What Comes Next

by John Katzenbach

  She was in a difficult position. She reminded herself to be cautious. She loved her job but she understood that each case was career defining. Screw up a campus rape and she’d be back driving a patrol car. Mess up a drug investigation or a burglary and in a small department such as hers the black mark on her record would be magnified. Instead of waving her gold shield at petty crooks and students who had drunk their way into a felony she’d be answering telephones.

  A part of her burst into anger at Jennifer. Goddammit! Why couldn’t you just smoke pot and stay out late like every other disaffected teenager. Why not drink and have unprotected and far too early sex and get through your teenage years that way? Why did you have to run away?

  She was exhausted. She would already have dozed off if not for the combined images of two dead murderers from half a century earlier and Jennifer. She wanted to promise I’ll find you but she knew that was still unlikely.

  The chief of her department sat behind his desk. There was a picture on the wall behind him of the chief in a baseball uniform surrounded by children. A Little League championship season. Not far away were a cheap but glistening trophy and a framed plaque that declared him The Best Coach Ever that was signed by many barely formed signatures. The rest of the wall was devoted to diplomas from many training courses: an FBI professional development program, Fitchburg State College, and a graduate degree from John Jay College in New York—she knew this last was fairly prestigious. The chief liked to wear a uniform to work, but this day he was in a suit that seemed far too tight for his expansive stomach or for his weight lifter’s arms. It gave her the impression that he was about to burst out in a number of directions, like a carton character filling up with balloon air.

  He was nursing coffee and drumming a pencil against the modest report that she’d filed.

  “Terri,” he said slowly, “more questions here than answers.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Are you suggesting we call in the state guys or the feds?”

  Terri had anticipated this question. “I think we should inform them of the situation, as best as we can tell. But without any firm evidence they’re just going to be as frustrated as I am.”

  He wore glasses. He had the habit of putting them on and then taking them off—removing them when he spoke, replacing them when he read—so that he was constantly in motion.

  “So what you’re saying . . .”

  “A teenager with an established history of running away runs away for a third time. An unreliable witness says he saw her snatched from a street. Further investigation uncovers that a stolen vehicle similar to that he spotted may have been torched in the hours after the disappearance.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “Yes, and that’s it. No ransom request. No contact from the missing girl or anyone else. In other words, if there was a crime it stops right there.”

  “Jesus. What do you think?”

  “I think . . .” Terri hesitated. She was prepared to rush into her answer when she abruptly realized that what she would say next was dangerous. She wanted to make certain that she protected her position cautiously.

  “I think we should proceed carefully.”

  “How?”

  “Well, the witness—Professor Thomas, he’s emeritus from the U; I put his bona fides in the report—thinks we should examine possible abduction for sexual abuse cases. Go through all potential sex offenders. Try to find some avenue to pursue there. At the same time, we should increase the Missing Persons requests. If you want to inform your liaison with the Springfield FBI office, that might make sense. See if they want to get involved—”

  “I doubt it,” the chief said. “Not without something more concrete to go on.”

  Terri didn’t continue. She knew the chief would.

  “Okay, keep working the case. Keep it on the top of your platter. You know most of these runaways eventually show up. Let’s hope that maybe the people the professor spotted were some friends that the mother doesn’t know about. Let’s just keep collecting information while we’re waiting for an I’m broke and I wanna come home phone call.”

  Terri nodded. The chief saw the same problems she did. He wanted to make sure that he never had to get up in front of a bunch of cameras and reporters and say, “Well, we failed to take advantage of opportunities we had . . .” She had seen cops in other jurisdictions face up to the same music and watch their careers evaporate. She doubted that her chief—even with the solid support of the mayor and local government council—wanted to be the next one facing the steely eye of negative publicity.

  It was easy for her to guess that he also didn’t want to get up in front of the town council, even in private session, and say, “Well, maybe we have a serial rapist or killer in our nice, quiet little college town . . .” because that would be every bit as explosive.

  So, as she suspected, what he was really saying to her was Do your best. Cover every base. Follow every procedure. But don’t take a chance. Don’t go crazy. Just be steady and reliable . . . Because if anything goes wrong you will get the blame.

  She nodded. “I’ll keep you posted if I develop anything relevant.”

  “Do that,” he replied. He tugged at the tie around his neck. A speech, Terri guessed, maybe in front of the Masons or the local Lions Club. It would be the sort of place that wanted to hear about crime-statistic breakdowns and about how the department had handled every case with skill and professionalism. This was an impression the chief was adept at giving.

  She decided she was going to do two things. Check cold cases. Maybe there was another Jennifer she didn’t know about. And then she planned to identify every registered sex offender within her reach. A lot of visits.

  She got up, crossed the chief’s office, and left. She had not spoken a word about Professor Thomas’s theories. Most crimes fit patterns, fit statistical norms, fit into frameworks that can be taught in classrooms and then applied to real-life situations. He wanted to step outside those parameters.

