When She Was Bad: A Thriller

by Jonathan Nasaw

  He decided to take a try at it, arranging his features in a deadly scowl and advancing on the retreating girl. “Where is she?” he demanded.

  “I—I don’t know what you mean.” Still backing away, her hands spread helplessly.

  “Then you’d better figure it out pretty goddamn quick, before I reach down your fucking throat and pull your lungs out through that lying mouth. Now where is she?”

  “Who—where is who?” Her back fetched up against a giant, uncaring redwood.

  “Lilith. I want Lilith. Come on dowwwn, Lilith!” Chanting now as he closed the ground between them, dragging his right leg behind him like the original Mummy, until his face was only inches from hers. “Get me Lilith or I will fucking kill you,” he said evenly, his voice coldly menacing, not at all heated. “Get me Lilith or you will fucking die.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  1

  The road to La Guarida curved downward to the canyon floor, then turned due east, narrowing to a rutted dirt track that ran alongside and a few yards above the south bank of Little Bear Creek. The going was easy enough at first, but when the redwood canopy closed in overhead, Irene rediscovered two things she’d forgotten about the wilderness at night: how bright and numerous were the stars, and how utterly dark it was in their absence.

  For the next three-quarters of a mile or so, she and Pender allowed themselves the luxury of flashlights. Walking single file between the ruts, shielding the beams with their palms, they could hear the creek chuckling and murmuring below them to their left; to their right loomed the south wall of the canyon.

  “Pen?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

  Pender was in the lead; he moved to his right and let Irene catch up. “You’re probably too young to remember the Davy Crockett craze.” With Irene walking the hump and Pender in the rut, their heads were almost level.

  “Before my time. I’ve heard about it, though.”

  “It was huge. When I was around ten, myself and every kid I knew, we’d have killed for a coonskin cap.” Pender dropped into line behind her and unzipped his windbreaker.

  “Anyway, this one time, I remember I’m lying on the living room rug watching Walt Disney on our old Sylvania Halo Light, it’s the episode where Davy tells his friend Georgie that his motto has always been Be sure you’re right, then go ahead. And my father, he’s an ex-jarhead, Semper Fi to the max, he’s sitting behind me in the armchair we always called Daddy’s chair, smoking his Camels and drinking his Genny—that’s Genesee beer—and I hear him grumbling, ‘Nobody was ever surer he was right than Ol’ One-Ball’—which was the only way he ever referred to Hitler.”

  “Smart man, your father,” said Irene, smiling to herself—she was trying to envision Pender as a ten-year-old, but the only picture that came up for her was a fat bald kid in a coonskin cap.

  As the canyon widened, the creek curved away to the northeast, while the road continued to hug the canyon wall for another quarter of a mile before branching off. Irene stopped when they reached the fork, holding up her hand like a scout on point. They switched off their flashlights.

  “The cabin’s that way,” Irene whispered, pointing toward the wide, grassy lane sloping downward to their left, descending through the trees toward the faintly audible murmur of the creek.

  “How far?” Pender whispered breathlessly, bent over like a winded football player with his hands resting on his knees; little points of colored light, the kind you see when you rub your closed eyes, were swimming in the blackness.

  “Maybe a hundred yards to the clearing, then another, I don’t know, fifty, sixty feet to the house?”

  Pender gestured toward the other, narrower fork. “Where does that lead?”

  “All the way up to the ridge—on a clear day, you can practically see Japan.”

  “But is there a way to get back out to the highway?”

  “From the ridge? Only by jumping off the cliff—it’s several hundred feet straight down. Other than that, this road is the only way in or out.”

  Excellent, thought Pender—not having a back door to cover greatly simplified the mission and improved their prospects. And more good news: he was starting to get his second wind. “Wait for me here,” he told Irene. “I want to scope out the cabin—I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  “Forget it, I’m coming with you.”

  “Laak fuck!” That was a little Caribbean-ism Pender had picked up on St. Luke. “Remember, you agreed to let me call the shots.”

