Liquid Fear

by Nicholson, Scott

  “Seethe? What’s that?”

  “Pray to God you never find out.” The man jogged away in an easy, rolling gait, now just another fitness freak putting in miles.

  Mark was pretty sure Alexis wasn’t home, but he headed for the car anyway. He had something tucked away in the back of the closet shelf he might need.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Roland hit Chapel Hill at about four in the afternoon. The city had a population of 55,000, but its sprawling, wooded nature projected a small-town feel, which led many UNC graduates to stay in the area and often end up working at the university. Roland had wanted to leave after the marriage, but Wendy was reluctant to give up her career track in the art department.

  It was just one of many conflicts that had led to their split, but Roland knew somewhere deep in his heart that the seeds of their ruin had been planted in the Monkey House.

  Monkey House? Why the hell am I thinking of that?

  He’d indulged in a Kurt Vonnegut binge in high school, just as he was discovering the mellow escapism of marijuana, and Vonnegut’s story “Welcome to Monkey House” had been one of those mind-altering leaps of consciousness.

  The story was based on the old joke of mathematical probability that if you gave a monkey a typewriter and he began pecking at random, eventually he would reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. In Vonnegut’s rendition, the monkeys immediately began cranking out flawless manuscripts.

  But he’d read the story a few years before he met Wendy, and there was no reason to link them now. Except for the inescapable realization that the entire world was a crazy primate zoo, and humans were little more than hairless monkeys, only with more murderous habits.

  Sure, I read the Vonnegut story, but I wonder if David Underwood did.

  He could feel the vial in his pocket, deliberately jammed by the seatbelt so he was constantly aware of its presence. He glanced at the dashboard clock. He was determined to skip the next dose, no matter how distorted his mind became, but he was nearly due.

  As he hit the business district, he passed an ABC package store, and the gleaming rows of bottles beckoned him. He licked his lips. The vodka in there would be real.

  Wendy.

  Roland didn’t know why her name would be so clear when all else was fog, but he pictured her face and the craving fell away. He knew that was wrong, that he should seek a higher power instead, but it worked, so maybe that was the power he needed.

  By the time he pulled into her apartment complex, his hands were shaking on the wheel and the car was weaving. He slowed and willed the sedan into an empty space, then pulled out the vial.

  Should I take one now, or wait until I get inside? And what if she doesn’t let me in?

  What if I’m David Underwood?

  No. Can’t be. If I were David, I wouldn’t be wondering about it.

  He had trouble getting out of the car and the Earth tilted on its axis, threatening to spill him on the pavement. It was like being drunk except he didn’t have any of the emotional numbness, the dumb rage, or the thirst for more pain.

  A man riding a ten-speed swerved on the sidewalk to avoid him, shouting, “Hey, watch it!” before pedaling away. Roland had to fight an urge to chase the man, drag him from the bicycle, and beat him senseless.

  Roland had only been to Wendy’s apartment three times. Once, he’d helped her move. The second time, they’d had a serious replay of the breakup, ending up reminiscing and engaging in awkward lovemaking before a final argument. The third time, he’d personally delivered the signed separation agreement.

  They’d bumped into one another occasionally because they still shared some of the same haunts, and the awkwardness lingered, as if something had gone unsaid.

  And now here he was, turning to the one person who had the least reason to help him. And he wasn’t even sure why he was there.

  She answered on the third knock, but from behind the closed door and with suspicion. “Who is it?”

  He hadn’t meant to scare her. He tapped gently this time. “It’s Roland.”

  “Roland who?”

  He fought off a rush of anger. “Come on, Wendy.”

  “Who is this?”

  He was about to punch the metal door in frustration, but he couldn’t afford to draw any attention. Someone might report his erratic behavior and then he’d be explaining himself to the cops while his brain was peeling itself like an onion. “It’s your husband, Wendy. It’s important.”

