by E. G. Scott
Specialists were called. A research doctor from the university consulted on my case and was visibly excited by the rarity of my condition. Seeing my mother’s reaction triggered a rare anxiety disorder called catalepsy, a name that sounded imagined by a child. When an attack comes on, the rare sufferer goes rigid and their pulse and breathing become barely detectable. It also decreases sensitivity to pain, something that contributed heavily to my survival that night at Paul and Rebecca’s. And the freezing weather helped too, but I’ll get to that later.
By the time I was reunited with my father, he’d gone through such an array of extreme emotions, there wasn’t much life left in him. He seemed not moved, but rather inconvenienced at my resurrection. He stayed around long enough to pick my mother up from the hospital and drop us both at home. He left the engine running and didn’t look back as he drove away that day. I wish I could say things got better after that. They didn’t.
I’ve been left by men three times and died twice. What kills me only makes me stronger.
thirty-nine
WOLCOTT
“HAVE WE BEEN FISHING in the wrong lake this whole time?” As I steer the cruiser onto the highway, I look to Silvestri for reassurance that we haven’t been completely off the mark. The possibility is jarring.
“Fuck if I can tell you,” he says, shaking his head.
“Well, let’s go see if we can figure out who’s been impersonating a dead woman. That should get us started.”
“Right,” my partner answers distractedly.
Because of the advanced decomp, we weren’t able to get a clean DNA pull off Sasha Anders’s body. Sheila Maxwell’s abandoned car didn’t produce any leads either, and the theories we’re considering seem like a tangle. I feel like I’m trudging through fog. Instead of finding answers, the more we investigate, the less sense it all makes. “I could have sworn I knew who was buried in that grave. And it’s not who they dug up.”
“You and me both,” offers my partner. “But we were also assuming that Sasha Anders was off spending her husband’s money somewhere.”
“Right. That added up. This . . . I don’t know.”
“Okay, let’s chop it up. We’ve got to consider Mark Anders.”
“We do. You think money was a bigger issue than we figured?”
“Often is. Pressures of the job? Or maybe an affair?”
“Could be.” I sit with the possibility. “Him or her?”
“Hmm. Think he’s fucking one of his employees? That has a way of throwing things in a special direction. Or else she’s getting in some extracurriculars. Bored wife, not getting any attention at home.”
“Or the two of them are keeping themselves amused.”
“Right.” Silvestri mulls the idea over. “Okay, I gotta take it back here for a second. Any chance Campbell’s in the mix?”
“I mean, the guy seems good for this sort of thing. We just thought it was with a different woman.”
“Right. But why are we assuming that this mope didn’t do ’em both? Seems like the women around here who take a shine to Paul Campbell turn up in the ground, or not at all.”
I give this some consideration. “Love triangle?”
“There we go. Wait—fuck—what if Sheila Maxwell was the doer? Found out about an affair between Campbell and Sasha Anders and lost it.”
“Hadn’t thought of that possibility.”
“I mean, she’s got the suspicious past, with the husband. Finding out about Paul Campbell with another woman could have sent her over the edge.”
“Right. But didn’t her case seem more like a disappearance? The abandoned car, the suspended credit card use, the unpaid utility bills.”
“Unless she had to get out of town in a hurry.”
“Okay. She could have left the car behind to stage a disappearance. Throw us off the scent.”
“Unless Campbell was mixed up with both of them, and things got out of hand.”
“Right. So the million-dollar question is: Did Sheila Maxwell skip town, or should we be looking for another body?”
“Jesus. This is a wreck.”
A silence falls between us as we sink into our respective thoughts. I’ve never had the rug of presumption so thoroughly yanked out from under me during an investigation, and it’s needling me more than it should.
When I finally address my partner, I’m surprised at the tentative quality of my tone, as if I’m overhearing my own voice. “I keep getting hung up on this one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“When we interrogated Campbell, he seemed genuinely disinterested in Sasha Anders. It struck me as one of the more truthful aspects of the conversation. I just didn’t think that he was mixed up with her.”
“He’s a seasoned liar. Who knows? He might be pathological. Shit, maybe he wasn’t quite as over Sasha as he’d have us believe. “
As I turn the thought over, my phone rings. I fumble for it before I pick up. “Detective Wolcott.” The voice on the other end is the one we’ve been hoping to hear from. “We were just on our way to pay you a visit.” I nod toward my partner as the air in the cruiser seems to lighten and lift. “We’ll be there in no time.”
* * *
“WELCOME TO THE HUNTINGT—Detectives!” Gina catches herself and looks around the lobby to make sure there isn’t anyone else in the vicinity.
“Good morning, Gina. Can’t tell you how happy we were to hear from you.” We approach the front desk, offering her warm smiles on the way.
Our new friend is vibrating with energy. “Guys, I just read about the body in the paper, and I had to call you!”
“We figured our favorite bloodhound might be onto the scent,” says Silvestri. “What can you tell us?”