  “Actually, I believe all I said was that it sounded reasonable—that’s not the same as agreeing.”

  Pender glared down at her. “Of all the goddamn childish stunts,” he whispered fiercely. “This is not a game here, Irene—I’m not going to debate with you.”

  “Good choice,” said Irene. “Come on, let’s get going before the moon comes up.”

  2

  Lily covered her face. Clawlike hands closed around her wrists, tugging them down to her sides. Her mind flashed back to earlier, in bed, she and Lyssy getting to know each other’s bodies, Lyssy showing her how tightly his scarred hands could grip, how weak they were when it came to letting go.

  But worse than the welling fear, worse than the pain in her wrists, was the sickening realization that that Lyssy was gone. This dry husk of a voice trying to bully her into switching alters (as if it were something over which she had any control, something she wouldn’t have done in a heartbeat, if only she had the power) was not her Lyssy’s voice, any more than these soulless eyes glinting with false merriment were those of the man with whom she’d made love earlier. They reminded her more of her father’s eyes, dead and glassy as he whisk-whisk-whisked his closed fist up and down his penis, getting hard, getting ready to hurt her.

  Thinking of her father triggered that old familiar sadness that usually presaged an alter switch—perhaps if Max had had the sense to back away and let her drift, it might have happened. Instead he tightened his grip on her wrists, brought his face up to hers.

  “This is your last chance,” he hissed. She felt his breath warm and damp against her skin, and knew what she had to do: whatever Lilith would have done. Fearless Lilith. Fearless, foulmouthed, hot-tempered, biker-tough Lilith. She loosed a quick inward-directed prayer—Lilith, if you’re there, for God’s sake help me out here—then squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and forced herself to meet his eyes.

  “Actually,” she said, “it’s your last chance.”

  A startled laugh. “For what?”

  “To get your fucking hands off me before I knee your balls up into your throat.” The words came with surprising ease; their effect astonished them both.

  “Well, I’ll be blowed,” said Max, releasing her wrists, leaning even closer, peering into her eyes. “Lilith?”

  “No, it’s Princess fucking Di,” she snapped. “Now would you mind backing off a tad, amigo?—your breath smells like you’ve been gargling raw sewage.”

  Any doubts Max may have had concerning Lilith’s identity had been largely put to rest by the time they’d finished dragging the corpse into the underbrush. She hadn’t winced when Max ordered her to take one of Fano’s legs while he took the other, nor flinched at the way the lolling head went bumping over the rough ground—timid Lily could never have managed all that without breaking character.

  Lily, meanwhile, had been steadily growing in confidence. If I can get through this, she told herself as she helped him cover her murdered friend with fallen redwood boughs, I can get through anything. Indeed, by the time the grisly task had been completed, there was no remaining effort, and very little volition, in her adoption of Lilith’s personna—the longer she played the role, the more it felt like a channeling rather than an impersonation.

  And afterward, sitting on the bottom step of the porch brushing damp earth and redwood needles from her bare feet, she made sure that he noticed her glancing around the clearing as though she’d
never been here before—which she wouldn’t have, not as Lilith, because in their system there’d never been any co-consciousness or memory-sharing among alters. “Who was that, anyway?” she asked him casually, nodding toward the edge of the clearing where they’d left the body.

  “Just some Mexican in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Sure looks that way.” She forced a shrug. “Whose place is this—yours?”

  “No, it’s yours. The DeVries family retreat. Come on, let’s go inside.”

  She felt his eyes boring into her from behind as she preceded him into the dark cabin. You’ve never been here before, she reminded herself, and made a point of feeling around the wall next to the door. “Where’s the light switch?”

  “There isn’t one—there’s no electricity.”

  “Oh, swell—fucking great. You got a flashlight?”

  “Here you go.”

