Perfect Nightmare

by John Saul

  A silence hung over the conservatory for a moment, and then Neville took the two vases, offered Claire the smallest of nods, and left the room.

  Claire’s eyes still coolly fixed on Patrick, she lifted the pitcher from the tray.

  “Tea?” she asked.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Patrick dropped into his leather recliner and closed his eyes for a moment. His head sank into the headrest, but tonight—for the first time since Christmas Eve—it wasn’t despair that had drained him to the point of exhaustion. No, tonight it was something else: a faint sense of hope; hope that perhaps, after all, he might find a way to survive the grief that until now had seemed utterly fatal.

  Granted, that sense of hope was faint, little more than a tiny pinpoint of light piercing what seemed an infinity of darkness. He opened his eyes as if to see the faint glimmer of light better and found himself gazing at a vase of daffodils that Claire had somehow managed to sneak into the library while he was gone. They glowed on the mantel like a beacon, each of them perfect, each of them seeming to infuse the library with a feeling of life.

  Claire had been right to fill the house with flowers this morning.

  And she’d been right about the support group tonight, too.

  Alison Montgomery had said little as she drove them the two miles or so to Shelley and Gordy Castille’s house a few hours earlier, and he’d had no idea what to expect. What he found were a half-dozen cars—ranging from a battered and rusty old VW beetle to a brand new Mercedes-Benz—parked in front of the kind of house that looked as if it would be owned by someone with a Ford Explorer.

  Inside, nine people were murmuring over glasses of wine. All of them smiled at him, but no one offered any of the sympathetic words he’d heard so often over the last months that they’d become nearly meaningless. As they sat down, Shelley Castille turned to a wan-looking young woman who seemed to be melting into the corner of the sofa. “Beth?” she said.

  It seemed that the young woman had not heard her name, but then she stirred, tried to speak, and pressed a sodden tissue to her eyes with one hand as she clenched the other into a fist of frustration at her failed attempt. After a moment she took a deep breath, then another, reached for her wine, then seemed to think better of it. “My husband ought to be here,” she finally said. “I think that’s what’s killing me the most.” She took another ragged breath, and her eyes moved to Patrick. “Our baby died—” she began, then choked on her own words and pressed the tissue to her nose and mouth. “Oh, God, it’s so hard to say that.”

  “Take your time,” Shelley said, gently touching Beth’s shoulder.

  Patrick found himself leaning forward in his chair, holding his own handkerchief out to the young woman. “Thanks,” Beth whispered, managing a hint of a smile, which vanished as she began to speak again. “Our baby died last week. She was only four months old. We’d been trying to have a baby for ten years. Ten years! And then—” Her voice broke and she spread her hands apart. “And then she died. She just died in her crib!” Her voice began to rise, her pain palpable. “Our lives revolved around getting me pregnant, and then being pregnant, and then having this baby, and now she's—she’s gone—and David—” She choked again, took a deep breath, and forced herself to finish. “David just went back to work.”

  Patrick stared at her, trying to comprehend her words and failing. What kind of father could have done that?

  “I mean, I don’t get that,” Beth went on. “I really don’t get that at all.” Her voice took on an edge as her grief coalesced into anger. “Is it like our baby was such a small part of his life that he could just go back to work like she never happened?”

  “I’m sure it’s not like that—” Shelley began, but Beth didn’t let her finish.

  “I know!” she cried. “I know it’s not like that! But I just don’t see him hurting—not like I hurt.”

  “You know he does,” someone said.

  Beth nodded, but she looked so forlorn, so vulnerable, that Patrick wanted to hold her, to comfort her.

  Her eyes darted from one face to another. “I’m so angry at him,” she said. “I’m so angry about everything, but I know I shouldn’t be. I should—” She broke down again, and now Shelley took her hand.

  “You should feel whatever way you feel,” Shelley said. “There’s nothing wrong with being angry—we’ve all been angry. Most of us still are.”

  A slight man with thick glasses—a man whose name Patrick hadn’t caught—cleared his throat and began speaking in a voice etched with as much pain as Beth's. “I lost my boys,” he said. “My twins. They were in an accident with my wife.” He bit his lip. “My ex-wife,” he went on. “She had them for the weekend, and after the accident there wasn’t a scratch on her. But the boys weren’t in their car seats, and they both died. She’d fastened her own seat belt, but couldn’t be bothered to strap her own sons in! Talk about angry! I was furious at her, and furious at God, and furious at everything. All I could do was sit in the dark and plot revenge. I didn’t know what I wanted more—to kill her or just curl up and die myself.”

  Patrick barely heard the murmurs of understanding that ran through the room, so transfixed was he by the words he was hearing.

  Words that expressed perfectly how he himself had been feeling the last months.

  The man spoke again. “After a while I started losing track of time. Whole afternoons would pass and I couldn’t remember them. It was like I’d have blackouts where I’d find myself at the grocery store and couldn’t remember how I got there or even why I was there at all.” Patrick’s focus had narrowed until there might as well have been no one else in the room. “I was losing my mind over it—I don’t know which was worse, my grief or my anger. But they were both killing me.” He paused again, collecting his thoughts. “Then I came here, and found out I wasn’t the only person who’d ever felt that way.” His eyes roamed over the room and came back to Beth again. “You’ve got a right to be angry,” he said softly.

