by Jan Burke
“To meet me?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re the one who escaped from Nick Parrish, right?” one of the men asked.
I looked at Wrigley. He’s known me for many years, which is why he stopped smiling. His guests didn’t seem to notice.
“Oh! It must have been so horrible!” one woman said, but she made the word “horrible” sound a lot like the word “thrilling.”
“What is he really like?” she went on. “They say he’s probably killed more women than Ted Bundy did. They say he’s just as handsome as Bundy.”
“He’s not handsome,” I managed to say. “Excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
“Not especially handsome,” the other woman corrected, “but charming. They say that’s how he lures women.”
“Don’t run off,” one of the men said, seeing me edge toward the door. “After all, you’re here with the boss, right, Win?”
Win? I had never heard anyone call him that before.
“Right,” Wrigley said. “Irene wasn’t taken in by his charms,” he added, trying to recover. “She’s a professional, through and through. Why, she nearly killed him!”
This elicited gasps from the female members of his audience.
“And she was the only one up there who had the sense not to get herself killed or wounded!” he said, warming to his subject. “She saved the life of this one idiot who ran into the field after the shooting started — can you imagine anyone doing anything so stupid?”
“Mr. Wrigley—” I began angrily, but he must not have heard me over the combination of exclamations of disbelief and laughter.
“He’s crippled now, but really, it’s his own damned fault. Irene has been taking care of him. In fact—”
“Yo, Win!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
All laughter and conversation ceased.
“Yo, Win,” I said quietly. “Go fuck yourself.”
I walked out. But as I did, I heard them start to laugh again — nervously, at first, and then one of the men made some crack I couldn’t hear, and they all laughed loudly.
“What happened then?” Jo Robinson prompted.
But I was frozen, watching a man walk across the parking lot.
It’s him.
Panic replaced the blood in my veins, pumped through me, tensed every muscle in my body.
He’s found out that I’m here alone. When I leave here, he’ll . . .
In the next moment, I saw it wasn’t him.
Just like every other time, it wasn’t him.
“Irene?” Jo Robinson’s voice, breaking through to me. Had she noticed?
“I was near Stuart Angert’s desk,” I said, forcing my mind back to the events of that day. “I seemed to go into this — this altered state. I heard this rushing in my ears, and then, after that, nothing. It was almost like being underwater, without the water — no sound, not even the sound of my own thoughts. I didn’t see anyone, feel anything.
“But I saw Stuart’s computer monitor, and I pulled the connections out of the back of it. Lydia tells me Stuart asked me what I was doing, but I didn’t hear, didn’t notice him. I pulled it off his desk with both hands — it’s a big monitor, but I didn’t notice its weight, either. I hurled it through one of the glass windows of the God office. I heard the glass breaking — that was the first thing I heard.”
“And after that?”
“They stopped laughing.”
She waited, and when I turned back to the window, she said, “Do you remember what happened after they stopped laughing?”
“I was forced to take a leave of absence and told I couldn’t come back until I had sought counseling.”
“I meant, immediately after you broke the glass panel.”
I frowned, then said, “Not really. There was a lot of shouting and — I’m embarrassed to admit this, because I should have been making a speech or something at that point, you know, a grand exit — but instead, I sort of fainted.”
“Sort of fainted?”
I came back to one of the chairs near her, and sat down in it. I looked down at my hands, clasped in front of me. “I didn’t really pass out, but all of a sudden I couldn’t stand up, and the next thing I knew, Stuart and — I don’t really remember, but a lot of people were around me, shielding me from Wrigley and his friends, or so it seemed to me, and Wrigley and one of the women were yelling and John was yelling back and Lydia and Mark and Stuart — Stuart, of all people! He never yells at anyone. Stuart was yelling. And the woman was saying, ‘I want her fired!’ as if she were anybody at the paper. It was close to a damned riot.”
She poured me a glass of water.
“Thanks,” I said, accepting it. “I still can’t . . .”
“Can’t what?”
“I often feel thirsty,” I muttered, and drank before she could ask anything more.
“Pretty crazy, huh?” I said. She refilled the water for me.
“Being thirsty?”
“No, you know, smashing things at work. Launching expensive electronic equipment through glass walls in rooms where people are seated.”
“Do you think you’re crazy?”
“No — yes — I don’t know.”
“A, B, C, or all of the above?” she asked.
“I feel,” I said, my voice shaking, “out of control. It scares me.”
She waited a moment before asking, “Aside from this incident at work, what’s making you conclude that you’re out of control?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s that . . . I can’t concentrate. I don’t sleep much. Maybe that’s what causes the lack of concentration.”
“Did you have trouble concentrating before you went to the mountains?”
“Not really.”
“Trouble sleeping?”
I hesitated. “Sometimes. Not often.”
She waited.