  He was just about to knock again when the deadbolt clicked. The door parted a few inches, a thick security chain in place. One of Wendy’s onyx eyes and half her face appeared in the gap.

  “My husband?” she said.

  Oh, fuck. They got to you, too, didn’t they?

  Instead of explaining, he simply held up the orange bottle and showed her the label. “We need to talk.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Kleingarten peeled off the latex gloves.

  Hand rubbers. I hope she wasn’t carrying anything.

  He’d left her in the cell in the back of the Monkey House, a few doors down from David Underwood’s hellhole. Anita’s walls were tricked out with the same kind of freakish collages, except hers were more colorful—photographs of autopsies, gaping flesh wounds, and invasive surgeries.

  Mixed in with the gore were lewd images of every conceivable kind of coupling, including one that looked like two women and a hairless dog, but Kleingarten hadn’t checked closely enough to be certain.

  Anita had felt damned good in his arms, despite her being a slut, but entering the room had sickened him enough that he’d dumped her on the cot and backed away. Briggs must have been watching from the monitors, because he immediately started a syncopated overhead light show of red and orange bulbs.

  A soundtrack started, and it took a moment for Kleingarten to recognize it. He’d heard his share of porn voice-overs, where the actors pretended to groan and grunt in pleasure, and this sounded like a dozen of them stacked on top of one another and mixed together into one huge orgy.

  Kleingarten hurried through the main alley toward Briggs’s cage, anxious to get paid and get the hell out of there. As he reached the opening of the cage, he was struck by the impression that Briggs was just as much a monkey as the others, except Briggs was in his cage voluntarily.

  “That thing about fear,” Kleingarten said. “I’m starting to figure out your game.”

  Briggs looked away from the bank of video monitors, which were now divided between images of Anita and images of David Underwood. Briggs seemed annoyed at the intrusion, but like a true egghead, he never passed up a chance for a lecture.

  “We each have a greatest fear,” Briggs said. “And in some ways, your fear is also your greatest strength. When you overcome it, then you are ready for a higher purpose.”

  “You make people scared with your joy juice, and then you hook them on the pills so they forget they’re afraid. Sort of like crack. The first hit is always free.”

  Briggs narrowed his eyes in a gesture of consideration that might have signaled respect. “If you can both induce fear and eliminate fear, you could help people control themselves. But fear is also our friend, a survival mechanism. Take Anita Molkesky here.”

  Briggs pointed to the screen that showed Anita sprawled on the cot, undulating in a faint but clearly sensual motion. Her eyes were closed and she seemed lights-out oblivious, and Kleingarten wondered how many brain cells Briggs’s medicine chewed up and spat out in the process.

  “Anita is afraid of abandonment,” Briggs said. “It’s so classically Freudian that it’s too easy. Father left when she was seven, mother had a string of bad boyfriends. She wasn’t molested, which was truly a miracle given the opportunities and cast of characters, but she formed an unhealthy need to seek attention and approval from this revolving cast of losers.”

  “So she started screwing for money?”

  “You don’t understand. This isn’t about sex or pleasure or reward of
any kind. In her pornography work, she doesn’t display any enthusiasm.”

  Kleingarten recalled the disgusting scene in Patti Cake Patti Cake where two men and a woman had rubbed chocolate batter all over Anita’s body and licked half of it off while plugging every hole in her body with different kitchen implements. Anita had uttered a few grunts and groans, although she might just as well have been complaining about a headache. But she went through the motions just fine and everybody got their money shots.

  “No, Mr. Drummond, to Anita, it’s all about acceptance. She is an exhibitionist because she expects to be rejected. She was a model who took her clothes off because her body was the one thing that no one rejected.”

  “She’s sweet stuff, all right,” Kleingarten said, then laid out his bait: “But the Sla—I mean, Wendy Leng—she’s a lot hotter.”

  Briggs glared at him, and then glanced at the nude charcoal drawing. “Wendy’s beauty radiates from the inside. She has the soul of an artist.”

