Crisscross

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Since when are you such an optimist?”

  “What—I should play Eeyore my whole life?”

  Jamie with the police…a possibility, but somehow…

  “I have to operate on the assumption they’ve got her.”

  “Got her where? I can’t imagine they’d risk taking her back to the temple.”

  “No, she’s someplace else. I’m sure they’re not stashing her back at the cabin, so…where?” He looked around. “Got any hats?”

  “Hats I’ve got tons of. What do you want?”

  “Something big. The bigger the better.”

  9

  Gia checked her pad for the third time this morning. Still no blood.

  See? Nothing to worry about. Dr. Eagleton had been right.

  Relieved, she stepped out of the bathroom and just missed colliding with Vicky who tended to go wherever she was going at a dead run.

  “Mom! Can Jessica come over?”

  Jessica had been one of the princesses on Halloween. Good kid and not at all high maintenance. But Gia didn’t feel up to overseeing two ten-year-olds.

  “I’m still feeling kind of pooped, Vicky.” Four days since the Big Bleed. She’d have thought she’d be bouncing back by now. “But you can go over there if you like.”

  Vicky grinned. “I’ll call her!” She ran for the phone.

  Gia would take advantage of the free time by keeping her feet up and taking it easy. One more day. If nothing else bad happened, she’d get back to a more normal routine tomorrow. Much more of this forced inactivity and she’d be ready for the loony bin.

  Jack was stopping by later this morning. It would be good to slip a movie in the disk player and hang out, just the two of them.

  The phone rang. It was Jack.

  “Hi, hon. Look, I’m going to have to put off my visit.”

  She hid her disappointment.

  “Something come up?”

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  Something in his tone…

  “Anything wrong?”

  “Not sure. Talk to you about it later, okay?”

  “Okay. Keep in touch.”

  She hung up and wondered what he was up to.

  10

  Jack slouched in the back of a taxi heading west along Jamie’s street. He wore sunglasses and an oversized khaki boonie cap pulled low on his head. As the cab approached her apartment house he scanned the parked cars and found one occupied by two men. Their eyes were locked on Jamie’s door.

  This could be a good sign. If they were watching for Jamie it could only mean they didn’t have her and were still after her.

  But then he thought of another reason for the ongoing surveillance. What if they weren’t watching for Jamie…what if they were watching for him?

  11

  Jamie squinted in the sudden glare as the trunk lid popped open. Not that the light was all that bright—just an overhead incandescent—but after all those hours in total darkness, it looked like a supernova.

  Her joints creaked in protest as she struggled to her knees. Her bladder was screaming for release. She’d wormed her way out of the canvas bag as they drove her around for what seemed like half a day. The car had stopped and started twice during the journey, but hadn’t budged for hours now. If the purpose of all that had been to break down her resistance with prolonged terror, they’d succeeded. In spades.

  She began to cry. She hated to let anyone see her like this but she couldn’t help it. She’d never been so frightened in her entire life.

  She tried to blink her surroundings into focus. Light filtered through a couple of dirty windows in a folding metal door. She seemed to be in a small garage. But in what state? She felt so disoriented.

  “There, there,” said a deep voice. “No need to be upset.”

  It came from her left. She looked up and cowered back from the blurred image of a huge black man in jeans and a black T-shirt. She didn’t need the extra blinks that brought him into focus to identify him.

  Jensen.

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. She’d been about to ask why he’d kidnapped her and brought her here—wherever here was—but she knew the answers. She had a far more pressing concern.

  The words clung to her throat but she forced them through. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you.”

  Jensen laughed like the guy who used to do the “Uncola Nut” commercials. “Don’t be silly! You’ve been watching too many bad movies. We have the tape, we erased your word processing file. If we wanted to kill you, you’d be dead by now.”

  Jamie glanced around. “‘We’?”

  His smile remained fixed. “Just an expression. I’m the only one here.”

  “Well, know this: I made a copy of that tape.” She hated the way her voice quavered.

  He smiled. “Oh? And when and where would you have made such a copy? And where did you stash it? In a safety deposit box? Not at that hour. In your desk? No. In your purse? No. In your apartment? No. At—”

  “My apartment? How—?”

  “When we got your purse we got your keys. Apartment 5-D, right? We know you haven’t been home since this morning, but we searched it anyway.”

  Christ, he’d covered all the bases.

  She clenched her trembling hands and decided to go the disarming route and ’fess up.

  “All right, you caught me. But I lied because I’m scared.”

  “No need to be. Just give me the answers to a few questions and you can be on your way.”

  “You’re not going to let me go. I’ve seen you, and kidnapping is a federal offense.”

  He laughed again. “Rest assured that I’ll have a perfect alibi. I’ll simply say it’s all something you cooked up to sell more papers. You’ve already gone public with your rabid hatred of Dormentalism—or ‘Dementedism,’ as you like to call it—and since you couldn’t dig up any real dirt on the Church, you pulled this stunt. Remember Morton Downey when he faked an attack by skinheads? Making that sort of crazy claim will hurt you, not us. You’ll be the new Morton Downey. No one will ever believe you again.”

