What Comes Next

by John Katzenbach

  A rebellious runaway teen.

  An old man.

  A burned panel truck.

  No ransom requests.

  No cell phone usage.

  A bus ticket to nowhere.

  A man disguising himself where there should have been Jennifer.

  Terri reeled in her seat. She could feel her detective’s skepticism falling away from her. There is a particular sense of despair that infects police detectives when they realize that they are up against the worst possible sort of crime, one that engages anonymity and evil. Crimes are solved because of connections—someone sees something, someone knows something, someone says something, someone leaves something at a crime scene—and eventually a clear-cut picture emerges. There is always some elemental connection that defines the detective’s course.

  Jennifer’s disappearance defied that.

  If there was anything clear-cut in what she knew, it was that she didn’t know what to do.

  But it was equally apparent to her that she had to do something that went beyond what she had been doing. She looked around her desk, as if this what to do should be obvious. Then she lifted her head and stared at the cubicle around her, decorated with pictures of her family, some color­ful child-art watercolors and crayon drawings, juxtaposed against cold gray police reports and FBI alerts.

  She had—she believed—done everything appropriately. She had done everything required by department standards. She had done everything that any official would do.

  None of it had brought her any closer to the missing Jennifer.

  Terri rocked forward, as if she had a cramp in her stomach.

  Jennifer was gone. Terri pictured the teenager, seated across from her on one of the prior escape efforts, sullen, noncommunicative, waiting angrily for mother and boyfriend to arrive and return her to the place she was so eager to flee from while Terri lectured her about the mistake she’d made. Terri realized that the time to save Jennifer had been then. All she had to do was lean across the desk and say, Talk to me, Jennifer and open up some sort of line of communication. Now what was she doing? Filing papers and reports, taking useless statements from a deranged retired professor, interviewing a sex offender who didn’t seem to have any link to the runaway, sending out needle-in-a-haystack, shot-in-the-dark inquiries to other police agencies. But, Terri understood, she was mostly just waiting for the day in the future when a hunter scouring dark woods for deer found Jennifer’s skeletal remains, or her decomposing body was hooked by a fisherman probing a lake for smallmouth bass.

  If the detective was that lucky.

  Terri punched some computer keys and the image of the man in the bus station came up on the screen in front of her. She blew it up, clicking computer keys until the picture filled her entire screen.

  All right, she said to herself, I think I will find out who you are.

  This was easier imagined than done. But she reached for the phone to call the state police lab, which could run some image recognition software on the tape. Maybe she would get lucky, but she doubted it. She was also aware that this was a step that might not be approved by her superiors.

  Mark Wolfe walked swiftly across the expanse of black parking lot macadam to where Adrian was waiting next to his car. Adrian could feel Brian’s presence beside him, almost hear his brother’s rapid breath, wondering for an instant why he would be nervous. Brian, Adrian understood, was always in control and never hurried, never anxious. And then he realized it was his own labored sounds he was hearing.

  As he approached Adrian, the sex offender looked warily about. Adrian had the odd thought that Mark Wolfe was supremely confident inside his own home, but like a prairie animal out in the open he needed to lift his head and check for predators every few seconds. This was backward, Adrian imagined. Wolfe was the predator.

  Wolfe wore a skewed grin.

  “I’m not supposed to take a long break,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to miss a major appliance sale. Hey, professor, you need a big-screen TV and surround sound system? They’re on special and I can get you a great deal.”

  This wasn’t said with any sincerity.

  “This isn’t going to take long,” Adrian replied.

  He produced a copy of the Missing Persons flyer that Detective Collins had given him and handed it to Wolfe.

  “That’s who I’m looking for,” he said.

  Wolfe eyed the picture. “She’s lovely . . .” The word lovely could have been a substitute for ripe. It sounded obscene coming from Wolfe’s mouth. Adrian wanted to shudder. “A runaway, you say?”

  “No. I didn’t say that. I said she has been a runaway before. But now she’s stolen.”

  Wolfe read through the details on the flyer, repeating them in a soft voice, Five feet six inches, one hundred and seventeen pounds, sandy blond hair, no distinguishing marks, last seen . . . Then he stopped reading.

  “You know, with my . . .”—he hesitated—“background, if some cop was to find this flyer in my possession it’d be just as bad as . . .”

  “We have a deal,” Adrian said. “You don’t want me to go to the cops and start talking about that other computer and what’s on it.”

  Wolfe nodded, but his reply was far more chilling than the nature of their agreement.

  “Yeah, I get it. So this is the kid you think is being used. I’m to explore the Web.”

  “The alternative is, you see . . .”

  “Yeah. She’s been fucked and killed. Or worse.”

  Wolfe twitched slightly. Adrian couldn’t tell if this involuntary motion was caused by distaste or pleasure. Either seemed possible. Maybe the territories defined by both sensations existed simultaneously inside Mark Wolfe. Adrian suspected that was the case.

  “You know, all that crap about snuff films, you know that was all urban legend mythology. Totally bogus. Bullshit. Untrue.”

