by Laird Barron
Not for the first time, Maureen wished she had acted on her impulse the moment Frank had said that sure, he used his EZ Pass on the drive here, why wouldn’t he? and no, he hadn’t shut off the GPS on his phone, why should he? On the spot, she had wanted to flee, to climb into her rental and take off while time remained before whoever Louise had hired to surveil her errant husband appeared, camera at the ready. Frank could join her if he wished, provided he left his cell in his car. Twenty-one years a private investigator, most of them spent gathering evidence on unfaithful spouses, and she had known what was going to happen. Hell, until Louise fired her, she had been the one with the telephoto lens, keeping a long-distance eye on the very handsome Frank as he roamed up and down the Hudson Valley from Wiltwyck to Manhattan, representing his ailing and reclusive (and significantly older) wife at gallery openings, philharmonic concerts, and benefit events for a range of charities. She had filled most of a thumb drive with the pictures she accumulated of Frank deep in conversation with this museum director, waltzing with that violinist at an after-party, laughing with the local TV anchor who was co-hosting the silent auction. None of those photos, though, went beyond the vaguely disquieting: Frank leaning a tad too close to a painter, or placing his hand on a cellist’s elbow, or giving an enthusiastic hug to a socialite in a gauzy excuse for a dress. To the best of Maureen’s not-inconsiderable ability to tell, Louise Westerford’s husband enjoyed walking to within sight of the boundaries of their marriage but had not trespassed them.
No, for that he would require (oh irony!) two conversations, one short, one long, with the woman who had been his unseen companion for the better part of six months, the first in an upscale restaurant in White Plains the month after Louise told her her services would no longer be required, the second in the restaurant-bar of the Motel 6 off the Thruway in Wiltwyck. When Maureen had sat down in Louise’s study with its assortment of occult paraphernalia—bookcases full of big, leather-bound volumes, stuffed ravens mounted on gnarled wire armatures, a crystal ball the size of a baby’s head cradled by a stand decorated with grinning devils—a sudden surge of pity for this woman twelve years her senior, her terribly thin body wrapped in enough black scarves to make Stevie Nicks jealous, had stirred her to venture beyond her usual detailed summary of her findings and review of her expenses. It appeared to her, Maureen said, that while Mrs. Westerford’s husband appreciated the company of attractive women, his admiration had not led to anything more. And if she didn’t mind her saying, Maureen had noticed that Mrs. Westerford’s husband appeared to be quite lonely. Those nights he wasn’t committed to an event or social gathering, he tended to dine by himself at one of a half-dozen restaurants, spending his time reading on his tablet. Rather than paying her to watch him, Mrs. Westerford might consider the possibility of joining him for some of those dinners; she might find an hour or two of talking with him over a nice bottle of wine and a good meal would do as much to allay her concerns over her husband’s fidelity as employing a private investigator to document his every move.
Throughout Maureen’s speech, Louise Westerford had regarded her with her large, liquid blue eyes as if she were speaking a language Louise found both unintelligible and distasteful. When Maureen was done, Louise had summarily fired her and summoned a maid to escort her out the front door. It had been a long time—as in, going back to her first years as a PI—since Maureen had been dismissed so casually, and though she told herself it was not the reason she sought out Frank four weeks later at his favorite steak house, the lie was too blatant to maintain. Give her this much credit: it had taken a month of debating whether to approach the man before she sat down across the table from him and introduced herself. She had been blunt, to the point, meeting his inevitable disbelief in her tale by handing her phone to him and allowing him to flick through the selection of photos she’d uploaded to it. Mingled with his shock had been curiosity. Why was she telling him all of this? “Because I don’t like being treated the way your wife treated me,” Maureen said. “Plus, you don’t seem as bad as she’s afraid you are, and I thought you should know about this.” What was he supposed to do now? he wanted to know. Maureen didn’t have any answers for him. Soon thereafter, she left. He asked for a number he could reach her at, in case he wanted to discuss this some more, but she refused. “I’m not the one you need to talk to,” she said.
