by Vivian Barz
The picture Anne had painted of Dov was entirely different from the one Susan had fabricated inside her head before her arrival. Not only did she have the off-the-cuff testimony of the dam employees but also Dov’s rap sheet, which had read like a menu of drug and petty-crime charges. She’d also been speculating that Anne’s pregnancy could have played a major role in Dov’s disappearance, but now she wasn’t so sure. Even if he was doing drugs behind her back, he cared enough about his wife that he was willing to live a double life for her, regardless of how twisted the logic. If he didn’t care whatsoever, his attitude may have been closer to deal with it.
Then again, according to rumors around the dam about Dov being lazy, he hadn’t seemed too concerned about keeping his job. Which was odd, with him having a pregnant wife—it seemed the Amsels could use all the money they could get. And, on that front, how had he been able to afford all the drugs he’d allegedly been taking? Maybe he’d been pressing his luck with the intent of self-destruction, whether deliberately or not, his hope being that everything would blow up in his face if he continued abusing drugs and neglecting his job and his pregnant wife. Maybe he was hoping the universe would step in and take everything he had and destroy him, since he was too cowardly to do it himself: freedom through annihilation. It wasn’t too much of a stretch, given how he’d been conducting himself most of his life.
There was, of course, the possibility that Anne was lying about being in the dark about Dov’s activities and whereabouts, but her gut was telling her no. She didn’t strike Susan as the sort of woman who’d be okay living on the streets with a newborn, should Dov succeed at wrecking the life they’d managed to build for themselves despite his shaky past.
Susan asked, “Before Dov disappeared, do you remember anything strange happening?”
“Strange? Like what?”
“Cars you didn’t recognize sitting out on the street for extended periods of time, or maybe someone stopping by the house claiming to be a repairman or a census taker—something like that? Anything out of the ordinary?”
“There is something but . . .” Anne blushed. “I thought maybe Dov was having an affair for a little while there because we kept getting hang-up calls on our home line. We must be one of the few people left in America who still have one. Of course, he wasn’t—having an affair, I mean.”
“Any idea who it was?”
“The number was always blocked, but I eventually found out who it was. Dov was doing side jobs with one of his old contacts.”
Susan asked, “What sort of side jobs?”
Anne shrugged. “It was mostly easy tasks that people didn’t want to do for themselves: moving furniture, hauling trash to the dump, hanging Christmas lights.”
“Someone paid your husband to hang Christmas lights?”
“He made a fair bit of cash doing it too. People want to show they have holiday spirit, you know, but they don’t want to do the work. He’d also take them down once the holiday was over as part of the deal. But the money didn’t matter to me, once I found out who Dov was working with. After that, I put an end to those side jobs.”
“And who was that?”
“It was one of Dov’s old drug contacts. He’d told me that he’d cut ties with all of them—the druggies from his past, I mean—once we found out I was pregnant. Some of them were pretty angry about it, according to my husband—he never said why, but I’m guessing he might have owed a couple of them money. But you know who was more pissed? Me, when I found out that he was still associating with them. I told him that I didn’t care how much money he was making. I didn’t want him hanging around with that crowd any longer.”
“And did he stop?”
Anne looked down at her feet. She seemed reluctant to answer. “He says he did . . .”
Susan could tell there was more. “But what?”
Exasperated, Anne said, “But look at me. I’m the size of a whale. I can’t follow him around twenty-four seven. He said he’d quit, and so I trusted that he did.”
Maybe that was your first mistake, Susan thought. Trusting Dov. She made a move to pull out her pen and pad. “You got the name of the guy he was doing these jobs with?”
Anne shook her head. “I wasn’t ever involved in that part of his life, so I never got to know his friends from back in the day. When Dov was on drugs, it was like he was a different person. That person I wanted nothing to do with.”
“Sure, I understand.”
“Look, I know Dov isn’t perfect. But regardless of who he was in the past, I’m telling you, he isn’t a killer.”
