Or She Dies

by Gregg Hurwitz

  The windshield wipers worked double-time, trying to clear my view. I was a few blocks from home when, seized by an impulse, I U-turned back down the hill and trolled Ventura, wired with agitation. Finally I found a late-night internet café.

  A few minutes later, snugged to a rented computer amid the sharp scent of coffee and the banter of two MySpacers comparing piercings, I logged into the Gmail account. As the page loaded, I had to concentrate to slow down my breathing.

  Nothing from them, just a pop-up window for Viagra on the cheap and uppercase spam from Barrister Felix Mgbada, urgently requesting my help in setting straight his wealthy relative’s affairs in Nigeria. I blew out a breath and cocked back in the rickety chair. I was just about to shut down the computer when another email chimed into the inbox. No subject. They knew I was logged in.

  My palms were slick. I clicked on the email. A single word.

  Tomorrow.

  Chapter 27

  Awakened by the sound of the running shower, I took a moment to get my bearings. Upstairs. In our bed. Ariana getting ready.

  New email coming. Today.

  I hadn’t done laundry all week, so the only suitable clean thing on a hanger was a trendy, faded salmon button-up that I’d bought overpriced at a Melrose boutique for some screening my agent had invited me to the week after she’d sold my script. Back then I was neither that cool nor did I have the money to afford it. And now I was less cool and more broke, so I would’ve felt sheepish wearing it if my apprehension about the coming email hadn’t drowned out competing emotions.

  In my office, nauseous with stress, I booted up and logged in. Even if I wasn’t going to open an email from my computer, I could at least see if there was anything waiting in my inbox. But there wasn’t. I hit ‘refresh’ to check for new mail. And then again. I jotted down a few sentences for my morning lecture before my attention pulled back to the screen. Still nothing.

  The shower stopped, and I felt a flare of unease. Hoping the student scripts might be more distracting, I pulled one from the growing stack. I read through it, retaining next to nothing. I tried the next one, too, but just couldn’t find it interesting. Worse, I couldn’t see the point of it anymore. Words on a page.

  How was I supposed to find interest in a fabricated plot when a real-life one was a single email away?

  My hand reached for the mouse. Came back to my pad. Went to the mouse again. Refresh. Nothing new. Tapping my pen against the notepad, I refocused on my lecture, trying yet again to care about character arcs.

  Ariana poked her head into my office. ‘Bathroom’s all yours.’

  I quickly closed out of my browser screen. ‘Great. Thanks.’

  ‘Want to have breakfast with me? I mean, we are sleeping in the same room now, so I figure we’re at least intimate enough to try sharing a Pop-Tart.’

  I smiled. ‘I’m ready. I’ll be right down.’

  ‘Whatcha doing?’

  I glanced down at the mostly blank notepad. ‘Just finishing up some work.’

  ‘Are you having an affair?’ Navigating the hall, Julianne placed a hand on the neck of a student and steered him out of our way.

  I was slightly winded, having just run upstairs from the computer lab, where I’d logged into my Gmail account so I could watch my empty inbox for the fifteen minutes before class. I could feel the blood in my cheeks. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  She tilted her head back, appraising me. ‘You’re positively glowing.’

  ‘A lot of excitement lately.’

  I started to peel off, but Julianne pulled me aside, out of the Monday crush, and lowered her voice: ‘I looked into that media contact. Even found a few producers who’ve gone through the process with her.’

  It took me a moment to figure out who she was talking about: The person at the CIA who read movie scripts to see which were worthy of agency cooperation. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Thanks for doing that, but—’

  ‘Not all the producers got their scripts approved, but to a one they vouched for her. I got her on the phone, said I was doing an article on the approval process — blah, blah, blah. Mentioned your script, and she had less than no reaction. She said it didn’t circulate past her staff. She also said — like most scripts she assesses — it didn’t paint a picture of the Agency that made them want to help with the movie. But there was no fire to it. So my guess? Unless she’s Oscar-worthy, no one at the CIA gives a shit about They’re Watching any more than you’d expect them to. I doubt they’re behind whatever you’re dealing with.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I pictured Doug Beeman on that dank carpet, face to the screen, sobbing with relief. ‘I think I figured that out already.’

