Rough Draft

by James W. Hall

  The wave of uneasiness slowly subsided, but she stood a moment more, leaning against a parking meter, watching the traffic flow by.

  She was having a minor flash about Erin Barkley in Fifth Story.

  While tracking the would-be assassin of the twelve-year-old girl, Erin realizes she is being stalked herself. Someone who knows who she is, what she’s been doing. Possibly the killer, who senses her drawing near, has decided he must kill her. Or was that a cliché? It felt good, but it also felt familiar. Well, she could call up Max Chonin, her agent. The guy had read every mystery novel ever written and he could quote the plots of any of them. She could ask him. He’d probably reel off half a dozen stories where the detective is being followed. The watcher watched. Still, she liked it. And she wasn’t afraid of clichés. Everything was a cliché anyway. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl. A man goes on a journey, a stranger comes to town. There were only five plots. Or maybe six. It all depended on the words, how fresh they were. The language.

  She looked back down the street in the direction she’d come. That fucking bastard. That pus-sucking son of a bitch.

  Cursing had never been her strength. She’d ask Gisela. She’d have one suitable for Pieter Thomasson, something Hannah’d never heard. One of those good Cuban curses. May Jesus and his donkey defecate in unison on your morning oatmeal. One of those.

  But for the moment, “that fucking bastard” would have to do.

  She’d told Brad to prolong this any way he could. Stretch it out. Use Randall’s fragile psychological condition as an excuse for delay if he had to. Anything to give her time to figure out some counterattack. Hell if she was going to let that child-raping son of a bitch spend a second with her boy. She’d hire a goddamn hitman before she let that happen.

  Hal sat at the counter of the deli and drank his Coke. He chewed the crushed ice and looked out the window and watched Hannah Keller halt briefly outside the window and look around. She was blond. She was pretty. Hal wasn’t stupid. He knew a pretty woman when he saw one. Like the ones in the magazines. The ones on television. That’s how you knew, you compared the real ones to the ones on television. They had to be slender with smooth skin, straight noses, large eyes. These women were the most desirable. They attracted wealthy and powerful men who wanted to mate with them and create more blond children with straight noses. Powerful men gave these women money, they gave them fancy cars and big houses and lots of jewelry.

  Hal understood how it worked. He wasn’t mentally retarded. He knew things.

  “Ready for another Coke?” the young woman behind the counter asked.

  She had stringy brown hair and a large nose and her eyes were small and close together. She was fat. This woman would never be in a magazine.

  “Have you heard of the kusimanse?” Hal said.

  “The what?”

  “Kusimanse,” Hal said. “It is a West African dwarf mongoose, a small creature, not very strong. Not even strong enough to crack open an eggshell. But the problem is, this creature loves eggs.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So what the West African dwarf mongoose does, when he finds an egg, he takes it, and he bends over like the center on a football team and puts his front paws on the egg and he hikes the egg through his back legs right into a rock or a tree. And he breaks the egg open and he eats it.”

  The woman looked at Hal like there was more to his story.

  “There are many ways to accomplish a task,” Hal said. “Even the weak can find ways to satisfy their needs.”

  “Ooo-kay,” the woman said, lifting her eyebrows slightly. “That mean you want another Coke or not?”

  Hal watched Hannah Keller pass by. He watched her go into a door across the street. She shut the door and was gone.

  “I do not,” Hal told the young woman. “I am finished.”

  The woman scribbled on her pad and tore off the sheet and set it on the counter in front of him.

  “Have a nice day,” she said.

  But she didn’t mean it. She did not care about him or how the rest of his day would go. She did not want to mate with him or ever see him again. He could tell this from her eyes and her tone of voice and the way she stood. Hal could see inside people. There was nothing difficult about it. He could read their bodies. He could tell who was dangerous and who was not. He could tell when someone was lying. He could tell who would be easy to kill and who would be difficult. Who would struggle, who would give in easily.

  Hal tried to stay attentive to everything around him. He watched and listened and was aware. He wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t mentally retarded or demented. He wasn’t an idiot.

  He counted out the exact change and set the money beside the bill. This was how it was done. You gave a tip if the service was good. Fifteen percent. Hal decided that the service he had received was good. It was prompt and polite and nothing was spilled. He counted out more money so that the coins added up exactly to the bill plus fifteen percent.

  He could do math. He could read. He wasn’t learning disabled.

  He sat at the counter and watched the door across the street. The door that Hannah Keller had entered. The door that soon she would exit.

  SEVEN

  The waiting room at Janet English’s office was still empty.

  Hannah sat down on the couch, set her purse beside her. She was thirsty, but there was no water fountain in the office. She could use something stronger than water anyway. Thinking more along the lines of tequila. That fucking bastard. Popping up like that out of nowhere, making a run at Randall. The man had no fatherly instincts whatsoever. The whole thing had to be about Hannah, getting even, making her sweat. Maybe he wasn’t even serious. Just out to grind her a little. Christ, that fucking fucking bastard.