CHAPTER 10
Eric was powerless as a series of hands tugged at his body and then seized his limbs. Because the cloth had been pulled over his head—he thought it might be an old pillowcase—he was unable to see his attackers. But he could hear them. They grunted and panted with effort as they dragged him away from his Jeep toward . . . where? he wondered, some small, deluded part of him still hoping that he was involuntarily partaking in a practical joke—though who the hell would find such a thing funny was beyond him.
His head throbbed as if he’d been struck, and it dawned on him that maybe he had been. They’d snuck up on him fast as lightning—so fast that he couldn’t figure out where they might have come from—so it was very likely that he’d suffered a blow stealthy enough that he’d missed it. The warmth at the crown of his skull hinted that he’d been assaulted, that it was blood he was feeling raining down the back of his neck. He dug his heels into the pavement and then kicked out at them when it didn’t work, but it was merely a futile attempt to slow their progress. They were dragging him away, and there was nothing he could do but let it happen.
“What do you want?” he demanded, but what he really meant was “Why me?” He couldn’t imagine that any group of students would be so angry about a grade that they’d orchestrate such an elaborate ruse—which was the only motive he could think would spawn the attack.
But could he actually be sure it was students who were attacking him? The media attention he’d received during the past year had brought a few crackpots out of the woodwork—people who’d sought his “psychic services” to find missing loved ones or determine whether a partner was being unfaithful. What if this was some of them now, hoping to force his hand through kidnapping?
“Look, if you’re wanting to hire me, we could sit down and talk—”
“Help me get him over the ledge,” a gruff voice demanded.
Then, another voice, a female. “Whoa, wait. Hey—ow!”
A different male: “Take the hood off! They can’t find him with it on!”
And, before Eric understood that they’d been planning to kill him all along, he was falling, falling.
Wake up-wake up-wake up . . .
A voice whispering to him from behind.
Eric sat up with a start, a scream escaping his lungs. He patted himself down as the world came back into focus—
you’re okay, you’re okay
—realizing slowly that he was in the front seat of his Jeep. Safe, and very much not splattered on the sidewalk below.
But he was not alone.
His eyes slowly traveled to the rearview mirror, where he wasn’t too surprised to catch sight of Bryan, mangled and bloody, staring back at him sadly. His mouth stretched into a wide, hideous grin, and Eric could see that only remnants of Bryan’s teeth remained, jagged pearls peeping out from ruined lips. His skull was grotesquely misshapen, eyeballs looking off into separate directions, as if they belonged in two different skulls.
Eric commanded himself to pretend that everything was normal, to not launch from his car and run back to the safety of the bright lights in his office, like he so very much wanted to do.
The dead, he’d come to know, would find him anywhere.
I’m not the only one. Bryan’s lips weren’t moving, but it was like he was speaking nonetheless.
“The only one what?”
Professor . . . help . . .
<
br /> But, of course, the kid was already starting to vanish, his sad, mangled silhouette dissolving until it was like he’d never been there at all.
A year ago, such an incident would have made Eric question whether he was having a schizophrenic episode. Now, he recognized the vision for what it was, the dead trying to communicate. And, although he was tired and desperately wanting to go home (never mind the trauma he felt after his trip off the roof), there was not a single doubt in his mind that Bryan would just keep coming back should he choose to behave as if nothing had happened.
He’d tried denial before with other visitors, and it had only made them angry and lash out. He shuddered as he recalled the time he’d awakened in his dark bedroom in the middle of the night to find a dead five-year-old boy named Lenny Lincoln staring back at him on the pillow, an insect squirming from his lips. He could live his whole life and be grateful to never see something like that again, thank you very much, so passivity was not going to be an option today.
Okay, so what did Bryan want? Well, that much was obvious. Although the dead Eric had encountered were often cryptic, Bryan’s message, thankfully, had been clear. He had not committed suicide; he’d been murdered by people who’d gone out of their way to make it look like he’d taken his own life. But who’d benefit from such a thing?