Nonetheless, when he called the following week, she agreed to meet him at McCabe’s, the restaurant-bar attached to the Motel 6. She wasn’t especially surprised he’d located her. She’d provided him her name and profession; her contact information was one Google search away. She had no interest in speaking to Frank, but residual spite toward Louise prompted her to accept his request; though she countered his suggestion of Fulci’s, whose waterfront popularity begged someone to notice them, with McCabe’s, whose dim lighting and high-backed booths offered more in the way of privacy. He questioned the location, insisting he had nothing to hide. “Good for you,” she said. “How do you suppose it’s going to look for me if I’m seen out with a recent client’s husband—a man, by the way, I’ve been investigating for possible adultery?” Her point taken, they had met at McCabe’s.
Afterward, when they were lying on the bed whose blanket and sheets they had kicked off, Frank asked her if she had planned for this to happen. She denied it but was uncertain how honest her answer was. You invite someone who has learned troubling information about his spouse to meet you for a few drinks at a bar connected to a motel; you proceed to buy round after round of bourbon for him, tequila for you, exchanging life stories along the way; you inform him you’re going to take a room for the night because you’re too drunk to drive and you don’t like to sleep in your car. How was that anything but a plan for seduction? She could imagine what the attorneys she worked with would make of any claims to the contrary. Her intentions were purer when she told Frank this was a one-time thing; although the vow held only until he appeared at her office door a couple of days later, as she was preparing to close-up shop. They did it right there on her desk, with the door unlocked. Maureen wasn’t a size queen (a good thing in Frank’s case), but damn, did he know how to use what he had. No doubt, the illicit nature of what they were doing added to its thrill, as in the days to follow he continued to return to her office when she was about to leave, and they added the couch, both her office chairs, and the floor to the register of places on which they stirred one another to shuddering climax.
Yet if the sex was good, to the point of Maureen wishing she smoked, so she could light a cigarette after, the talks they had in the sodium light falling in orange stripes through the Venetian blinds were better. Maureen had experienced her share of good sex (though perhaps not at quite this level), but a partner with whom she could enjoy a decent conversation had proven more elusive. She told herself she was going to bring the affair to an end but settled for moving it from her office to her apartment, picking up Frank at a different location each time and driving him to her place via a new and circuitous route. Already, she was on the lookout for her replacement, the next PI Louise Westerford would have retained to trail her wandering husband. Maureen didn’t like hotels, whose security systems were built around video cameras, as were those at the majority of motels; although there was a seedy place off 9W in Highland at which she and Frank passed a couple of dirty evenings. He thought her precautions charming, but within a few weeks was chafing under them, going so far as to ask if it would be that bad for Louise’s agent to discover their affair. “Yes,” Maureen said, sitting up in her bed. “Your wife is very rich. That makes her much more powerful than either of us. She could divorce you and leave you with nothing. Hell, with the lawyers she could afford, you’d wind up owing her alimony. She could call the politicians she’s donated to and have them yank my license. Trust me, you do not want to fuck with the rich.”
Frank accused her of exaggerating. Louise, he said, was far more interested in her mystical studies than she was in ruining either of their li
ves. Sure, a divorce would be unpleasant, but it wouldn’t be the catastrophe Maureen was describing. His wife loathed public attention, which was why she sent him to represent her hither and yon. If they split, she would want the proceedings to be as low-key as possible. Although she knew he was underestimating the effect betrayal would have on a spouse, Maureen had not argued the point, as she had not argued a month later at Breakwater, when Frank admitted his failure to cover his tracks. In part, this was because of the promise implied by his words, a vision of a life together she found surprisingly compelling, even as she heard herself disabusing two decades’ worth of adulterers of similar fantasies. Like them, she had become addicted to that most dangerous narcotic, hope, and her ability to recognize her disease did nothing to blunt its power. Yes, she wore large sunglasses and a sunhat, but as far as disguises went, the combination was lacking. At the end of their four-day excursion to the Jersey shore, when Frank expressed his intention to talk to his wife, Maureen didn’t ask what he was going to discuss, nor did she attempt to dissuade him from his plan. Amazing, the effect a surplus of fine dining and athletic sex could have on her. She wasn’t just addicted: she was overdosing.