  Jamie doubted that. Doubted it big time.

  “What about Henry?” she said.

  Jensen’s brow furrowed. “Henry? I don’t believe—”

  “The night guard at the paper. Was he in on it?”

  “Oh, yes. Henry. I didn’t know who you meant at first because that’s not his real name.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a Dormentalist, you know.”

  “Bullshit. He’s been with the paper for years.”

  “He’s been with the Church even longer. Of course, you’ll have no way of proving that since our membership rolls are sealed.”

  Did he really think they could pull this off? She wasn’t about to disabuse him of that particular illusion.

  For the first time since the trunk lid had slammed closed over her, Jamie Grant saw a glimmer of hope that she might come out of this alive.

  And if that was the case…

  “Let me out of this trunk. I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “In a minute.”

  “I have to go now.” God, she didn’t think she could hold it another second. “I mean right now.”

  “After you’ve answered a question or two.” His smile broadened. “Consider bathroom privileges part of an incentive plan.”

  When she got out of here, was she ever going to nail their asses to the wall.

  She pressed her thighs together and said, “Doesn’t look like I have a choice. What do you want to know?”

  Jensen’s smile faded. “Who is the man you were with at the cabin?”

  She could pretend she didn’t know who he was talking about, but Jensen would know it was another lie. All she’d accomplish was wasting more time—time she could be spending relieving herself in the bathroom. Bladder spasms or not, though, she didn’t want to give up Robertson’s name.

  Jensen took the choice out of her hands by holding up Robertson’s
card.

  “We found this in your pocketbook. It says that John Robertson is a private detective. When did you hire him?”

  Jamie had no problem answering that.

  “I didn’t. He came to me. He’d been hired to find one of your members who’d gone missing—as a fair number of them seem to do. He read my article and came to me for advice on how to sneak in. He knew I’d been kicked out and didn’t want to make the same mistakes.”

  Jensen stared at the card, nodding slowly. “He didn’t.” His head snapped up. “How do you know he’s John Robertson?”

  “I checked out his PI license. It’s current.”

  “True, but Mr. John Robertson is not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he’s dead. Died of cancer in Duck, North Carolina, three years ago.”

  Jamie couldn’t believe that. “You’re lying.”

  Jensen fished a piece of paper out of his back pocket, unfolded it, and held it out to her. A Xerox of an obit. She caught a flash of a grainy photo of an old guy in a Stetson hat before the paper was snatched away. He looked nothing like the man she’d been working with.

  Jensen angrily balled it up and hurled it across the room. She sensed his pent-up fury, felt it radiating from his soul like heat from an oven, and it frightened her.

  “But his license—”

  “—is current. Yes, I know. But obviously someone else has been renewing it.” Jensen snarled as he poked a finger against the card. “The address here is a mail drop. And the phone number belongs to a hair salon.” His rage seemed to build with every sentence. “Who is this man? I want to know and I want to know now!”

  Jamie couldn’t believe it. “His name’s not Robertson?”

  “No, and it’s not Farrell and it’s not Amurri either.”

  What was he talking about?

  “Then—?”

  He jabbed a thick finger at her. “He must’ve given you a number.”

  His blazing eyes frightened her.

  Jamie shook her head. “No. He always called me. No, wait. He gave me a cell number. It should be in my purse.”

  “There is no number in your purse.”

  Oh, God, had she lost it?

  “Then…then…” What could she say? “Wait a minute. I have caller ID on my office phone. It would still be there on the call list. I’m always getting grief for leaving so many numbers in the list.”

  Pure bullshit, but maybe Jensen would go for it.

  His eyes narrowed. “Then you would have seen the number. What was it?”

  “I couldn’t possibly remember. I get so many calls. I vaguely recall a 212 area code, but that’s it. I can check it out for you if—”

  Another Uncola Nut laugh. “If I let you go back to your office? I don’t think so. Not quite yet. But maybe we can figure out some way for you to find that number from here.”

  Her bladder shot a quarrel of pain into her lower back.

  “All right then, if I’m not going to my office, can I at least go to the bathroom? Now? I can’t think straight with my bladder killing me like this.”

  “Of course.” Jensen pointed toward the front end of the car. “It’s right through that door.”

  She raised herself on one knee, slipped an unsteady leg over the trunk lip, past the bumper and down to the floor. When both feet were back on the ground, she straightened slowly, carefully, her back protesting all the way.

  She looked around and saw an unfinished, uninsulated garage. To the car’s left sat a chair and an old table with a couple of nails driven into its thick, scarred top. A pile of heavy chain sat on the table next to a folded green towel. And just past the front bumper, a closed, unmarked door.

  “Is that it?” she said.

  He nodded, but as she turned away she felt her shoulders grabbed from behind. She was twisted and shoved into the chair and, before she could react, Jensen was wrapping the chain around her waist and chest.

  “What are you doing?”

  His face was set in grim lines and he didn’t answer. She tried to wriggle free but he was too strong for her. Finally, when Jamie couldn’t move, Jensen spoke.