  She had ten minutes before Randall’s session was over. She needed to relax, calm down, not let Randall see her agitation. Like he didn’t already have enough to deal with.

  As she was shuffling through the magazines on the coffee table, she saw it. Lying right beside the tattoo magazine—a copy of First Light, the book that had gotten her writing career started.

  She hadn’t noticed it earlier. But then she’d been distracted.

  Copies of First Light were rare these days. Only a two-thousand print run in first edition. Collectors starting to take an interest in her, snapping them up. She hardly ever saw one on book tour.

  Probably Janet English had left it there, wanting it signed.

  She plucked the novel off the table. The cover was wrapped in a clear plastic sheet, a book collector’s standard practice. Beneath the plastic, the paper jacket appeared pristine. No nicks, no worn edges. She turned the book over and glanced at the photograph on the back. Half a decade younger with a defiant smile, that milky-skinned young woman was wearing faded jeans and a plaid cowboy shirt, arms crossed over her chest, her ash blond hair cut boyishly short with a part on the side and her shoulder cocked casually against a brick wall that had been tagged with yellow spray paint.

  It was an image the rest of her book jackets had consistently imitated. Saucy blond with a hard-core police background leaning against crumbling urban walls marked with gang graffiti. Tough lady who’d done hard time in gritty back alleys, specialist in crime and grime. But a woman nonetheless, with ruby lipstick in her purse and four-inch heels back home in her closet.

  The image wasn’t exactly Hannah Keller, but what the hell. As images went, it wasn’t as far off the mark as some she’d seen.

  Seven days a week for two years she’d risen before dawn to tap out that book on the electric typewriter set up on the kitchen table. The rush she got each morning from reshaping her best cop stories into the plot of that first book kept her heart singing all day. In her literary innocence, the characters and dialogue gushed out in great effortless bursts. The coarse talk of the men she worked with, the heart-shaking savagery of the streets and grinding hours of monotony, the bloodstained carpets and shattered lives, all of it bathed by luxurious tropical breezes. Not
hing she’d written since had come so effortlessly. Nothing ever again had been so raw or so true. It wasn’t her best work, but it was a book she knew she’d no longer be able to write, composed as it was under that brief and luscious spell of innocence. Before she knew what the hell she was doing. Before she fully understood the depth of hurt, the confusion and rage an act of violence could produce in those who survived.

  She settled the book in her lap and let it fall open to a random page.

  And her breath caught in her throat.

  The margins of both pages were littered with furious scrawls in a pinched script, the lettering as tiny as the print on the page. She peered at the scribbled words, studying them for a moment, but could make no sense of them. Then as she leafed through the rest of the book, her pulse began to flutter.

  It was the same on every page. Passages frantically underlined, twice, three times, the pages nearly torn in places from the pressure of the pen. There was purple ink, red and black. Whole paragraphs highlighted in Day-Glo yellow and blue. Another phrase here, an entire sentence there. Cryptic clusters of scribbled words littered almost every blank space, verbs and unrelated nouns joined together like the garbled ravings of a maniac. Either the scribbler had been insane when he stumbled upon her book, or else the book had driven him mad.

  Gathering herself, she flipped to the inside front cover and found several columns of numbers covering the flyleaves. The lettering was so small it was like the leavings of microscopic insects. The columns were made up of strings of one- and two-digit numerals separated by dashes as if someone had jotted down a long list of Lotto picks.

  At the top of the list, someone had written: “This is how to find me.”

  On the back of her neck all the tiny hairs had prickled to attention. She drew a long breath and let it out. In her hands the book had suddenly begun to feel radioactive.

  She shut the covers and pressed them tightly as if to keep the lethal fumes trapped inside. She lifted her eyes and looked across at the dog sleeping on its master’s bed.

  She took another long breath and let it out and managed to calm herself by a fraction. She was being silly. She was letting her imagination race. Later when she’d composed herself, it might be amusing to sit down with Gisela and examine the book with more care, try to deciper that crazy code. Something to joke about, another anecdote for the endless speaking engagements. Library groups, university women’s clubs, the rubber-chicken dinner circuit. Maybe she’d take the book along, read some of the marginal scribblings to the audience, get an easy laugh or two. Say something pithy about the danger of taking her books too seriously.

  She turned the flyleaf over and looked at the dedication page.

  This time the air hardened in her lungs. Her heart began a long tumble.

  To my parents, who taught me everything important I know.

  And to Captain Dan Romano, who taught me the rest.

  Beneath the dedication, in the same tiny script, was a signature that shook her heart.

  J.J. Fielding

  “Something wrong, Hannah?”

  She forced down a breath and looked up at Janet English. Randall was standing at her side. They weren’t touching. Randall was stiff, distant. Something had happened in his session.

  “This book,” she said, holding it up. “Is it yours, Janet?”

  “What?”

  Dr. English came over and took it from her hands.

  “This is your first novel.”

  “That’s right. I found it here, on the coffee table.”

