Precipice

by Tom Savage

  “You’re right about one thing, Trish. He is a sculpture. Rather like a god, something in bronze.”

  She watched, unamused, as the amusement drained from Adam’s face. She momentarily studied his large fingers as they twirled Kay’s hair, the deep red strands against the deeply tanned flesh, committing that image of casual intimacy to memory. Then she rose to her feet.

  She had to get out of that room.

  “I’ll do the dishes,” she announced, reaching down for the silver tray that held the coffee things.

  “Don’t bother, dear,” Kay offered, dropping her hand onto her husband’s thigh, a gracious smile on her lips. “I can see to it later—”

  “No,” she said. “You made dinner. I’ll clean up. It’s no trouble, really.”

  With that she picked up the heavy tray and walked through the swinging door into the kitchen. She placed the tray with the other dishes near the sink and leaned forward, her hands pressing down on the countertop. She lowered her head and closed her eyes, waiting for the dizziness and nausea to subside.

  With little thought for what she was doing, she reached out with both hands and turned on the faucets. She picked up the plastic bottle and squeezed a stream of clear yellow liquid into the sink. She watched, transfixed, as the water rushed noisily down to mingle with the detergent and filled the stainless steel basin with a rising carpet of pearlescent foam. The hot steam floated upward, assaulting her nostrils with the cloying aroma of artificial lemons. She loaded the glassware in first, plunging her hands down into the scalding water, experiencing that brief, almost pleasant thrill of exquisite pain before her skin adjusted to the temperature. She washed and rinsed, washed and rinsed: glasses, plates, platters. She followed them with the cutlery, thinking all the while of the little smile on Kay’s face as she touched her husband, of Adam’s face as he twirled his wife’s hair. Round and round, between his fingers, round and round. . . .

  The little burst of pain made its way through her reverie and into her brain, dispersing the fantasy. She cried out softly and jerked her hands from the water. Looking down, she saw her left hand clutching the handle of the enormous carving knife, and her right hand grasping the blade itself.

  Then she saw the blood.

  It spread out quickly over the surface of her wet palm, emanating from the long, thin slash that ran along the base of her fingers. She stared, transfixed, as the edges feathered out, mixing with the water on the hand, covering it and dropping slowly, drip, drip, drip, into the sink. The ribbon of red against the soft, white flesh. . . .

  The bloody hand reaching slowly out to her, inching its way across the rough pile of the carpet. The soft moaning sound filling her ears, feeding her terror. The cold hardness of the knife clutched in her tiny fingers. The cry of rage welling up inside her. The first wave of merciful shock, dulling her senses, blinding her eyes to the sight as she crouches in the doorway of the bedroom. Blood on the wall, the carpet, the bedspread. Darkness.

  The knife fell into the basin, sending a splash of soapy water up into her face. As the jolt of naked, primordial panic shot through her body, her unwounded hand flew up involuntarily to clamp over her mouth, cutting off the scream. The sound that ultimately forced its way out of her throat and past her rigid fingers was little more than a whimper.

  “Mommy.”

  The door swung open behind her. She was no longer alone in the kitchen. She stood frozen, unable to turn around or even think clearly. She held the bleeding hand over the sink, staring down at it as if it did not belong to her, wondering what to do.

  “My dear, what on earth . . .?” Kay Prescott cried as she came up behind her. “You’re bleeding! Here.”

  She stood there staring down, hearing the ripping of soft paper, and then she felt the pressure as Kay took her injured hand and pressed the towel to the cut.

  “Hold that there tightly,” Kay instructed as she pulled open a drawer and rummaged.

  She held the paper towel, still stupid, still unable to form a coherent thought. She felt the towel being pulled away by soft fingers, heard the aerosol hiss. Something cool made contact with the wound and then began to burn.

  “Ouch,” she said.