“When I’m under a lot of stress, I sometimes have nightmares.” In a few words, I told her about my time of being held captive in a small, dark room in a cabin, of the fear and injuries I suffered there, of the occasional bouts with nightmares and claustrophobia I have suffered since. Only a few people know the details of that time. I don’t usually talk about it very freely, but I found myself thinking that maybe if I could interest her in that, she would not ask about more recent events.
She asked a few questions about my life in general. Again, I considered this safer ground, and was fairly relaxed, even when describing situations that had been traumatic at the time they occurred.
“You’ve been through a lot lately,” she said.
I shrugged. “Other people have been through worse.”
“But you survived. All of that, and what happened in May in the—”
“I don’t want to talk about the mountains,” I said quickly. “I’m tired of talking about what happened there.”
“Okay,” she said. “I won’t ask you to talk about those events just now.”
I felt a vast sense of relief.
“In the time since you’ve been back in Las Piernas, and except for Ben, have you spoken to any of the other people who were in the group?”
“I thought you weren’t going to ask—”
“Since you’ve been back,” she said calmly.
“They died,” I said, unable to keep the edginess out of my voice. “All except Ben and Bingle.”
“Everyone?”
“Yes. Unless you mean — the original group that hiked in?”
“That’s who I mean.”
“J.C. came by to see Ben several times. And so did Andy.”
“To see Ben,” she repeated. “Did you talk to them?”
I lifted a shoulder. “They were there to cheer him up.”
“So. . . ?”
“So I didn’t talk to them.”
After a moment, she said, “There were two others, weren’t there?”
I thought, then said, “There was a cop, Houghton. He was Thompson’s assistant, you might
say. Frank told me he resigned on May nineteenth.”
“The day you returned from the mountains. When everyone learned what had happened there.”
“Yes. Maybe he felt bad about not being there. But it wasn’t his fault.”
“Maybe. Or he might have felt lucky,” she said. “Sometimes, in battle, for example, a soldier will see the man next to him die, and feel lucky that it wasn’t him. But even though that’s a natural reaction, later, he might feel bad about having felt it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Let’s see,” she said, “there was one more, person up there, right? The lawyer.”
“You mean, Phil Newly?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. Disappeared for a while.”
“Why do you think he disappeared?” she asked.
“He said his sister was taking care of him while he recovered from his injuries. Parrish broke Phil’s foot.”
“So, there are four other people who went up into the mountains with you, but you haven’t talked to any of them since then?”
“Right.” I thought for a moment and said, “You think they might be having a hard time, too?”
“Do you?”
I hesitated only slightly before saying, “Yes.”
“How could you find out?”
“Talk to them.”
“Let’s make that your first homework assignment.”
“Homework!”
“Did you think therapy was going to be easy?” She laughed.
“No,” I answered honestly.
“Just those four people. A phone call, a visit — just contact them. Okay? Now, let’s talk about sleep and nutrition . . .”
39
MONDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 11
Las Piernas
Parrish was humming to himself as he worked. Being in a garage workshop was not quite as wonderful as having his own hangar to himself. The neighbors were a little closer, more caution was required.
But it was just so darned great to have his hands on some real tools again! He revved up the circular saw and listened to the high-pitched sound of the motor, smiled at how little resistance it met until it got to the bone.
He wondered if Ben Sheridan had been in the hands of so fine a surgeon — he doubted it was possible — and began to sing “Dem Bones.” There was a little burning smell as the saw did its work. He took a deep breath, and sang another chorus. When the saw zinged to a finish, he was at one of the “connected to” phrases. He stopped singing and smiled.
“Not anymore!” he said aloud, and had to put the saw down until he could stop laughing.
He methodically continued his work, but was disturbed to note that he was subject to a certain degree of distraction. He kept thinking about Ben Sheridan.
Ben Sheridan had tricked him!
No, no, such a thing wasn’t really possible. A trick implied cunning, and Sheridan had been acting in a ridiculously sentimental fashion when he charged into that meadow.
By pure luck, the man had escaped being killed by the bullet — little higher, Parrish thought, touching the bone he was working on — a shot in the femur, through the femoral artery and — glub, glub, glub — in no time at all, the man would have bled to death. Actually, he thought, if he had hit an artery, maybe it would have sprayed blood all over the place. The image was exciting to him, and he stayed with it for a moment, savoring it, pleasantly surprised by it.
He was constantly evolving, he knew, into a more perfect, higher being. He must embrace these changes in himself.
After all, Sheridan was on his mind almost as much as Irene. He had even thought of using the knife on him! His knife, which had never been used on male flesh.
Except for one of his early kills — the childhood bully Merrick had caused him to remember — he didn’t bother much with killing males. They were obstacles: accidental witnesses and the like. For men, he used guns. He shot them, got it over with. But maybe he was missing out on something.
He smiled, doing a little detail work around the knee joint of bone, thinking of the pain Ben Sheridan must have suffered. Did he scream, he wondered? Did he cry? Perhaps he would cause Ben Sheridan to weep, and lick the tears from his face.