  She glanced at the clock, swore under her breath, and began to backpedal up the hall. ‘So I guess that leaves you wide open again.’

  SHE NEEDS YOUR HELP.

  The message, standing out against the black of the screen, made my gut twist. The tiny office in the department felt even more cramped than usual. The air gusting from the vent overhead smelled like freezer-burned ice cubes, and the scent of stale coffee lingered from whoever had taken office hours here last period.

  As the bold letters faded away on screen, I checked my Canon camcorder, which I had pointed at the old Dell monitor. No green dot — the damn thing wasn’t recording.

  I knocked the camera with the heel of my hand, but already the slideshow had moved on.

  A photo of a well-kept prefab house, taken at night, stars in the windows from the camera’s flash. Just visible inside, the silhouette of a woman sitting on a couch and watching TV, her curly hair piled high. Two chairs pinned down the little strip of grass in the front, and a lawn gnome kept mischievous lookout.

  My eyes jumped frantically from my camcorder to the monitor and back again. After testing the Canon this morning, I’d left it briefly unattended at a few points — in the car when I stopped to get coffee, in the faculty lounge when I’d gone down to the computer lab. They must have disabled the recording function. To stop me from doing this.

  Dropping the camera on the desk, I searched out a pencil, finding a broken one in the coffee mug. My other hand rooted in my briefcase, yanking free the notepad and spilling scripts onto the floor. All the while I kept one eye on the monitor, fearful of missing something. Cracked pencil poised over pad, waiting to write. That hazy outline of the woman on the couch. She? Who the hell was she?

  A new picture showed our house from the front. Standard shot, like a Realtor’s photo.

  A knocking on the office door.

  ‘Just a minute!’ I shouted, a bit too loudly.

  ‘Patrick? This isn’t your slot. My office hours started five minutes ago.’

  The next photo showed the fake rock by the driveway, where we used to hide the spare house key, a flash illuminating the night scene.

  My heartbeat pounded. ‘Right, sorry about that. I’ll clear out in a minute.’

  And now a car key laid on the grass of our front lawn beside the fake rock. The plug on the rock had been pulled out and the key angled toward the hole. I squinted at the plastic key head, made out the Honda insignia.

  Her voice, more polite to mask the rising tenseness: ‘I’d appreciate it. You know our time in there is limited as it is.’

  I did. But I had only a ten-minute window between afternoon lectures, not time enough to leave the floor to hit the computer lab, and my colleague hadn’t shown up for her office hours. Or so I’d thought.

  The next shot showed my Red Sox cap lying on our bed, as stark as Exhibit A in a crime-scene photo. The air-conditioning froze the sweat on the back of my neck. In the picture, our bedroom walls weren’t torn up, so it had been taken before Thursday night. I dug in my pocket for my cell phone and thumbed it on, the spinning Sanyo graphics taking their time.

  ‘I’m just packing up. Gimme a sec.’ Navigating its menu, I held the phone up next to the monitor so I could take in the cell-phone screen and computer monitor at a glance. Furiously punching at the tin
y buttons, I finally called up the camera function on the phone and hit ‘record.’

  On the computer a QuickTime video lurched into action. A driver’s view through a windshield, the lens carefully positioned so not a sliver of dashboard or hood crept into the frame. The rumble of an engine. A low view — a car, not a truck or SUV, leaving a familiar parking area. Northridge Faculty Lot B2. The footage played on fast-forward, the car zipping through streetlights, turning corners, other vehicles speeding by.

  My eyes jerked back and forth from the real screen to the view of it through my cell phone’s camera, as I made sure the Sanyo was picking up the footage.

  A frustrated thump at the door — a little more than a knock this time. I could hear her keys jangling in her fist. ‘Patrick, this is getting a bit rude. Don’t you have class now anyway?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Literally give me two minutes.’

  My phone beeped twice, and the camera shut off — the memory was limited, so it recorded only in ten-second chunks.