Enough of her critical faculties remained, however, for her to be on edge when after four days, then five, then six, Frank had not communicated with her. Had he lost his nerve? Had his romantic sentiments been nothing more than the side-effect of the endorphins saturating his blood? Patience, she thought, trying to focus on her current caseload, to watch the news. Sandwiched between reports of the current scandals roiling Washington and Hollywood was a feature on a freak storm which had coalesced in the Atlantic and swung due west, toward central New Jersey. Maureen missed the explanation for why something that looked like a small hurricane on the satellite photos wasn’t designated one and formally named, but she did notice the name of the location where the storm barreled ashore, the vacation town of Breakwater. As the days proceeded with no word from Frank, coverage of the storm elbowed its way to the lead of each broadcast. After lifting the ocean into a surge that had washed away much of Breakwater’s shore, the storm had parked itself over the town. Instead of lessening, it gained in intensity, lashing Breakwater with driving rain and high waves, spinning off tornadoes like enormous tops, dragging the Atlantic higher and higher up the ocean-facing streets. What portion of the populace hadn’t fled the storm’s approach rectified their error and headed inland. Meteorologists struggled to explain the storm’s behavior, employing increasingly elaborate models to account for it, predicting an imminent departure the system had yet to make. While she knew the location of the storm’s landfall had nothing to do with her and Frank’s excursion there, the coincidence was difficult to ignore. As his failure to send so much as a simple text reached the two-week mark, and her certainty that no such communication was on its way grew, Maureen began to take a grim satisfaction in the reports of the destruction of the place where she had been so stupid, so naïve. The storm came to seem an embodiment of the disappointment and hurt weighting her chest, its objective correlative, a term her brain retrieved from some college literature course or another.
Yet when her cell played its tinny version of the theme from Magnum, PI and she recognized the number of the Tracfone she had insisted Frank buy, she nearly dropped her phone in her haste to answer it. Her “Hello?” struggled to contain thirteen days’ worth of anxiety and doubt. But damned if her heart didn’t lift at the sound of Frank’s, “Maureen.”
Already, though, she heard the hoarseness in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
Another voice replaced his. “I believe we all know the answer to that.”
Maureen’s mouth went dry. “Louise.”
“Mrs. Westerford—at least for the moment.”
There was no point in playing dumb. If Frank was there and she had the Tracfone, then Louise knew enough for any theatrics to be a waste of time. Maureen said, “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, I think you’ve done quite enough, already. From what my husband tells me, admirably so, much better than an old sack of bones like me.” The fury in her words was terrifying.
“Mrs. Westerford—”
“Check your e-mail.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, Check your e-mail.”
Maureen was already at her computer. She opened her gmail account. The message had been sent while they were talking. Its subject line read, “Poseidon’s Palace Room 211.” Maureen clicked on the photo attached, and there was Frank, naked, roped to a chair, his flesh a patchwork of bruises, some purple and fresh, others green and yellow and old. Long cuts traversed his chest, biceps, and thighs, half of them scabbed-over, half weeping blood. The worst, though, was his face, which bore the marks of sustained beatings, the eyes swollen shut, the nose mashed and bloody, the lips torn, a handful of teeth missing from bloody sockets. Maureen stared at the image, her pulse pounding at the base of her throat with such intensity she feared she was about to throw up.
“Do you understand?” Louise Westerford said.
“You don’t need to do this,” Maureen said.
“You know nothing of what I do and do not need. Right now, my needs include seeing you at the location where this photograph was taken within the next twenty-four hours.”
