He was slightly ashamed by the last thought. I should want them arrested and processed. I should want them swallowed up by the system.
But I was thirty years a judge, and I don’t trust my own profession. Not one bit.
He was surprised by his own cynicism. He cast his mind back to the situation at hand.
Why are they so confident? They should be nervous, sweating, anxious. They should be pacing about in sleepless tension. Instead, the house is quiet, like some typically suburban family resting up for another routine day.
He did not understand it. They should be on alert. They should be watching everything.
They are not scared to show themselves to us. That’s completely wrong.
Judge Pearson shifted about on the cot uncomfortably.
In his courtroom he had heard dozens of kidnapping cases; abductions of all sorts, over thirty years. He started to race his mind back, trying to think what cases he’d had that resembled this, but found he couldn’t concentrate, all he could think of was the woman, and the bitter smile that she’d worn when she’d stood in the parking lot facing them.
What have they done? They have taken us, and she acts as if she knows us—or knows about us. Something is going on here that I do not yet understand.
He felt the night chill and gathered the blanket.
She is very dangerous, he thought. The others, despite their weapons, less so. They cannot have her resolve. She will tell me what is going on, that is part of her arrogance. She will create the rules of engagement.
He rolled over on the cot. He could not shut his eyes, instead he stared up into the light, waiting for the morning to come.
Olivia Barrow slid naked from the bed.
The night chill raised goosebumps on her arms and legs and she shivered once, pulled a blanket from the bed, and threw it over her shoulders like a cape. She watched Bill Lewis briefly shift position, and slide back away into sleep. He was a dull lover, filled with grunting, straining, pumping obviousness. He bucks away on top of me as if it were simply an act of reproduction, and collapses after orgasm as if dead. She bit her lip at a sudden piercing sadness, thinking of moments in bed with Emily Lewis.
She walked to the window and stared out through the moonlit darkness. It is a winter moon, she thought; it throws out the light of death. It makes everything seem colder, as if etched by frost. The window faced toward the rear of the house, and she looked down across a small grassy field toward the treeline fifty yards away. It was like standing on the edge of the ocean, with the trees forming the edge of the surf. Once in there, you could lose yourself in an instant.
But not me. I’ve walked through the property too many times. First with that damn silly realtor, who kept wanting to show me something closer to town. She’d swallowed the fiction so quickly: just-divorced writer needing total peace and quiet and isolation. The sight of cash had certainly eliminated any further questions. And then a hundred times since then until I became completely familiar with my back door.
Olivia let her mind ease back over the events of the day. It seemed oddly segmented; more as if days or weeks had passed, not simply hours.
It had all been so remarkably easy. I’ve had too long to plan this to have anything go wrong now. Right from the first day they slammed the door on me.
She smiled. She remembered how the police had all thought that when she got her first taste of prison she would crumble and tell them everything they wanted to know.
She remembered an FBI agent, all slick in gray suit and white shirt, hair trimmed military short, his conversation filled with theories of revolution and conspiracy. He’d sat down across a small table from her, giving her a speech about making things easier on herself. “We can help you,” he had said. “We can see you do some easy time, then get out into a new life. Come on, Miss Barrow, you’re smart, you’re beautiful. Don’t throw your life away. You think you belong in there with all those whores and junkies? They’ll eat you alive. They’re going to take little pieces of your beautiful white skin every day, until there’s nothing left. You’re going to get out old and ugly and wasted. Why? Tell me why?”
The agent had leaned forward, ferret-like, waiting for her response.
She’d spit in his face.
The memory made her grin. He had been so surprised: It reminded her of a moment in high school when she had refused to let the football captain use her body.
Prison had not scared her in the least. She had expected one fight, perhaps two, then grudging acceptance. In her heart, she had known that all those whores and junkies would come to her eventually, and that she would be in command.
In a funny way, though she hadn’t been able to say this to the FBI agent—or to her father, whose tears she failed to comprehend, or to the lawyer he’d hired who’d been so upset with her refusal to help defend herself, or the judge who angrily sentenced her after giving her a useless lecture on showing respect for the system—she had looked forward to jail.
The hardest thing about her first days of prison had been adjusting not so much to confinement, but to the physical limits of space. She’d been put in a single-person cell on a tier that was called the “classification” area. She had swiftly learned that this was where she would live until prison authorities determined what sort of prisoner she was going to be. The cell had a bed, a washstand and toilet. It measured eight feet from front to rear, six feet from side to side. She had paced the distance once, twice, then realized that she’d done it a hundred times. She ignored the bars, ignored the sounds of prison, with its near constancy of shouts, screams, footsteps echoing, bars clanging as they opened and shut. In the distance she could always hear electronic buzzers, as sally ports were used. Buzz, clang, clang, buzz, clang, clang. It was the rhythm of prison. It was a noise that measured the size of space and the limits of movement.
