Her Every Fear

by Peter Swanson

  Her thumb continued to drip blood, and she sucked at it some more, actually savoring the taste in her mouth.

  She’d often wondered about the night that George Daniels had tracked her down in the Lake District and sealed her in the closet. She wondered whether, even if the door hadn’t been blocked, she’d have been able to leave. Not while he was still out there, but after she heard the gun go off. She’d been trapped, and there was nothing for her to do but wait, but even if the door had been open, Kate sometimes thought that she’d have stayed there forever. She’d crouched into a ball, like an injured animal, and hadn’t moved, not even when the frightened copper had opened the door and reached in to take her out. But now she had a chance to run, and she knew she needed to take it, for better or for worse.

  She swung the false back door all the way open and stepped into the main space of the closet, pressing her ear to the door. She listened for a minute but heard nothing. She put her hand on the knob. She breathed in through her nose and blew out through her mouth.

  She tried to remember a prayer from childhood, but all she could remember was what she learned from her grandmother to say at bedtime. She said it now, to herself, her eyes closed:

  From ghoulies and ghosties

  And long-leggedy beasties

  And other things that go bump in the night,

  Good Lord, deliver us

  Calmed by the words, her grandmother’s voice in her head, she swung the door open and stepped out of the closet into the still-flickering light of the den.

  Chapter 26

  On Monday morning, after calling the London office and letting them know he was deathly sick, and asking if he could start the following week, Corbin Dell took out fifteen thousand pounds in cash from the local branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He’d opened an account online before his departure to avoid having to pay transaction fees on all his withdrawals. The teller, an Indian woman wearing a head scarf, registered almost no reaction to the request, but she did spend close to fifteen minutes making calls and typing into her computer before finally handing over the money in hundred-pound notes.

  With the hefty packet of money in the inside pocket of his raincoat, Corbin took a taxi to Camden Market and began to wander the stalls, looking for a candidate. He wasn’t going to rush it; he had all day, and knew his chances were best when the pubs opened. But he had a plan. He was going to find Henry Wood and he was going to kill him. And this was the best opportunity he was going to have.

  It was almost two in the afternoon when Corbin spotted the first promising match. It was in a dingy pub several blocks from the market area. The man had a beard and longish, greasy hair, but other than that, he looked a lot like Corbin. Same coloring, similar features, prominent jawline. And he looked mildly down and out, drinking a pint glass of cider over ice in the middle of a rainy Monday afternoon.

  Corbin ordered himself a pint of Stella and another cider, and brought both over to where the man was seated, at a table near the grimy windows. There was just enough light coming through for the man to read his Charles Bukowski novel.

  Corbin sat and pushed the cider over to the man, who looked alarmed as he lowered the well-thumbed paperback. He really did look like him, enough anyway.

  “Can I ask you something?” Corbin said. “Do you have a passport?”

  “The fuck you want?” the man answered. The words were clear, but Corbin didn’t recognize the accent.

  “I have a proposition for you, but I need to know if you have a passport first.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a passport.” Maybe it was a German accent.

  “I’d like to borrow it, plus any other identification you have. It will be no more than a week, I promise. I can give you eight thousand pounds in cash right now, and I’ll give you another two when I return everything. There’d be no risk for you, at all.”

  The man laughed. “Go away.”

  “I’m telling you. It’s ten thousand pounds and no risk.”

  “No risk? It’s my fucking passport you’d be using.”

  Corbin took a sip of his beer. He’d sold enough financial opportunities over the years to know that this guy was already hooked. Getting his passport was not going to be a problem. “How tall are you?” Corbin asked. “Do you mind standing up?”

  The man didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said: “What if you don’t come back?”

  “Then report your passport stolen. It happens all the time. Where are you from, anyway? I don’t recognize your accent.”

  “I’m from Rotterdam. I’m Dutch.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “It’s Bram. I haven’t decided to do this, you know.”

  “Listen, Bram. It’s ten thousand pounds. In cash. All you have to do is hand over the passport, and help me book an airline ticket with your credit card. I’ll pay you in cash for that as well. I need to take a trip but don’t want someone to know where I’m going. That’s all there is to this. In one week I return everything. If something goes wrong, you just have to say that your passport and credit card were stolen and you didn’t notice right away. There’s no downside to this.”

  Bram thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll do it for fifteen thousand pounds.”

  Corbin stood up. “I’ll keep looking. There’ll be someone else ’round here that looks like me.”

  Corbin returned his empty pint glass to the bar and exited the pub. Bram caught up with him on the street. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  Bram Heymans was squatting in a large nearby flat that was under construction, sleeping on a rollout and living out of a backpack. Despite this, he had an Apple laptop and a portable wireless router. Corbin studied Bram’s maroon passport. In the picture Bram was clean-shaven, his hair swept back off his forehead. Corbin had been hoping that the picture would have the bearded version of Bram, but the clean-shaven picture was good enough. Corbin would pass as Bram, so long as he didn’t draw too much attention to himself. There were no flights going to Logan for the remainder of that day, so Corbin, using Bram’s Visa card, booked an early morning flight for the following day. He gave Bram the eight thousand pounds, plus an extra eight hundred for the ticket, and took possession of the passport.