  He repeated words for emphasis, creating the opposite impression. Look behind the words, look behind the way he’s standing, the tone he uses, the way he shifts about. Adrian thought this was what Cassie would say to him, and it was as if the thoughts in his head had her musical tone of voice.

  Adrian stared at the sex offender and then lifted his glance. The sky above them was a wide, cloudless expanse of blue, a promise of fine weather to come. High across the sky, Adrian could see a jet’s vapor contrails drawing a straight line in billowing white against the pale background. People traveling at high speed, to varied destinations. He realized he would never ride on another plane, never have a chance to visit someplace exotic. He was nearly overcome with the direct path the airplane flew so effortlessly; he seemed to be caught up in a mire of disease and doubt. He wished he knew exactly what steps to take, in what direction, and how many miles he had left to travel.

  “Audie, pay attention!”

  He heard his brother’s sharp words, bringing his vision back down from the skies.

  “Come on, Audie, focus!”

  “You okay, professor?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, the hassle is trying to determine what’s real and what isn’t. That’s the trouble with the Internet. It’s a place where lying and fantasy and all sorts of deceptive stuff exists right next to real good, solid information. Hard to separate the two. Even in the sex world, you know. What’s real. What isn’t.”

  “Snuff films . . .”

  “Like I said, big phony. But . . .”

  Wolfe hesitated. He rolled his words over, as if he tasted each before speaking, and added, “But all those myths, well, they only create opportunity, if you know what I mean, professor.”

  “Explain.”

  “Well, snuff films don’t exist. But as soon as the FBI or Interpol says, ‘Snuff films are an urban legend,’ it only encourages people to try, professor. That’s the thing about t
he Internet. It exists to make something out of something else. You say something’s untrue, and someone else, maybe on the other side of the world, is out there trying to prove you wrong. Like, maybe killing porn for real doesn’t exist, but . . . You pick up the paper in the morning what do you read? Some kids maybe in Eastern Europe filmed themselves beating someone to death. For kicks. Or maybe some guys in California filmed themselves killing a hitchhiker after making her perform all sorts of acts. Or . . . well, you get the idea. A terrorist takes a hostage and cuts his head off on film. It gets posted on the Internet. Well, the CIA and the military are all over it. But who else? It’s out there for anyone.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “I’m saying that if little . . .”—he looked at the flyer and a lascivious grin broke out on his face before continuing—“Jennifer is being used, it makes sense. And it could be coming from next door or maybe on the other side of the world.”

  “How will you look?” Adrian asked.

  “There are ways. You just keep punching those keys. It might cost some money.”

  “Money? How so?”

  “You think that people exploit other people for nothing? Maybe just because they like it? Sure, maybe some do. But other people, they want to make a buck. And getting in to those sites, well . . .”

  “I’ll pay.”

  Wolfe smiled again. “It can be pricey . . .”

  Again he heard his brother echoing commands in his ear. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He removed a credit card and handed it to Wolfe.

  “What password shall I use?” the sex offender asked.

  Adrian shrugged. He could see no need for deception. “Psychprof,” he replied. “And keep a written record of every place you use it. Any excess charges and I’ll go straight to the cops.”

  Wolfe nodded but even this motion might have been a lie. Adrian didn’t care. I’m not going to live long enough to worry about these bills.

  “You have to move fast. I don’t know how much time she might have.”

  Wolfe shrugged. “If she’s someone’s toy, and he wants to share her—”

  “He and she,” Adrian interrupted.

  “That’s right. Two people. That might make it easier. Anyway, if they want to share her, well, that’s good, because that’s what you want, because she will be there, somewhere.”

  He laughed again. Adrian thought Wolfe had the type of laugh that penetrated through walls, like a weapon fired at close range, before steering itself back into a cynical giggle, as if he always knew some extra secret that he was unwilling to share.

  “You got one thing going for you, prof,” he said, grinning.

  “What’s that?”

  “This is what the world is now. Nothing takes place in secret really. Everyone wants to broadcast themselves. What was it? We’re all famous for fifteen minutes? Well, it’s true.”

  Warhol, Adrian thought. A sex offender quoting Warhol.

  “One problem, though.”

  Or was it Marshall McLuhan? Suddenly Adrian couldn’t remember. Maybe it was Woody Allen. He fought himself back to focusing on Wolfe.

  “What’s that?”

  “Get close, try to break down that old electronic barrier, and whoever it is that’s got her just might figure it out that someone is looking for her and then all of a sudden she’s likely to be damaged goods.”

  Adrian took a sharp breath.

  “And damaged goods . . .”

  The sex offender continued to speak but Adrian noticed that his voice had changed, so that his lips moved with the words yet they sounded like his brother was speaking them. Adrian warned himself not to look confused but simply to listen.

  “Well,” Wolfe said slowly, “I don’t know about you, but when something goes bad in my refrigerator I throw it out.”