  The beam from a 12-volt lantern darted around the square, cluttered cabin like an obese Tinkerbell, coming to rest on a shelf with oil lamps, a Coleman lantern, and dozens of candles. In a nearby drawer she “discovered” a box of Strike Anywhere matches sealed in a baggie. They lit everything with a wick; when the cabin was ablaze with light, they closed the shutters while Lily made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  While Max rested his leg, Lily came within a whisker of blowing the masquerade. Having realized that all she needed to do to save herself was get a good running start on the one-legged man, then hike out of the canyon and flag down a car, she was just about to tell him she was going back outside to fetch the drinks cooling in the creek, it dawned on her that Lilith wouldn’t have known anything about Mother Nature’s fridge.

  “Goddamn it, didn’t we bring anything to drink?” she blustered, feeling cold sweat dampening the back of her T-shirt. “No fucking way I’m choking down a pb&j dry.”

  “Lily stashed everything that needed to be refrigerated in the creek.”

  “I’ll get ’em,” said Lily, quickly slipping on her sneakers. “Just tell me where.”

  “No, I’ll do it—I know where they are.”

  “Fine by me,” said Lily. It might even be better this way, she told herself—she could be long gone by the time he returned.

  “I’ll be right back.” Max limped over to the door, opened it—and immediately slammed it shut.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Either I just saw Bigfoot out there,” said Max, leaning his back against the door, “or we have company.”

  3

  “Down!” Pender whispered fiercely, dropping into a crouch. He and Irene had just emerged from the road into the clearing when the cabin door had opened suddenly, revealing Maxwell standing in the doorway. He had peered briefly into the darkness, then retreated into the cabin, shutting the door behind him. “Of all the freak luck!”

  They took cover behind the skeletal frame of the strange-looking vehicle parked at the edge of the clearing. From here, the cabin looked dark and solid as a blockhouse, with thin cracks of light outlining the shutters, which weren’t quite flush with the window frames.

  “Do you think he saw us?” whispered Irene.

  Pender grimly unholstered the Colt. “Unless he’s gone blind recently.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “I’m not sure.” He racked the slide, jacking a round into the firing chamber. “It’d be helpful to know who we’re dealing with,” he added, in what was possibly the understatement of the decade.

  “I knew it,” Max declared triumphantly, when a few more minutes had gone by without any bullhorns bellowing that they were surrounded. “I knew he’d come after me on his own.”

  “It could be a trap,” said Lily, holding a lantern to the huge USGS map on the wall, examining the pale green swirls and spirals the way Lilith would have, if she were trying to find a back way out. There was none, of course, but Lilith wouldn’t have known that. Neither would Max—Lily was counting on that.

  He turned away from the window. “You just don’t get it, do you? This is personal with him—he can’t stand that I beat him.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re planning to go out there and take him on?”

  “It’s personal for me, too,” replied Max. “Remember what I told you when we were planning Lyssy’s birthday party? Revenge is the priority. First Corder, now Pender and Cogan, it’s like they’re lining up for me. I really would be an ungrateful bastard if I didn’t at least try to take advantage.” He double-checked both guns—the reloaded revolver had a bullet in each of the six chambers, while the black pistol had one round up the spout and another thirteen in the clip—then turned back to Lily.

  “From here on in, job one for you is keeping your body between his gun and my body. Meanwhile, anything you can do to convince him that you’re Lily and I’m Lyssy would be extremely helpful.”

  “Anything else, oh lord and master?”

  He gave her a sharp glance, decided to let it pass. “Just follow my lead.”

  After several long minutes, during which they’d discovered that their cell phones were useless this deep in the woods, Pender and Irene abandoned the partial protection provided by the mule for the solid cover of Irene’s Infiniti. From here, they watched the lopsided moon, a few days short of full, rising above the hills behind the cabin, turning the sky to the east a shimmering gray and casting a pallid silvery light over the canyon. Below them to their left, a ghostly mist drifted lazily behind the willows lining the south bank of the creek; above them to their right they could just make out the pale scar of a dirt road zigzagging up the canyon wall.