  About two blocks from campus, the driver pulled into a dead-end alley between a Chinese restaurant and a video store. Parked tight in front of a Dumpster, facing away, was an old Honda Civic. The screen went black, and when it came back on, the driver was no longer in his car — he’d edited out his exit from the vehicle so I wouldn’t catch even a glimpse of the door.

  A handheld approach to the Honda, the screen tilting back and forth. Not wanting to take my eyes from the monitor, I struggled with my phone, punching buttons by feel and memory, trying to call up another ten-second recording session. A quick glance over showed me to have succeeded in getting myself into a cell-phone game of Tetris.

  With frustration, I dropped the phone into my lap. The rapping on the door intensified.

  The view pushed in tight on the Honda. Closer, closer. When I realized what it was zooming in on, a chill spread through my insides.

  The trunk lock.

  A wave of light-headedness, static specking my vision.

  Another set of messages appeared and faded. Forgetting to breathe, I read them numbly.

  6PM. NO SOONER. NO LATER.

  GO ALONE.

  TELL NO ONE.

  FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS.

  OR SHE DIES.

  The screen went blank. The browser quit of its own volition. Sagging back in the chair, I stared vacantly at the sad little office. Out in the hall, high heels clicked angrily away, and then only my ragged breathing remained to interrupt the silence.

  Chapter 28

  ‘I know some of you are starting to feel impatient. I will get to your scripts this week.’

  ‘That’s what you said last week,’ someone called out from the back of the lecture hall.

  I rifled my pad, staring at my notes. Aside from the three sentences I’d jotted down this morning, the page was empty. I kept picturing those ghost letters, rising and fading against the black screen: FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS. OR SHE DIES.

  Did I know the woman on the couch? Or was she merely a stranger I was supposed to help, like Doug Beeman? Was she locked in the trunk of that Honda? Alive? And if so, if they wanted me to help her, why did I have to wait until six o’clock? Dread had returned, blacker and more certain than before, wiping out any foolish excitement that might have tinged my encounter with Beeman. Their runaway plot had veered across the line, finally, into life-or-death terrain.

  The clock in the back of the lecture hall showed 4:17. Class let out in thirteen minutes — I’d have just enough time to race home, grab the key and my Red Sox hat, and get back to that alley. Though dozens of countermeasures ran through my head, I couldn’t seriously consider them. My choices would determine whether that woman survived.

  One of the students cleared her throat. Loudly.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, regrouping. ‘So dialogue . . . dialogue should be succinct and . . . uh, compelling . . .’ I was just considering how poorly I was exemplifying this principle when I scanned the class and caught sight of Diondre in the back. I detected a hint of disappointment in his face. I forced my head into the lecture again, trying to hold it together, and had just started to get my focus when I heard the classroom door open and close.

  Sally stood to the side, her back to the wall, her holstered sidearm poking conspicuously from the bottom of her rumpled coat. I did a double take, but she offered only an amiable smile. I’d lost the cadence of my thoughts again. The mostly blank page offered no help. I checked the clock. An hour and thirty-five minutes to showtime.

  ‘You know what?’ I said to the class. ‘Why don’t we call it early today?’

  I grabbed my notes and started for the door. As I approached, Sally took in my faded salmon button-up. ‘Nice shirt,’ she said. ‘They make it for men?’

  Valentine lingered beyond the door. I couldn’t wait for the last of the students to shuffle out, so I pulled him and Sally aside in the hall. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Somewhere we can talk?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t have my office right now. Maybe the faculty lounge.’

  ‘Coupla teachers,’ Valentine said. Something hummed in his shirt pocket, and he pulled out a Palm Treo and silenced it.

  ‘You went in there?’ I glanced around nervously. Dr. Peterson was passing through the intersecting hall at that moment, of course, discussing something with a student. ‘It really looks bad for me to be questioned by cops at work right now.’

  ‘We’re not questioning you,’ Sally said. ‘Just wanted to check in. And here we thought you’d be flattered by all this attention.’

  Peterson didn’t slow down or stop talking, but her eyes tracked us until she passed out of view. My watch read 4:28. I needed the key before I could get to whatever — or whoever — was locked in the trunk of that Honda. If I didn’t get moving, soon, I wouldn’t make it there by 6:00.