  Kleingarten wondered why Briggs simply didn’t have him just kidnap the Slant, drug her, and then tie her up in one of those cells where he could work his magic.

  This game was getting way more complicated than the pay was worth. Still, it was tax-free, and if not for this gig, Kleingarten would probably be working as a bodyguard for some rich-kid drug dealer.

  Movement on one of the corner monitors caught his eye. “What’s that?”

  Briggs huddled over the keyboard and clacked until the camera zoomed in. The monitor showed the outside perimeter of the lot, and a guy in a jogging suit was huffing and blowing, moving through the pine trees on a narrow trail that followed a creek.

  “Penetration,” Briggs said.

  “Is that one of your people?”

  “I don’t have any ‘people.’ Except you.”

  Kleingarten wanted to lecture the egghead for a change, tell him that you didn’t go engaging in double-crosses and setups unless you had a few layers of insulation. Instead, he touched the 9mm in his shoulder holster. “Guy must not be able to read. He just ran past a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.”

  “And the gate closed after you came through?”

  “That’s what you told me to check, right?”

  “It’s probably nothing.”

  Some egghead. The way Kleingarten did math, probability was measured on a scale between “Dead certainty” and “Don’t take the chance.”

  “Want me to check it out for you?”

  “Okay, but act like you’re a security guard patrolling the property. Don’t make him suspicious. I’ll unlock the back door.”

  Briggs bent over his series of switches and buttons, hitting a couple.

  Kleingarten wended through a series of wenches with hooked cables, once used for lifting motors, until he came to the emergency exit. The inside of the door had no handle, which probably worked great at keeping factory workers from playing hooky back in the old days.

  He oriented himself to determine the location of the jogger and began strolling as if he were a bored plainclothes guard. Most real security guards wore little uniforms to make them feel good and to intimidate those who equated a brass badge with authority. Kleingarten had a few like the campus-cop uniform hanging in his closet back home, but today he’d just have to fake it.

  The spring air was crisp but not cold, and pine needles squeaked under his new leather shoes. He reached the creek, which was little more than a drainage ditch with a slimy green trickle of fluid ruining through it. A path meandered parallel to it, probably used by the wildlife that was fenced in on the twenty-acre compound, unaware they were imprisoned.

  Kleingarten transferred the 9mm to his jacket pocket in case he needed a quick response. By his calculations, the jogger should be visible between the corrugated brown tree trunks any moment now.

  After an enforced casual stroll of more than a minute, Kleingarten was antsy. Ease up. The guy probably was winded and needed to catch his breath.

  Yeah, and he also accidentally climbed over a ten-foot fence topped with barbed wire.

  Kleingarten gave it another minute, picking up his pace, before he decided to hustle back to the Monkey House. He reconstructed the image of the jogger in his mind, searching for possible clues. The man wore one of those hooded gray tops, a little baggy, so he could be packing. His jogging pants were the faggoty, snug sateen kind with no bulges in the wrong places, so no weapons were stuffed in there.

  He was a little out of breath by the time he’d looped back through the trees, leaving the path so he could take cover. The jogger was standing outside the back door, running in place, the way those adrenaline junkies did when they were punishing themselves for taking a little break.

  Kleingarten wasn’t sure how to play it. If he let the guy run away, then Kleingarten would have to give chase, and his feet were already killing him. Best-case scenario, he’d get the guy’s car tags, but if the jogger was a pro, the plate would be stolen or forged anyway.

  Option Two was to see if the guy tried to break in, which meant he knew a little something, but probably not enough, or else he would have taken a different avenue into the factory. Like maybe getting a job like Kleingarten did, asking around, doing a little research.

  No, this guy knew just enough to be dumb. And therefore he was dangerous.

  On the other hand, the guy could be on the Home Team, paid by the same handlers as Kleingarten, except without Briggs’s knowledge. That made the most sense, because somebody obviously had a lot invested in the Monkey House. And if that investment was riding on a wild card like Briggs, it was good business to see which other cards were in the hand or up the sleeve.