  Beth’s eyes were so bleak, they tore at Patrick’s heart. “Will I ever get past it?” she asked.

  The soft-spoken man smiled gently. “In time,” he said. “If you want to.”

  “How?” Beth asked, her voice hollow. “How can I ever get over it?”

  The man spread his hands in a wry gesture. “We all find our own way,” he replied. “I finally decided to join Big Brothers, and now I have a dozen kids who seem to need me just as badly as I need them. Seems like that’s what always does it—find someone else who’s hurting as bad as you are, and try to give them a hand.”

  Now, in the silence of the library at Cragmont, the nameless man’s words echoed in Patrick’s mind.

  . . . find someone else who’s hurting as bad as you are, and try to give them a hand.

  Patrick ran his hand over his face and felt the little scab on his chin where he’d cut himself shaving that evening. At the time, he hadn’t even felt it. In fact, he hadn’t realized he’d cut himself until he noticed the trickle of blood running down his neck. He’d stared at the reflected image of the cut for nearly a full minute, but felt nothing. Then his gaze shifted to his own eyes, where he’d seen only blankness.

  The same kind of blankness he’d seen in Beth’s eyes tonight.

  . . . find someone else who’s hurting as bad as you are, and try to give them a hand.

  His eyes fell on the newspaper that lay folded on the table next to his chair, and on the photograph of the girl who had vanished.

  The girl who looked so much like his Jenna.

  This morning he had used that newspaper to fuel his grief. Now he picked it up and looked at it in a new light.

  Lindsay Marshall. A nice name.

  More of the nameless man’s words came back to him.

  . . . I started losing track of time . . . I was losing my mind . . . curl up and die . . .

  Only that morning, he had awakened in the mausoleum with no knowledge of how he got there.

  A
nd he didn’t want to lose his mind.

  . . . find someone else who’s hurting as bad as you are, and try to give them a hand.

  His eyes fixed once more on Lindsay Marshall’s image.

  What could he do?

  What could he offer?

  He wasn’t sure.

  But the point of light that had pierced the vast darkness in his soul began to brighten.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Rick Mancuso handed his fake Mont Blanc pen to Ellen Fine, and watched disinterestedly as she read every line of the fine print on the listing agreement, knowing that in the end she would sign. This was a nice little listing; he wasn’t sure Ms. Ellen Fine and her daughter were going to be prospects for another house, but at least he’d make a nice commission on this one.

  She hesitated, looking up, but before she could say anything, his cell phone rang.

  “Sorry,” he said, pulled the phone from his pocket and looked at the caller ID. Instead of a single name, or just a phone number, four words were scrolling across the screen.

  CAMDEN GREEN POLICE DEPARTMENT.

  Crap.

  Mark Acton had told him they’d be calling, but why did they have to call now, just as he was about to get this woman to sign on the dotted line?

  He’d talk to them later.

  Keeping his expression impassive, he switched the ringer to vibrate and dropped the phone back into his pocket. “Will you be relocating in this area?” he asked, his voice betraying none of the concern the phone call had caused.

  Ellen Fine shook her head as a little blond girl—maybe five years old, he thought—appeared at the kitchen doorway.

  “Mommy?” the child piped, sidling over to her mother while her eyes remained suspiciously on Rick.

  “Hi, honey.” Ellen wrapped an arm around her little girl. “This is Mr. Mancuso. He’s going to help us sell our house.”

  “Hi,” Rick said, and held out his hand.

  The little girl kept her own hands firmly behind her back. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Emily.”

  “You’re very pretty, Emily.”

  The little girl smiled shyly at the floor.

  “What do you say?” Ellen prompted.

  “Thank you,” the girl whispered, her eyes still avoiding Rick's.

  “Sweet little girl,” Mancuso said. Ellen frowned, glanced at Mancuso, and felt a sudden urge to end the meeting right then. A moment later, though, she remembered her financial plight, dismissed her misgivings about the agent, and signed the listing. “We’ll get a good price for this house, Ellen,” Mancuso went on. “You and Emily can—”

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and though he tried to resist it, he couldn’t help pulling it out and looking at the screen. The police again, and obviously not about to give up. “Sorry,” he said, throwing his new client an apologetic smile. He opened the phone and turned away from Ellen Fine. “Rick Mancuso.”

  “This is Sergeant Grant from the Camden Green police department, Mr. Mancuso. We’re investigating the disappearance of Lindsay Marshall.”

  The real-estate agent nodded as if the officer were in the room with him. “Listen, I’m with a client right now. Can I call you back in a few minutes?” He scribbled the sergeant’s name and phone number in his notebook, then folded his phone and tucked it back in his pocket. “I’m sorry,” he said, turning back. “Where were we?”

  “I think you were about to pitch us another house,” Ellen Fine said. “But I’m afraid we’ll be moving out of the area entirely.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “We’re moving to Missouri to live with my grandmom,” Emily said.