He felt an impulse to even the man out, to take part of the other leg. Sheridan was so asymmetrical now. It was displeasing to him to see such a thing; it disturbed his sense of orderliness.
“I’m a sawbones, after all!” he said aloud, and snorted with laughter.
He made plans. She was a tricky one, this Irene. She was no longer working. Did his little engraved announcement — oh, that was a good one! — of his arrival in town frighten her away? Had she quit or had she been fired?
When he had called to see if she had received his other little message to her, he was transferred to her voice mail. But a recording said the voice mailbox was full, and the imbecile at the switchboard claimed she didn’t know when Ms. Kelly would be in. He considered and rejected killing the switchboard operator. He hardly had time to kill every ignorant nobody on this earth, now did he?
He must concentrate on more important matters. He went back to making plans for Irene Kelly.
But while making these plans produced rather lovely sensations, thinking of her brought him to an entirely different state, made him taut with desire. He was a patient man, but he knew that he would not deny himself much longer.
He finished working on the bone, and laid it gently aside. The bone scent was so stimulating!
He must bring himself under control — there was a great deal of work to be done.
He bent to pick up the other leg, and put it on the workbench. As he did so, he said in a little puppet voice, “Hey, pal, thanks for the leg up,” and enjoyed a good bit of amusement over that. Unable to resist another moment of fun, he held it as if it were a rattle and said, “Shake a leg!”
He recovered his composure and went back to work, fastening the leg between two vises.
For short while, he distracted himself with thoughts of the Moth. The Moth was hiding something from him. Did the little fool think he didn’t see that? He was beginning to tire of the Moth. One or two more tasks to fulfill.
He turned the saw on again. This workshop wasn’t nearly as large as the one he would be moving into. Neither one was as big as his hangar, but he supposed it would be quite some time before he would be able to work on airplanes again.
The sacrifices he was willing to make were phenomenal.
He thought of all of the unworthy hands that were now disturbing the remains from the meadows. That this defilement should be the price of his fame angered him.
And close to anger was passion.
The little bone-burning smell came to him.
He was almost there . . . almost, almost there.
Simply volatile.
40
TUESDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 12
Las Piernas
Standing outside Phil Newly’s door, I seriously considered bailing on my assignment from Jo Robinson.
Some perverse impulse made me decide to tackle the toughest visit first. I had already had some contact with Andy and J.C., but I had avoided Phil Newly. I hadn’t had much contact with Houghton before he left the group, and because he no longer worked for the LPPD, it was going to take me a while to track him down. But I didn’t have any ambivalent feelings about Houghton. My feelings about Newly were mixed.
He had been associated with Parrish, in a role that made him Parrish’s champion. At the same time, Phil had made it clear that he didn’t like Parrish personally. After all, Parrish had attacked him.
Although I wasn’t proud of myself for thinking it, it had crossed my mind more than once that Phil Newly was fortunate to have his foot broken; a painful injury, but unlike Ben, he still had two feet. Because of that broken foot, he hadn’t faced the same terrors; he had escaped before the worst of the journey began. He hadn’t even seen the coyote tree. Afterward, he had cleverly dodged all efforts of the media to
interview him; once it was clear to everyone that he had not been present at the excavation of either of the graves, there was little interest in him.
The police didn’t seem to suspect him in the break-ins at David’s house and Ben’s office. They said his alibi had checked out. Still, while his sister backed up his claim that he had never left her San Francisco home during the day of the break-ins, a devoted sister might say anything to protect her brother.
But I couldn’t think of anything he might have wanted at the house or university, let alone any reason for him to risk a lucrative law career to become a burglar. In fact, although I didn’t know Phil well, I had never had any reason to believe he was dishonest.
I also felt grateful to him — Frank had told me about the ways in which Phil cooperated with him while I was in the mountains; he contended that without Phil’s help, it would have taken him much longer to find me.
My mixed feelings stayed mixed.
I rang the doorbell.
I could hear someone approaching on the other side of the door, then there was silence.
I had called his office; I reached a recording that said the offices were closed and that he was not accepting any new clients. A little checking around led to the discovery that he had referred all of his current cases to other lawyers, and had told those attorneys that he was retiring from the practice of law.
It was already old news that a judge, considering the injury done to Newly by his client, had released him from the burden of defending Nick Parrish; a new attorney would be assigned if and when Mr. Parrish was ever back in custody. But no one had expected that Newly would end his lucrative law practice so suddenly and completely.
I didn’t have Newly’s home phone number, but Frank had dropped him off at this address.
Just as I was wondering if I’d get credit from Jo Robinson if Phil refused to see me, he opened the door.
“Irene,” he said, “what a pleasant surprise.”
It must have been etiquette lessons instilled from childhood that made him use the word “pleasant.” He looked distinctly unhappy to see me. He peered nervously out at the street, and beckoned me in. I found myself almost reluctant to cross his threshold, but stepped inside.