“So, I see the headline, and the picture of that pretty woman on the front page, and I start reading, but then I get to her name, and it doesn’t add up.”
“What part doesn’t add up, Gina?” I ask.
“Well, so I recognize the name from your investigation, but it’s not the right person.”
I look to my partner, then back to Gina. “How’s that?”
“Well, obviously the picture in the paper is Sasha Anders. But that woman who checked into the hotel isn’t the woman in the paper.”
“Got it. I know you already gave us a description of the woman who checked in here under that name, but is there anything else you might remember now? Any little details that stick out?”
“Let’s see. Blond hair, brown eyes. I told you guys about the hat, right?”
“You did.”
Her eyes settle on the top of the desk for a long moment. They narrow as she concentrates. “I mean, she looked a lot like the woman in the paper, but not quite.” She frowns. “A lot of these women look really similar, quite honestly. I hate to say it, but they’re sort of, like, interchangeable.”
I smirk at my partner. “We’ve noticed.”
Suddenly, Gina’s eyes widen. “Wait, did I tell you guys about the fumigation?”
“You did not,” says Silvestri, perking up.
“Hmm. Must have been after your last visit. They had to call a guy in to have the room fumigated. The cigar smoke in there was disgusting.”
I eye my partner before turning back to Gina. “Well, you’ve certainly got a talent for recall. It’s been very helpful to us.”
“Thanks, Detectives. Hey, do you still think I’d make a good cadet?”
“We’d be happy to put in a word for you,” my partner says.
“You guys rule.”
* * *
IN SPITE OF THE WAVES of heat rising from the asphalt in the parking lot, Silvestri and I are tripping over ourselves to get back to the cruiser.
“Shall we go look in on our favorite cigar aficionado?” I ask.
Silvestri shakes his head in disb
elief. “Anders actually has the stones to run around with some girlfriend impersonating his wife while she’s in the ground?”
“Let’s find out.”
forty
SHEILA
THERE WAS A TIME when I would have said that I’d die for Paul. But we often say ridiculous things when love has taken the wheel from common sense. I admit, I tend to get a little wrapped up in my relationships, but Paul was different. He was the real thing. Certain events just got in our way before he was able to fully realize how he felt about me. And if I was willing to die for him, since I did die for him, isn’t it only fair that he do the same? But I’m getting ahead of things.
I definitely didn’t picture my birthday unfolding the way it did. Namely, I didn’t imagine that it would end with me wrapped in plastic, thrown away like a piece of garbage. I suppose there is something poetic about being murdered by my boyfriend’s wife on my thirty-fifth. All of those self-help books I’d tried to comfort and coach myself with over the years always promised that the most profound beginnings come from the most traumatic endings. But these were not the thoughts that were going through my throbbing head when I came to in the dark, swaddled in cold plastic. The thing in the forefront of my mind was how I was going to get free of the tight coil I was trapped in before I froze or suffocated.
Luckily they’d rolled me in such a way that my head was bent upward, and while highly uncomfortable on my neck, the angle allowed for a small range of mobility and limited airflow. My breathing is more shallow than most to begin with, and my cataleptic response to the scene in Paul’s bedroom benefited me once unconscious and with limited air. As did the temperature. Ironically, Paul extended my chances of survival that night considerably. When a person’s heart stops, or at least slows so much it appears to have stopped, keeping their body cold renders the cells in their body less in need of oxygen, therefore slowing down death. Leaving me in the nearly freezing basement probably saved my life.
Thanking him wasn’t exactly on my mind in that moment.
I’d initially panicked when I regained consciousness, and started to hyperventilate. I was able to calm myself quickly enough, though. When you have an aversion to mood stabilizers and a condition that is triggered by high levels of stress, you have to learn alternate methods of control or else spend your life in a rigid state of panic. I took as deep a breath as I could and counted to five and then exhaled for ten. With each inhale, the casing around me constricted like a corset. With each exhale, I felt my heart rate slow by a beat or two.
I was still too disoriented to piece together the recent events of the evening up to that point. The last thing I remembered clearly was making the decision to take a cab to Paul’s house after polishing off a bottle of pricey red in place of my uneaten birthday dinner. I’m sure I was a sad sight sitting alone at my favorite restaurant, where I’d first seen Paul, all dressed up, tears falling into my barely touched risotto.
In that moment, I’d told myself that confronting him and exposing our relationship to his wife was the only thing left to do if we were going to have any chance of being together. Any doubt or rational thought was replaced by the merlot-tinged adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream as I put the stolen key into his lock. Duff rushing to greet me and happily lick my familiar hand confirmed that I was meant to be there. At least that is what I told myself as I pulled Paul’s pistol from my purse and made my way upstairs. I felt powerful holding it. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do when I reached their room, but I knew whatever it was, Paul wouldn’t be able to ignore me any longer.