The most obvious answer was rooted less in benefit and more in revenge.
Samantha’s parents had the motive, money, and connections to orchestrate the murder in such a short time. Perhaps they’d been too impatient to wait for the courts to dole out justice. The act of violence had undoubtedly been premeditated; the attackers had the pillowcase on hand and ready to use. They’d been waiting for him in the parking lot, too, which meant they probably were aware of his schedule. But why use the pillowcase in the first place if they’d been planning to throw him off the ledge? Bryan could hardly identify his attackers if he was dead.
Ridiculous as the motive might be, Eric considered the possibility that Alan Williams, dean of students, might have done it with other members of the board. And why not? Once word got out that a salacious murder had tainted the campus’s once-chaste reputation, parents might consider sending their precious offspring elsewhere. Benefactors, too, might feel that their donation dollars would be better utilized someplace where the students weren’t killing one another. But if Samantha’s murderer were to never stand trial—kind of difficult to go to court when you’re wearing your brains on the outside of your skull—the hubbub surrounding the scandal might go away quietly.
There was always the third possibility, which was that an entirely unrelated group of vigilantes—men and women who did not even know, or had maybe never even met Samantha—wanted to send a message to would-be murderers and rapists: hurt a woman, and we’re going to come out of the shadows to hurt you right back.
Of the three theories, the one where Samantha’s parents were the perpetrators made the most sense. They were the ones most emotionally invested and the ones actively out for blood, given the way they’d been trashing Bryan. Additionally, they had never liked the kid, so the decision to end his life might not haunt their conscience the way it would another guilty party.
Eric made a move to start his car and then reconsidered. He pocketed his keys and exited the vehicle, retracing his steps to the elevator. From there, he walked the perimeter of the balcony, which was merely where builders had extended the concrete up about four feet, so that it made a blockade to the open air. He walked the whole third level, finding nothing, so he went up a floor. And then another.
About halfway around the fifth floor, he saw it: two distinct skid marks that ran up the front side of the blockade, as if someone had been dragged to the ledge. Eric was positive that the someone was Bryan. He scanned the lot behind him, finding the approximate area where he’d been grabbed in the vision two floors below, the area near where the black truck had been. He got down on his hands and knees and peered at the ground, finding a set of scuff marks here, too, where they’d begun to drag Bryan away. He rushed back down to the car, grabbed his cell phone, ran back up to the fifth floor, and began snapping pictures.
Exhausted from all the back and forth, he took the elevator down to the third floor. Once in his car, he looked up directions to the nearest police station. Before he had a chance to reconsider, he screeched out of the parking lot.
On the way to the station, he began to call Susan, but then thought better of it. She’d already advised him to go to the police, which he hadn’t done, despite his assurance to her that he would. Besides, wouldn’t calling her again be a little . . . ? “Stalkerish,” he answered himself and then put down the phone. If he hoped to ever win her back, acting like a pest would be the last thing that would endear him to her.
CHAPTER 11
The waiting room at the police station was about as pleasant looking as Eric had anticipated, except it also had the added bonus of smelling like stale urine. He glanced at the scowling miscreants scattered about the room and then elected to take a seat next to a well-dressed woman in a tailored pantsuit who looked like she belonged there even less than he did. He gave her a polite smile as he sat down.
She leaned into him a couple minutes later and said, “Boy, do you look like—”
“What, like I’ve seen a ghost?” he said dryly and then had himself a private laugh. Ho-ho-ho, so funny. Telling dad jokes when you’re not even a dad. And he never would be, thanks to the vasectomy he’d gotten when he was married to Maggie. Not unless he got it reversed. And with his love life being the way it was lately, he didn’t see that happening any time soon. It had actually been Maggie’s idea, and then after he’d had the procedure she’d gone and gotten herself pregnant by his brother, if you could believe it. Ho-ho-ha-ha, isn’t life funny?