She tossed her head to free herself of the memory.
They thought they would classify me, she laughed to herself.
At her first dinner in the prison cafeteria, she’d finished her meal and thrown the empty metal tray crashing to the floor. She’d thrown a cup of coffee in the face of the first guard to reach her, and slugged the second, breaking the woman’s jaw.
I classified myself.
She remembered the beating she’d received. It never hurt. She smiled and shook her head at the lie. Actually, they beat the shit out of me. I was all black and blue and bruises for a month afterwards. I thought I would limp forever.
But they could never hurt the inside me. That was the important thing to show them. They never controlled anything except when the doors would open and when they would shut. She thought again of the FBI agent: Easy time. It was all easy time. From the first minute to the last.
Her eyes picked out a slight movement from the forest line, and she watched as a half-dozen deer wandered out into the moonlit field. What a terrible life, she thought. A deer has nothing other than fear. It flees headlong at the slightest sound. It freezes in the winter, endures ticks and flies in the summer. When does a deer know peace? Certainly not in the fall, when it is hunted by every bozo with a rifle from New Jersey to Canada. She smiled. How ignominious a deer’s death must be: shot by some weekend warrior who was, in reality, lucky not to have killed himself, his partner, or some farmer’s dull cow. Or perhaps dying in flight, trying to escape across a roadway, hit by some half-drunk businessman in his car, staggering broken-legged into the brambles to die alone and in pain while the pig shouted in rage at the damage done to his fender. They live out their entire lives from panic to panic. They are the most stupidly timid beasts, even if they are beautiful in the moonlight.
She watched them graze, every so often picking up their heads, alert to the nuances of the night. Within a few moments the group had grown to at least two dozen collected in the open area in front of her. When something finally di
sturbed them, they left in a great bounding, leaping rush, flowing across the field like so many dark wavelets driven by the wind across a pond.
When the deer disappeared into the forest, she cleared her mind and thought of the captives in the attic, then of Megan and Duncan.
Are they crying, she wondered? Are they sobbing away the night-time? Or do they just sit and stare out helplessly? Do they have any idea what’s in store for them?
She glanced back at Bill Lewis and made a mental note to tease Ramon, bring his own desires a little closer to boiling. He should want me, she thought. He should want Bill, too. She listened to his snoring and admonished herself to keep his passion on edge.
If I maintain the tension, then they will not be paying attention to what it is I’m really doing. I must stroke them both and keep them churning. They are like all men, unable to see past their stiff pricks.
What I’m really doing is all mine and no one else’s. They will help me as long as they think it is something else, and then they will be too surprised to understand what it was that they were part of.
And I will be alone again.
She stood up, dropping the blanket to the floor, and let the moonlight wash over her nakedness.
It was as if she could feel the night penetrate her, slowly pumping away at her with great languorous strokes. Her stomach knotted, her breath quickened, her insides glistened with the rhythm of the darkness within her. She moved her hips forward and spread her legs slightly, feeling the cold air sweep around her, probing her, caressing her. She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, as if to hold this new lover closer.
As daylight started to take hold, Duncan looked around the living room of his house and thought of the problem that the new day presented. Megan had finally fallen asleep on the couch. The girls had been sent upstairs sometime after midnight. They were quiet; he did not know if they’d slept, but he suspected so, the teenage capacity for sleep in the face of almost any event having been previously documented in the household.
Duncan was slumped in an armchair. He found himself watching the slow progress of a shadow across a wall, growing fainter and less distinct with each passing minute. For a moment he thought he would be hypnotized by the sight; then he shook his head and cleared his imagination and tried to focus on the new day.
“So,” he said out loud. “What precisely is it that I do?”
He replayed the conversation with Olivia in his head. She had warned him about going to the police, which he had not done. Other than that, her threats had been generalized and her instructions nonexistent. He had not yet been told to collect money; nor had he been asked to perform any other task.
That would come, he told himself.
But what was he to do?
The answer was odious: Nothing but wait.
The idea that he would go up to his room and lay out a freshly laundered shirt and tie, select a conservative wool suit from the rack, shower and dress—just as he did on every weekday morning—nearly sickened him. How could he play-act his way through the day—smiling, shaking hands, going to meetings, reviewing papers?
He looked around the room at all the familiar items. It all seems so normal and well-arranged and acceptable. I have striven so hard for all the externals: the new car, the stately house, a little vacation property in the woods. Providing. That’s what I’ve done, I’ve provided. I’ve given my family the fruits of money. They have not lacked for anything.
And it has all been a lie.
For an instant, he thought he envied Olivia. I used to think of her, back in the first years when I thought any day it was all coming to an end. He recalled wondering about her life in prison, imagining with fear that the same confinement, beatings and regimentation awaited him. It had taken him years to understand that she had had the luxury of acting in accordance with her idealism, which was a sort of freedom in itself. And I, he thought, became middle-class and ordinary, which is a kind of prison of its own. She didn’t have to look down and see the twins, all newborn and defenseless, and realize that bringing about a new society was one thing, but providing for the children was more important. And then, by the time Tommy came along, everything was different.