  “Time to test your memory.”

  “About what?” Her pounding heart threatened to break through her chest wall. “Not the phone number! I told you—”

  “We have 2-1-2 so far. Only seven more to go.”

  “But I don’t know the rest!”

  Jensen grabbed her left hand and flattened her palm on the tabletop. He maneuvered her little finger until it was fixed between the two nails.

  “What are you going—”

  “I hate when things are unbalanced, don’t you?”

  Jamie sensed where this was going and it doubled her terror.

  “No, I—”

  “Your right pinkie, for instance. It’s so much shorter than the left.”

  “No.” She remembered the pain, the blood when her darling husband had chopped it off. She heard herself sobbing. “Oh, please, please…”

  “Perhaps I can overcome my dislike of an unbalanced body by hearing a phone number. A complete phone number. One that will connect me to the man I’m looking for. If not…”

  He lifted the towel to reveal a heavy, rust-rimmed meat cleaver.

  Jamie’s struggling bladder gave up. She felt a warm puddle spread across the seat of the chair.

  Jensen picked up the cleaver and hefted it, then raised it over her finger.

  “We’ll call this an exercise in memory stimulation.”

  Jamie could barely speak. Her words gushed out in a high-pitched rasp.

  “Oh, God, Jensen, please, you’ve got to believe me! Please! I don’t know the number, I swear, I swear, I swear I don’t!”

  He looked at her. “You know, the sad thing is, I believe you.”

  And then he swung the cleaver.

  12

  Gemini (May 21–June 21): You see what you want, and you know what to do to get it—give a fair dose of your winning attention, and then confidently walk away! Being too enthusiastic about a new prospect could scare him or her off or weaken your position.

  Richie Cordova’s office chair groaned as he leaned back, and screeched when he jerked forward. He’d rested the back of his head against the chair and his sutured scalp had let him know it wasn’t too happy with that.

  Goddamn, that still hurt.

  He resettled his weight and looked over the Gemini reading again. He liked the part that said, You see what you want, and you know what to do to get it. Damn right about that.

  Except about whoever had sent him that fucking virus. And who had split open his scalp. He knew what he wanted to do to those guys, but didn’t have no way to track them down.

  He lifted the paper off the mound of his belly and checked the other side of the astrological cusp.

  Cancer (June 22–July 22): A small but satisfying victory is the beginning of a lucky streak. Do what you must to get a good deal—a little financial wrangling won’t make you look bad. Tonight, lots of action with you at the center is your idea of a good time.

  Well, well, well. This was looking better all the time. He had a good day ahead of him. And why not take advantage of that? He’d been thinking about that nun and how the prospect of hitting a decent payday from her was looking dimmer and dimmer. She was tapped out and wasn’t going to get much from that building fund—if anything.

  But her boyfriend, Metcalf…why not hit him up for the difference? He owed the nun. Owed her big time.

  He told Eddy he was going for a walk and headed for the street.

  He traveled away from the park this time, searching for a phone he hadn’t used in a while. He’d thought of getting one of those prepaid cell phones, but he’d still have to leave the office. Couldn’t risk Eddy overhearing him putting the teat squeeze on one of his cows.

  He found a phone in a shady spot. The air was still humid after last night’s downpour and Richie had worked up a sweat during the walk. Had to lose s
ome of this weight, get back into shape.

  Yeah, right. Mañana.

  He tapped in his prepaid calling card numbers, then Metcalf’s office number. He wasn’t in, so Richie tried his home and caught up to him there.

  “You know who this is?” Richie said when Metcalf picked up the phone.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Good. Then listen up. I—”

  Metcalf’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “No! You listen, scumbag. I’m through playing your game. Do what you want. I’m not paying another cent.”

  For a few seconds Richie found himself speechless. Had this jerk called him a scumbag?

  “I guess you musta forgot about the photos. They’ll—”

  “I don’t care. Let the chips fall where they may. And don’t try harassing me with more calls because I’ll report you to the police and have them trace your calls. This ends it. I’m leaving town today, taking my family away on a vacation, and putting this whole thing behind me.”

  Richie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Had Metcalf gone bug-fuck nuts?

  He forced a growl to his voice. “Vacation, ay? Well, enjoy it, because married life ain’t gonna be so hot when your wife and kids come home and find the neighborhood plastered with bare-assed pictures of you and your little fuck-buddy nun.”

  “I guess that’s just a risk I’ll have to take.” And then Metcalf laughed—laughed!—and said, “Outfoxed by a nun. Some criminal mastermind you are. Good-bye, loser.”

  He hung up, leaving Richie staring at the handset in slack-jawed stupefaction.

  Had Metcalf said what Richie thought he’d said?

  Outfoxed by a nun…

  What the hell did that mean?

  And then he saw it all. Everything clicked into place. The virus hitting his computer not once but twice…and then the little nun giving him the runaround on payments…and finally Metcalf stiffing him, all but daring him to expose the photos of him and Sister Mary Margaret.

  Why? Because he knew the photos were gone!

  Outfoxed by a nun…