  “You’ll still be here in a week?” Corbin asked Bram, who was flicking through the bills with a nicotine-stained thumb.

  “What, here? In this flat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “So one week from today I’ll be back here with your passport and ID. At noon. You’ll be here?”

  “I’ll be here,” Bram said, still looking at the bills.

  The line at the Gatwick security gate was at least a hundred travelers long, but Corbin was early. He was happy to see the crowd; it would hopefully mean that whoever looked at his passport might rush the job, not studying the picture too hard. Corbin had been anxiously analyzing the small photo all through the night and into the morning, trying to decide if it was going to work. He thought it would, especially since the picture was seven years old. He had been trying to decide whether it would be better to keep his current style or to imitate the hairstyle in the photograph, and decided to keep his current style. If the hairstyles were perfect then the security agent, or the customs agent in Boston, might look too closely at the facial features, realize that the eyes weren’t quite right, the ears entirely different.

  The hungover-looking agent at the end of the line barely looked at the passport after placing it on the scanner, just perfunctorily moving his eyes from the picture to Corbin’s face, then ushering him through toward security.

  It was a little rockier in Boston, where they’d recently installed Automated Passport Control. Corbin stood in front of a computer screen, scanned his passport, then stood still and stared at a camera, waiting to have his photograph taken. He hadn’t been prepared for this, and his heart sped up as he waited for the camera to flash. Instead, words appeared on the screen—th
e machine had failed to capture a recognizable face—and Corbin thought he was finished, that some software program was figuring out that the face in front of them didn’t match the face on the passport. Corbin tried the picture again and got the same message. A customs agent drifted over, adjusted the height of the machine, and it worked. A light flashed, and a slip of curled paper slid from the machine—a black-and-white image of Corbin’s alarmed face. He brought the slip of paper and his passport to another agent, a young acne-ridden man with a military-looking mustache, who grilled Corbin about his trip to the United States, asking him where he was staying and how long he planned to stay, and studying the passport, although paying relatively little attention to the picture. Finally, the customs agent stamped Bram Heymans’s passport and Corbin, armpits damp but otherwise okay, walked through the double doors into Logan airport. He could see through the terminal, and the large sliding doors, to the taxis idling on the curb outside; he was free, unmoored. He was in America and no one could ever prove it. As long as he wasn’t caught, he had a perfect alibi. He had tremendous power, he realized, so long as he could find Henry.

  He was suddenly nervous that someone would recognize him now that he was back in his hometown. Should he disguise himself? Where was he going to stay? He hadn’t thought everything through since he’d been so concerned with whether he could return to America without using his own passport. Now that he’d done it, what was next?

  He took a taxicab to a boutique hotel on Beacon Street and checked in using Bram’s passport and cash, claiming, with a terrible Dutch accent, that his credit card had been recently stolen. The clerk said they needed a credit card for incidentals, but Corbin offered a cash deposit of two thousand dollars (he’d traded in nearly five thousand pounds at the cash exchange at Logan, using Bram’s ID), and the hotel manager finally agreed. Alone in the room, Corbin stripped off his clothes and stood under the shower for nearly half an hour, trying to will his body to relax. Ever since he’d received the e-mail from the police, Corbin had felt like a man possessed, finally knowing what he had to do. What he hadn’t yet allowed himself to feel was the pain of what had happened to Audrey, the sadness that she was gone forever. But now the thoughts came anyway, along with uncontrollable tearless sobs, Corbin’s jaw clenched so tight that he worried his teeth might shatter. The only thing that calmed him was the thought of getting to Henry and crushing him in his hands, making him pay for what he’d done. Henry had been in Boston less than a week ago. There’s a chance I can find him, Corbin told himself. As soon as it got dark he would walk to his apartment building and wait in the bushes, to see if anything happened, if Henry, for whatever reason, made an appearance.

  It was almost noon. He had barely slept or eaten since hearing about Audrey, but now his stomach was growling loudly, and his head was light with lack of food. He pulled on jeans, a T-shirt, and the hooded Jack Wills sweatshirt he’d bought at Gatwick. He pulled the hood tight around his head, tightening the strings so that it wouldn’t come loose, and left the hotel, turning right and walking toward the hospitals. He passed a barbershop he’d never really noticed before, doubled back, and pushed through the doors. There were two barbers, one old and bald, and the other young and bald, clearly the son. The dark interior was about as wide as a train car and smelled of pomade. The young barber was free, and after being seated, Corbin asked for a buzz cut.

  “How short?” the barber asked.

  “As short as you can go.”

  The barber set his clipper to the lowest setting and began taking off almost all of Corbin’s hair. Sports talk radio was playing from an old boom box high up on a shelf, and Corbin was able to turn his mind off for a moment, listening to callers complain about the lousy relievers the Red Sox had this season.

  “You want a shave as well?” the barber asked after finishing.