He shook his head. But it was never different for her. It was always the same, day after day, in that prison.
Duncan rose from his seat. He paused by Megan’s side, reaching down, about to raise her from her sleep, then thought better of it. He wanted to touch her, as if that would be reassuring. But he lifted his hand and let her doze. It is Wednesday, he thought. Time to go through the motions. He went upstairs to the shower. At first he turned the water hotter than normal, letting the scalding flood wash over him. He poured shampoo all over his body, sudsing himself violently, scraping the soap through his hair and across his flesh. Then, as the room filled with steam, he angrily twisted the shower knob to cold, and punished himself with water that could have been ice.
Megan was awakened by the noise from the bathroom, surprised that she’d fallen asleep, unsure whether she was rested. Her emotions tugged at her instantly, like an undertow at the beach.
At first she felt a momentary anger; she hated the idea that Duncan would waste time in such a mundane pursuit. She thought they should all be dirty and bedraggled, as if their appearance should fit the feelings she had.
She kicked her legs off the sofa and sat up, pushing her hair back with her hands and trying to force sleep away from her head. No, she said to herself, he’s right. We must be fresh. There’s no telling what the day will hold.
She rose and, feeling her way unsteadily, went upstairs.
In their room, she faced Duncan.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he said. He was drying himself vigorously, slapping the towel across his body, leaving red striations on the skin. “But I suppose we’re expected just to behave as if nothing has happened and wait on them. She’ll be in touch. That’s what she said.”
“I hate that.”
“So do I, but what alternative do we have?”
“None.” Megan hesitated. “What are you going to do?”
Duncan took a deep breath. “Well, last time she called at the office. So I’m going to get dressed and go to my office and pretend to work and wait for her to call again.”
“Do you think they’re okay?”
“Yes. Please, Meg, don’t think about that. It’s just been one night and I’m sure they’re fine.”
“What about Tommy’s school? They’ll be expecting him.”
“Call them and tell them he’s got a touch of fever.”
She nodded.
“The twins?”
Duncan thought. “Christ, I don’t know. And what about you? Did you have appointments for today?”
“None that I can’t cancel, or get someone to take. I’ll use the flu excuse.”
She paused, then added: “I couldn’t stand it if I didn’t know where the twins are. I’ve got to keep them here with me.”
“That’s fine. Call their school . . .”
“And say they’ve got the flu. Then what?”
“Wait for me to call you.”
“God, I don’t know how I can.”
“You’ll just have to.”
“I can’t stand it.”
Duncan stood, trying to knot the tie around his neck. He tried once, and the thin end was too long. He tried again, and again it was uneven. He tried a third time, but it came out skewed. He tore the tie from around his neck and threw it hard on the floor. “You think I like this? You think I can stand it any better than you? Christ! I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. There! There are all the answers to every question you have. We just have to wait, dammit!”
Megan flared with anger, then bit her tongue.
�
�All right,” she said. “All right.”
They were both silent a moment.
“Why don’t you get showered and dressed? I’ll fix us some breakfast. Wake up the girls after you’re dressed.”
She nodded and, barely thinking, started to drop her clothes to the floor. Duncan, still struggling with the tie, left the room. He forced himself not to look down the hallway towards Tommy’s room as he went downstairs.
Megan let the water stream over her and cried freely.
When she finished, she toweled off quickly and dressed herself in jeans and sweatshirt.
She could smell bacon frying from the kitchen and it almost overcame her. She swallowed hard and went into the twins’ room.
“Come on, girls, get up.”
“Has anything happened?” Lauren asked.
“Where’s Dad?”
“Nothing has happened and he’s downstairs fixing breakfast. Get cleaned up and dressed, please.”
“We’re not going to school?”
“No, you’re staying with me.”
The girls nodded.
“And make your beds.”
“Mom!”
“Listen, dammit, we’re still a family and we’re still going to do things as if we’re going on just like usual. Make your beds!”
Lauren and Karen nodded.
Megan walked slowly downstairs, her head reeling. Still a family. Just act normally. She hated everything she’d said. She hated what she’d done. She could hear the girls in the bathroom, and she hated that they were all clean and ready for the day and that she’d ordered them to make their beds, which, she thought suddenly, was the silliest, stupidest thing in the world to do on the day their brother had been kidnapped.
She walked into the kitchen, wondering if the morning light would hurt her.
Duncan looked at her.
“Steady?” he asked.
She didn’t reply.
“There was a hard frost last night,” he said. “Everything looks crystal.”
“I know,” she replied, without looking. She shivered, realizing that the rising of the sun wouldn’t warm her in the slightest.
Day of Reckoning Page 13