  “Well, I didn’t put it there, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure it wasn’t there this morning when I came in. I remember straightening up, putting all the magazines in nice neat stacks.”

  “Maybe one of your other clients.”

  “Monday I do my writing. Reports, all the crap I haven’t gotten to. Randall’s the only client I see on Mondays.”

  “No one else was in today?”

  “What is it, Hannah? What’s the problem?”

  Randall was staring at her too. His face tightening in worry.

  She drew a slow breath, tried to soften the strain in her face.

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing at all.”

  “You can have the book if you want. It doesn’t belong to anyone I know.”

  She handed the book back to Hannah.

  “Could you come in for a couple of minutes, Hannah? A quick chat.”

  Hannah followed her into the back office. Her pulse surging. A stab of panic flashed through her gut. She looked back at Randall. He was sitting on the couch, paging through the tattoo magazine. Studying the lavish blue designs and the woeful bodies they were etched on.

  She shut the door. Janet was sitting behind her desk, tapping a pen against her ink blotter.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Hannah.

  “Randall’s quite upset.”

  “Well, of course, he is. That’s why we’re here.”

  “No, this is something new. This is something that’s just emerged.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “Sit down, Hannah. Relax.”

  She had the copy of First Light in her hand. It was as heavy as iron. Her ears buzzed with static.

  “I’ll stand. I can’t stay long.”

  Janet English said Fine, stand, sit, it didn’t matter.

  Hannah took another sip of air. Feeling her heart rolling around, a seasick wobble in her legs.

  “What is it? Tell me about Randall.”

  “He’s extremely agitated. As upset as I’ve ever seen him. But he can’t articulate it. He talks around it, so I know its shape. I know it’s large and I know it’s scaring him. But he can’t open himself to it.”

  “Soccer? His wardrobe? I know it can’t be that.”

  “Those are manifestations. He wants new clothes because he wants a new identity. Soccer takes him outside in the open, makes him vulnerable, exposes him. He wants to hide, wants to disappear from view. He wants to stay inside where it’s safe.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “Think about it, Hannah. What would he fear the most? What began everything?”

  “Finding his grandparents’ bodies. The horror of seeing them dead. Of losing these people he loved in such a violent way.”

  “And what else?”

  “Why don’t you just tell me, Janet? If you know something, then please, just say it.”

  “The killers,” she said. “He’s afraid of the killers.”

  “What? Coming back for him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It does to Randall.”

  “So he doesn’t want to go outside. He’s frightened of the exposure. That’s what you’re saying? He literally thinks the killers are coming back for him?”

  “Literally or metaphorically. It hardly matters to an eleven-year-old.”

  “Well, what set this off? Five years later, what’s going on? Did he say anything about that?”

  “These things can lie dormant. They’re like land mines. We bury them, forget they’re there. Come back later and stumble over one. Something trivial might have set this off, or something not so trivial. It’s hard to say. Especially when he refuses to discuss the issue. We get close, he shies away, makes a joke, changes the subject. You know how he is.”

  “He’s crafty, yes.”

  “Crafty, but very scared. Terrified, Hannah. Absolutely terrified.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I don’t want to alarm you. I just want you to be on alert. He’s at a critical place.”

  “How critical?”

  “Critical,” Janet said. “Just stay aware. Keep on alert. Be there for him when he needs you. Even the slightest jolt could have serious consequences.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

  It was quarter after five and Han
nah was caught in virtual gridlock on US 1. Trying to get over to the far-left lane to make her turn at Sunset Drive, but no one was giving an inch. Every time she left as much as half a car length in front of her, another hero cut into the space and pushed her farther back into the pack. She was focused on that, on the traffic and driving. Trying not to deal with these other things yet. J. J. Fielding’s signature in her book, Randall’s new elevated level of fear, the legal maneuverings of an amoral pervert who had fathered her son.

  Randall had picked up the copy of First Light from the console and was looking through it.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s my first novel.”

  “I know that. What’s with all the scribbling?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably one of my strange fans. He got carried away.”

  He leafed through it for a moment or two, then turned back to the front pages.

  “‘This is how to find me,’” he said. “Did you see that?”

  “Yeah, I saw it.”

  “And these numbers right below it, that’s code,” Randall said.

  “It is?”

  “Yeah, some kind of code. Want me to crack it?”

  “You’re a cryptographer now? They teach you that at Pinecrest Middle?”

  “If you want,” he said, “I could try.”

  “Sure. Be my guest.”

  Randall took a ballpoint pen from the coin tray and busied himself with the book while Hannah inched through traffic.

  Her pulse was jangling. A raucous clatter ricocheting inside her skull. Randall was making marks beside the list of numbers. Flipping through the book, counting words and lines, circling things.

  Clawing for every inch, forced to be aggressive by all the super-aggressive assholes around her, she finally made it to the far-left lane. Ten minutes later, she was at the light at Sunset, waiting her turn to go left when Randall dropped the book on the floor at his feet.

  He sat there looking straight ahead.

  “So?” she said. “You figure it out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. It’s a simple code.”