  “Lucky her,” Rick said. He picked up his paperwork and put it in his briefcase. “I’ll get this right into Multiple and we’ll start showing it.” He stood up.

  Ellen hoisted her daughter to her hip and walked him to the front door. “The sooner the better,” she said. “Thanks for your help.”

  Rick opened the back door of his black Mercury and threw in his briefcase, then got into the driver’s seat, wondering how long he could postpone his call to the cops. Not long at all, he decided. Might as well get it over with. He pulled out his phone and punched in the numbers.

  “Sergeant Grant,” a gruff voice responded after the first ring.

  “This is Rick Mancuso.”

  “Thanks for getting back to us so quickly,” the officer said, somewhat moderating his tone. “We’re just following up on a few things. You were at the Marshalls’ open house last Sunday?”

  “Mark Acton’s open house in Camden Green. Yes, I was there.”

  “You were there with clients?”

  Rick frowned. “That was the plan, but they had to cancel.”

  “But you went anyway?”

  “I was meeting them there, and they called at the last minute. I was already there, so I took another look at the place, with them in mind. And it’s perfect for them, by the way.”

  “You were at a broker’s open house there the previous Wednesday.” It was a statement, not a question, and Mancuso thought he detected an edge to the cop’s voice now. Where was this going? “Yes,” he said, remembering his father’s advice never to volunteer anything.

  “And you went back again on Sunday by yourself?” Sergeant Grant pressed.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you taken your clients to see the house yet?”

  “No,” Rick said, but the definite edge in Grant’s voice told him he’d followed his father’s advice long enough. “I called Mark to schedule a showing, but he said the house had been temporarily taken off the market because of what happened to the girl.”

  “What did you do after Sunday’s open house?”

  Rick told himself this call was nothing personal. The police were just following up, calling everyone who had been at the open house. “Let’s see,” he said. “I dropped by the post office to get my mail, went to the grocery store, drove to my sister’s place to take her some ice cream, but she wasn’t home, so I went home and grilled myself a steak.”

  “Can anybody vouch for any of that?”

  Rick’s heart began to pound. The post office had been closed—he’d just picked up the mail from his box.

  He’d paid cash at the store.

  His sister wasn’t home, and he lived alone—her ice cream was still in his freezer.

  So he hadn’t talked with anybody. There was nobody to corroborate his story.

  “Mr. Mancuso?”

  “I—I guess not,” he finally said. “Unless maybe someone at the store remembers seeing me.”

  “And what time would that have been?” Grant asked.

  Rick hesitated. “I’m not sure. Five? Five-thirty? I remember getting home in time for the six o’clock news.”

  Grant thanked him and hung up, but even after the phone went dead in his hand, Rick sat there, staring numbly through the windshield of his car.

  Maybe he ought to stop by Fishburn's, he thought, and see who else the police had called.

  And it wouldn’t hurt to show his face after leaving Ellen Fine’s place, either.

  That was the other thing his father had always told him:

  You can’t be too careful.

  “I heard we were the last to see her alive,” Tina McCormick said, tossing her blond hair in the way she thought was so sexy but that Dawn D'Angelo thought was just kind of slutty. Both of them, along with the rest of the cheerleading squad and their coach, Sharon Spandler, were sitting at a table in the cafeteria, facing the policeman who had called them all there.

  “Well,” Andrew Grant said carefully, ignoring Tina’s flirting, “you were certainly among the last to see her.”

  “And we’re sure she’s still alive, Tina,” Sharon Spandler said, fixing her eyes disapprovingly on the girl. Tina tried to pretend she didn’t notice the coach’s glare, but reddened in spite of herself.

  “I was the last to see Lindsay,” Dawn said. “We walked home together
Sunday after practice. And she’s still alive,” she added, glowering at Tina. She could hardly believe Tina had said that. If the policeman and Ms. Spandler hadn’t been sitting with them, she would have thrown her water bottle at Tina. But the coach was there, looking almost as tired as she herself felt, and the cop was there, so she hadn’t. Not that doing anything to Tina would help her feel any better, Dawn thought. She hadn’t been able to eat since last Sunday night, when Mrs. Marshall had called, saying that Lindsay was missing.

  And she couldn’t stop feeling it was her fault. If she’d only asked her stupid stepmother if Lindsay could come with her—or better yet, not asked at all and just brought Lindsay with her on Sunday night—then Lindsay would be fine, and everything would be good again, and none of them would have to be sitting here talking about her.

  “I heard she ran away,” Becka Saunders said.

  “I heard her parents were taking her to the city and putting her in a private school,” Heather Blaine offered.

  Grant’s eyes swept over the group. “Anybody hear anything else?”

  Dawn sat silently as every rumor that had swept through the school was repeated, each of them with new embellishments. She sat with her arms crossed, and with every new theory that was aired, the dull ache in her belly grew worse.

  And it would continue to get worse until she saw her best friend’s face again.

  “Did Lindsay have a boyfriend?” Sergeant Grant asked. “Maybe somebody who didn’t go to school here? Somebody older? Somebody she didn’t talk about too much?”

  All the girls shook their heads.