  Okay, so we play it “pro to pro.” That will cut the bullshit about me having to pretend to be a security guard and him having to pretend to be a lost jogger.

  Kleingarten emerged from the woods. “Howdy,” he said, trying to sound like a dumb-ass Southerner instead of a California ex-con.

  The jogger quit with the leg-pumping-in-place and let out an exhausted pant. “Hey. I was running through the woods and saw this old building. What was it, a school?”

  Yeah, right, a school that only has windows thirty feet above the ground.

  “Nah.” Kleingarten kept approaching, steadily, the nine in his palm but still tucked into the jacket pocket. “It’s a secret research lab.”

  The jogger gave a “just guys” grin and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Ha, that’s a good one. Like on that TV show, Twenty-Four, right? Kiefer Sutherland?”

  “Yeah, just like that.” Kleingarten had never seen the show, but it sounded stupid as shit.

  A drop of sweat slid down the jogger’s nose and dangled at the tip. “Nice day to be outside, huh?”

  “Nice day to be on private property.”

  The jogger frowned. “CRO?”

  “Hell, no,” Kleingarten lied. “I’m with the Feds.”

  “Then you shouldn’t know this is a secret research lab.”

  “And neither should you, I reckon.”

  The man made his move then—or maybe he was just reaching up to wipe that itchy drop of sweat from his nose—and Kleingarten reacted at the first twitch. If he was a Fed, he was poorly trained, and if he was a lone op like Kleingarten, he wasn’t cut out for the job anyway.

  Kleingarten had his nine out and smoking in less than a second, and the jogger gave a girlish squeal as blooms of red erupted on his chest.

  Kleingarten knelt over the corpse, wondering what sort of gun the amateur was carrying in the pouch of his hoodie. Probably a .357 Magnum. That’s what guys pack when they watch too much TV.

  All he found was a water bottle.

  “I’ll be damned,” Kleingarten said.

  At least he’d discovered that the secret research lab was not so secret, so it wasn’t like the murder had been a total waste.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “These are the same pills,” Roland said, avoiding looking around Wendy’s apartment because he was afraid of ho
w much she’d changed without him.

  “How the hell do you know?” Wendy said. “A green pill is a green pill. Unless you want to have the cops run a test.”

  “Be cool, Wendy,” Alexis said. “If this is what we think it is—”

  “No. If we go down that road, we don’t come back.”

  Alexis, sitting on the sofa beside Wendy, took a tight grip on Wendy’s forearms and pulled her hands from her face. “We can’t hide anymore.”

  Wendy was nearly in tears, and Alexis was afraid if the dam burst, there would be no patching the pieces back together. The friends had drifted apart after Susan’s death, but that had been an instinctive act of survival, not a conscious decision.

  They had all stayed aware of one another, bound by the understanding that they held a collective fate in their hands. Any of them could break the code of silence at any time. But none of them seemed to remember it in exactly the same way.

  Roland, standing by the locked door, shook his head at Alexis. His sudden appearance had served to unsettle Wendy even more. And, just like during the trials, Alexis now felt responsible, as if she’d let things go too far through her own fascination with untapped landscapes of the brain.

  “All right, Wendy,” Alexis said, hating herself for lapsing into the cold, academic bitch she knew slept inside her. “Let’s look at the facts. We each got the same vial with the same pills and the same prescription. And you said Anita got them, too. That makes four of us.”

  “Where’s David Underwood, then?” Wendy said.

  “Right here,” Roland said, and they both glared at him. He fumbled in his back pocket and pulled out his license and flipped it toward Alexis. It knocked over the three pill bottles they had placed on the coffee table.

  Alexis retrieved it from the carpet and studied it. Roland’s face and David Underwood’s name.

  “He’s back,” Alexis said.

  “But why?” Wendy said. “He’s got more to lose than any of us.”

  “You know why,” Roland said.