  31

  Jennifer was perched on the bed, her eyes shut tight behind the blindfold, trying to picture her room at home. She had started to envision things remembered, detailing with draftsman’s precision every angle, every shape, and every color. Toys. Pictures. Books. Pillows. Posters. The desk was positioned just so, the colors of her bedspread were red, blue, green, and purple, all shaped in interlocking squares in a quilt. On a bureau there was a five-by-seven snapshot of her at a youth soccer game heading a ball. She took her time, piecing each element together; she did not want to forget even the smallest item. She luxuriated in each memory—the plot and characters of a book she read as a child; the Christmas morning when she had been given her first pair of earrings for her newly pierced ears. She slowly painted her past in her mind’s eye. It helped to remind her that she had been Number 4 for only a few days but for many years she had been Jennifer.

  It was a constant fight.

  Sometimes, when she awakened from dozing, it took an immense effort to recall anything from her past. What she could feel, smell, hear—everything that she had memorized from her prison room and what she knew was being captured by the camera—all circumscribed the immediacy of her situation. She was afraid there was no Jennifer yesterday. No Jennifer tomorrow. There was only Jennifer right that second. It would have been easier to be a lost sailor cast adrift in a winter sea. At least then, she thought, it would be obvious that she had to fight the currents and the waves and that if she couldn’t stay afloat she would drown.

  Inwardly, she sobbed. Outwardly she kept herself calm.

  She told herself, I’m only sixteen. A high school student. She knew she did not know much of the world. She hadn’t traveled to exotic places or seen unusual sights. She wasn’t a soldier or a spy or even a criminal—anyone who might have some experience that would help her understand her jail. This should have crippled her but, oddly, it didn’t. I know some things, she told herself. I know how to fight back. Even if this was a lie, she didn’t care.

  Part of that approach required her to imagine everything about the life she had been a part of, all the way up to the moment the van had stopped and the man had leaned out toward her.

  Next to the bureau there is a black metal floor lamp with a red shade. The rug is a multicolored throw that covers some dingy old tan and stained wall-to-wall shag. The worst stain is from where I spilled tomato soup, which I wasn’t supposed to take out of the kitchen but I did. She yelled at me. She called me irresponsible. I was. But still I argued with her. How many arguments were there? One a day? No. More. When I get home, she will hug me and tell me how she cried when I went missing and that will make me feel better. I miss her. I didn’t think I’d ever say that. I miss her. She has some gray now in her hair, just a few strands that she forgets to color, and I don’t know whether I should tell her. She could be beautiful. She should be beautiful. Will I ever be pretty? Maybe she’s crying now. Maybe Scott is there. I hate him. My father would have found me already, but he can’t. Is Scott even looking? Is anyone even looking? My father is looking for me, but he’s dead. I hate it. I was robbed. Cancer. I wish I could give cancer to the man and the woman. Mister Brown Fur knows. I would put him to bed beside me. He remembers what the room looked like. How are we going to get out of here?

  Jennifer knew that the camera would catch a vision of anything she did. She knew that the man and the woman—she wasn’t certain which one scared her more—might be watching. But quietly, as if by being silent somehow she wouldn’t attract attention, she began to run her fingertips over the chain around her neck and the eyelet where it was attached to the wall.

  One link. Two. She felt each. They were slick beneath her touch. She could picture them. They would be silver and shiny and they probably bought them in a pet store. The links weren’t pit bull or Doberman heavy and strong. But they were probably strong enough to hold her.

  She touched the eyelet screwed into the wall. Plaster board, she guessed. Drywall.

  Once, when she
had a fight with her mother—she had stayed out past her curfew—she had thrown a paperweight at the wall. It had hit with a solid thud, and then dropped to the floor, leaving a wide hole. Her mother had to call a handyman to come fix it. Drywall isn’t strong. Maybe she could rip the eyelet out? She could feel her lips moving as she asked herself the question. The man would have thought of that. I didn’t throw that paperweight like a girl, Jennifer reminded herself. My father taught me to throw a ball when I was little. He loved baseball. He gave me my Red Sox hat. He taught me the right way. Pull back hard. Arm crooked at the elbow. Shoulder locked. Drive through the throw. Fastball. Painting 95 on the black.

  She smiled, just a little, stopping herself because she didn’t want the smile caught by the camera.

  Maybe I can be a little pit bull, she thought.

  Jennifer ran her fingers over the leather collar around her neck.

  She imagined the pet store conversation: “And what sort of dog is it you want to chain up, ma’am?”

  She pictured the woman standing at a counter. You don’t know, Jennifer thought. You have no idea what kind of dog I can be. And what my bite is like.

  She took her fingernail and started to scrape away at the collar. It felt like cheap leather. She could feel a small lock, the sort that someone would use to secure luggage. This was supposed to keep the collar in place. She scraped a little harder, just enough so that she could find the same spot again. Maybe, she thought, she could rub it into pieces.

  She told herself there had to be steps to freedom. She tried to formulate a series of moves. First, she had to get loose. Then she had to get through the door. Was it locked? She had to get up out of the basement room. Where are the stairs? They have to be close by. She had to find a door to the outside. Then she would run. It made no difference what direction. Just get away. That was the easy part, she thought. If I can just get free enough to run no one will catch me. I’m fast. On every field, in every game, I was the fastest. The cross-country coach wanted me to run for the high school, but I told him I wouldn’t. But I could beat all those other girls and most of the boys too. All I need is the chance.