“What are you—”
“She saw you the night we took her. Lindsay was waking up before you left. She was pretty surprised you weren’t deaf, actually.”
A wave of nausea hits. Because of what I did. Because of what my wife has done.
“The funny thing,” she says, “is that Lindsay thought I was torturing her because she slept with you. I tried to tell her it wasn’t like that, not at first anyway, but I don’t think she ever believed me.”
“Millicent, what have you done?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Millicent says. “You did. You did all of this.”
“I don’t know what you think happened—”
“Do not patronize me with a denial.”
I bite my tongue until I taste blood. “How long have you been planning this?”
“Does it matter?”
No. Not anymore.
“Can I explain?” I ask.
“No.”
“Millicent—”
“What? You’re sorry, it just happened, and it didn’t mean anything?”
I bite my tongue. Literally.
“So what are you going to do?” she says. “Run and hide, or stay and fight?”
Neither. Both. “Please don’t do this.”
“See, this is your problem.”
“What?”
“You always focus on the wrong things.”
I start to ask her about what the wrong things are but stop myself. I am making her point.
She laughs.
The line goes dead.
Sixty-two
I SHOULD GET SICK. I should vomit up whatever is in my stomach, because when my wife of fifteen years has set me up for murdering multiple women, this should make me sick to my stomach. Instead, it feels like my whole body has been injected with Novocain.
Not a bad thing, because I can think instead of feel.
Run and hide. Stay and fight.
Neither is appealing. Nor is prison, the death penalty, lethal injection.
Run.
First, I take stock. Car, half a tank of gas, panini, partial iced coffee, and about two hundred in cash. Credit cards I cannot use, because Millicent will be watching.
I wonder if there is time to make a cash withdrawal at the bank.
Beyond that, my options narrow considerably. Can’t keep the car for long unless I get rid of the license plate, and then there is the issue of where to go. Canada is too far. By the time I make it there, my picture will be all over the news.
Mexico is the only driving option, and even that would be a stretch. It depends on how quickly this all plays out. My name and picture could be out within hours.
I could fly out of the country, but then I would definitely need to use my passport. They would know where I landed. At no time did I prepare for this kind of escape.
Millicent knows this.
Running will get me caught.
It also means leaving my kids. With Millicent.
Now, I get sick. On the side of the road, behind my car, I empty my stomach. I do not stop until there is nothing left.
Run and hide. Stay and fight.
I start to consider a third option. What if I just walk into a police station and tell them everything?
No. Millicent might be arrested, but so would I. Claiming innocence is not an option, because it is not true.
There has to be a way, though. A way to implicate her instead of me, because I never killed anyone. A deal could be made with the right lawyer, the right prosecutor, the right proof. Except I don’t have any. Unlike Millicent, I have not been setting up my spouse for murder.
You always focus on the wrong things.
Maybe she is right; maybe the why does not matter. But it will. The why is what will haunt me, what I will think about at night when I am lying in bed. If I am in a bed. Maybe it will be a prison cot. She is right about the why. It’s the wrong thing to think about.
Run and hide. Stay and fight.
The options repeat over and over, like those words written on the wall of the basement. Millicent stated these options as if they were the only ones that existed. As if it were an either-or choice.
She is wrong. The options are wrong.
First, I will stay. Leaving my kids isn’t going to happen.
And if I stay, I have to hide. At least until I can find a way to make the police believe me about Millicent.
That means I have to fight.
Stay, hide, fight. The first is easy. No running.
The police. I could go to the police and tell them everything, tell them . . .
No. Cannot do that. I have real blood on my hands, and even a rookie will figure that out. And if I cannot go to the police, I will have to avoid them.
Money. I have two hundred dollars in my wallet, and that will not last long. I head straight to the bank and withdraw as much cash as I can without triggering an alert to the IRS. Millicent will know about it, because the tracker is still on my car.
Millicent. How long did she know? How long has she been tracking me? When did she start to plan this? The questions are endless, unanswerable.
With all we have been through, with all we have done together, it is unfathomable to me that she did not talk to me, ask me about it, even give me the benefit of the doubt. Instead, I had no chance, no opportunity to explain.
It seems a little bit crazy.
And heartbreaking.
But I do not have time to think about either one. In less than an hour, my life has been reduced to its most base level: survival.
So far, I am not very good at it. Millicent knows where I am, and I have no idea what to do next.
* * *
• • •
HOME. IT IS still where I always go.
I grab what I can—clothes, toiletries, my laptop. The one we used to search for the women is gone, probably destroyed, but I find Millicent’s tablet and take it. And photographs. I take a couple of pictures of the kids right off the walls. I also send them a text.
Don’t believe everything you hear. I love you.
Before leaving, I turn off the GPS tracker but keep it with me. For a while, she will wonder if I am just sitting in our house. Maybe. But that is assuming I know my wife at all.