Smiling, the woman shook her head. “Well, no, I was going to say that you looked like you could use a piece of candy. I keep a bag of these in my purse for occasions like these.” It was then that Eric saw that she was offering him a foil-wrapped lollipop from See’s Candies. She studied him for a moment. “But, sure, the ghost thing works too.”
Eric thanked her for the lollipop with a sheepish chuckle. “That’s what I get for rudely interrupting people.”
She dismissed the comment with a wave of her hand, which was sporting a wedding ring adorned with a diamond that could double as a bowling ball. She had matching stones in both earlobes, and a thick brushed-gold chain with a sizeable topaz pendant at her neck. Her handbag boasted a large French designer’s emblem. “You’re not a criminal, are you?” she asked, her immaculately penciled eyebrow arching.
“Why, because I interrupted you?”
“Cute.” She flashed him a coy, pretty smile, and it was easy to imagine her being crowned homecoming queen back in the day. He placed her in her late-late-sixties, which in appearance-obsessed California was comparable to fifty everywhere else. The “mature aged” supposedly looked even younger down in Los Angeles, with all that access to cosmetic surgery clinics, but Eric didn’t know this firsthand, having only moved to the state from Philadelphia a little more than a year ago. “I was only making small talk, because I’m nosy and wondering why you’re here. I’m Greta, by the way. Greta Milstein.”
Eric was quickly growing to like the woman, as her playful ribbing was a welcome respite after the day he’d just had. “I’m Eric, and, no, I’m not a criminal.”
Her hand flew to her chest dramatically. “Phew! Because it’d break my old, dear heart to hear a boy as cute as you was out causing trouble. I might even have to make you give me the lollipop back. Like stealing candy from a baby!” She gave him a flirty wink.
Eric felt the color rise to his cheeks. He didn’t know how to take this, sitting in a police station while being hit on by a senior citizen wearing a collection of jewelry that probably cost more than the house he grew up in. “I work at the university—LU. I’m here because of a suicide we had on campus. I knew the kid who did it, and I’m giving a st
atement.”
“Oh, how awful—I’m so sorry for you! I heard about that on the news. Terrible stuff.” Luckily, she didn’t ask him probing questions, which he appreciated.
“Why are you here?” he asked. Then, to make her day, he added, “Been out stealing too many hearts?”
“Oh, you,” she said, but he could tell she was pleased. “You ever hear of Grow Green?”
“Don’t they do stuff with trees—paper products and whatnot? I’m always seeing their billboards and trucks going down the highway.”
She nodded. “That’s right. I own the company.”
“Wow, that’s unbelievable! You’re a household name.” Well, that explained the clothes and the jewelry. She must be worth millions upon millions.
Greta nodded proudly. “It was my daddy’s company until 1987, and then my brother and I took over after he passed. Don joined Daddy in ’07, so now it’s just me.”
“And who will you pass it to?” he asked before he could think better of it. Was that rude, asking an elderly person such a question?
She didn’t seem offended, having laughed at his pained expression. “You mean once I kick the bucket?” She shrugged her bony shoulders. “I’m still deciding on that. Both my boys are lazy as all get-out—wouldn’t know a hard day’s work if it bit them on the butt. They’d run the company into the ground not six months after my passing, of that I have no doubt. I’m sure Daddy’s rolling over in his grave right now with me just talking about it. You don’t know anything about trees, do you?” she asked, giving him a once-over, as if considering him for the position.
He could only assume she was kidding. “Afraid not.”
“Shoot. I guess I’ll have to leave it up to the shareholders, then.”
“So, why are you here at the station?” he asked, wondering if she was there to bail out one of the lazy sons, though he could better imagine her letting them stew in jail to teach them a lesson. Greta did not seem the type to brook anyone’s bullshit, offspring or not.