  She heard Kay giggle softly, smelled her fragrance. Opium. Kay Prescott, Adam’s wife, wore Opium. When her mind began to function, she focused on the hand holding the spray can of Bactine. Of course this woman would keep Bactine handy: she had a twelve-year-old daughter. Lisa. The fingers clutching the can had long, tapered nails. She recognized the polish as Passion’s Promise, the same shade as the lipstick she herself had bought recently. Perhaps in the same drugstore, with the same friendly women hovering over her, advising, helping her to choose . . . .

  “What did you do to yourself?” Kay asked, reaching again into the drawer to produce cotton gauze, surgical tape, and scissors.

  She shook her head absently.

  “It’s nothing,” she insisted, watching as the woman quickly and expertly bound her hand. “There was a knife, under the suds.”

  Kay glanced down at the sink, clearly perplexed. “Yes, but why were you washing the dishes by hand?”

  She followed Kay’s gaze from the sink to the space down below the counter. Oh, God, a dishwasher. Of course.

  Then they both began to laugh.

  “Darling, when was the last time you were in a kitchen?”

  She felt the flush on her cheeks. “It’s been a while.”

  Kay nodded. “I’m never here myself if I can help it.”

  “As she stood there laughing with Kay Prescott, she raised her left hand to her chest. The hand touched something small and cold. She looked down.

  It was the amethyst brooch.

  She mumbled something, some sort of thanks, something about being suddenly exhausted, and left the kitchen. She made her way quickly across the living room and up the stairs, pausing to say good night to Trish and Adam, who sat in uncomfortable silence, obviously waiting anxiously for Kay’s return. She stopped once, briefly, at the top of the stairs and turned to look down at the two people seated below her. The last thing she saw was Adam’s face as he gazed up at her, glowing in the soft light from the chandelier. Then she turned around and walked down the hall to her room. She closed the door behind her and locked it.

  She moved swiftly across to the closet, pulled out the suitcase from behind the hanging clothes, hauled it up onto the bed, and unlocked it. She sat down and leafed slowly through the newspaper clippings in the scrapbook. The old case, twenty years ago, with the photographs she couldn’t bear to look at. Tonight she forced herself to study them. Then she turned to the other case, the one in Hawaii. The accompanying pictures were no less horrible, but she stared at them for a long time, feeling herself become filled with the sharp, breathless excitement.

  Yes, she thought, poring over the clippings. I can do this.

  It had been a bad moment there in the kitchen, with the blood on her fingers. But there would be no more of that: she would close her mind and her heart to the past, concentrate only on now. She would do what had to be done, like—

  Antigone.

  Diana, Goddess of the Hunt.

  A slow smile spread across her face. She put aside the scrapbook and reached once more into the suitcase, into the small hidden compartment at the back.

  Slowly, carefully, she withdrew the knife.

  She held it up before her, watching the long, thin blade winking in the light. She pressed it flat against the side of her face, feeling the ice-cold steel bite into her warm cheek. She closed her eyes and emitted a long, low sigh. Then she opened her eyes and held the dagger out, inspecting the carved brass handle with the intricate design. The designer’s name appeared at the base of the handle, where it met the eight-inch blade. Kouronos.

  Her smile widened.

  It was a Greek knife.

  She had gone to a great deal of trouble to find it. It had to be a Greek dagger. A Kouronos. Once, long ago, she had held another just like it.r />
  “Mommy.”

  She realized, after several moments, that she had uttered the word aloud.

  She replaced the weapon in its hiding place, thinking as she did so of Adam. Adam, tall and beautiful, a god disguised as a man. She thought of Kay Prescott, his wife, and of Lisa, his stepdaughter.

  Then she thought of Adam’s plan.

  Labor Day. . . .

  As she locked the suitcase and returned it to the closet, she became aware of the soft patter that had begun on the roof above her. She undressed carefully, with only the one good hand for the buttons and the brooch, turned down the sheet on the bed, and switched off the light. She walked across the room, naked in the dark, and opened the sliding glass door. The warm tropical rain splashed down on her as she stepped out onto the balcony above the wet, deserted sundeck. Light shone out onto the deck from the living room, and through the rain she could hear the muffled sound of laughter. Slowly, deliberately, she raised her unbandaged fist above her head and swiftly, violently flung it outward.

