  “Really? Well, the police don’t think so. They’ve asked me for a recent photograph of Julia.” She patted the pocket of her khaki pants, tried not to see the pictures inside it.

  “I still don’t understand when exactly you spoke to the police.”

  “I’ll explain,” Neil said, motioning Tom and Fiona toward the living room. “You go find the photograph,” he directed Cindy.

  “And what exactly is your part in all this?” Tom was asking Neil as Cindy left the room, running up the stairs, Elvis at her heels.

  Cindy stood motionless outside Julia’s bedroom for several seconds, as if waiting to be invited in, Elvis’s tail slapping happily against the door. Her daughter wouldn’t like her snooping around in her room any more than Cindy had appreciated seeing Tom on the wrong side of her front door. How dare he come inside the house, make himself at home, bring that silly twit he married into her space, rub her nose in his new life—what was the matter with him? Did he think that just because he’d once lived here that gave him some kind of residual rights?

  I make the money. I make the decisions.

  Cindy took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. What exactly was she so angry about? The fact that Tom seemed so unconcerned about their daughter’s whereabouts, or the fact that he still looked so damned good, that despite the years and everything that had happened, he still had the power to make her go weak in the knees? “It’s not fair,” she muttered, turning around in helpless circles, trying to think where Julia might have stored her most recent head shots. Probably in the same place she keeps her address book, she thought, shaking her head, aware this was the second time this morning she’d invaded her daughter’s privacy.

  “She’s going to be so pissed,” she told the dog in the Cookie’s voice, as once more, she rifled through the drawers of Julia’s desk. Getting pretty good at this, Cindy thought, counting three boxes of unused stationery, at least thirty black pens, several scraps of paper with nameless phone numbers scribbled across them, four unused key chains, two empty picture frames, a leopard-print chiffon scarf, a dozen matchbooks, and three unopened packages of Juicy Fruit gum.

  No head shots.

  She opened the closet, slapped at the size-two clothing dangling precariously from the wooden hangers, again rummaging through the stacks of sweaters piled carelessly on the built-in shelves, and straightening the shoes lined up across the closet floor.

  No head shots.

  She ransacked each drawer of her daughter’s dresser, suppressing a shudder when she came across Julia’s collection of sexy push-up bras and thong panties. Doesn’t she have any normal underwear? Cindy wondered, recalling the days of her own youth, how she hadn’t even owned a bra when she married Tom. Her sister, Leigh, who was several cup sizes larger than Cindy, used to tease her about her lack of endowment. “My breasts might be small,” Cindy had countered, “but they’re perfect.”

  Now they’re just small, she thought dryly, closing the last of Julia’s dresser drawers, and looking out the front window in time to see a police cruiser pull up in front of the house.

  The police had arrived at Sean’s apartment within twenty minutes of his roommate’s call. They’d listened with interest as Paul apprised them of the situation, told them that he’d asked Cindy and Neil to leave repeatedly, and that they’d refused. Cindy, in turn, patiently explained that her daughter had recently broken up with her boyfriend, Paul’s roommate, and that she was now missing. She and N
eil had come by to talk to Sean, only to find Julia’s torn picture in his wastepaper basket and this alarmingly odious little story, she said, her voice cracking, her patience evaporating, as she thrust the offending piece of paper at the two police officers, and suggested they start combing the area immediately south of the King Sideroad for any abandoned shacks. “Hey, hey, hold on a moment,” they’d said, trying to slow her down.

  “Slow down,” Cindy repeated now, falling to her knees and peeking under her daughter’s bed, the dog’s nose, wet against her cheek. She saw an old electric keyboard and a new acoustic guitar, both covered in dust, which wasn’t surprising since Cindy couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Julia play either. She was about to give up in defeat, go downstairs and tell the police that Julia must have taken the head shots with her when she went to her audition, when she saw the large manila envelope peeking out from under the shaft of the guitar. “Perfectly logical place to keep them,” Cindy said, stretching to retrieve the envelope and opening it as the front doorbell rang. Elvis barked loudly in her ear, then ran from the room. “I’ll be right down,” she called over the dog’s repeated yapping.

  “Hello, Officers. Please come in,” she heard Tom say, as if this were still his house.

  Cindy pulled a handful of photographs out of the envelope, smiled sadly at her daughter’s beautiful face. She looks so radiant, Cindy thought, admiring the determination in her daughter’s eyes. As if nothing can stop her, as if nothing can get in her way. “Julia gives good attitude,” Tom had once remarked, and as much as Cindy hated to admit her ex-husband was right about anything, he was right about that. Julia stared back at her mother from the black-and-white glossy, her head tilted provocatively to one side, straight blond hair cascading toward her right shoulder, her skin flawless, with just the hint of a smile on her enviously full lips.