I pull out of the driveway and drive down the street, having no idea where to go next.
An empty building, a roadside motel, a parking lot? The swamp, the woods, the hiking trails? I have no idea, but it does not seem smart to be in a place I am unfamiliar with. I need somewhere quiet, somewhere I can think. Somewhere no one will bother me for a few hours.
A complete lack of options and originality sends me to the country club.
As an employee, I have a key to the office, which I never use, along with the equipment rooms and the courts. I make a quick stop at the store for a bag of food, mostly junk, and stay out of sight until after nine o’clock. That’s when the lights are shut down on the tennis courts, and security locks them up for the night.
This is where I go. The club has cameras inside the building. There are none on the courts.
Sixty-three
EVERYTHING ABOUT THE tennis courts is familiar. I grew up here, on these courts. This is where I learned to play tennis, but that wasn’t all I did. My coach made me run around these courts endless times to get into shape. I won trophies here and had my butt whipped, sometimes on the same day.
This was my escape; this is where I came to get away from my friends, school, and especially my parents. At first, I came here to see if they would look for me. When they never did, I used it as a hideout. I even had my first kiss here.
Lily. She was a year older than me and far more experienced, or so it seemed. On Halloween night, about a million years ago, my friends and I dressed up as pirates. She and he
r friends dressed up as baby dolls. We all ran into each other somewhere in the Oaks, while trick-or-treating, and Lily told me I was kind of cute. I assumed that meant she loved me, and I think she did.
One comment led to another, and it wasn’t long before I asked if she wanted to go somewhere cool. She said yes.
“Cool” might have been an exaggeration, but when I was thirteen I thought it was cool to be outside the house, at night, with a girl. Lily didn’t think it was too bad, either, because she kissed me. She tasted like chocolate and licorice, and I loved it.
For a second, I am so enveloped by this memory that everything seems okay. It is not. I am on this tennis court because the police are after me and I cannot go home.
But thinking about Lily makes me realize I do have somewhere to go.
* * *
• • •
THE ALARM ON my phone wakes me up at five. I jump up, gather my things, and get into my car. Trying to sleep on a courtside bench gave me plenty of time to come up with a plan. The Internet on my phone helped make it a good one. Turns out there are dozens of websites that explain how to disappear, how to go off the grid, how to elude the police, your boss, or your angry wife. Everyone wants to escape something.
I drive out of town, down the interstate, and do not stop for at least an hour. Eventually, I pull into a gas station, turn on the GPS tracker, and attach it to the bottom of a semi. After taking the battery out of my phone, I stop at a convenience store and buy a cheap disposable.
Then I head back to Hidden Oaks.
The Internet does not recommend this part, but the Internet does not have children. If I didn’t, I would keep driving, change the license plate on my car or get rid of it altogether. Take a Greyhound from state to state and eventually end up in Mexico.
Not an option. Not when Jenna and Rory are still with my wife.
Halfway back, I stop and buy a trunk full of groceries. I check all the papers, looking for my own face, but I do not see it anywhere. The headlines are just those two words.
TOBIAS DEAF
As I drive back toward home, I wonder if I am being stupid all over again.
* * *
• • •
THERE ARE TWO gates at the Oaks. The front gate is where the guards are; you have pass them to get in.
But Hidden Oaks is quite large, given that it has an entire golf course as well as hundreds of homes, so there is a back gate. Or rather, two of them. One requires a code; the second, an opener like the kind used for a garage, but there are no guards. This is where I enter.
Once inside, I drive past the less expensive homes, through the midrange development, and finally arrive at a house twice as large as mine. It has six bedrooms, at least that many bathrooms, and a pool in the back. Kekona’s house is empty, because she is still in Hawaii.
This is the most brilliant part of my plan. Or the stupidest. I will not know until I try to get in.
This is where Lily lived. On that Halloween night, she became my first girlfriend. So many nights, I snuck out of my house and into hers. Just like my son does with his girlfriend now.
It has been many years since I have done it, and the house has been repainted, remodeled, and updated. The locks have probably changed several times. But that’s the thing about real estate. People always change the locks on the front and back doors. I am betting the lock on the French doors around back, on the second-story widow’s walk, has never been changed. The lock on those doors never closed properly. It did not need a key.
Climbing up is not as easy at my age as it was back then, but I am not worried about being seen. Kekona’s house is deep in the middle of the Oaks, in the expensive area where everyone has more land than they need. The closest neighbors are barely visible from the front, let alone the back.
Somehow, I make it up without falling, and, sure enough, I know before I even try. The doors have been painted, maybe even resealed, but the lock is the same. I smile for the first time in twenty-four hours.
Minutes later, I am inside and then back out through the garage. Kekona has one car, an SUV, which leaves an extra space in her garage for mine.