  The amethyst glinted once in the rainy silver moonlight as it arced and plummeted down, down into the ocean waiting far below, at the base of the cliff.

  PART TWO

  GODDESS OF THE HUNT

  EIGHT

  MONDAY, AUGUST 19

  IF YOU SURVIVE long enough, Margaret decided, everything eventually happens to you. I am living proof of that.

  She was kneeling in the soft black earth next to the rosebushes, thankful for a sunny day, meticulously extracting the offending weeds from the base of one that was particularly besieged. She leaned over to the nearest blossom, blood-red and fairly bursting in the warm morning air. Closing her eyes, she drank in the rich perfume.

  Summer roses. How many have I planted in my time? Nurtured, tended, loved: ten thousand? Twenty? More, probably. And that was merely the roses. There had been marigolds and honeysuckle, zinnias, tulips—and violets, her second greatest horticultural passion. She’d even had a go at orchids once, but had found she didn’t have the patience for them. Orchids required a certain artistic temperament that she had never possessed.

  Her mind was wandering this morning, more than usual. But at least, she thought, I’m aware of the fact. I’m just nervous.

  He will be here very soon.

  She had thought long and hard before finally picking up the phone and making the call. There were several options open to her, and this had seemed to be the wisest.

  Of course, she could just wait for news from Robin Trask in St. Thomas. But the young man, nice as he seemed to be, was not a very competent investigator. Besides, he couldn’t know just how worrisome the girl’s behavior was. Certainly not from the brief outline she’d provided in the dossier.

  No, she could not remain inactive. A passive role had never been in her repertoire.

  Nor could she go barging down there. The thought had occurred to her several times a day ever since Robin’s report that the girl had vanished. She’d fantasized about it: arriving in St. Thomas and going straight to the local police, locating her niece, and bringing her back to the States. In handcuffs, if necessary. Tell them she was a thief, or an escaped mental patient—

  No. Whatever else she was, the girl was a Barclay. Family. Nothing so ignominious, so undignified, could be allowed to happen to her, despite her own undignified behavior in the past. Margaret could suffer disgrace if it was brought about by her niece, but she could never bring herself to be the direct cause of it.

  Besides, such an act would end their relationship. The girl would never forgive her. She loved her niece more than anything else, and she feared losing her.

  She would never admit that fear, not to another living soul, and certainly not to her niece. It was a weakness, a ridiculous dependency, and she prided herself on her strength. She’d only recently admitted her fear to herself. It hardly mattered. She could always, for the record, fall back on her other phobia as her true reason for not going to St. Thomas.

  Margaret was afraid of airplanes. Ever since the crash, some forty years ago, that had claimed both her parents and her young husband, leaving her—barely out of her teens—to bring up her much younger sister by herself. She had been married only a year when the tragedy occurred, and she was seven months pregnant. The news brought on a miscarriage, during which she very nearly died. She’d lain in the hospital wanting to die, trying to will it to happen. The pain of that time had never left her, but neither had she succumbed to it. She’d returned to the house in Glen Cove, to the little sister who needed her.

  Once, in the sixties, she’d wanted to go to the surprise wedding of an old friend in Texas. She’d even boarded the United 727 at La Guardia and taken her seat. But the moment the enormous airliner began to taxi down the runway, she’d experienced an overwhelming sense of panic. She’d risen from her seat, taken the nearest flight attendant aside, and quietly but firmly explained the situation. The plane had returned to the gate, and from that day to this she had never flown.

  Of course, if it became necessary, she could book passage on a cruise ship. But the shortest voyage available took four days, so, after much thought, Margaret had chosen a third option.

  Now, in the garden, she rose painfully to her feet, brushed the dirt from her knees, picked up the watering can, and hobbled slowly into the house to wait for him.