  It didn’t make sense to do it, she knew. But neither did it make sense not to.

  20

  Michael was pleased.

  The inbox of responses for Series #4 was crowded with ideas, suggestions, and demands. These ranged from the subtle I need to see her eyes to the considerably more predictable fuckherfuckherfuckher to the complex Kill her. Kill her now!

  Michael knew that his replies were important, and he spent time crafting each. Like any good entrepreneur dealing with a multifaceted client base, he wanted to be certain that those merely making recommendations were given the same careful, teasing answers as he gave those who were more deeply enmeshed in Series #4.

  Michael was always alert to the needs of subscribers entangled in the obsessive and compulsive demands created at Whatcomesnext. He liked to imagine himself as a writer for the new age, a poet of the future. He thought traditional authors who devoted months and years to building stories on a page were dinosaurs and clearly on their way to extinction. He proudly spoke a different language, one that wasn’t limited to English or Russian or Japanese. He wasn’t a painter confined to the barriers of a canvas; he constructed brush strokes that constantly shifted and changed. Unlike a film director working within a strict budget, he crafted images that were filled with uncertainty and surprise. He wasn’t tied to any dialect or any medium. He was an artist for modern times, one that blended film and video with Internet and words and performance, a mixed media that spoke to the days that were coming, not the antique times that had passed. He thought of himself as part documentarian and part producer. His was a design of spontaneity.

  It did not bother him in the slightest that his creation was built on a crime. All great advances in art took chances, he believed.

  Linda was asleep, wrapped in tangled sheets on the bed, making small regular, peaceful breathing sounds. Her long legs w
ere exposed and her skin glistened. She was halfway on her stomach, with a pillow pulled against her, and the curve of her breast was outlined beneath the sheet she’d tugged around her back and shoulders. He imagined her dreams were happy, filled with simple, magical sights.

  Sometimes, when she slept, he found himself staring at her, and it was as if he could see her aging, her perfect skin fading and wrinkling, the tautness in her body loosening. He would imagine the two of them growing old together, and then he would think that was impossible; they would forever be young.

  Occasionally he glanced toward the camera monitors to check on Number 4. At that moment she, too, seemed asleep—at least she had barely moved in the past hour. He suspected her dreams to be far less quiet. Number 1 and Number 2 had frequently screamed in their sleep. Number 3 had groaned, pulling on restraints, which had been a precursor to the way she had fought them when she was awake. It had cut Series #3 shorter than he’d liked because Number 3 was just too hard and too demanding to handle. But he’d learned a great deal from Number 3 before the end of the show, and these were lessons he was employing with Number 4.

  He punched a few computer keys and zoomed a camera into a close-up. Number 4’s lips were slightly parted and her jaw seemed set in concrete. She will scream soon, he thought.

  There are screams caused by what you dream. There are screams caused by what happens to you when you are awake. He was unsure which was worse. Number 4 knows, he thought.

  He sighed, lifted his hands, and ran them through his long hair. He adjusted the glasses on the end of his nose. He wondered if he had time to grab a quick shower. As he watched, he saw Number 4 twitch and her hand involuntarily move toward the chain around her neck. Dreams of drowning, he guessed. Maybe dreams of choking. Or nightmares of being trapped under the ground.

  He watched, thinking that Number 4 would probably wake up in the next few minutes. The dreams were so vivid, so frightening, that they often pitched subjects into wakefulness. At least that was what he believed.

  One of the problems with guaranteeing her disorientation—which Michael knew was a key element of the entire show—was that she was likely to be awake at odd times, no longer roped to the rhythms of wake in the morning, stay up in the day, go to sleep at night. There was an advantage to this, Michael knew, because Series #4 went to so many time zones in so many parts of the world that eventually every person was ­satisfied—because at some point or another, their time zone would contain something undeniably live and visually compelling. But this was a hassle for the two of them—often one of them had to do sentry duty while the other caught some sleep. Part of their own passion for the project came from sharing observations and their own arousal over what they were creating. But frequently these moments came when one was observing, which made for frustration.

  In their first two efforts at Whatcomesnext.com this had proven to be an immense problem. They were constantly exhausted and, by the end, had barely the energy to complete the show.

  After much discussion Michael and Linda had solved this electronically. They taped action, they taped moments of sleep, they created shows within the show so that the narrative thread of Series #4 was constantly being renewed and rewound and replayed. He had become an expert at Final Cut and other editing programs and had learned how to paste together different sequences, so that when things felt like they were lagging he could send out something compelling.

  Michael had come up with this idea when he studied modern pornographers and recognized that people would watch the same video of actors coupling over and over again, as if every moan and every stroke were happening for the first time.

  But Michael had the sense to understand that no matter how explicit the pornography was eventually it turned stale. It was ultimately predictable. He got so that he could actually time the videos that streamed over the Internet—so many minutes for each element of each sex act, one after the other, all in military order until the eventual mouth open conclusion.

  Michael had been determined to break those molds.