I bring in the groceries, take a shower, and get settled. For the first time, I feel like I have a chance. A chance at what, I am not sure, but at least I am no longer sleeping on a tennis court.
When I open my laptop, problem number one hits: the wireless password.
Kekona has removed the code sticker from the bottom of the modem, so the password does not come easily. It takes me far too long to realize the sticker is right on the refrigerator door.
Once online, I search for a way into Millicent’s tablet. It requires a four-digit PIN. I know without trying that she would never use a generic birth date or anniversary. I need a better way.
On the news, they won’t stop talking about the press conference, about Tobias, and about the three women in the basement.
I try to figure out who they are, who Millicent would have chosen. Women from our list? Women I had rejected, like Annabelle or Petra? I hope it is not Annabelle. She didn’t do anything to deserve Millicent.
No, that wouldn’t make sense. Someone has to be alive to identify a deaf man named Tobias. She couldn’t have killed everyone who has seen him.
Maybe Millicent chose strangers, women I have never even seen or spoken to. Or maybe that would be too random for her.
I tell myself to stop. My mind is going in circles and getting nowhere.
I keep working on the tablet, hoping to find answers. By the time the sun goes down, I am no closer to getting into it.
It is six o’clock, and I should be at home eating dinner. Tonight is movie night, and I am not there. If my text didn’t let Rory and Jenna know something is wrong, my absence will.
* * *
• • •
I WAKE UP thinking I am at home. I listen for Millicent downstairs, back from her run, making breakfast. Today’s schedule runs through my mind; my first lesson is at nine. I roll over and hit the floor with a thud.
Not at home. I slept on the couch in Kekona’s great room. Her seafoam green sectional is huge, but I still roll right off it. Reality hits with the wood floor.
The TV goes on, the single-serve coffee brews, the computer boots up. I spent the previous night making lists. What I know, what I don’t know, what I need to know. How to get the info I need. The last list is a little short, because I am neither a hacker nor a detective. What I do know is that there are two ways to go about this: prove she killed those women or prove I didn’t kill them. Ideally both.
On the night Naomi went missing, I went home and stayed with the kids, leaving Millicent alone with her. Same with Lindsay; I was with Jenna, because she was sick. The kids are my alibi, and they’re not a good one. Once they were asleep, they cannot verify anything.
But can I prove Millicent did it? Not any more than I can prove I didn’t.
Millicent’s tablet is a larger problem than I thought. Although there is software available to reset a PIN, it can be done only if I am signed into the e-mail address on the tablet. Another password I do not have and can’t even guess. In the middle of the night, I resorted to reading hacker message boards populated by teenagers looking for the same thing I was.
There could be another way. Maybe. But only if I can convince someone to help me.
I spend half the morning wondering if it is better to ask now, before my face is all over the news, or after I am a wanted man. I try to imagine someone coming to me for help, someone who may or may not be a psychopath. Would I help them, or slam the door and call the police?
The answer is the same. It depends.
And my options are limited. My friends are Millicent’s friends; we share them. I have many clients, but most are just that. Just one possibility comes to mind—the only person who might be both willing and able to help.
Sixty-four
THE GOLDEN WOK is a Chinese buffet thirty minutes outside Hidden Oaks. I have been there once, on my way to somewhere else, and it is like every other Chinese buffet I’ve seen. I arrive early and fill up my plate with Mongolian beef, sweet-and-sour pork, chicken chow mein, and fried spring rolls. Halfway through the meal, Andy Preston walks in and joins me.
I stand up and offer my hand. He pushes it aside and gives me a hug.
Andy is not the same man I knew before Trista killed herself. He is not even the same man I saw at her funeral. The extra weight he carried is gone; now he is almost too thin. Not healthy. I tell him to grab a plate.
The Chinese buffet was his choice. He left Hidden Oaks after Trista died, and Kekona told me he quit his job and spends his days on the Internet, encouraging strangers not to kill themselves. I believe it.
Andy sits down at the table and gives me a smile. It looks hollow.
“So what’s going on?” I say. “How are you?”
“Not great, but it could be worse. It could always be worse.”
I nod, impressed he can say something like that after what has happened to him. “You’re right, it can.”
“What about you? How’s Millicent?”
I clear my throat.
“Uh-oh,” he says.
“I need help.”
He nods. Doesn’t ask a single question—because he is still my friend, even if I haven’t been much of one to him.
All morning, I have gone back and forth about how much to tell Andy about my situation. First, the tablet. I take it out of my gym bag and slide it across the laminate table. “Can you help me get into this? It has a PIN code, and I have no idea what it is.”
Andy looks at the tablet and then at me. His eyes look a bit more alert. “Any eight-year-old could get into this thing.”
“I can’t ask my kids to do it.”
My Lovely Wife Page 27