  The housekeeper, Mrs. O’Rourke, lowered the silver tea service onto the coffee table between them and left the living room. A moment later he heard the faint sound of a vacuum cleaner. That woman certainly earns her salary, he thought as he settled back on the couch and looked around. It was an enormous house: the big living room with its large, comfortable furniture covered in dark burgundy velvet; the curved staircase leading to the upper floor; the doors to the patio revealing a glimpse of the flagstone terrace and the roses beyond. There was an office next to this room, he remembered, and a dining room and kitchen on the other side. A beautiful gray BMW in the garage. He glanced over at the grand piano covered with silver-framed photographs.

  The woman across from him was as he remembered her: handsome, regal, yet somehow also warm and friendly. A woman with an enormous capacity for love.

  He accepted the tea she poured, thinking what he’d thought the last time he was here, four years ago. Any child growing up in this lovely house with this lovely woman should feel secure, well adjusted, happy. But he knew from his practice that people rarely responded as expected.

  Dr. David Stein had just turned fifty, and people were still a constant source of surprise and fascination to him. His wife was always laughingly reminding him that this was why he’d become a clinical psychologist in the first place. He remembered the young woman, this woman’s niece, quite well. Very beautiful. Very friendly, when she wanted to be. But he’d always had the impression that, even alone with him, she was not very forthcoming. She had secrets that nobody shared.

  He adjusted the wire-rimmed bifocals on his round, friendly face and ran a hand through his thinning black hair. Then he settled his stocky, worsted-covered body more comfortably on the couch.

  “So that’s where it stands now,” Margaret told him, continuing the conversation that had been interrupted by the housekeeper’s entrance. “She’s called twice, both times very briefly, both times claiming to be in Florida with a child named Linda Goodman and her family.”

  There was a princess phone on the end table next to her couch. She pointed to it. “See that little wire sticking out at the side? I told the Nassau County police that I’ve been receiving anonymous calls threatening my life. The second call, two days ago, was from a public phone at a mall in St. Thomas. She’s there somewhere. And she’s presumably going by one of two names, Diana Meissen or Selena Chase. She has dark hair and brown eyes—don’t ask me why! On her third day down there she bought a large bottle of contact lens solution and a box of what was obviously hair coloring. She apparently plans to keep the charade for a considerable amount of time. She’d just dyed her hair in Miami,
so why another box? And why a large bottle of solution, when small ones are available? Why lenses at all, for that matter? She has perfect vision.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps you should hire yourself out as a detective.”

  “I’m worried, Dr. Stein. Of all the people I consulted, you were the one who made the most sense. She’s been fine—really!—since you worked with her four years ago. In fact, about three years ago she became positively serene. She got a part-time job and enrolled in acting classes in the City. I asked her at the time what had brought about her change in attitude, and she said, ‘At last I know what I want to do, and how to do it.’ I assumed she meant the acting lessons.

  “Then, a few months ago, she got it into her head that she wanted to see the West Indies. She took off for the Islands, and she was gone for over a month. When she returned, she was very excited about the trip. There was something peculiar, though: she’d dyed her hair bright red.”

  “She’d never done that before?” the doctor asked.

  “No, never. And something else: the airline ticket she’d used to come back from the Islands. She left it on the coffee table when she got home. The name was written on the Pan Am envelope in huge black letters: Selena Chase.”

  Dr. Stein leaned forward. “Did you ask her about it?”

  He watched as Margaret began absently twisting her fingers together.

  “No,” she whispered. “I learned long ago that there’s no point in interrogating the girl.”

  He nodded: he’d learned that himself. He glanced down at the file on the coffee table, his own transcripts of his sessions with the girl four years before.

  “And the red hair?” he asked.

  “She kept it that way until she took off three weeks ago. She said she was on her way to Florida, but by then I’d engaged Robin Trask to follow her. She dyed her hair brown and went to St. Thomas. I’m very worried, Dr. Stein.”

  “So you called me,” he said.

  “Yes. I thought perhaps you could find some pattern to all this, something that might indicate where she is or what she’s doing.”