On the hard ground, I’d started rocking slightly side to side, and then more animatedly, to see how much breadth I had to work with. There seemed to be a good amount of space on either side of me, which was a relief. I wasn’t completely sealed shut in my swaddle either, which was a very good thing. When I moved to the right, I could sense the flat edge of the seam where the plastic ended. I could also feel a sledgehammer of pain radiating from my head down into the rest of my body. My back felt broken on the hard, flat surface beneath me. Although it felt like concrete, which was more hopeful than a number of alternatives. Newly dug compact soil on all sides of me, for example.
I’ve always been naturally flexible and am pretty strong for my small size. That night, I was never so grateful for all of the core strengthening I’d conditioned working out nearly every day. Though little did I know I’d been working toward saving my own life. I used the strength in my abs and ass to start rocking more aggressively and was able to push myself and land facedown a half turn to my right. Still unable to see anything, I could feel the gravity of my new position as the blood ran from the back of my head to the front in an explosion of pain. Without access to my hands, I hadn’t yet surveyed the extent of my head injury, but I could feel it from the inside out.
As long as there weren’t any obstacles for a number of feet in the same direction, I stood a decent chance of rolling myself free. But I had no way of knowing if I was careening toward death. I could be forty feet up in a building yet to be finished and pitch myself over the edge unwittingly. I craned my neck as much as possible in the direction of the opening and waited for my eyes to adjust to the pitch black. Nothing changed or came into focus. It was a terrifying feeling to have so many of my senses disabled. Smell and sound seemed moot in the situation. But no sooner did the thought dissipate than I registered the absence of outdoor sounds. So if I was stashed in a construction site high above the ground, I most likely would have been able to hear wind or maybe even the ocean, depending on where Paul had thrown me away.
The instinctual will to survive over the intellectual is a powerful thing. Whatever reason and fear I had about going over an edge was eclipsed by my body’s sideways momentum. Each exhausting revolution struck pain through every possible part of my body, but the hope keeping me in motion blossomed stronger with each plastic layer shed like a snake’s skin behind me. When the roll was down to one layer separating my weak body from the world around me, I was able to shimmy my arms up and break through the final fold.
I cried with relief and self-pity for where I’d ended up. For what they’d done to me. And relief gave way to fury. I used that feeling to keep going.
Once I’d rolled away from my restraint, I sat upright slowly. A burst of blinding pain flashed a deceptive moment of light but then left me in the unrelenting darkness once again. No matter how long I remained in the gloom, my eyes could not adjust to make any sense of the space I was in. I was on solid ground, and the cold concrete was hard and unforgiving under my sore body. I moved my hands up to my head, and where my smooth hairline was supposed to be was a lump the size of an orange, screaming at my touch. A flash of the object in Rebecca’s hand, a hammer, hadn’t registered in the moment earlier in the evening but was certain in my mind now. I was grateful she’d hit me in the place that she did and not in one of the more vulnerable spots, like the back of my skull.
The euphoria of freeing myself was fleeting and was rapidly replaced by panic and pain. I knew I was at the very least concussed. My whole scalp was dry to the touch and there was no stickiness to indicate bleeding, which in the moment seemed like a good thing. But I’d absorbed enough about NFL head injuries to know that often the worst trauma didn’t bleed on the outside. I rolled to my side and pulled my legs up into myself in a child’s pose to will away the persistent image of blood hemorrhaging across a CAT scan.
When I felt around in the dark to assess the rest of my body’s injuries, I was surprised to find that my purse was still slung across my body. I pulled my phone out of the small satchel and was encouraged to see that it still had some battery power remaining. I had to squint to lessen the impact of the light from the screen. There were no bars for service. I was seeing double and starting to have waves of nausea as I swept the flashlight from the phone across the terrain and saw that I was in a basement, surrounded by lumber and landscaping materi
als. I pulled a burlap tarp from the pile of materials and draped it over my body for warmth as I dragged myself toward the stairway a short distance from where I was sitting.
And then I began the slow and agonizing climb from the bottom up. To new beginnings.
forty-one
PAUL
“THEY’RE LYING, MADOO.”
I stare at my wife, coiled up in the sheets next to me. The alarm clock on the side table reads 4:42. I haven’t slept since we got into bed.
I know Rebecca is awake. Her brow furrows in a certain way when she’s trying to will herself to sleep but can’t quite reach it. It’s another short moment before her eyes pop open and find mine.
“Who’s lying, Paul?”
“Those dipshit cops.”
She slides herself up toward the headboard, propping her shoulders atop the pillows. She seems wired physically, but there’s a dull glaze behind her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Babe, I’ve been up all night trying to make sense of this. It’s been driving me nearly crazy. But I’ve gone through every permutation, and I keep coming back to the only possible answer. They’re lying about the ID.”
Her eyes narrow as she appears to weigh the words coming out of my mouth. She takes a deep breath, presses her eyelids together, and meets my stare. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“Sheila’s body was in the ground for weeks, rotting away.”
“You mean Sasha’s body.” There’s a tinge of panic underneath the resigned exasperation in her voice.
“No, babe. I mean Sheila’s.”
“But you said yourself that the police don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”