  My shirt felt damp. I resisted the urge to run my sleeve across my forehead. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Thank you for checking in.’

  Sally said, ‘We didn’t make a scene in the faculty room. Though I must say, one of your colleagues was rather solicitous.’

  ‘Julianne.’

  ‘Yes. Attractive woman.’

  Valentine sucked his teeth. ‘She’s straight, Richards.’

  ‘Thanks for pointing that out. I won’t abscond with her to Vermont now.’ Sally hitched her belt, rattling the gear. ‘When you comment that Jessica Biel is hot, do I point out that she doesn’t go for aging black guys with jelly-doughnut guts?’

  Valentine scowled. ‘I have a jelly-doughnut gut?’

  ‘Wait five years.’ She took in his expression of strained amusement. ‘That’s right. And there’s more where that came from.’

  I snuck another peek at my watch, and when I looked up, Sally was studying me with those flat eyes. ‘Late for something?’

  ‘No.’ I felt like vomiting. ‘No.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Valentine said. ‘We got it the first time.’

  ‘Went to your house this morning,’ Sally said. ‘All the curtains are drawn. Your wife barely opened the door enough to poke her head through. Like there’s something in there she didn’t want us to see. Is there something in there you don’t want us to see?’

  Just torn-up walls, peeled-back carpet, dismantled outlets — the kind of mess a paranoid schizophrenic with a toolbox might make if left unattended. ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re just a little sensitive to being watched right now. You can hardly blame her. Why were you at the house?’

  ‘Your neighbor called.’

  ‘Don Miller?’

  ‘The very one. He said you were acting weird.’

  ‘That’s a news flash?’

  ‘A lot of banging from your house. The closed blinds. And maybe you shoved something down into the sewer a couple nights ago.’

  ‘Like a body?’ I said.

  She waited patiently as I did my best to feign amusement, then said, ‘I came by to make sure I didn’t mislead you in our last conversation. ‘“Look around” means
look around. It doesn’t mean go Falcon and the Snowman and get your ass shot off.’

  My half grin felt frozen on my face. TELL NO ONE, they’d warned, OR SHE DIES. But for a moment I almost caved. Spilled about the email and the key and the Honda’s trunk. Wouldn’t the police have a better chance at saving that woman than I would? All I had to do was open my mouth and make the right words. But before I could, a cell phone bleated out the Barney theme song.

  Sally sighed, her considerable weight settling. ‘The kid likes it. One in an avalanche of humiliating parental concessions.’ She stepped away to take the call.

  Valentine pouched his lips, looked down the hall with unfocused eyes. He took a half step closer, like he shouldn’t be telling me something but wanted to anyway. ‘Listen, man. One thing I learned in my time on the force is, shit leads to more shit. I can’t tell you how many guys we’ve put away for taking one wrong step at a time.’ He smoothed his mustache, and in his brown eyes I saw the weariness of experience, the wisdom he’d rather not have accrued.

  Sally doubled back briskly. ‘We got a 211 in Westwood. We gotta move.’ She turned her focus to me. ‘If you’re into something, we can help, now. If you keep us out, when things go south, we won’t be able to help. Because by then you’ll be part of the problem. Now: is there anything you want to tell us?’

  My mouth had gone dry. I took a breath. I said, ‘No.’

  ‘Let’s go.’ Sally jerked her head at Valentine, and they hurried up the hall. She paused to look back at me. ‘Be careful,’ she said, ‘wherever you’re rushing off to.’

  Chapter 29

  Through the strobe flicker of passing vehicles, I could make out the Honda in the alley across the street. I’d rushed home to retrieve the key and my Red Sox hat, and made it back with two minutes to spare. The whole ride I talked myself into and out of detouring to a police station, but the image of that woman sitting on her couch kept my foot on the gas and my hands steady on the wheel. She was no more than a hazy silhouette in a photo that I’d barely glimpsed, but the thought of her vanishing, of feeling terror or pain because of a gamble I took, was unbearable.