  The cabin door opened again, throwing an elongated trapezoid of yellow light across the covered wooden porch. “Here we go,” whispered Pender. He rose from a squat to a high crouch, holding the gun two-handed, fingers interlaced, using the roof of the Infiniti as a platform to steady his aim. A short, spidery figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted dramatically in the streaming light like the alien emerging from the mother ship at the end of Close Encounters—if the alien had had two heads and eight limbs.

  Pender eased his finger off the trigger. So much for the quick and dirty solution—he had never been much of a sharpshooter. FBI agents had to be range-qualified, of course, but even when he was young, Aim for the middle and hope for the best had always been Pender’s motto.

  “Who’s out there?” Max shouted from the porch.

  Lily winced. “Not in my ear, bro,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.

  “It’s Agent Pender.”

  “And Dr. Cogan,” called the psychiatrist—from where Max stood, he couldn’t see Pender glaring at her.

  “Oh, good. Dr. Cogan, it’s Lyssy. Lyssy and Lily. We want to come down and talk things over, but I’m scared your friend there is just going to shoot me the first chance he gets—could you get him to maybe just point his gun away a little?”

  Max’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the moonlight; looking over the girl’s shoulder, he could see Pender bracing the gun against the roof of the car, twenty yards away.

  “Lyssy!” he called. “I give you my word I won’t fire first.”

  “You bet he won’t,” Max whispered to Lily. “Not while I have you for a shield.”

  “Well that cheers the shit outta me,” Lily murmured as she started down the steps.

  “Okay, that’s far enough,” Pender called, when the other two had crossed the clearing to within ten feet of the Infiniti, Lily trudging along in the lead with the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up, Maxwell limping behind her, wearing an old canvas knapsack containing their money and a few supplies. They were standing not far from where Fano had died; behind them, his blood was a dark stain in the moonlight.

  “Hi, Dr. Cogan,” said Max, in Lyssy’s ever-hopeful voice. “We’re sorry we put those sleeping pills in your juice, but we couldn’t think of any other way to get a head start.”

  The voice, the timid stance, what she could see of his expression as he half-crouched b
ehind Lily, all seemed to Irene to support his claim to be Lyssy. “No harm done,” she told him, then turned to Lily. “Are you all right, dear?”

  The girl nodded curtly, but it was Pender she was staring at, as though she were trying to telepath him a message. He thought he knew what it was, too. “Lyssy, I need to see both your hands. You can stay there if you’d like—just show me your hands.”

  “If you want to know do I have a gun, the answer is yes. But I’ll ditch mine if you’ll ditch yours.”

  “You first.”

  Half obscured by his human shield, Maxwell shrugged. “Dr. Al always said I was a trusting soul,” he said, holding up the .38 with which he’d killed MacAlister, then clicking on the safety before tossing it away. “Your turn.”

  “Sorry, I can’t do that,” said Pender. That was a lesson every cop was taught in the cradle: No matter how bad it is, there’s no situation that can’t be made worse by surrendering your weapon.

  “But—but you lied!”

  The childish disappointment and disbelief in Maxwell’s voice, the air of naiveté, went a long way toward convincing Pender that this might be Lyssy after all. He did not, however, lower his own gun or let down his guard. “Sorry I had to mislead you, son. Now put your hands in the air for me. Lily honey, you come on over here.”

  But before she could move, Maxwell snaked his left arm around her throat, drew MacAlister’s automatic from the waistband of his jeans with his right hand, and pressed the muzzle against her right temple. “Drop your gun, or I blow her head off.”

  “Go ahead,” Pender told him calmly. “You’ll be dead before she hits the ground.”

  4

  Being in the dark place is like being deaf, dumb, blind, paralyzed, and buried alive. Nothing here. Nothing but yourself and your thoughts. Crazy-making. Unbearable to contemplate. To think too closely about it is to risk becoming an endless scream resounding through the void.