  Corbin ran his hand across his chin. He hadn’t shaved in over a week, and his beard was thicker than it had ever been. “Sure,” he said. “Shave everything but the mustache.” He’d read or heard somewhere that if a man wanted to change his appearance he should shave his head and grow a mustache. It was one of those things that had stuck in his head for years, even though he’d always wondered if it were true. But when the barber was done, and Corbin stared at his nearly bald head and the beginnings of his reddish mustache, he did think he looked different enough to possibly fool someone who happened to glance at him. It was enough.

  After leaving the barbers, Corbin walked down toward Mass General Hospital and found a Greek pizzeria he’d never been to; he ate a large meatball sub and drank two Cokes. Then he got a turkey sub to go and brought it back to the hotel. Who knew when he’d get a chance to eat again? Back in his room, he cracked the window that looked out over slate roofs toward the Common. It was a windy day, and it felt good to let some of the blustery, cool air into the stuffy room. He opened his laptop, keyed in the wireless code, and checked his e-mails. He’d left his phone behind. Even with GPS turned off, it would still make him nervous, but he felt okay with using the laptop, fairly certain it wouldn’t give his location away. There was nothing new from his cousin Kate, just the e-mail she’d sent him on Sunday night that the police had asked to search his apartment. He was still wondering about that. There must have been some way they’d connected him with Audrey, although he didn’t know how. Maybe they’d interviewed other residents in the apartment and Alan had said something. It didn’t really matter. They weren’t going to find anything in his apartment.

  Corbin opened a browser window and, for the thousandth time, searched for anything related to a “Henry Wood,” or “Hank Bowman,” or “Hank Wood.” There was nothing. He lay back on the bed and stared at the high ceiling, the ornate molding. The wind whistled through the room, fluttering the curtains, and Corbin closed his eyes, pretended he was a kid again, lying on Annisquam Beach, the salt air moving over him. He fell asleep and dreamed that he was innocent, that the murderers were coming for him, and that he wasn’t one of them.

  Chapter 27

  A beep from his computer woke Corbin. The hotel room was cold, and he was shivering. He sat up and looked at his computer screen. He had left his e-mail account open, and Kate Priddy had sent him a message in a chat box. Hello there, it said. He stared at it for a long time, his teeth now starting to chatter from the cold. It felt as though she could see him through the computer screen, see where he was. He got up and shut the window, pulled his hoodie back on. Hi, he wrote back.

  Did you kill Audrey Marshall?

  Corbin, barely breathing, put his fingers on the keyboard. He wanted to write that he knew who killed her, but he wasn’t brave enough. Instead, he wrote to Kate that he hadn’t killed Audrey, and asked if the police thought he had. They say you were in a relationship with her, Kate wrote, and Corbin admitted that he was. He told her their relationship had been secret and that’s why he hadn’t brought it up. He knew how lame it sounded, of course. Why hadn’t he just opened up about his relationship with Audrey as soon as he’d found out she was dead? It wasn’t to protect her anymore.

  He promised Kate he hadn’t killed Audrey. It seemed to work, since they were now chatting about the weather and Sanders, the cat. She asked what Audrey was like, then mentioned a friend of Audrey’s who she had met.

  Corbin’s skin prickled. He asked her who the friend was.

  Jack Ludovico.

  Corbin asked what he looked like and she told him he had reddish hair and glasses. It didn’t sound like Henry, but he could have easily dyed his hair.

  Corbin quickly googled the name. Nothing. Then googled the name with Henry Wood. Still nothing. They chatted a little more and said goodbye. He felt nauseous at the thought that Henry had possibly met Kate. Corbin had to find him.

  Why Ludovico? It sounded familiar to Corbin, and he googled it. The first item that came up was the Ludovico Technique, the aversion therapy from the scene in A Clockwork Orange in which they pry Alex’s eyes open and make him watch violent pornogra
phy. It had been Henry’s favorite film, or one of them. He loved all of Stanley Kubrick’s films, and Corbin and Henry had watched many together that summer in New York City when they had been so close. It felt like decades ago. Henry obviously had gotten that particular pseudonym from the film; what about his other false name—Hank Bowman—that he’d used when he lived in Hartford? Corbin punched Kubrick and Bowman into the search engine, and the film 2001 immediately came up. Corbin’s heart began to race, and a flush of excitement went across his skin. He looked at the list of all of Kubrick’s films. They’d watched The Shining together several times. What was Jack Nicholson’s character’s name? Corbin looked it up. It was Jack Torrance. He punched in Henry Torrance. There were a few hits. An actor who’d been in a bunch of B movies. Corbin added Boston, and a mediation consultant came up. There was a Web site, and even though there was no picture of Henry Torrance, Corbin somehow knew right away that he had finally, after all this time, found him. The biography listed Aurelius College and Columbia University for a master’s degree in conflict resolution. It was definitely Henry. There was a phone number and an office address in Newton.

  He’d found him.

  Even though it was nearly five, and the chances of Henry’s still being at work were slim, Corbin hailed a taxicab on Charles Street and gave the address of Henry’s office in Newton. It took forty-five minutes to get there through stop-and-go Boston rush hour traffic. The office was in the village of Newtonville, above a bakery on a tree-lined street that ran parallel to the turnpike.