  The beauty of Series #4 lay in the art of unpredictability.

  No one would ever know what might take place on camera. No one would ever be able to anticipate the next move. They could not measure the length of time it might last, or the actual theme.

  A near-naked teenager chained to a wall in an anonymous room was a canvas that any possibility might be drawn upon.

  He was immensely proud of this. And proud of Linda. It had been her insistence that they find someone young and fresh for Series #4. She had argued that the increased risk involved was dwarfed by the Internet word of mouth that would increase their paying customer base. She had been insistent and determined, using all her onetime business school and corporate knowledge to buttress her argument.

  Michael admitted that in this—as in so many other things—Linda had been right.

  Number 4 was going to be featured in the most interesting drama they’d ever created.

  Behind him Linda stirred. In her sleep she was smiling. He smiled back and longed to stroke her leg, but as he reached out he stopped his hand. She needed her rest, and he shouldn’t disturb her.

  He turned back to the computer. There was an e-mail message from someone with the Web name Magicman88 asking: Number 4 should exercise, so we can see her figure more excellently.

  Michael wrote back: Yes. All in good time.

  He liked giving the subscribers the impression that they were helping to control the situation, and he made a note on his script to make Number 4 do some push-ups, sit-ups, maybe jog in place.

  He sat back in his chair and asked himself, If I make her exercise, what will that make her think?

  He wondered: Does the lamb being fed extra food realize it’s being fattened for slaughter?

  Michael whispered out loud, “No, she won’t. She will believe it’s all a part of something else. She won’t be able to see the theater of it all.”

  Linda rolled over in the bed. He liked the idea that she was sensitive even to his whispers.

  Back on the video monitor he saw Number 4 lift her hand to her face, her fingers touching the mask that hid her eyes. But her motions seemed involuntary and he understood she was still asleep.

  He believed that this was part of his genius. Michael was able to imagine the psychological ramifications of every action that took place on the video screen. He considered not only how Number 4 was being affected but also how it would appear to those watching. He wanted them to both identify with Number 4 and, simultaneously, want to manipulate her.

  Control was everything.

  Again he glanced at the monitor and then let his eyes linger on Linda. When they had first devised the ideas that had led to Series #1 he had immersed himself in the world of captivity. There wasn’t a paper written about the Stockholm Syndrome that he hadn’t read. He had devoured POW memoirs and obtained declassified U.S. military tracts assessing life in the Hanoi Hilton. He had even managed to obtain some of the CIA psychological operations unit’s interrogation and risk assessment manuals for high-value targets. He’d read prison wardens’ oral histories and biographies of the men they’d kept incarcerated. He knew the truth about Birdman of Alcatraz and could have told any film history professor precisely how Burt Lancaster’s famous performance had deviated from the reality.

  He thought he knew as much about confinement as any expert. This self-assured knowledge always made him smile. The difference between him and some professional was that they were looking for information, or wanted to inflict pain, or merely needed to measure the passing of time.

  Linda and he were creating art. They were unique.

  She shifted again, and he quietly got up and made his way to the bathroom. A shower would refresh him, he told himself. He needed to be alert for the next dramatic moment with Number 4.

  There was a small mirror
above the sink and he took a second to stare at himself in it. He flexed his wiry muscles and thought he looked ascetically thin, monklike, or maybe configured like some possessed long-distance runner. He pushed his threads of hair away from his face and felt his scraggly beard. He had long fingers that once he’d thought would have been well suited to dancing across a piano keyboard. Now the music they made was playing with the keys of a computer. He splashed some water on his face. He thought he looked a bit pale. He and Linda needed to get out a little more, not be such recluses. Or maybe after Series #4 was finished they should go south for some R and R. Maybe someplace hot, humid, and tropical, like Costa Rica, or perhaps exotic like Tahiti. They would have more than enough money for whatever first-class extravagance they wanted. Series #4 was by far their most successful version yet. There were still subscribers logging in with new credit card numbers, forking over the funds electronically. He reminded himself that he needed to do an update, so that the newer viewers were as up to speed as those who’d been there from the start. Michael decided to shave, and he turned the hot water on full, almost instantly steaming up the mirror. He lathered his face with shaving cream, poised with a razor in his hand, and mimicked another famous movie: “It’s show time!” he whispered confidently.

  * * *

  As before, Jennifer was unsure whether she was still dreaming or if she had awakened. Behind the curtain of black that covered her eyes, she could sense that things were starting to slide as if nothing in the world was attached solidly, gravity had lessened, and everything was loose and disconnected. She did not know whether it was night or day, morning or evening. She did not remember how many days she’d been held captive. Time, place, who she was—all was unraveling from minute to minute. Sleep did not mean rest. Food did not curb her hunger. Drink did not reduce her thirst. She remained buried behind the blindfold, chained in place.

  Her fingers wrapped for the millionth time around Mister Brown Fur. It was the only thing left within her grasp that reminded her of anything that had been real in her life right up to the second that she had been swept away.