“All right. I’ll come. Don’t hurt Frank anymore. Please.”
Louise hung up.
The screen of Maureen’s computer flickered, and the image of Frank disappeared, to be replaced by the g-mail login page, on which was the message “Error: Account Not Found.” A second later, a pop sounded inside the computer’s tower, and the screen went black. The machine sighed, and the power light blinked off. A strong odor of burnt plastic and metal issued from the stack. Maureen spent the next several minutes attempting to resuscitate it, but whatever malware Louise had employed had reduced the computer to an over-sized paperweight. Louise was covering her tracks, ensuring no data trail to incriminate her. As more and more of her business had involved an online component, Maureen had armored her PC with successive firewalls, a squadron of the most efficient anti-malware available. For Louise to have slipped through all of it was more than a little intimidating. Maureen’s phone buzzed; she checked it, only to discover it, too, had been rendered inert. Although the possibility existed that a specialist in electronic forensics might be able to detect Louise’s fingerprints on the attack of her devices, such investigation required time she didn’t have. Instead, Maureen retrieved a wallet from the bottom right drawer of her desk, checked its contents, and left her office.
Ten years past, Maureen had been hired by the wife of a local crime magnate to document his numerous infidelities. The case had been no more risky than most until, during a tirade fueled by box wine and cocaine, Mrs. LaPierre had boasted to her husband about knowing every last thing he had been up to, thanks to her private eye, which assertion Mr. LaPierre had taken to encompass his extra-legal as well as his extra-marital affairs. After gouging out the eyes of his head of security, the gangster had devoted the substantial resources of his criminal network to discover the identity of the person investigating him. The ensuing weeks had been the most perilous and tense of Maureen’s career. Only by an exercise in bravado that had led to a sit-down with Étienne LaPierre in the palatial living room of his Catskill mansion had she survived them. The experience had prompted her to establish a series of protocols in case she ever should find herself again in a similar or worse situation. These, she put into action with a drive to the local bank, into whose ATM she inserted a debit card in the name of Irene Paretsky. The ATM would allow her to withdraw a maximum of five hundred dollars, which she did. Next was a stop at the Wiltwyck Trailways, where she used a Visa card signed Irene Paretsky to purchase a one-way ticket on the next bus to Montreal, leaving in two hours.
The same credit card paid for a Tracfone and a pair of hundred minute phone cards at the Wal-Mart on the other side of town, along with a selection of toiletries, a small overnight bag in which
to carry them, a pink and yellow sunhat, and a blue Yankees cap. She activated the phone, loaded the minutes, and punched in the number written on a slip in the wallet. It was for a small hotel on the outskirts of Montreal. While she was on the line with the front desk clerk, she asked for recommendations for car rental places, and once Ms. Paretsky’s room was booked, called the second company the clerk had recommended. She reserved a sub-compact for two days from now, insisting she wanted a vehicle with good gas mileage.
Next to the bus station was a diner to the far side of whose parking lot she drove, parking and locking her car. She ordered a Monte Cristo with fries at the diner, which Irene Paretsky’s Visa also took care of. Fifteen minutes before the bus was scheduled to head for the Thruway, Maureen exited the diner and joined the line waiting for it. Once she had identified the positions of the security cameras, she withdrew the sunhat from its plastic bag, glanced from side to side, and placed it on her head. After boarding the bus, she seated herself beside the college-age woman she had identified ahead of her on the line. Five minutes’ conversation—and two hundred dollars, cash—was sufficient to persuade the woman, who was transferring at the station in Albany to a bus headed for Buffalo, to agree to wear the pink and yellow sunhat all the way to western New York. Maureen slipped off her jacket, folded and stuffed it into the bag that had contained the hat, pulled on the baseball cap, and as the driver was checking the tickets of a pair of last-minute passengers, left the vehicle, apologizing to the driver for having mistaken this for the bus to Springfield.